US Needs Space-Based Radars To Detect Missile Threats - General

WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 12th August, 2020) Vice Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff John Hyten said on Wednesday that he is working to ensure proper financing of the space-based missile detection capabilities seeing them a more efficient alternative to multi-billions land radars.

"My desire is to advocate strongly from the position of the Vice Chairman and make sure that we get the space layer funded in the future so that we can actually see and characterize these threats on the global perspective," Hyten said speaking at the Hudson Institute, a Washington-based think tank.

He added that the United States spent "enormous amounts of money" building giant radars in the Pacific and "has desires" for more to cover remaining blind spots.

"When you build a multi-billion Dollar radar and you go to another multi-billion dollar radar and multi-billion dollar radar pretty soon you have spent a lot of money and you still have holes... When you build a space layer you eliminate the holes and in the long term it will actually save you money," Hyten explained. "It looks expensive when you look at the price tag when you start off but in the long term it saves you enormous amounts of money."

He added that missile interceptors deployed in Alaska and California are "very effective" against North Korea's attack capabilities, but not against other threats. Hyten called for continued modernization of the anti-ballistic homeland defenses to make sure it matches "threats that might come from other places as well."