The United States has built a vast defense network of interceptors and radars across the Pacific to safeguard its homeland — including the westernmost territory of Guam — against evolving missile threats from nuclear-armed adversaries.
A Newsweek map shows the locations of major land- and sea-based elements of the U.S. homeland missile defense web, from the West Coast to allied territories in East Asia, according to information disclosed by the U.S. Missile Defense Agency and official U.S. military press releases.
The recent release on Netflix of A House of Dynamite has prompted public and expert discussion about the effectiveness of the U.S. missile defense system. The film depicts the real-time responses of the president, the White House, and the military establishment after an unidentified enemy launches a nuclear missile across the Pacific toward Chicago that successfully evades interception.
A U.S. Defense Department official told Newsweek that the Pentagon was not consulted in the production of the film regarding the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD), the anti-ballistic missile system that fails to stop the weapon in Kathryn Bigelow’s thriller. The movie “does not reflect the views or priorities of this administration,” the official said.
The GMD is the current missile defense system designed to protect the U.S. homeland. It remains a critical component of the U.S. national defense strategy, ensuring the safety and security of the American people and U.S. allies, the official said in the statement.
As the U.S. pushes the development of the Golden Dome — the next-generation missile shield that will defend against all types of long-range aerial attacks — Russia, China and North Korea also continue to advance their nuclear and missile forces, from testing novel armaments to developing “defense-penetrating” strike capabilities.
According to the 2022 Missile Defense Review, the U.S. has the right to defend itself against attacks from any source. However, the GMD is neither intended for nor capable of defeating the large, sophisticated threats from Russia and China, which are countered by strategic deterrence. Instead, it is designed to address limited threats from North Korea.
The GMD’s anti-ballistic missile capability is called the Ground-Based Interceptor, or GBI, a rocket carrying a payload called the Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle. The EKV can intercept and destroy hostile warheads outside Earth’s atmosphere using the kinetic force of a direct collision — often described as “hitting a bullet with a bullet.”
The target of the GMD is missiles in their midcourse phase of flight, when they coast in space toward their targets for as long as 20 minutes, offering several opportunities to destroy them outside the atmosphere, according to the Missile Defense Agency.
A total of 44 GBIs are currently deployed — 40 at Fort Greely in Alaska and four at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Earlier this year, Boeing announced it had installed the first of 20 additional GBI silos at Fort Greely.
In a report on missile threats, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency assessed that North Korea possesses “10 or fewer” ground-based intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the U.S. homeland and projected that the number could rise to 50 by 2035.
The GMD would fire more than one GBI at each incoming missile’s reentry vehicle, which carries the warhead, according to Ankit Panda, a nuclear policy expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Panda estimated that the number of interceptors required per projectile threat was four, meaning the GMD could be saturated by just 11 North Korean reentry vehicles, according to testimony he gave in 2021 before the Strategic Forces Subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee. The saturation point would rise to 16 with 64 deployed GBIs.
“The GMD system could cope with greater numbers by relying on two- or three- interceptors per incoming reentry vehicle, but this would come at the cost of reducing the system’s overall expected effectiveness,” Panda noted.
In a February report on missile defense, the American Physical Society said the GMD achieved a 55 percent intercept rate across 20 tests since 1999, all of which were held under what the group called “scripted conditions” designed for success.
In a memo dated October 16, directly addressing the events depicted in A House of Dynamite, the Missile Defense Agency stated that the GMD, which costs about $63 billion, “displayed a 100 percent accuracy rate in testing for more than a decade,” according to a report by Deadline.
According to the Missile Defense Agency, an effective “layered” missile defense incorporates a wide-range of sensors — satellites and radars — to detect and track hostile missiles through all phases of their trajectory, providing “worldwide sensor coverage.”
At least four Pacific-oriented radars are deployed in Alaska and the continental United States: the Long Range Discrimination Radar (LRDR) and the Upgraded Early Warning Radar (UEWR) at Clear Space Force Station in Alaska, and a second UEWR at Beale Air Force Base in California. The COBRA DANE radar is located at Eareckson Air Station in Alaska.
The LRDR’s initial operation in 2021 was called “an extremely important milestone” for U.S. homeland defense, designed to simultaneously search for and track multiple small objects including all types of ballistic missiles at “very long ranges.”
The UEWR, which has a detection range of 3,000 miles, is tasked with providing estimated launch and impact points of submarine-launched or intercontinental ballistic missiles, as well as updating target tracks for interceptors once they are in flight.
In June, the LRDR conducted its first flight test tracking a live intercontinental ballistic missile-representative target over the North Pacific, along with the UEWR. Data from both radars was transmitted to the GMD in support of a simulated interception.
The COBRA DANE radar — located on the Aleutian island of Shemya, closer to Russia’s Far East than to Alaska’s mainland — performs a similar missile defense role as the UEWR but has a shorter detection range of 2,000 miles.
In addition to land-based radars, the U.S. deploys a radar mounted on a mobile, ocean-going, semi-submersible platform known as the Sea-Based X-Band Radar (SBX) in the Pacific. It was recently spotted under tow as it arrived at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.
Given its mobility, the SBX is hailed by the Missile Defense Agency as an “extremely powerful and capable radar” that can be deployed to cover any region across the world. It is designed to acquire, track and discriminate the flight characteristics of missiles.
In the Western Pacific, the U.S. has deployed the Army Navy/Transportable Radar Surveillance and Control Model 2 (AN/TPY-2) in Guam, Japan and South Korea, serving as the first line of missile defense on the doorsteps of Russia, China and North Korea.
The AN/TPY-2 radar can operate as a forward-based sensor for detecting missiles early in their flight and providing tracking information. Two units have been deployed in Japan at the Shariki Communications Site and the Kyogamisaki Communications Site.
Both Japan-based radars, located on the coast of the Sea of Japan — also known as the East Sea in South Korea — are tasked with constantly monitoring North Korean missile launches and passing “highly accurate” tracking data to sensor operators across the United States.
“We provide the strategic-level early warning for all ballistic missiles launched from North Korea that have the potential to impact the United States homeland,” an Army officer stationed at the Kyogamisaki Communications Site said in a 2017 press release.
The same radar also helps guide interceptors launched by the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system toward descending hostile missiles in “terminal mode.”
The U.S. has deployed two THAAD systems — consisting of interceptor launchers and AN/TPY-2 radars — in Seongju, South Korea, and at Marine Corps Base Camp Blaz in Guam. The THAAD unit in Guam previously operated at Andersen Air Force Base on the island.
Another U.S. land-based capacity deployed in the region is the Patriot Advanced Capability-3, or PAC-3, missile defense system stationed at Japan’s Kadena Air Base and at South Korea’s Osan and Suwon air bases, as well as at Camp Humphreys, the largest U.S. overseas military installation, also in South Korea.
Within the U.S. missile defense architecture, the THAAD and the PAC-3 are tasked with intercepting missiles in the terminal phase of flight, when they reenter the atmosphere. This phase offers the last opportunity to intercept before the missiles reach their targets.
The Navy supports missile defense in the Western Pacific by deploying Aegis warships capable of conducting ballistic missile defense missions out of Yokosuka Naval Base in Japan. Aegis, developed by Lockheed Martin, is a naval combat system designed for integrated air and missile defense.
Aegis ships are equipped with two types of interceptors — the Standard Missile-3 for midcourse defense and the Standard Missile-6 for terminal defense — against short- to intermediate-range threats, according to a Congressional Research Service report.
The Missile Defense Agency previously stated that by the end of September, the Navy would operate 56 Aegis warships tasked with ballistic missile defense across the U.S. surface fleet.
Guam, a strategic U.S. military outpost for power projection in the Western Pacific, is within range of China’s long-range missiles and was threatened by North Korea during the first Trump administration, which warned it could launch missiles at the island.
To add to the six interceptor launchers and one radar of the THAAD, the Pentagon is building the Guam Defense System (GDS) which will eventually consist of seven elements for an enhanced missile defense system, including radars and weapons.
“[Guam] looks set to become the most densely protected place anywhere on the planet,” The War Zone, a specialist U.S. defense outlet, wrote in an article that said the missile defense system would be able to defend the island with 360-degree coverage.
In a test in December 2024, the Aegis Guam System, a command-and-control component of the GDS, tracked and intercepted a medium-range ballistic missile target using the AN/TPY-6 radar and a Standard Missile-3 from Andersen Air Force Base.
In July, Guam received a radar prototype of the Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor (LTAMDS) capable of detecting and engaging threats from any direction simultaneously. The radar is set to be equipped with a future PAC-3 unit on the island.
U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in May: “The Golden Dome will progressively protect our nation from aerial attacks from any foe. Within the last four decades, our adversaries have developed more advanced and lethal long-range weapons than ever before, including ballistic, hypersonic and cruise missiles capable of striking the homeland with either conventional or nuclear warheads. Golden Dome is designed to leverage some past investments but will also use next-generation technology to defend against the evolving and complex threat landscape.”
The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency said in May: “Missile threats to the U.S. homeland will expand in scale and sophistication in the coming decade. China and Russia are developing an array of novel delivery systems to exploit gaps in current U.S. ballistic missile defenses…. North Korea has successfully tested ballistic missiles with sufficient range to reach the entire homeland, and Iran has space launch vehicles it could use to develop a militarily viable [intercontinental ballistic missile] by 2035 should Tehran decide to pursue the capability.”
