Russia in Global Affairs

For citation, please use:
Krivolapov, O.O., 2025. U.S. Homeland Missile Defense, Great Power Competition, and Arms Control – Incongruous Concepts? Russia in Global Affairs, 23(3), pp. 180–196. DOI: 10.31278/1810-6374-2025-23-3-180-196

Great-power rivalry will likely continue for the foreseeable future. Russia and the U.S. may agree on the need to stabilize bilateral relations, but Moscow currently holds that strategic stability dialogue can be resumed only once the U.S. gives up attempting to strategically defeat Russia and once contradictions over European security are resolved. Until then, each will look for ways to limit nuclear risks and curb the arms race. Given this, and the anti-Russian consensus in the U.S. Congress, it is unclear whether nuclear-weapon states will be able to adjust the balance of power, and the rules of strategic competition, through negotiations and agreements that require parliamentary ratification.

But defense systems (air defense, missile defense, aerospace defense) will be an important factor in any such attempt. The Trump administration has predictably agreed with experts who believe that the strengthening of homeland missile defense will prevent opponents from being able to threaten a conventional strike on U.S. territory in order to coerce concessions, whether in Europe or East Asia (Costlow, 2022; Heinrichs, Hyten, 2024; Soofer, 2025). At the same time, it is not clear whether U.S. homeland missile defense will be exclusively stabilizing.

There are three views among Russian experts on U.S. missile defense: its uncontrolled development will spur the arms race, so missile defense should be limited (Esin, 2017; Rogov, 2021; Klimov and Oznobishchev, 2023); it will not be able to repel a massive Russian nuclear strike, even in the long term, and therefore will not jeopardize strategic stability (Dvorkin, 2019; Mizin, 2019); it will remain limited in its capabilities and thereby enhance stability (Savelyev, 2023).

In the last five years, few U.S. experts have continued to suggest abandoning strategic stability with Russia. The two remaining approaches hold that: U.S. homeland missile defense does not affect strategic stability as long as it is focused on repelling the North Korean (not Russian or Chinese) missile threat (Thielmann, 2020; Panda, 2021; Sankaran, 2023); missile defense will strengthen U.S.-Russia and U.S.-China strategic stability, but only if protects the U.S. from a limited strike precisely from Russia or China (Karako, Williams, Rumbaugh, 2017; Costlow, 2022; Obering and Peters, 2024; Heinrichs and Hyten, 2024; Soofer, 2025).

Strategic stability was defined in 1990 (Soviet-United States Joint Statement, 1990) as a situation between the USSR/Russia and the U.S. in which there are no incentives for a massive nuclear first strike. In general, missile defense and long-range conventional weapons can create such incentives. Of the two components of nuclear stability—arms race stability and crisis stability—Russian and American experts still believe that missile defense is primarily a factor in the arms race. It is all the more interesting, therefore, that some experts view U.S. homeland missile defense as a stabilizing factor in the event of an acute political-military crisis between Moscow and Washington. As a rule, talk about renewed great-power rivalry as a key long-term trend. However, they neither consider more than one acute crisis scenario nor take into account the opponent’s initial motives or the specifics of an international political-military crisis as a phenomenon.

The purpose of this study is to determine how missile defense could contribute to the development of rules for strategic competition between great powers.

In considering a U.S.-Russia or U.S.-China crisis, we use deterrence theory (G. Snyder, T. Schelling, R. Jervis, etc.), which considers how leaders use the risk of harm to compel others’ behavior (Jervis, 1979, p. 292). The deterrence theory takes into account the fullest combination of factors (including inaccurate assessments) that impact the decision-making process of the top political leadership during an acute political-military crisis.

One of the main terms in this study is ‘political-military crisis.’ Academician Andrei Kokoshin distinguished such features of an international political-military crisis as “an intermediate state between peace and war,” a stressful situation, the need to make decisions within a short time, a high probability of ill-conceived actions and mistakes, as well as not only measures to influence the opponent’s behavior but also those intended for “domestic consumption” (Kokoshin, 2013, pp. 43, 101-103). Foreign deterrence theorists have written much about the specifics of a political-military crisis as a situation where the leadership of countries is motivated to take measures that they would otherwise never approve of (for more details, see Jervis, 1982, pp. 21-30; Schelling, 2008, p. 95-101). At the same time, the leaders of the countries involved in such a crisis can act on the strength of their own, not always accurate, assessments of the opponent’s intentions and “red lines” as well as their own and the opponent’s offensive and defensive limits and capabilities. So, a ‘political-military crisis’ hereby refers to a situation involving a high risk of armed confrontation between the opposing parties amid extremely low communication and trust between them.

Another key term is ‘arms control.’ This study is based on the definition given by former Russian Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov: a set of measures aimed at stopping the buildup of weapons, their limitation, reduction, and elimination, as well as at preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons through international agreements and arrangements (Antonov, 2012, p. 9). However, such measures may not always be the result of international agreements and arrangements. One example is Russia’s 2019 unilateral moratorium on the deployment of intermediate and shorter-range missiles, which remains in force as long as the United States does not deploy such systems. Regardless of how long this moratorium lasts, it is an arms control measure. At the same time, this moratorium was not the result of international agreements. So this study construes ‘arms control’ more broadly as a set of measures, including unilateral ones, aimed at stopping the buildup of weapons, their limitation, reduction, and elimination, as well as at preventing nuclear proliferation.

This study only considers systems for intercepting ballistic missiles with a range above 5,500 km. Shorter-range missiles, and newer systems such as unmanned underwater torpedoes, require a separate study.

Prospects of the Trump administration’s homeland missile defense policy

At the beginning of his first presidential term, Donald Trump instructed the Department of Defense to consider a long list of various missile defense projects. All of them were mentioned in the 2019 Missile Defense Review. By the end of 2019, many programs were canceled for technological or financial reasons. By 2021, the list was shortened to just those projects that were considered cost-effective and technologically feasible.

In January 2025, the second Trump administration launched the Iron Dome for America initiative (The Iron Dome for America, 2025), later renamed the Golden Dome, which was stated to include:

• Space-Based Interceptors. Designed to intercept ballistic missiles in the boost phase, these were mentioned in the 2019 Missile Defense Review, but canceled by 2020 for high cost, vulnerability to anti-satellite weapons, and ineffectiveness against multiple ICBM launches from one area.
• Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA), commenced in 2020 as the National Defense Space Architecture (NDSA), and renamed in 2023. It is supposed to serve as the basis for Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2), ensuring uninterrupted information transmission between sensors, command, and troops on the ground. The PWSA is to consist of seven layers, with dozens of small satellites in each. Two of those—Tracking Layer and Custody Layer—are part of missile defense. The former layer involves Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensors (HBTSS); the latter uses sensors tracking the movement of mobile missile carriers in order to attack them before they fire.[1]
• Homeland missile defense underlayer. The sea-based Aegis system, with the SM-3 Block IIA interceptor, was tested against an ICBM-class target (with one warhead and no decoys) in November 2020, reportedly with success. The SM-3 can intercept only at the exoatmospheric phase of flight, and thus its success would require the deployment of Aegis ships in the northern Atlantic and the Pacific. American experts expect the SM-3 Block IIA inventory to grow from 50 to about 100 in 2025-2029 (Rumbaugh, 2024), and the number of BMD-capable ships from 56 to 69 in the same period (Congressional Research Service, 2024).
• Non-kinetic capabilities designed to augment the kinetic defeat of ballistic, hypersonic, advanced cruise missiles, and other next-generation aerial attacks, including lasers and high-power microwave. In 2020, these programs were reduced to a minimum when their effectiveness turned out to be limited to cruise missiles and drones.

In addition to the systems mentioned in the 2025 executive order, the U.S. will continue the Overhead Persistent Infrared (OPIR) program, launched in 2017 to replace existing high-orbit space sensors (SBIRS) designed to detect ballistic missile launches around the world. The U.S. plans to deploy the entire OPIR constellation of four satellites by 2031.

In 2020, the Trump administration launched a program to create a Next Generation Interceptor (NGI) to replace the existing Ground-Based Interceptor (GBI), and intends to deploy 20 such new interceptors by the end of the 2020s. Twenty silos have already been built in Alaska, but the first NGI is expected to come into service no earlier than 2028. All 44 GBIs will gradually be replaced with NGIs. This plan is still in force (U.S. DoD, 2024, p. 2-4). An additional 20-silo site on the U.S. East Coast at Fort Drum (New York) is planned by the end of 2030 (National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2025, p. 410), which would bring the total number of silo-based interceptors to 84.

The NGI is being developed to carry several kill vehicles. A similar project was initiated by the George W. Bush administration, canceled in 2009, and then resumed five years later. No multi-object kill vehicle tests were conducted. Around 2020, the concept was incorporated into the NGI program.

As for protecting U.S. territory from hypersonic weapons, the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) says that the Aegis SM-6 interceptor can provide minimal defense against such capabilities (U.S. Senate, 2023, p. 25-26). However, the sea-basing of this system and its under-240km interception range restrict its protection to the coast. Additionally, if it is capable of intercepting hypersonic missiles, that would be only in the terminal phase, which the MDA considers highly risky. A preliminary plan to create a new Aegis-based Glide-Phase Interceptor suggests initial operational readiness no earlier than 2035 (U.S. DoD, 2024, p. 2-4).

In 2017, the Trump administration started working on a plan to protect the continental U.S. from subsonic long-range air- and sea-launched cruise missiles. Currently, the Homeland Defense Design 2035 implies the construction of four over-the-horizon radars in the U.S., and two in Canada, to detect and track cruise missiles, and also foresees enhanced protection of eight to ten key facilities in the U.S. (U.S. Senate, 2023, p. 34-37). All the six over-the-horizon radars are not expected until 2031, but radars aimed at the Arctic are scheduled to come into operation around 2028 (Roza, 2023).

Apparently, aviation will remain the U.S.’s primary means of intercepting cruise missiles.

In addition, of the Army’s 16 Patriot battalions, half are permanently stationed in the U.S. to protect key facilities. NASAMS protect the metropolitan area. NASAMS and Patriot systems have been used in Ukraine to intercept Russian cruise missiles since 2022 and 2023, respectively.

In 2021, then-Director of the Missile Defense Agency, Vice Admiral Jon Hill, said that the space, air, and missile-defense segments should eventually be integrated within the Joint All-Domain Command and Control framework (Judson, 2021). Big data from all types of space-based sensors and land-based radars, regarding missile launches in the direction of North America, will be centrally processed in JADC2 using artificial intelligence and transmitted directly to sea- and land-based air and missile defense systems. Although there is still a very long way to go, the U.S. homeland missile defense architecture is evolving towards integrated aerospace defense.

The approximate balance of forces 

U.S. officers and politicians have lately been speaking of the need to protect the continental U.S. from a limited conventional or nuclear missile attack from Russia or China. For example, the U.S. Strategic Posture Report (2023) states: “A ‘coercive’ attack consists of limited conventional or nuclear strikes intended to convince U.S. leadership that the costs of intervening or persevering in a conflict involving the attacker are too high. If an adversary perceives that the United States would not or could not continue to fight after executing such a strike, that strike is incentivized. Such coercive attacks are bounded in scale to avoid eliciting a severe U.S. response. The coercive effect of the attack is based on the threat that additional attacks will follow if the United States refuses to be coerced. As will be discussed, the Commission believes this analysis applies to China and Russia as well as rogue states” (America’s Strategic Posture, 2023, p. 66). This view has been mentioned in one form or another by American experts (Karako, Williams, Rumbaugh, 2017, p. 4, 12; Costlow, 2022; Obering and Peters, 2024; Heinrichs and Hyten, 2024; Soofer, 2025) and the military since the 2015 (Gortney, 2015, p. 6), and it can also be found in the Missile Defense Review 2022 (Missile Defense Review, 2022, p. 6).

Whether Russia or China really have such doctrine to exert pressure is beyond the scope of this article and deserves a separate study. It is much more important that the U.S. leadership is likely to assume, in a crisis, that Moscow/Beijing has such plans.

The U.S. currently has more than 1,000 NASAMS’ AIM-120 interceptors and Patriot PAC-3 MSE interceptors.[2] In addition, some aircraft can also intercept long-range cruise missiles. Such forces should be enough to repel a limited coercive cruise-missile strike.

As for a strike comprised of ballistic missiles, which make up the bulk of the Russian and Chinese Strategic Nuclear Forces, the U.S. has the following systems available for interception. The 84 above-mentioned NGIs, if each is assumed to have three kill vehicles, amount to 252 interceptors. If we also assume 69 Aegis destroyers by 2029, some permanently patrolling in the North Pacific and North Atlantic, and an arsenal of SM-3 Block IIA interceptors that reaches 100 units by then, then the U.S. will have about 350 interceptors for use against ICBMs and SLBMs.

According to U.S. experts, the Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces have 872 warheads on ICBMs and 640 on SLBMs (Kristensen et al., 2024b, p. 119-120), far greater than the number of theoretically available U.S. interceptors. This homeland missile defense architecture will not be able to protect the United States from a Russian massive nuclear strike with such missiles, even if the U.S. puts the entire arsenal of 100 SM-3 IIAs from depots into the ship-based Aegis launchers. At the same time, the U.S. homeland missile defense architecture can theoretically protect the U.S. from a limited ICBM and/or SLBM attack by the Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces. (Importantly, the Fundamentals of the State Policy of the Russian Federation in the Area of Nuclear Deterrence, adopted in 2024, allows unacceptable damage to the aggressor even if it tries to deliver a massive non-nuclear strike on Russia.)

 As of 2024, U.S. experts estimated that Chinese ICBMs and SLBMs carried approximately 310 nuclear warheads (Kristensen et al., 2024a, p. 50), which theoretically could be entirely intercepted, but only if each interceptor destroys a warhead, when in reality up to four might be needed (Panda, 2021, p. 14). However, U.S. missile defenses could theoretically protect it from a limited ICBM and/or SLBM attack by Russia or China.

A crisis involving U.S. homeland missile defense

Some American experts believe that limited protection of the entire U.S. territory would raise the threshold for the use of weapons against the U.S. and thereby strengthen strategic stability with Russia and China.

According to deterrence theory, a political-military crisis between competing great powers is the result of a situation where their leaders are convinced that the status quo is not changing in their favor, that their interests are being jeopardized, and the situation is hopeless (Jervis, 1982, p. 13; Snyder, 1960, p. 166; Schelling, 2008, p. 225). As a result, they become increasingly confident that by launching an attack (limited or not) they would lose less than if they do not attack at all. This creates an incentive to attack even if there was none before.

This is always the result of a certain assessment of the opponent’s intentions, actual “red lines,” and offense and defense capabilities.

Correct or wrong, this perception affects countries’ leaders during an acute crisis, when they cannot form an objective view, make a thorough and balanced assessment of the situation, and obtain full information for a number of reasons. In such a situation, a nuclear-weapon state is motivated to respond to the opponent’s actions, which it sees as an attempt to exert pressure, by putting counter-pressure and raising the stakes.         

In the scenario considered by American experts and officials, Russia (or China), seeking to coerce the U.S., faces a kind of obstacle in the form of limited U.S. homeland missile defense. This situation allows for two possible outcomes, in addition to Moscow’s (or Beijing’s) likely retreat:

(1) A limited attack based on the conviction that the enemy can inflict certain damage upon the U.S. with subsequent negotiations from a position of strength or at least with equal opportunities. In this case, homeland missile defense as such fails to deter a missile strike. Moreover, nothing keeps the parties from attacking and counterattacking with limited conventional strikes on each other’s territory.

(2) A delay and a build-up in strength for an attack that will overcome the defenses so that subsequent negotiations are not held from a position of weakness. This would provide only temporary deterrence and only delay a limited conventional strike.

Refusal to take any action due to the impossibility to overcome limited homeland missile defense or due to one’s conviction that the country can inflict certain damage despite the opponent’s limited homeland missile defense essentially means that there is no political-military crisis as defined herein, since the risk of military showdown is low. If a country is not motivated to up the ante and try to overcome U.S. limited homeland missile defense, it does not start exerting pressure at all. It is hard to imagine a situation where an unmotivated country, unwilling to raise the stakes, would try to blackmail the U.S. with a possible missile strike on its territory.

So, U.S. limited homeland missile defense is an attempt to eliminate a stage of escalation that can be tentatively called “a limited strike on the opponent’s national territory” in the hope that the opponent will give in. However, the elimination of one stage of escalation does not necessarily lead to stabilization during a crisis. In particular, this is not necessarily the case when the opponent for some reason believes that losing in such confrontation would allow the winner to impose his political will on the defeated party. A nuclear state capable of delivering a limited conventional strike deep into the adversary’s territory may not necessarily agree to lose in such a standoff.

Arms control in the current situation

Some rules of great-power competition will probably be eventually worked out, but nobody can say when this may happen and whether a new nuclear crisis might first be necessary to encourage the parties to do so. Speaking of tentative rules or restrictions for the development of the two countries’ missile defenses, two points should be regarded.

Firstly, these rules theoretically could regulate certain attributes of missile defense: the number and location of homeland missile defense interceptors; geographical restrictions for mobile sea- and ground-based regional missile defense systems; moratoriums on destructive anti-satellite tests and on orbital interceptors’ deployment.

Secondly, countries will probably be unwilling to limit many other characteristics of missile defense: the number and location of land-, sea-, air-, and space-based sensors; the deployment of non-destructive counter-space weapons (blinding lasers, electronic warfare); the growing integration of offensive and defensive weapon systems; the qualitative development of sensors, interceptors, and systems; limited preemptive conventional strikes’ inclusion into the overall missile defense strategy.

Given this, and the current level of great-power confrontation, benefits from missile defense transparency regimes look quite doubtful.

Missile defense can be a stabilizing factor only if the defender is fully confident that the system can reduce possible damage to an acceptable level (otherwise the defender will seek to upgrade the system) and the potential attacker is fully confident that its forces can overcome the defenses to inflict the necessary level of damage (otherwise the attacker will seek to upgrade its offensive capabilities).

Therefore, missile defense can contribute to stability only if it is taken as part of the achieved balance of strategic forces.

Arguably, the U.S. cannot limit its missile defense because Pyongyang and Tehran are increasing their missile capabilities. However, current U.S. limited missile defense is already enough to raise the threshold for a North Korean or Iranian attack, and U.S. offensive capabilities deter any massive strike. Thus, further strengthening missile defense would not provide any better protection, but only force Iran and North Korea to improve their arsenals in order to regain minimal deterrence. Rather than seeking its own safety, Washington may be seeking to deprive the DPRK and Iran of the minimal deterrence that they currently possess.[3]

Missile defense is connected to the whole range of strategic stability issues, on which Russia and the U.S. will be able to resume official dialogue if and when the Ukraine crisis is somehow resolved and thus nuclear risks are reduced. After nuclear risk reduction, arms limitation would then be the next item to address. New START will end in 2026, and the U.S. Senate is unlikely to ratify any new arms control agreements. Given U.S. statements about China’s nuclear and conventional arms buildup, the Trump administration is unlikely to agree with Russia on any arms limitations unless China is also a party.

In this situation, “tacit coordination” and “tacit negotiation” (Schelling, 1980, pp. 71, 101-105, 225-226) are the only arms control that is possible. These do not require public statements, summits, contacts, or even secret negotiations. For example, both parties could simply maintain the status quo. As long as both sides comply with the New START ceilings on nuclear warheads and delivery vehicles, do not station new conventional or nuclear medium-range missiles near each other’s territory, do not deploy new missile defense systems, and do not launch new space and counter-space weapons into orbit, some sort of balance will hold. However, any new deployments will trigger an action-reaction spiral.

*  *  *

In the long term, missile defense will be able to protect the U.S. from a Russian/Chinese missile strike only if it is limited, and even this is uncertain. Nor does the system prevent action-reaction spirals from emerging (regardless of the initial strike’s success), since each side may fear (especially in the absence of actual contacts) that non-retaliation will be interpreted as an admission of defeat.

The U.S.’s development of limited missile defense, in parallel with the development of doctrines for the limited use of long-range (nuclear and conventional) weapons, may harm stability in a crisis between the U.S. and another nuclear great power with long-range conventional capabilities. Attempting to eliminate one rung of escalation ladder may simply push a motivated adversary to the higher rung.

Reinforcement of  U.S. defenses against a coercive attack, widely discussed among American experts and officials, would not guarantee protection against such an attack or against escalation after it. Defensive systems can help stabilize the situation only if they are factored into the overall strategic balance.

Even without direct U.S.-Russia dialogue on strategic stability, each side can still grope for guardrails with which to avoid the nuclear war that neither side wants, even as great-power competition continues. This may be followed by tacit coordination or tacit negotiation.

Any creation of a new system will likely prompt the other side to qualitatively or quantitatively improve its own arsenal in order to dig out of the perceived imbalance. Therefore, unilateral limitations on the deployment of new offensive and defensive weapons, being implemented in parallel by Russia and the U.S., could prevent the situation’s further deterioration.