US Large Planes, Early Warning Assets Now More Vulnerable, Pacific Air Forces Chief Says

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - US large manned aircraft, including early warning surveillance airplanes, are becoming increasingly vulnerable, US Pacific Air Forces Director of Strategy, Plans, Programs and Requirements Brig. Gen. Christopher Niemi said.

“Large air frame airborne assets are becoming increasingly vulnerable,” Niemi told a podcast seminar on air-to-air missile defense streamed by the Missile Defense Advoacy Alliance on Monday.

North American Aerospace Defense Command Vice Director of Operations Col. Kristopher Struve agreed that no single early warning or missile defense system the United States could deploy either on the ground or in the air could work perfectly all the time or would some vulnerabilities, but he said that in a layered defense they would complement each other.

“Every single system we purchase is going to have vulnerabilities in some regards,” Struve said.

Niemi added that US military planners needed to abandon their traditional emphasis on the cost-effectiveness of defense systems and learn to design and deploy more expensive systems with multiple back-ups and safeguards to ensure that more resiliency in the face of unanticipated attacks was built into them.