The US has just unveiled plans to substantially upgrade Guam’s missile defenses, turning the strategic island into a formidable fortress against potential Chinese and North Korean missile attacks.
This month, The Warzone reported that the US military had conducted meetings discussing the daily impact of 20 planned missile defense sites on Guam, which will host surface-to-air interceptors, radars and other elements of the planned Enhanced Integrated Air and Missile Defense (EIAMD) system.
The EIAMD, the report notes, will consist of Aegis Ashore, the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), Typhon, Patriot, and Enduring Shield systems, providing a layered missile defense system.
In addition, the report says that EIAMD will come with new airspace restrictions, particularly around new radar sites in constant operation and present potential electromagnetic interference hazards.
The Warzone report says that the US military held “public scoping meetings” earlier this month to disseminate information about the EIAMD system to residents and get feedback, criticisms and concerns about the project and its possible environmental impacts.
The report mentions that EIAMD will defend Guam in a 360-degree arc by distributing system components at multiple locations across the island.
It notes that the core of EIAMD would be the planned Aegis Ashore system in Guam, with unique features for its strategic location. Although the source says that the exact configuration of Aegis Ashore in Guam remains to be determined, it will have a more distributed architecture than its predecessors.
The Warzone notes that the EIAMD will include at least four AN/TPY-6 four-sided phased array radars, leveraging technology from the Long-Range Discrimination Radar (LRDR) now operational in Alaska.
Asia Times reported in May 2023 that Guam would receive a road-mobile version of the AN/TPY-6 for integrated air and missile defense, linked to a disaggregated Aegis Ashore. An underground facility at Guam’s southern end may also be possible, with interceptor missiles fired from apertures in the mountainsides.
Asia Times noted in August 2022 that the LRDR is a two-in-one system combining low and high-frequency radars. The former can track multiple space objects but cannot distinguish which ones are threats, while the latter has a narrow field of view but can discriminate and identify specific threats.
Such capability may be crucial to defeating evolving ballistic, cruise and hypersonic missile threats, which may be volley-fired with deployed penetration aids to defeat current US missile defenses.
Apart from Aegis Ashore, the US plans to upgrade the THAAD currently deployed in Guam as the backbone of the island’s missile defenses, alongside Aegis-equipped offshore warships.
Asia Times reported in August 2022 that British Aerospace Systems (BAE) won a contract from US defense contractor Lockheed Martin to design and manufacture next-generation infrared seeker technology for the THAAD interceptor missile, providing critical sensing and guidance capabilities against ballistic missile threats.
BAE System’s new seeker can seek and lock on to missiles flying at 27,300 kilometers per hour, enabling THAAD guidance systems to route interceptor missiles to the threat. THAAD’s non-explosive hit-to-kill mechanism minimizes the risk of unintended detonation, reducing the risk posed by ballistic and hypersonic missiles.
Aside from the EIAMD and THAAD, the US may deploy the Typhon road-mobile missile launcher in Guam to reinforce the latter systems and as a part of a larger strategy to build a “missile wall” in the Pacific.
In December 2022, Asia Times reported that the US Army received the first of four prototype Typhon missile launchers designed to fire Standard SM-6 interceptors. It is expected to fire the latest Standard SM-6 Block IB, which features a redesigned body and a larger rocket motor, improving its anti-air and anti-missile capabilities and giving it a secondary land-attack capability.
The Patriot missile system may complement those systems to improve Guam’s defenses, medium and short-range threats. However, there have been conflicting reports regarding the system’s effectiveness.
In line with those conflicting reports, Asia Times noted in August 2022 that, during the 1991 Gulf War, the US Army may have manipulated figures about the Patriot’s effectiveness, initially claiming near-perfect performance in intercepting 45 out of 47 ballistic missiles, but later revising that to 50%, then after that expressing “higher confidence” in just a quarter of intercepts.
The Patriot has also been criticized for its near-terminal phase interceptions, limited target discrimination capabilities and limited effectiveness against a highly-lofted trajectory ballistic missile attack.
Despite that possibly subpar performance in its combat debut, the Patriot has been upgraded several times, substantially increasing its capability compared to earlier versions.
Defense News reported in November 2017 that Arab-operated Patriot batteries had intercepted more than 100 tactical ballistic missiles since 2015, with 90 of those kills credited to the PAC-2 Guided Enhanced Missile-T (GEM-T) interceptor with a powerful blast fragmentation warhead.
In May 2023, multiple media outlets reported on the Patriot system’s successful intercept of Russia’s much-vaunted Kinzhal air-launched hypersonic weapon, potentially validating its capability against hypersonic threats. That may also be early proof of concept against China’s new air-launched hypersonic missile, unveiled in November 2022, which is very similar to Russia’s Kinzhal.
The US may also deploy short-range air defense capabilities (SHORAD) systems to Guam, further bolstering the island’s defenses against low-flying threats. Such systems may be missile-based or directed-energy weapons such as lasers.
In January 2023, The Warzone reported on the US Army’s Enduring Shield Indirect Fire Protection system, built around the Multi-Mission Launcher (MML) and AIM-9X Sidewinder missile, with a platoon consisting of four launchers linked to one AN/MPQ-64 Sentinel-series radar via the Integrated Battle Command System (IBCS) network.
Based on released concept art, the Warzone report notes that a platoon could have 18 AIM-9X missiles.
However, integrating those various systems may be a significant challenge to Guam’s missile defense, as disjointed systems may not be effective against an adversary deploying several types of advanced weapons such as drones, cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, and hypersonic weapons in a saturation attack.
Integrating those systems will require exceptional sensor fusion across various domains, such as space and cyberspace, to defeat such threats.