By Denise Rivette
The dire warnings given on August 13 by NORTHCOM Deputy Commander Lt. Gen. Joseph Jarrard’s during his presentation at the 29th Annual Space and Missile Defense (SMD) Symposium at the Von Braun Center in Huntsville, Alabama, have the wires buzzing. Below are two video clips of the most jarring assessments he shared including that “North Koreans have successfully flight tested ICBMs with enough boost to deliver a nuclear payload anywhere in North America.”
In the above video, the question asked was: “The next threat to the Homeland can be a swarm of inexpensive drones launched from inside our own borders rather than a missile approaching from thousands of miles away. Does NORAD have the sensor coverage, authority and decision speed necessary to respond?”
The short answer was NO. “We are ill-equipped right now to handle something like that.” He stated that we’re seeing drones used on a daily basis around the world and we have got to figure out how to mitigate that threat. “But we’re not there yet.”
In the following video, he gives his assessments of the progress China, North Korea and Russia are making in conventional and nuclear weapons and in evading our existing detection systems. “In the era of strategic competition, we recognize that geography no longer provides the protection and standoff range of the past and a more robust approach is needed to defend the United States.”
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