Why Missile Defence Now Depends On Resilient Sensors And Command Networks

Missile defence credibility is still judged largely through interceptor speed, range, accuracy, and probability of engagement. Those measures capture only the final action within a longer defensive pathway. Contemporary threats compress warning time, combine dissimilar trajectories, manipulate the information environment, and target networks connecting detection with command. This article develops a continuity-threshold framework for judging missile defence under disruption. Credibility exists only while at least one trusted and authorised path remains available from observation and validation to decision, engagement coordination, and reconstitution. Missile defence has therefore shifted from a platform-performance problem to a continuity-of-decision problem. Future advantage will favour forces able to preserve that pathway despite deception, saturation, cyber intrusion, electromagnetic interference, organisational friction, and loss of individual nodes.