The “Golden Dome for America: Current and Future Missile Threats to the U.S. Homeland” assessment was released by the Defense Intelligence Agency earlier this week, specifying the kinds of threats the U.S. will face from advanced missile weaponry in the next decade.
The report provided information on the “agency’s unclassified intelligence on adversary missile threats” and identified the missile capabilities of China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran as the biggest threats to U.S. national security in the future.
“In the coming decade, missile threats to the U.S. Homeland from more advanced conventional- and nuclear-capable delivery systems will expand in scale and sophistication,” read the assessment. “DIA profiles the missile threat and inventories in six categories: intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, two types of hypersonic weapons, land attack cruise missiles, and fractional orbital bombardment systems.”
The objective of the assessment was to depict “the threats a sophisticated missile defense system for the U.S. would defend against.”
North Korea has been in the news recently for conducting a wide array of weapons testing, a process that began in October 2024, shortly before the U.S. presidential election. The communist nation claimed the testing was done due to perceived aggression toward North Korea by the U.S. and its allies. Tensions increased earlier this year when, in January, the U.S. conducted military drills with South Korea and Japan in East Asia. The joint exercises made North Korea uncomfortable, and in response, the country launched missiles in a weapons testing exercise in January, February, and March.
North Korea tested ballistic missiles during its exercises, a kind of weapon that the DIA report listed as one of the most dangerous threats to the U.S. And while North Korea has been more active recently, China and Russia have a significantly larger inventory of the weapons, according to the report. However, another cause for concern regarding North Korea is the country’s leader, Kim Jong Un, vowed to “update and strengthen” its nuclear capabilities.
Other weapons listed as threats included submarine-launched ballistic missiles, boosted hypersonic weapons, land attack cruise missiles, and a low-altitude ICBM known as a fractional orbital bombardment system.
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The assessment warned that there was “no part of the Homeland which cannot be struck” by intercontinental ballistic missiles and submarine-launched ballistic missiles. It also warned that the “majority of the systems presented here have nuclear variants.”
China and Russia were the countries with the largest stockpiles of each weapon. North Korea and Iran lagged significantly behind, not even having any known quantities of SLBMs, FOBs, cruise missiles, or hypersonic weapons.