Could Navy Ships Track, Intercept & Destroy a Chinese or North Korean ICBM?

By Kris Osborn, President, Center for Military Modernization

The threat of enemy ICBMs continues to grow more ominous given the precarious circumstance in Ukraine, Putin’s threats, China’s ongoing effort to double its number of nuclear warheads by the end of the decade and North Korea’s recent ICBM test firing. 

Certainly the ability to respond with a massive, catastrophic nuclear weapons attack can serve as a deterrent potentially stopping any would-be nuclear attacker, yet the role of air, sea and land-based missile defense only continues to become more pressing. 

The ground-based interceptors are pretty well known and continue to be upgraded with new command and control technology, interceptor guidance with advanced kill vehicles and sensor fidelity, yet there are also a number of critical new avenues of ICBM defense. These include, for example, the potential ability of a fighter jet to incinerate a launching ICBM during its boost phase with laser weapons, innovative and yet to be discovered space-based defenses, a new generation of interceptors and .. perhaps most recently, Navy ships at sea. The Navy has long operated and upgraded its Aegis Combat System ship-based air and cruise missile defense system to intercept short, medium and long-range ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and other threats, yet Aegis-capable Navy ships can now possibly track and destroy enemy ICBMs at sea. 

Can Navy Ships Shoot Down ICBMs? 

There is a clear, unambiguous national security question of great relevance which naturally continues to receive a massive amount of attention. The question needs little qualification or explanation .. and it is “could the US shoot down, intercept or stop an incoming ICBM?”

In an immediate sense, this might apply to North Korea given the potential volatility of their leadership and continued testing, yet the question is equally relevant to great power threats as well. The pace of Chinese nuclear weapons modernization and production, combined with Russia’s known arsenal of tactical, nuclear-capable hypersonic and larger ICBMs are certainly not lost on the Pentagon. Added to this complexity is multiple recent reports that North Korea has recently test fired an ICBM again, a development reportedly causing alarm, according to an CNN report.