Trump unveils plan to expand US missile defense

Washington, Jan 18 (IANS) US President Donald Trump has unveiled at Pentagon this year's Missile Defense Review which contains the country's intention to expand its missile defence capabilities.

"The US will adjust its position to defend against any missile strikes to include cruise and hypersonic," Trump said on Thursday, Xinhua news agency reported.

"The world is changing. The US cannot simply make incremental changes... It is not enough to just keep pace with our adversaries," the President said.

Under the review, the Pentagon plans to expand the country's existing missile defence shield, including extra layers with space-based sensors and interceptors, technology to track and defeat hypersonic weapons, unmanned aircraft with lasers to shoot down threats, and missile-hunting F-35 stealth fighters.

"Missile defences are a key element of our strategy given this proliferation of offensive ballistic and cruise missiles and emerging hypersonic weapons technologies that markedly raise threats to regional balances and to our major allies and partners," Acting Secretary of Defence Patrick Shanahan wrote in a preface to the review.

The review is the first update to the US missile defence policy since its 2010 version unveiled during the previous Barack Obama-led administration.

TheDrive.com analysis said unlike the 2010 version focusing almost exclusively on ballistic threats, the new review adds an entirely new emphasis on potential non-ballistic threats posed to the US homeland and to US forces deployed abroad, with particular attention to cruise missiles.

The US has spent more than $300 billion on its anti-missile goal, the media quoted military experts as saying.