Email from July 17th, 2026 Click here to view the Alert on the MDAA website Follow and Support MDAA   MDAA Alert 2: “Air Base Defense” (VCRT Summary) Gen. (Ret.) Glen VanHerck Former Commander, NORAD/USNORTHCOM 2020-2024 Dear Members and Friends, "I can tell you, you can go look at open testimony and open posture hearing statements — and you can know that in closed hearings, these things were articulated. I can tell you that in my reports to the Secretary of Defense — both my 90-day report after I took command in August of '20, and when I left, and multiple times in between — there are memos conveying the lack of capability, capacity, responsibility directed, and authority given to execute against this threat. I can tell you that in the spring of '23, right before Langley happened in December — the UAS events — during an event in the Pentagon with all senior leaders together, I expressed my concerns about the UAS threat, both home and abroad, and was largely ignored, candidly. Just stating the facts as they are. We rolled into this fight, Epic Fury, with a force laydown and a command-and-control structure designed for a 30-year-ago threat. And we should have expected what we got. We put things in place to defend against ballistic missiles, with limited capacity. But in the end, we lost infrastructure; we lost key treasure, and — most importantly — blood and lives that we lost. That's very, very disappointing. I can tell you that the budget process functioned as it should. The bottom line is, we made decisions to accept this risk as part of the budget process over numerous years, over multiple administrations. The Defense Planning Guidance during my time in command — I non-concurred every single time, because although Homeland Defense and defense of our forces is always stated as the number one priority, the planning guidance and the budget didn't reflect this. And for those out there who don't know what that is, the Defense Planning Guidance is the guidance to the services on what you're going to buy and acquire in the future. Those are just facts. What didn't work? Services attempting to push TOA — Total Obligation Authority — to somebody else to pay for it. The bureaucracy is bickering among themselves. I can tell you, for years we talked about whose responsibility it was to acquire and operate this, and ultimately the department — I'm talking at the strategic level — didn't throw down and make a decision and pin the tail on somebody and say, "Go fund this, go organize, go train and equip the joint force to accomplish this mission." And we did accept that risk. What needs to happen? We need to make sure we have the proper policy in place, the right responsibilities with the required authorities, and that all the documents reflect that. I'd remind people — we talk a lot about the U.S. AirForce and the U.S. Army. We don't fight the Air Force and the Army; we fight as a joint force, and they're going to organize and train those forces. John talked a lot about that. Today, we don't have the domain awareness in place to put together a command-and-control structure to command and control these threats like we do more broadly for missiles and air threats. Group 1, Group 2, and even the smaller portions of Group 3 UAS are largely not fitting into the command-and-control structure we have today. We need to go look at how we're going to do this differently. In the homeland, they've given it to the services to defend their individual installations. Forward, that may have to happen as well. But the bottom line is, I don't believe we have the right structure or the right organization in place to have the right domain awareness and the right ability to execute this mission. The budget must reflect this as we go forward. And the bottom line, it doesn't require a whole bunch of new sensors, oftentimes, Riki. It requires the sharing of data across organizations, across governmental agencies, with allies and partners — fusing data, using artificial intelligence and machine learning to process that data, and getting that data to the right decision-maker or effector to be able to move forward. But all too often, that data falls on the cutting-room floor; it is not processed; it is not shared. That's something we have to move beyond. Industries got to be part of this. They must move more rapidly, and they must collaborate across industry. The days of proprietary solutions, with an individual company moving out on its own, must go by the wayside. We've got to have them collaborate to create affordable, adaptable, rapidly adjustable, modifiable solutions. And the bottom line is, there's no silver bullet. Depending on the situation — what you're defending, the area you're defending — it'sgoing to require integrated solutions, everything from RF capabilities for Group 1 and 2 up to kinetic capabilities for military-style drones, Group 3s, etc. Depending on what you're defending, you may not need everything — you may just need non-kinetic effectors. But if the infrastructure is so important and critical, you may need a combination of everything to defend it. Those are policy decisions that absolutely need to be made. General Niemi brought up a great point: this isn't a Band-Aid solution. Whoever gets this pinned on them has got to organize, train, and equip around it — and that includes ops, maintenance, supply chain, everything that goes with it — to be able to execute this mission. This isn't a pickup game that you're going to be able to do. This is here for the future, and we've got to get this right. Let me just stop here really quickly and say: we need to move with a sense of urgency, and I have not seen that. I think General Wilsbach gets it. General Niemi clearly gets it. How fast we move within the bureaucracy — that needs to change. We have to move forward. Loss of lives, loss of critical infrastructure — we can't accept this in the future. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you, Riki. I think the ideal solution is for a single commander to have responsibility for area air defense — a joint task force commander assigned to do that. And that would include defense of the carrier. Obviously, the Navy is going to do largely the defense of the carrier, but that can't be an isolated solution worked in a vacuum. The area air defense commander — and that doesn't have to be U.S. Air Force, it could be another service — needs to have awareness, responsibility, and authority designated to operate across the joint area of operations to be able to accomplish that. Domain awareness today is my concern. You can't give somebody responsibility and authority without ensuring they have the capability to execute the mission you've given them. And if you don't have domain awareness for Group 1 and 2, and portions of Group 3, then a single commander can't execute that. That's where we are in our homeland today. The NORAD/NORTHCOM commander does not have the domain awareness to be able to defend every installation and piece of critical infrastructure. Therefore, the services have the responsibility today to defend their installations. Forward, it's likely going to be that way for a little while, until we can get domain awareness broadly enough that you can have a single commander to do that, Riki. I applaud General Wilsbach, the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, and his team for stepping up, owning this, and moving forward with solutions. So, well done, Cruiser and team — great job. We've got to move faster, and the bureaucracy has gotten out of the way. John said something that's really, really important: small and mid-sized companies have developed a lot of capability and technology to help solve these problems. Their challenge is scaling what we need for this solution, and the department and larger companies can help scale. That's where I'm talking about collaboration across companies. Don't look at a small company and go, "They can't deliver." Look at the technology they're delivering and go, "How can we scale this to be part of our solution?" I think that'll help us be more effective." -Gen. (Ret.) Glen VanHerck — Former Commander, NORAD/USNORTHCOM, 103rd MDAA Virtual CRT, 16 July, 2026 Summary of Air Base Defense I. Executive Summary The Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance (MDAA) convened its 103rd Virtual Congressional Roundtable, "United States Air Base Defense," on Thursday, July 16, 2026, hosted by MDAA Founder and Chairman Riki Ellison from Rock Springs, Wyoming. The panel brought together three of the most authoritative voices on the subject: Lt. Gen. Christopher J. Niemi, USAF, Deputy Chief of Staff for Strategy, Integration and Requirements (A5/7) and Chief Modernization Officer of the Air Force; Gen. (Ret.) Glen VanHerck, former Commander of U.S. Northern Command and NORAD; and John Rood, former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. The roundtable was convened against a stark operational backdrop: six months into Epic Fury, U.S. air bases are still being struck - including an attack the Sunday prior - with lives lost, aircraft and radars destroyed on the ground, and no one held accountable. Ellison framed the structural issue at the heart of the discussion: America's closest allies - Israel, Japan, Korea - defend their air bases with their air forces, while the United States, under roles-and-missions decisions dating to 1948, relies predominantly on Army missile defense to protect Air Force installations. That construct, appropriate for an era of limited, expensive ballistic missile threats, has been overwhelmed by the proliferation of low-cost, long-range one-way attack drones and cruise missiles. The central news of the roundtable was the Air Force's decision, made by Chief of Staff Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach at the Corona four-star conference, to get back into the business of defending its own assets with destructive effectors - kinetic and non-kinetic - for the first time since divesting the mission in the 1990s. General Niemi detailed how the service will build that capability around three initial threat sets: small UAS, one-way attack drones, and subsonic cruise missiles. All three panelists agreed on the deeper diagnosis: the barrier is not technology but culture, bureaucracy, outdated policy and law, and a budget process that knowingly accepted risk on base defense for years - and the rate of change inside the Department is still not matching the rate of change outside it. II. Strategic Themes and Major Discussion Areas The Corona Decision: The Air Force Takes Back Base Defense General Niemi described the Chief's decision as courageous and consequential: the Air Force will defend its assets with destructive effectors - guns, rockets, kamikaze drones, and directed energy such as lasers and high-powered microwave - because the capacity required far outstrips what exists in the joint force today. The construct in which the Air Force depended primarily on the Army worked when the threat was a limited number of ballistic missiles; it cannot work against cheap, unsophisticated, widely proliferating systems that can reach out hundreds of miles. The Air Force last performed this mission with Stinger units in Korea through the 1990s before divesting it - accepting a risk that did not manifest until Epic Fury. Three Threat Sets, Starting Now The Air Force will focus initially on three elements of the threat spectrum. First, small UAS - the Operation Spiderweb problem - where a quadcopter with a hand grenade could destroy an F-22 at Langley in peacetime, and where policy constraints on employing defenses domestically are as challenging as the technology. Second and third, the open-conflict threats: one-way attack drones and subsonic cruise missiles, which are striking bases today and require higher-end effectors. Niemi was explicit that these are not all the threats of concern, but they are numerous, they exist today - "so we're late" - and the problem is solvable. Institution-Building Over Materiel Niemi's sharpest emphasis was that materiel is the insufficient part of the solution. His time is going to the questions only a service can answer: where the manpower comes from, what tech school and career progression look like, whether to build a weapons school and an operational test squadron for air base air defense. Airmen are firing effectors in the Middle East right now in a pickup game they were not trained for; the A3/A5 partnership is working to map that ad hoc reality to a sustainable future - including building a new career field that captures combat-experienced airmen rather than returning them to their old specialties. Timelines, Priorities, and Mass Pressed on timelines, Niemi rejected a date-certain framing: capability is being fielded today, but on a scale of zero to 100 the force sits in the single digits, and growth will be evolutionary - prioritizing the nuclear enterprise and the highest-value installations first while accepting risk at lower-priority locations. Against mass attack, the Air Force is pursuing automation to reduce 24/7 manpower burdens, low-cost effectors like APKWS - a Vietnam-era rocket adaptation at less than a tenth the cost of an AIM-9 - and a layered defense that attrits a hundred-missile raid at 50 miles and 25 miles rather than at the fence line. Rood: The Rate of Change Problem and Roles-and-Missions Reform John Rood framed the strategic failure in one axiom: when the rate of change outside an enterprise exceeds the rate inside it, the enterprise loses relevance. The 1948-era division of air defense labor - Army guns covering low altitude, Air Force fighters above - is decades out of date, and MDAA argued in a 2022 report that the base defense mission should move from the Army to the Air Force. He called for the Air Force to be given coordinating authority for area air defense and beyond, driven by civilian leadership, while preserving the joint force construct that remains America's decisive advantage. Rood also warned that the United States now faces a mature axis - Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran - sharing lessons and resources; that the Ukraine playbook of truck-launched drone saturation could shut down New York, Los Angeles, or Langley tomorrow; that the U.S. is behind in electromagnetic spectrum warfare; and that the force must accept a shift from qualitative overmatch to affordable mass, attritable systems, passive defense, deception, and the reality of leakers. VanHerck: The Warnings Were Given - and Ignored General VanHerck delivered the roundtable's accountability record. The threat was not a surprise: it was documented in his 90-day report to the Secretary of Defense in 2020, in repeated memos, in open and closed testimony, and in a spring 2023 Pentagon session with all senior leaders - months before the Langley drone incursions - where his warnings were, in his words, largely ignored. He non-concurred with every Defense Planning Guidance during his tenure because homeland defense was stated as priority one but never resourced as such. The department never made a decision pinning the mission on anyone; services pushed obligation authority to each other; and the nation rolled into Epic Fury with a force laydown and command structure designed for a threat 30 years old. The results - lost infrastructure, lost treasure, lost lives - should have been expected. Domain Awareness, Data, and Command Structure VanHerck's prescription centered on domain awareness as the gating deficiency: Group 1 and 2 UAS, and portions of Group 3, largely do not fit the existing command and control structure. The ideal is a single area air defense commander - a JFACC-like authority with subordinate missile defense and air components - but no commander can be given engagement authority without the domain awareness to exercise it. Until that exists, services will defend their own installations, at home and likely forward as well. Crucially, he argued the answer is often not new sensors but sharing and fusing data that today falls on the cutting-room floor - across services, agencies, allies, and industry - processed with AI and machine learning and delivered to the right decision-maker or effector. Golden Dome demonstrated exactly that last month against a cruise-missile-class threat, but the Group 1-2 problem remains bifurcated and stovepiped. The Homeland Gap Both Rood and VanHerck stressed that the fight applies domestically, where the Department of War is not the lead federal agency. A sustained drone campaign against U.S. airports or bases would today be handled through Defense Support of Civil Authorities requests and would require presidential authority, because DOD cannot conduct law enforcement. Policy and law have not kept pace with the threat, and the solution must be whole-of-nation - including the commercial sector, which owns roughly 80 percent of the infrastructure that sustains U.S. power projection. Why Are We Still Getting Hit? Ellison closed by asking why, six months in, the lessons of every attack have not stopped the losses. Niemi declined to litigate the past, saying his finite energy goes to solving the problem so the next six months are better - while acknowledging there is rarely a day he is satisfied with the pace. VanHerck was blunter: this is not a technology problem; it is culture, bureaucracy, and an unwillingness to move fast and take risk. Rood added that the United States is slow even in adopting technologies the Ukrainians have offered, and that a war game replaying the last 30 days of Ukraine against U.S. forces would leave everyone very unhappy with the results. III. Key Strategic Takeaways - The Air Force, by decision of General Wilsbach at Corona, is re-entering the base defense mission with destructive effectors - kinetic and directed energy - for the first time since the 1990s, focusing first on small UAS, one-way attack drones, and subsonic cruise missiles. - The binding constraint is institutional, not materiel: manpower, training pipelines, career fields, weapons school, and operational test - problems only a service can solve, and without which materiel is insufficient. - Capability is fielding now but sits in the single digits on a 100-point scale; growth will be evolutionary, prioritized by asset value, starting with the nuclear enterprise. - Defeating mass requires automation, low-cost effectors like APKWS, and layered defense that attrits raids far from the fence line - plus allied and joint contributions beyond the base perimeter. - The 1948 roles-and-missions construct is obsolete; Rood argues the Air Force should hold coordinating authority for area air defense, driven by civilian leadership, without breaking the joint force model. - The warnings were documented for years - in commander reports, testimony, and non-concurrence with successive Defense Planning Guidance - and the risk was knowingly accepted through the budget process across multiple administrations. - Domain awareness for Group 1-3 threats is the gating gap for any single area air defense commander; the near-term answer is fusing existing data across organizations with AI, not necessarily buying new sensors. - The homeland is dangerously exposed: DOW is not the lead federal agency, law enforcement authorities govern, and policy and law have not kept pace - demanding a whole-of-nation solution that includes the commercial sector owning 80 percent of critical infrastructure. - Industry must collaborate across company lines, and the department must scale the technology of small and mid-sized innovators rather than dismissing them for lack of capacity. - The obstacle is not physics or money alone but culture, bureaucracy, and speed: the rate of change inside the enterprise still lags the rate of change outside it. IV. Conclusion This roundtable captured a genuine inflection point. For the first time in three decades, the U.S. Air Force has formally taken responsibility for defending its own installations with destructive effectors - a roles-and-missions shift that MDAA advocated in 2022 and that Epic Fury made undeniable. General Niemi laid out a disciplined path: triage the fight underway in the Middle East, capture the experience of airmen learning the mission in combat, and build the enduring institutions - career fields, schools, test organizations - that turn a pickup game into a warfighting capability. The cautionary counterweight came from the panel's historical record. General VanHerck's testimony established that this crisis was foreseen, documented, and briefed to the highest levels of the department for years - and that the risk was consciously accepted, budget cycle after budget cycle. John Rood's framing explains why: an enterprise whose internal rate of change trails the external one will always be reacting to the last attack. Six months into Epic Fury, with bases still being struck, the panel's consensus was that the technology to defend them largely exists; what has been missing is decision, resourcing, accountability, and speed. The stakes extend beyond the current fight. As General Niemi observed in closing, the American way of war for 35 years has depended on operating from proximate safe-haven bases - an advantage eroding before our eyes. Defending the bases is the immediate imperative; changing how the force fights so that it is inherently less vulnerable is the strategic one. The Air Force has taken the first courageous step. Whether the department, Congress, and the nation move at the speed the threat demands - at home as well as forward - will determine whether the next roundtable convenes to mark progress or to count more losses. Speakers:  Lt. Gen. Christopher J. Niemi Deputy Chief of Staff for Force Modernization; USAF Chief Modernization Officer USAF Gen (Ret.) Glen VanHerck (Ret.) Commander of NORAD and U.S Northern Command (USNORTHCOM); MDAA Board Member Mr. John Rood Former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy; MDAA Board Member Mr. Riki Ellison Founder & Chairman, MDAA Click here to view the transcript Click here to view the recording Winners Associate with Winners to Win! Click Here to become an MDAA Member! Riki Ellison Chairman and Founder Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance   MDAA is a non-profit, non-partisan tax-exempt 501(c) (4) organization. Our mission is to make the world safer by advocating for the development and deployment of missile defense systems to defend the United States and its allies against missile threats. We are a membership-funded organization that does not advocate on behalf of any specific system, technology, architecture or entity. 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