“…when the rate of change is faster on the outside than it is on the inside, you have a big problem. When you’re dealing with an enterprise like the Department of War / Department of Defense… your speed of relevance for the changes you’re implementing internally need to keep pace with the speed of change externally… The rate of change on the inside is too slow, and there needs to be recognition of that.”
“This is not a technology issue; it’s not a resource problem, and it’s not some individual authorities problem. It’s a bigger issue, because if we look at where we sit today, we’re on the cusp — the leading edge, I’d say — of a real change in the way warfare is being conducted: a highly autonomous, distributed way that reflects not only the information age that informed it, but the advancements since then in terms of lower cost.”
“Precision used to be the province of very expensive systems that we owned. That’s not the case today… There’s that level of precision that drones are being employed for — not just to hit a target, but to navigate through a racecourse, with netting and other protection, through exactly the right ductwork, to go inside a building and down. These advancements have happened, and they’re increasingly happening in an automated capacity.”
“One of the things I’m glad to see is in the roles-and-missions area. It’s always a role-and-missions fight between our services. After World War II, a lot of these decisions were put in place about what the Army’s role would be for air defense, and what the Air Force’s would be. Some of those definitions and roles and responsibilities have rapidly become outdated — they were probably outdated some time ago. At MDAA, we wrote a report in 2022 — we’re now in 2026 — arguing that the change occurring now, for the Air Force to take on base defense, expeditionary defense, and forward defense of their air bases and operating locations, needed to happen, and that the mission probably needed to be moved from the Army to the Air Force because of the change in the way the air domain is operating.”
“…we’ve tended to incorporate new technologies into our existing organizational and command structures — to inject or bolt on technology to our existing formations and think that will be sufficient… but this is a much more substantial change occurring in the method and nature of warfare, and we must change how we’re operating to keep pace with it. And, again, we have to admit to ourselves: the rate of change internally is not at the rate of change externally. We’re not moving at the speed of relevance. I’m glad to hear that the Air Force is moving to fill the vacuum, to do things like expeditionary and base defense.”
“…we’re also going to have to be honest with ourselves that our structures and ways of operating are wildly out of date domestically.”
“…it’s just unacceptable, the level of losses we’re allowing ourselves to take because we allowed ourselves to be in this situation: losses to our forces and equipment, loss of life and injuries, and then the damage to our equipment and our ability to accomplish the objectives of the campaign.”
“…this could just as easily happen here, whether in New York, at National Airport, O’Hare Airport, or Langley Air Base — that the same tactics being employed in Ukraine (trucks showing up with 500 drones and other things to saturate an airfield, to attack it, to achieve an operational kill of an airport) could be employed tomorrow, whether in Los Angeles or elsewhere. And screening those things at the border will not occur.”
“If we had to respond, and someone said to the Commander of NORTHCOM or others, “Address this issue — all three of the New York-area airports have been taken down,” he would not have the authorities or the ability to do that, much less the technical means. It’s a bigger issue, and it’s one that candidly calls for some leadership from not only Department of War-level leaders.”
The last thing I’ll say is that quantity, or mass, is [an area where] we were operating in a different environment, where we emphasized quality — qualitative overmatch — and that was appropriate for the conflicts we were in at that time, say 20 years ago. Post-Desert Storm, we really reduced our force structure, and we were okay, but we’ve been warning for many years that we can’t do two major regional contingencies — i.e., a conflict with Korea and a conflict with Iran — at the same time. We can’t handle a China contingency, and we can’t handle a war with Russia when it’s sufficiently sized. That’s much more acute now. We have to accept that we’re going to have to have a larger number of less-expensive units that are expendable, and we’re going to have to be able to absorb losses, and at times deal with leakers, and have passive defenses and other things that — in our DNA — didn’t feel right… But when 5,000 or 10,000 small drones — swarms of 100,000 launched by China — are reached … by the law of large numbers, if you do 99.99% defense, you’re not going to have leakers. We’ve got to accept that we’ve got to be able to have passive defenses, and we’ve got to be less predictable, use deception, use some of the tactics we used to use but have grown a little rusty at as a force.”
“I do think you’ve got to look at integration. Some of these seams that made sense before, between lower-tier air defense and upper-tier — the enemy has chosen not to accept our definitions and rulebook, and they are playing by a different set of constructs. It’s Swiss cheese in terms of the holes there. I think we have to talk about, in my view, the Air Force playing a bigger role in coordinating those things. But that’s not going to mean the other services don’t have programs, don’t have budgets, or don’t have a need to do things — it’s a coordinating authority.”
“And here, traditionally, is where there’s got to be civilian leadership. Leaders need to lead, and civilian leaders need to drive this — and ensure the services and others understand what their roles are to accomplish those broader national mission areas.”
-Mr. John Rood — Former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, MDAA Board Member; 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
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