Pentagon Missile Defense Review looks at new space technologies

The long-delayed Missile Defense Review, which will be formally introduced by President Donald Trump at the Pentagon Thursday, will call for research and investments to ensure America’s security for the next several decades: laser technology, the F-35 as an ICBM killer, and potentially putting interceptors in space.

Trump will roll out the report at 11 a.m. Thursday as part of his third visit to the Pentagon since taking office.

The review comes months after an expert commission published a sober report on President Trump's defense strategy which argued the US "margin of superiority" is now "profoundly diminished".

It said there are "urgent challenges that must be addressed if the United States is to avoid lasting damage to its national security."

The president previously ordered the military to create a sixth branch of the military to ensure "American dominance in space".

A senior administration official, speaking to reporters ahead of the report’s release, confirmed a number of new technologies that Defense News has learned are highlighted in the report.

The official told reporters that overall, the review looks at “the comprehensive environment the United States faces, and our allies and partners face. It does posture forces to be prepared for capabilities that currently exist and that we anticipate in the future.”

Pentagon officials originally said the document would be released in late 2017 — then February, then mid-May and then late in the summer. In September, Rood, who as undersecretary of defense for policy is the point man for the MDR, indicated the report could come out in a matter of weeks. And in October, Shanahan, then the deputy secretary of defense, said the document had been done “for some time.”

There is also widespread speculation in the missile defense community that the review has been delayed, at least in part, because of the warmed relations between the Trump administration and North Korea.

Much of the technology discussed in the MDR will require many years of development, and in some cases will never come to fruition. But the following points give a good sense of the let’s try-everything approach the Pentagon is putting forth with the report.