By Zachary Keck, The National Interest: “Many Americans have failed to grapple with the magnitude of China's rise, confident that Beijing will go ultimately go the way of the Soviet Union or Japan in the 1980s.”
From CSIS Missile Defense Project: “After a ballistic missile launches, its engines burn hot and can be detected by infrared satellites. Outside the Earth's atmosphere, the missile engines burn out and it reaches its peak velocity. At this point, the missile's payload, a warhead, usually separates from the rest of the body. The warhead is also accompanied by the flying junk pile of debris created by launching a missile as well as by decoys or other countermeasures designed to complicate the missile defense job. All of these objects move together through space as part of a threat cloud. So for a missile defense system to successfully destroy the warhead, its various sensors must first discriminate it from among the various other parts of the cloud.”