Rogers: Accelerate NGI, buy more interceptors, re-look space-based missile defense

A key House lawmaker is calling for wide ranging enhancements to homeland ballistic missile defense after North Korea over the weekend launched an intercontinental ballistic missile on a lofted flight into the sea that experts said demonstrated the potential for Pyongyang to strike anywhere in the United States.

Rep. Mike Rogers (R-AL), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said Congress should “fully fund” homeland missile defense projects in the fiscal year 2024 budget that lawmakers will begin work on after the Pentagon delivers the Biden administration’s proposal next month.

“What has to be done is clear -- we must accelerate our missile defense development to outpace the DPRK threat,” Turner said in a Feb. 20 statement. “This includes speeding up the Next Generation Interceptor, putting more interceptors in the ground, and looking to space-based missile defenses.”

North Korea’s state media said that​ the country had tested its Hwasong-15 on Feb. 18, according to the New York Times.

"Japan’s defense minister, Yasukazu Hamada, told reporters that the North Korean missile had reached an altitude of roughly 3,540 miles. If fired at a normal ICBM trajectory, the missile could have traveled about 8,700 miles, enough to reach anywhere in the entire continental United States, he said,” the Times reported.