S6E15: Integrating Today's Forces for Air and Missile Defence

Apr 8, 2026

Rear Admiral Archer M Macy Jr, retired Navy leader and air and missile defence expert. He discusses what true integration means across technical and organisational levels. He addresses alliance trade-offs, evolving threats from drones to hypersonics, and the balance of costly interceptors versus lower-cost layered responses. He also highlights cultural and training barriers to making integrated defence work.

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INSIGHT

Integration Is A Multilevel Desired Effect

Integration is a desired effect across technical, operational, resource and strategic levels rather than a single theme.
Rear Admiral Archer M Macy Jr explains each level and stresses you must decide what you will and will not defend.

INSIGHT

Wrong Threat Assumptions Undermine Integration

The biggest integration risk is wrong assumptions about the adversary and threat mix.
Macy warns engineering and planning cannot cover every adversary possibility, so wrong threat models warp system and operational design.

INSIGHT

Tech Focus Is Driven By Measurability And Procurement

Technical integration attracts attention because it's measurable and funds industry, but it cannot substitute for understanding the adversary's intent.
Macy notes procurement incentives push focus to hardware rather than mindsets or strategy.

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Rear Admiral Archer M Macy Jr describes today's military, organisational, human and cultural risks and opportunities in integrating forces for air and missile defence.

Many modern defence reviews focus on the need for integration. Arguably, nowhere is the need more important today than in providing air and missile defence. State and non-state adversaries have shown varying abilities to combine their attacks in ways that pose multiple dilemmas.

Using small, slow-moving and low flying drones intended to swamp defences, coordinated with aircraft and cruise, hypersonic and ballistic missiles, these packages present huge challenges across a wide span of heights, speeds and trajectories. As well as being a problem for fielded forces, it is an industrial challenge in making sure there are enough interceptors at the right price point to sustain the defences.

In this episode, RAdm Macy USN (Retd) offers his unique perspective on the challenges and opportunities based on his time in the Aegis Program Office and most recently as the Director of the Joint Integrated Air and Missile Defense Organization in the US Joint Staff.