About Us

The Missile Defense Project at CSIS looks at a wide range of policy, program, and strategic issues related to missile defense.  Technological and geopolitical factors have driven increased global supply and demand for high-velocity, unmanned, missile-based weapons and their corresponding counters.  Besides more recognized cruise and ballistic missile threats, global missile proliferation now consists of a spectrum including precision-guided rockets, anti-ship missiles, air defenses, hypersonic delivery systems, and counterspace weapons. 

Within the International Security Program and directed by Senior Fellow Thomas Karako, the project’s research considers the most pressing problems of the day, such as homeland missile defense, integrated air and missile defenses for U.S. forces and allies abroad, offensive strike capabilities, and investments in high technology to defeat missile threats through new and innovative means. The project also hosts a variety of events to shape the debate about policy, budgets, legislation, and both current and future programs.

The CSIS Missile Defense Project also operates Missile Threat, a CSIS microsite that brings together a wide range of information and analyses relating to the proliferation of cruise and ballistic missiles around the world and the air and missile defense systems designed to defeat them.