Radar targeting, hypersonics, and the expanding missile industrial bases
Posted: 11th March 2026
The Iranian reports circulating today about strikes on U.S.
͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏
,w_1100,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5945bb4a-4ef6-4db9-b8d1-374dfe98bacd_2366×672.png” height=”157”>Radar targeting, hypersonics, and the expanding missile industrial bases
MAR 7
The Iranian reports circulating today about strikes on U.S. missile-defense radar systems highlight something defense analysts have warned about for years: modern missile defense depends heavily on radar and sensor architecture. If those systems are degraded or destroyed, the effectiveness of interceptor systems drops dramatically.
Systems such as THAAD radar, LRDR, COBRA DANE, and other early-warning sensors are the “eyes” of missile defense networks. They detect launches, track trajectories, and provide the data necessary to guide interceptors. Without that information, interception becomes far more difficult and warning times shrink.
This is why radar installations are often the first targets in modern missile warfare. Remove or degrade the radar layer and the defensive system is partially blinded.
Hypersonic weapons compound this vulnerability. Hypersonic glide vehicles travel at speeds greater than Mach 5 and can maneuver during flight, making them far harder to track than traditional ballistic missiles. They compress decision-making windows and stress detection systems that were originally designed around predictable ballistic trajectories.
When radar systems are degraded and hypersonic weapons are introduced into the battlespace at the same time, the defensive architecture becomes extremely strained. That is not speculation—it is exactly the scenario many military planners model.
At the same time these vulnerabilities are becoming more apparent, the United States is rapidly expanding the hypersonics and advanced weapons industrial base across the country.
New production facilities and manufacturing nodes are being developed in places like Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and New Mexico. These include missile and drone production expansions in Columbus, Ohio; Perry, Florida; the Pittsburgh defense manufacturing corridor; Virginia’s defense technology hubs; and the proposed Castelion hypersonic missile facility in Rio Rancho, New Mexico.
These sites are not isolated economic development projects. They are part of a rapidly scaling national weapons manufacturing network designed to increase missile production capacity.
At the same time Congress and the Pentagon are pouring tens of billions of dollars into expanded missile defense infrastructure, including radar and sensor networks discussed this week in Senate Armed Services hearings. Radars in Alaska, northern radar tiers, and new space-based sensor systems are being positioned as part of an expanded missile defense architecture sometimes described as a “Golden Dome” approach.
On one hand, the United States is investing heavily in missile defense systems because adversaries possess increasingly sophisticated weapons. On the other hand, the country is dramatically expanding its own hypersonic weapons production capacity across multiple states.
This creates a strategic contradiction and ignores what is already playing out in real time revealed by the Iranian strikes.
This is the familiar escalation cycle of an arms race: expanding offensive capability while simultaneously expanding defensive infrastructure to counter similar capabilities elsewhere.
Communities where these manufacturing facilities are being built deserve a transparent discussion about the role they are being asked to play in this expanding global missile systems.
Projects like Project Ranger in Rio Rancho are not simply local economic development initiatives. They are nodes in a much larger industrial network tied to hypersonic weapons development, missile defense expansion, and evolving strategic competition.
What makes the current debate in Congress particularly troubling is that the same policymakers discussing expanded missile defense architecture—including the so-called “Golden Dome” system of radars, sensors, and interceptors—are also overseeing the rapid expansion of hypersonic weapons manufacturing across the United States.
These decisions translate directly into where new weapons facilities are placed and which communities bear the risks. States like Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and New Mexicoare becoming manufacturing nodes in a rapidly expanding missile industrial base.
New Mexico is already deeply embedded in this system through Los Alamos National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories, along with decades of nuclear weapons development and testing. Now projects like Castelion’s proposed Project Ranger facility in Rio Ranchoseek to add large-scale hypersonic missile production into communities that were never asked to host it.
There was no public hearing, no full environmental review, and no Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the siting of this project.
At the same time Congress is debating billions of dollars for missile defense expansion, New Mexico communities are still fighting for something far more basic: protection of their drinking water.
Senator Martin Heinrich is part of the congressional discussions shaping these defense investments, yet the communities most affected by federal weapons programs in this state are still waiting for meaningful federal action to address the Española Basin Sole Source Aquifer (EBSSA) contamination caused by the LANL chromium plume, which threatens the regional aquifer relied upon by Pueblos, Santa Fe, Rio Arriba County, and surrounding communities.
For far too long New Mexico has been treated as a national sacrifice zone—a place where weapons development, nuclear waste, and military experimentation are concentrated while local communities carry the environmental consequences.
The contrast is stark.
While billions are directed toward expanding missile production and radar systems, the federal government has yet to fully fund the protection and restoration of drinking water systems already damaged by its own weapons programs.
Communities are also being asked to accept new weapons manufacturing projects like Project Ranger, proposed for land that had previously been identified for conservation and transferred through approvals that many residents argue bypassed the public hearing process and environmental impact studies.
It is also worth noting that Castelion reportedly declined locating a similar facility in Tucson, where groundwater contamination has already devastated parts of the regional aquifer. Yet a comparable project is now proposed for Rio Rancho on land that remains relatively intact.
This raises a fundamental question Congress—and New Mexico’s delegation—cannot continue to avoid:
If the federal government can mobilize tens of billions of dollars to expand missile production and missile defense infrastructure, why can it not guarantee the protection and remediation of the drinking water systems already harmed by decades of federal weapons activity in New Mexico?
Before approving new weapons manufacturing nodes in places like Rio Rancho, Congress should first ensure that the communities already living with the legacy of weapons programs are protected.
Because in the end the question is simple:
A nation capable of building hypersonic missiles and space-based defense systems should also be capable of protecting the drinking water of the communities subjected to the contamination.