NEMESIS: WITHIN THE CHALLENGE POSED TO AIR AND MISSILE DEFENCE SYSTEMS BY NEW ATTACK VECTORS

The evolution of contemporary conflicts has highlighted a profound transformation in long-range strike capabilities and in the employment methods of attack vectors, requiring a reassessment of traditional air and missile defense architectures. The Russia-Ukraine war, as well as the recent military operations conducted by the United States and Israel against the Islamic Republic of Iran, have demonstrated how the combined employment of long-range attack drones (OWA UAVs – One-Way Attack Unmanned Aerial Vehicles), ballistic missiles, and cruise missiles has become the prevailing operational paradigm for conducting saturation attacks. At the same time, the main near-peer competitors of the West (the Russian Federation, the People’s Republic of China, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, and the Islamic Republic of Iran) are pursuing development programs that integrate high-end systems with low-end platforms, with the aim of enabling multi-layer saturation of adversary defenses.

This paper analyzes the evolution of these capabilities, highlighting how the increasing heterogeneity of the threat spectrum results from the convergence between emerging technologies and traditional missile systems, employed according to multi-layered and multi-domain approaches. Particular attention is devoted to the development of dual-capable systems and to the three main trajectories of hypersonic innovation, which are contributing to increasing the penetration capabilities of modern air defense systems: Maneuverable Re-entry Vehicles (MARVs), Hypersonic Glide Vehicles (HGVs), and Hypersonic Cruise Missiles (HCMs).

The analysis further highlights how these developments support the implementation of Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2/AD) strategies, thanks to their ability to simultaneously saturate the different layers of Western Integrated Air and Missile Defense (IAMD) architectures. Within this framework, this study examines the different specializations pursued by the near-peer competitors of the West, highlighting how the growing integration of vectors characterized by different types, ranges, and technological sophistication levels represents one of the main challenges for the evolution of future air and missile defense capabilities.