Forecasting Costs of U.S. Ballistic Missile Defense Against a Major Nuclear Strike

What if all the technical issues involving U.S. ballistic missile defense (BMD) have been resolved, and it is operating with targeted effectiveness of more than 90%? Would building a BMD system to protect against a major scale nuclear attack make sense from the cost perspective?
Igor Moric (SGS Princeton University) and Dr Timur Kadyshev address these among other questions in their article for the journal Defence and Peace Economics. Results show that in the most optimistic case for the defender, to stop more than 90% incoming warheads the defender needs to spend 8 times more than the attacker. In the more realistic scenario, the cost-exchange ratio is on average 70. The US may be able to operate at such a cost disadvantage against smaller nuclear weapon states, but unless there is an overall numerical reduction of nuclear weapon arsenals, a nuclear "Iron Dome" over U.S. is unlikely to ever be feasible against Russia or China.

You can read the article “Forecasting Costs of U.S. Ballistic Missile Defense Against a Major Nuclear Strike” by Igor Moric and Dr Timur Kadyshev here.