China
Rapid, broad-spectrum growth
Rapid expansion of ICBMs, significant growth in hypersonic systems, expansion of long-range cruise-missile inventories, and increasing naval and air-based strike capability.
Beyond the numbers, the strategic environment is changing: long-range precision strike, hypersonic weapons, cruise missiles and low-cost drone swarms are converging into a large-scale conventional missile arms race.
Recent U.S. intelligence assessments indicate that the missile threat to the U.S. homeland could increase from more than 3,000 missiles today to over 16,000 by 2035 — driven primarily by the modernization and quantitative growth of Chinese and Russian missile arsenals, alongside continuing missile development by Iran, North Korea and Pakistan. This is not simply a renewed nuclear competition but the emergence of a large-scale conventional missile arms race.
Lessons learned from the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, where long-range strikes became central to military campaigns; rapid advances in hypersonic technologies, precision guidance and mass production; and growing investment in integrated air and missile defence, including the proposed U.S. "Golden Dome." The interaction between offensive and defensive systems is creating a classic security dilemma: improvements in missile defence encourage adversaries to expand and diversify offensive arsenals.
Rapid expansion of ICBMs, significant growth in hypersonic systems, expansion of long-range cruise-missile inventories, and increasing naval and air-based strike capability.
Continued modernization of strategic nuclear forces; expansion of hypersonic systems such as Avangard, Kinzhal and Tsirkon; sustained cruise-missile production despite wartime constraints; combat experience from Ukraine.
Continued improvement of missile range, precision and survivability, contributing to regional instability and increasing pressure on missile-defence planning.
Allied countries will face pressure to expand interceptor inventories, improve integrated air and missile defence, increase defence-industrial production and strengthen early-warning and space-based surveillance. Although Africa is not a primary theatre of missile competition, the continent will feel indirect effects: higher global defence expenditure may reduce development and humanitarian funding; competition for critical minerals will intensify; demand for air-defence systems is likely to increase among key regional powers; and external military partnerships may deepen.
AHOMF Intelligence assesses that the world is entering a new era of conventional strategic deterrence. Unlike the Cold War, where nuclear weapons dominated strategic planning, future military competition will increasingly depend on the ability to produce, deploy and sustain large inventories of precision-guided conventional missiles, hypersonic weapons and autonomous strike systems. AHOMF judges that the greatest strategic risk over the next decade is not necessarily a deliberate nuclear exchange, but the increased probability of miscalculation during crises involving large-scale conventional long-range strikes.