diff --git a/aio/tools/transforms/angular.io-package/index.js b/aio/tools/transforms/angular.io-package/index.js
index 1834957db0..77ac13f9e1 100644
--- a/aio/tools/transforms/angular.io-package/index.js
+++ b/aio/tools/transforms/angular.io-package/index.js
@@ -25,7 +25,11 @@ module.exports = new Package('angular.io', [gitPackage, apiPackage, contentPacka
     renderDocsProcessor.extraData.versionInfo = versionInfo;
   })
 
-  .config(function(checkAnchorLinksProcessor) {
+  .config(function(checkAnchorLinksProcessor, linkInlineTagDef) {
+
+    // Fail the processing if there is an invalid link
+    linkInlineTagDef.failOnBadLink = true;
+
     checkAnchorLinksProcessor.$enabled = true;
     // since we encode the HTML to JSON we need to ensure that this processor runs before that encoding happens.
     checkAnchorLinksProcessor.$runBefore = ['convertToJsonProcessor'];
diff --git a/aio/tools/transforms/links-package/inline-tag-defs/link.js b/aio/tools/transforms/links-package/inline-tag-defs/link.js
index 2b24828bad..e957a22e81 100644
--- a/aio/tools/transforms/links-package/inline-tag-defs/link.js
+++ b/aio/tools/transforms/links-package/inline-tag-defs/link.js
@@ -9,23 +9,29 @@ var INLINE_LINK = /(\S+)(?:\s+([\s\S]+))?/;
  * @param  {Function} docs error message
  * @return {String}  The html link information
  *
- * @property {boolean} relativeLinks Whether we expect the links to be relative to the originating doc
+ * @property {boolean} failOnBadLink Whether to throw an error (aborting the processing) if a link is invalid.
  */
 module.exports = function linkInlineTagDef(getLinkInfo, createDocMessage, log) {
   return {
     name: 'link',
     aliases: ['linkDocs'],
+    failOnBadLink: false,
     description:
         'Process inline link tags (of the form {@link some/uri Some Title}), replacing them with HTML anchors',
-    handler: function(doc, tagName, tagDescription) {
+    handler(doc, tagName, tagDescription) {
 
       // Parse out the uri and title
-      return tagDescription.replace(INLINE_LINK, function(match, uri, title) {
+      return tagDescription.replace(INLINE_LINK, (match, uri, title) => {
 
         var linkInfo = getLinkInfo(uri, title, doc);
 
         if (!linkInfo.valid) {
-          log.warn(createDocMessage(linkInfo.error, doc));
+          const message = createDocMessage(linkInfo.error, doc);
+          if (this.failOnBadLink) {
+            throw new Error(message);
+          } else {
+            log.warn(message);
+          }
         }
 
         return '<a href=\'' + linkInfo.url + '\'>' + linkInfo.title + '</a>';