October 2012 marks the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the most dangerous moment of the nuclear age – and perhaps any age. Regular readers will know that I’ve long been a missile crisis afficiando – indeed, it’s behind my personal and professional interest in arms control, nonproliferation, and disarmament.
A Review of the House Version of the Fiscal Year 2013 Defense Authorization Bill: Nuclear Weapons and Missile Defense
by Kingston Reif On May 16 the House approved the FY 2013 National Defense Authorization Act (H.R. 4310) by a vote of 299-120. The bill provides $554 billion for national defense (function 050). This is an increase of approximately $4 billion above the President’s request and $8 billion above the Budget Control Act’s FY 2013 […]
Dueling Quotes of the Day: GMD on the Jersey Shore edition
“We’ve invested billions of dollars. We’ve proven this technology,” says Sessions, who represents the state where much of the GMD development work was conducted. “An extra site [on the East Coast] would clearly provide extra protection. And I think it would validate our investment. It’s such an unacceptable thing to have developed a system that will work and then not deploy it.”
HASC vs. HAC on Nukes and Missile Defense
We’ve made a point of highlighting the different funding decisions made by the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) and GOP-controlled House Appropriations Committee (HAC) regarding the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) weapons activit…
Revive the Airborne Laser?
In its mark-up of the Defense Authorization bill for Fiscal 2013, the Strategic Forces Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee lauded the prior accomplishments of the Airborne Laser Test Bed program. It then went further by directing the Missile Defense Agency to provide a report by 31 July 2012 on the costs that would be involved in returning the Airborne Laser aircraft to an operational readiness status to continue technology development and testing, and to be ready to deploy in an operational contingency, if needed, to respond to rapidly developing threats from North Korea.
