Key arms control and national security policy differences remain to be resolved by the House-Senate conference committee including the East Coast missile defense system, withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan, strategic arms reductions under the New START Treaty, the Shaheen amendment to protect military victims of sexual violence and funding for the next generation of Ohio-class strategic nuclear submarines, long-range bombers and the plutonium research facility at Los Alamos.
Turkey Wants Missile Defenses and the Accompanying Design Info
Bordered by three states known to have pursued both ballistic missiles and WMD capabilities, Ankara has set its sites on purchasing missile defenses.
Missile Misinformation
Missile defense is, in many ways, the poster child for expensive and technologically dubious US defense systems that survive based on misconceptions about their strategic benefits. A November 1 Letter to the Editor in the Washington Times by Admiral James A. Lyons, Jr. provides a classic example of these misconceptions.
Quote of the Day: Monty Python Edition
Philip Coyle, director of the Pentagon’s operational testing office during the Clinton administration, said in a Sept. 21 e-mail to Arms Control Today, “Discrimination is the Holy Grail, but no one really knows how to find it or how to get there. And like Monty Python [in the British comedy group’s movie, Monty Python and the Holy Grail], the Missile Defense Agency has only pretend solutions, banging coconuts together to make the sounds of horse’s hooves, when what America needs is real horses.”
Center Senior Science Fellow Philip Coyle, October 2012.
Quote of the Day: Rearranging the Deck Chairs on the Titanic Edition
The National Research Council (NRC), “Making Sense of Ballistic Missile Defense: An Assessment of Concepts and Systems for U.S. Boost-Phase Missile Defense in Comparison to Other Alternatives”, September 11, 2011.
