“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.
House Armed Services Committee Gone Wild — Again
Yesterday the House Armed Services Committee marked up the Fiscal Year (FY) 2013 National Defense Authorization Act. Head over to the mothership for our initial summary. If you thought last year’s version of the bill was bad, this year’s iteration includes a number of proposed funding proposals and policy provisions on nuclear weapons and missile defense that are even more extreme.
Click here, here, and here for our earlier previews of the bill.
The Heritage Foundation’s Missile Defense Fantasies
Check out my latest article responding to an op-ed by Heritage Foundation President Ed Feulner on missile defense. Here’s the into:
Heritage Foundation President Ed Feulner’s op-ed in the Washington Times on April 23 muddled the history of ballistic missile defense when he blamed President Barack Obama for the inability of the United States to field anything more than a nascent missile defense system. The United States has been developing missile defense systems for almost sixty years without success. Without irony, his solution to persistent cost overruns and schedule delays would be to increase the missile defense budget by nearly 40%, adding an additional three billion dollars a year to an already astronomical price tag. Furthermore, Dr. Feulner approves of the United States’ abrogation of the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty that contributed to strategic stability for forty years by trying to argue that missile defense, if it actually worked, would improve relations between the United States and Russia despite repeated threats from Russian military officials regarding the future of missile defenses in Europe…
