By Lt. Gen. Robert Gard and Kingston Reif Published in Defense News on October 20, 2008 Despite the Bush administration’s investment of an estimated $60 billion since 2001, U.S. national missile defense continues to be an unnecessary and counterproductive enterprise. Testing objectives consistently are not met, cost overruns and scheduling delays are rampant, and relations […]
Growing Economic Ties Better Deterrence
by Kingston Reif Published in the Washington Times, May 29, 2008 James T. Hackett’s column on India’s strategic posture suffers from two major problems (“India’s missile power lifts off,” Commentary, May 22). First, emphasizing the threat to India posed by China obscures the fact that China is set to overtake the United States as India’s […]
Why Missile Defense Upsets Russia
by Kingston Reif Published in the Washington Post on March 18, 2008 In the March 13 op-ed “Moscow’s Missile Gambit,” Robert Joseph and J.D. Crouch II said the United States should proceed with plans to place missile interceptors and their supporting radar systems in Europe regardless of Russian opposition. A fundamental assumption underlying their argument […]
Downing a Sick Satellite, or Upping the Arms Race?
by Katie Mounts Published in the Topeka Capital-Journal on March 7, 2008 When the White House announced in January that a failed U.S. intelligence satellite would soon fall out of orbit to the Earth, Bush administration officials claimed the potential for risk was “very small.” That story quickly changed, however, in order to launch an […]
Excessive Claims for Missile Defense
by Robert G. Gard In his article “Missile Defense Hits the Mark: Increasing Success Undermines Critics” (Defense News, July 23, 2007), Lt. Gen. Henry Obering, director of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA), carries the traditional and laudable “can-do” attitude of the military too far. He claims an operational capability, yet to be demonstrated, for […]