Making his case for cuts in defense spending,The Washington Post‘s David Ignatius wrote yesterday: Trimming the defense budget is one of the hardest tasks in Washington. … Senior Pentagon officials recognize that new technologies make it possible to reshape the budget without putting the country at greater risk. … The new technologies that will drive these changes are detailed in a study called “Technology Horizons” that was prepared last year by Werner Dahm, who was then chief scientist of the Air Force. He urged research on “cyber resilience” and “electromagnetic …
Congress may be turning the corner on missile defense. It is reported that the House Subcommittee on Strategic Forces added $361.6 million to the Obama Administration’s inadequate $9.9 billion request for the overall missile defense program in fiscal year 2011. This is a significant departure from last year, where Congress, with the notable exception of the valiant effort by House Republicans to oppose it, acquiesced in the Obama Administration’s $1.6 billion reduction in the broader program. The increase in funding is to go to the following components of the broader …
Ryan Mauro, an intelligence analyst with the Asymmetric Warfare and Intelligence Center, flags this new video by the Russian company Concern Morinformsystem-Agat selling its Club-K Container Missile System. Mauro reports: The system allows a weak nation to strike the land and sea targets of a superior force by placing cruise missiles into any type of 40 foot container. The video uses a ship, truck and train as examples of potential launching platforms. This means that once this weapon is sold, any of these transportation vehicles have to be seen as …
At 8:44 p.m. PST Feb. 11, 2010 … for just a second … man made night into day. A short-range ballistic missile launched from a sea-based platform off California’s Point Mugu Naval Air Warfare Center. Moments later, the Airborne Laser carried aloft in a specially modified 747 detected it. Then it cranked up the high-energy laser. That beam struck home, burning a small hole in the missile. A split-second later, its structural integrity destroyed, the missile vaporized in a tumbling corkscrew. Within two minutes of launch time, it was all …
The U.S. Missle Defense Agency (MDA) reports that its airborne laser successfully shot down its first ballistic missile last night over Ventura, California. The MDA’s press release explains that the airborne laser “successfully destroyed a boosting ballistic missile” and “the entire engagement occurred within two minutes of the target missile launch”. According to Reuters, the laser system, called a “Airborne Laser Testbed (ALTB)” is being developed by Boeing Corporation and the MDA and is essentially a “modified 747 jumbo jet” with a “higher-energy laser” attached to the nose of the plane.
It has been one year since the 2008 national election. During this period, the cause of missile defense has suffered serious setbacks. The overall budget for missile defense for this fiscal year will be $1.6 billion less than the amount allocated in fiscal year 2009. The number of fielded long-range defense interceptors in Alaska and California will be 30, as opposed to 44. The Multiple Kill Vehicle (MKV) program for countering decoys and countermeasures designed to overwhelm or confuse the defense has been terminated. The Airborne Laser (ABL) program has …
