The Obama Administration’s decision to reinstate 14 ground-based interceptors (GBIs)—which it reduced in its first term—is a necessary but not sufficient response to the North Korean ballistic missile threat. North Korea’s ballistic missile testing and bellicose rhetoric prompted the Administration to augment the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) program. This decision …
Today, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel announced that the United States will shore up its missile defense system. Yet again, the Obama Administration is proving critics of its missile defense program correct. The U.S. will deploy additional 14 Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) interceptors in Alaska, deploy additional radar in Japan, …
Yesterday, White House spokesman Jay Carney asserted that the U.S. is “fully capable of defending itself” against a North Korean ballistic missile attack. Carney didn’t mention that the Obama Administration has tried to undermine the long-range missile defense program since it came into office. First, it decided to decrease the …
Senators Bob Corker (R–TN) and James Inhofe (R–OK) recently published an op-ed outlining dangerous fallacies of President Obama’s disarmament policies, which the Senators claim will do nothing to make the world a safer place. Rather, America will weaken itself and give North Korea and Iran more incentive to improve their …
In an area of the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii on February 12, 2013, the Navy and Missile Defense Agency conducted a successful intercept test of a combined sea-based and space-based system against a medium-range ballistic missile. The sea-based component was the Aegis ballistic missile defense system and its already -deployed …
The person most responsible for reviving the missile defense program in the face of the Cold War policy of mutually assured destruction, President Ronald Reagan, would have celebrated his 102nd birthday today. President Reagan would marvel at all the accomplishments of the missile defense program since the U.S. withdrew from …
What do welfare reform and missile defense have in common? Both were gutted under the Obama Administration, says Senator Jim DeMint, who will become Heritage’s president in April. Senator DeMint is correct. President Obama has drastically decreased the funding for the missile defense program since he took office and cut …
Russian President Vladimir Putin recently oversaw a strategic exercise—including a series of coordinated missile tests—that drew on Russia’s nuclear “triad” (bombers, intercontinental-range ballistic missiles [ICBMs], and submarine-launched ballistic missiles [SLBMs]). Both the ICBM and the SLBM reached their respective targets after having traveled distances of more than 6,000 kilometers. Less …
The missile defense budget has been on the chopping block ever since the Obama Administration took office. In 2009, President Obama proposed $1.6 billion in cuts compared to the prior year’s budget estimate. In 2010, the Administration proposed a modest increase in the missile defense budget for FY 2011 but …
According to The Telegraph of London on April 8, Russia is demanding direct operational control of U.S. and allied missile defense systems in negotiations regarding missile defense cooperation. While the U.S. is right to be seeking Russian cooperation in the area of missile defense—more defensive strategic postures would benefit both …
