The U.S. Air Force recently stripped 17 officers of their authority to control and launch intercontinental-range ballistic missiles (ICBMs) after inspections indentified potential problems that could endanger U.S. national security. Although the incident did not impact security and operational readiness of U.S. ICBM forces, the Air Force is right to …
President Obama’s Chief of Staff Denis McDonough recently said of former-Senator Chuck Hagel (R–NE), “I think he’ll be a great Defense Secretary. This is a guy who volunteered to go to Vietnam…heavily decorated when he was there, well performing when he was there, and everything since.” Members of the U.S. …
Today’s hearing in the Senate Armed Services Committee about the September 11 terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, was bizarrely divided. One line of questions drew a devastating picture of an Administration shamefully unprepared to defend its beleaguered personnel in Libya. The bemused facial expressions of Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta …
Tomorrow, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will deliver testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee on the terrorist attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya. The outgoing Secretary of State is unlikely to provide new insight into the attack. However, her testimony as …
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 …
Last week North Korea successfully launched an Unha-3 rocket, thereby demonstrating an alarming capability to target U.S. territory with ballistic missiles. China is rapidly expanding its fleets and arsenals in an unprecedented military build-up, while intimidating other countries in East Asia—including U.S. allies. The Middle East is a conflagration of …
On November 29, the Medium Extended Air Defense System (MEADS) had its first successful test run, during which it intercepted an air-breathing target (that is, a missile that does not fly outside the Earth’s atmosphere). While the Pentagon decided not to procure the MEADS program, Congress recently eliminated the funding …
Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D–NV) has announced that the Senate will again consider cybersecurity legislation when it returns from its election recess. The move comes in response to another in a series of apocalyptic pronouncements about our cyber vulnerabilities—this one from Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, who is warning …
“It’s a ship without sailors. It’s a brigade without bullets. It’s an air wing without enough trained pilots. It’s a paper tiger,” said Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta about the effects of the looming sequestration, which will cut more than half a trillion dollars from the defense budget over the …
