Gaffney on the Administration’s Kerry-like Defense Cuts
January 11, 2005 :: Washington Times :: News
President of the Center for Security Policy Frank Gaffney writes in today’s Washington Times on the 55 billion dollars in proposed cuts which are said to be planned for the upcoming defense budget. Gaffney aptly notes, with much justification, that lesser cuts would have been expected from a Kerry presidency, but are quite a surprise coming from the Bush administration:
Actually, a President-elect Kerry probably would not have dared suggest the far-reaching cuts Mr. Bush plans. And he surely would faced difficulty getting them enacted, given pervasive concerns about his judgment on national security. Yet, here we have the spectacle of $55 billion in extensive defense reductions being made by the man who beat Mr. Kerry—largely on the basis of precisely those concerns.
Gaffney goes on to observe that John Kerry had particularly promised to slash missile defense funding, and that the proposed cuts to the missile defense budget are probably not all that dissimilar from what a Kerry administration might have implemented.
Nowhere is it likelier that John Kerry would have cut back Pentagon spending than in the portfolio of the Missile Defense Agency. Yet, here too, President Bush is said to be considering $5 billion in reductions over the next five years. These could essentially eliminate the most promising means of performing boost-phase missile intercepts (namely, using an airborne laser and/or from space); preclude building out the initial, very modest deployment of ground-based interceptors; and sharply curtail sea-based anti-missile defenses. So much for the robust, layered missile defense Mr. Bush promised to put in place.
One may, incidentally, find a sampling of Kerry’s promises to cut missile defense on his website, JohnKerry.com. (Article, Link)
» June 3, 2004: Hackett on proposed defense cuts
» Kerry criticizes Rice plan to deliver speech on missile defense on 9-11
» Kerry pledges to reduce missile defense expenditures
» Kerry pledges to delay deployment of missile defenses
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Hackett on Proposed BMD Budget Cuts
January 3, 2005 :: Washington Times :: Analysis
James T. Hackett writes in today’s Washington Times noting that budget cuts should be applied to the area of missile defense only if necessary, and then only very carefully. Hackett’s piece comes a few days after reports that a proposed budget would include 1 billion cut from missile defense in the coming year, and 800 billion in subsequent years. Hackett notes that cuts may be necessary, but warns that “the trick is to cut fat while avoiding high-priority programs.” Specifically, this means cutting the “ill conceived” Kinetic Energy Interceptor (KEI), which is impractical for its strict need to be in the right place at the right time, namely “very close to hostile missiles on foreign soil.” Cutting this program will free funds for the more pressing deployment already begun, that of the ground based interceptors to be placed in Alaska and Hawaii.
One might add to this that other, still more effective, interceptors should also be pursued, but the KEI should certainly stands to be the first to go. (Article, Link)
» More stories on: Analysis, Budget
Riverside Editorial on BMD
December 23, 2004 :: Analysis
The Riverside Press Enterprise newspaper here in California carried a timely editorial articulating the continued need for missile defense and putting into perspective the MDA’s recent attempt at a test, entitled, “Build the shield.” (More »»»)
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Spring on the Need to Deploy
December 22, 2004 :: The Heritage Foundation :: Analysis
Baker Spring of the Heritage Foundation considers last week’s attempt at a test of the ground based missile defense system, and reminds us how wrong opponents of missile defense have been in the past and still are today, and why we must push forward with such defenses. (Article, Link)
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Kansas City Star Editorial
December 20, 2004 :: Analysis
The Kansas City Star carried a very fine editorial on the need for perseverance despite the “unknown anomaly” which prevented the most recent test from taking place, and putting that minor setback in perspective. An excerpt: (More »»»)
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New Publication: Getting MAD
December 14, 2004 :: Analysis
The latest in a series of books co-published by the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center and the Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute has been released and is available in full online. Edited by Henry D. Sokolski, Getting MAD is a collection of timely essays about how one may think about nuclear proliferation and nuclear strategy today.
Claremont Institute Fellow Mark T. Clark contributes a chapter to the book, which considers the recent nuclear proliferation to a number of smaller regimes, and asks whether the cold war framework of purely offensive deterrence, namely mutually assured destruction, can be imposed upon them with any level of confidence—or even with a straight face. Do North Korea and Iran pursue nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them only to deter others? Clark concludes that “the idea that SNPs [small nuclear powers] are limited to some form of mini-MAD deterrent seems unreasonably optimistic. The optimism rests on the notion that because MAD, even its mini-version, would be so catastrophic that its realization is exceedingly remote, if not a virtual impossibility.”
Such faith in the nuclear deterrence doctrines of the past rests upon the idea of that somehow merely technological advances in destructive capacity—the “nuclear revolution”—have somehow rendered obsolete the classical rules, ends, and possible outcomes of war. But human nature remains the same, and so do the purposes of strategy. It is for precisely these reasons that war, even nuclear war, is still possible even in the post-Cold War era. And it is for just this reason that missile defenses to defend against the inevitable proliferation of such technologies are so important. (Article, Link)
» Getting MAD in .pdf form
» Biography and writings by Mark T. Clark
» More stories on: Analysis, Nuclear Weapons, Proliferation
The Real Sources of Ballistic Missile Proliferation
November 11, 2004 :: Ha'aretz :: Analysis
An article in today’s Ha’aretz describes the work of a German scientist by the name of Robert Schmucker who has been making a case about the nature of ballistic missile proliferation, one which sounds similar to that so often made here, at Missilethreat.com. Namely, that the real sources of such a problem are less from the spontaneous research programs of rogue states, but rather primarily from the considerable, and perhaps not altogether unconscious, proliferation by China and Russia. An excerpt: (More »»»)
» More stories on: Analysis, China, Proliferation, Russia
Garwin on Missile Defense
October 29, 2004 :: Analysis
Richard Garwin writes in the November edition of the Scientific American on the need for missile defense efforts to be properly directed. He makes a number of good points about the ballistic missile threat, but his opposition to the means by which to meet that threat leaves questions unanswered. First, a summary of his main points: (More »»»)
» Archive of Garwin writings at FAS
» More stories on: Analysis, Policy, Space-Based Systems
» Missile system details for: Brilliant Pebbles, Ground-Based Interceptor (GBI), Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD), Kinetic Energy Interceptor (KEI)
Analysis: History of Bulava SS-N-30
October 11, 2004 :: Analysis
Viktor Litovkin, described as a military analyst with Ria Novosti, writes on the status of Russia’s newest ICBM, the SS-N-X-30, or Bulava (“Mace”). Litovkin notes the genesis of the Bulava in the 1990s, and the building of a new type of nuclear submarine to accommodate it. Future submarines will be armed with the Bulava, which Litovkin notes is, for all intents and purposes, now ready to go. The recent underwater test of the missile on September 23 marks “a significant event for Russia’s Navy and military-industrial sector,” according to Litovkin. (More »»»)
» More stories on: Analysis
» Missile details: SS-NX-30
NYT Swipes at Missile Defense
October 10, 2004 :: New York Times :: Analysis
An editorial in today’s New York Times attacks the missile defense system soon to be deployed as “exorbitantly wasteful,” and having as its primary aim, base political objectives, namely reelection.
The Times admits there is a threat: “There is no disputing the idea that North Korea or some other rogue nation might someday present a nuclear missile threat.” Yet the Times recites the tired argument that deployment is undesirable unless it can be perfect, and that, barring perfection, deployment constitutes a “rush” towards a “faith-based” defense.
The Pentagon argues that the testing has been adequate, and that more testing is on the way. Indeed, the Alaska system was designed by the Clinton administration and is now being implemented as a “test bed,” a location from which further, more realistic, tests will be conducted. If it is indisputable that a rogue nation will soon pose a missile threat to the U.S., just how long are we supposed to wait before actually doing something about it?
Of course, the most “realistic” test would involve an actual attack on America by a ballistic missile. Had such an attack already taken place, the issue would be moot, and the political parties tripping over each other about who would more quickly deploy a robust defense, to prevent such an attack from ever taking place again.
Barring the clarity of hindsight which catastrophe can bring, it remains all too easy to drone on irresponsibly, looking for this or that reason to delay deployment in favor of more “research and development.” The testing argument is not now, and has never been, the central question in the missile defense debate. Were there a glut of superfluous testing, the opponents of missile defense would effortlessly shift to another objection.
To be clear: if more testing is needed, more testing should be done. But there is no satisfactory argument for prolonging one minute longer our decades long vulnerability to missile attack. (Article, Link)
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