Word: interceptor
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...same time, Russian officials must be smiling wryly at Obama's explanation that the plan was changed because of revised intelligence estimates of Iran's missile capability - since Moscow had never taken seriously the U.S. explanation that the shield was designed to protect against an Iranian threat. (An interceptor system targeting Iranian missiles would be more appropriately stationed in Jordan than in Poland, after all, and Moscow's vehement opposition to the planned deployment on its doorstep was based on fears that it actually was aimed at weakening Russia's own nuclear deterrent, because the system would be able...
...Meanwhile, interceptor missiles in Alaska "are clearly in a position to take action" if Hawaii is threatened, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on June 18. "We do have some concerns, if they were to launch a missile to the west in the direction of Hawaii," he added. "We are in a good position, should it become necessary, to protect Americans and American territory." If a North Korean shot somehow draws close, Marine General James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on June 16 that he felt "very comfortable," predicting that existing U.S. missile defenses have...
...part of a nefarious Obama Administration plot: "Fiscal restraint for defense and fiscal largesse for everything else." Congressman Trent Franks of Arizona was very concerned about anti-missile defense - a gold-plated pipe dream, if there ever was one - and especially a product dramatically called the Kinetic Energy Interceptor. To which Gates replied, in a manner so casually dismissive that Franks seemed to shrivel in his seat, "I would just say that the security of the American people and the efficacy of missile defense are not enhanced by continuing to put money into programs ... that are essentially sinkholes for taxpayer...
Russia's interests in the situation are far from simple. Moscow clearly recognizes that Washington's needs in Afghanistan are an opportunity for Russia to press for greater accommodation of some of its top concerns. Russia expects the Obama Administration to scale back U.S. plans to deploy a missile-interceptor system on Russia's doorstep in Poland and the Czech Republic; it also expects the new team in Washington to abandon the Bush Administration's effort to press reluctant European allies to admit Ukraine and Georgia into NATO. But Russia also has a direct interest in the outcome in Afghanistan...
...work. It did not work when Reagan first proposed it, it does not work now, and there is nothing to suggest that it will work in the future. Not only have past missile defense schemes—from Patriot Missiles to the Bush administration’s missile interceptor plans—failed, but every available option is inherently easy to fool. As Nobel laureate physicist Steven Weinberg argues, it is impossible to tell whether a missile is loaded or a decoy based on its trajectory above the Earth’s atmosphere. Hence it will always be possible...