Free Republic

Fifty years ago, I was a young Bell Telephone Laboratories engineer on the heels of celebrating with our development team the deployment of Telstar, the first telecommunications satellite — and also a grad student at New York University. I vividly remember the evening of October 22, 1962, watching a student-union black-and-white TV broadcast of President John F. Kennedy’s address to the nation.  The president announced that the Soviet Union was deploying nuclear weapons in Cuba, only 90 miles from our Florida coast — and the actions that the United States was taking in response. (For the unedited broadcast, see...

........Of all the waste by the Federal government and with all the other Federal agencies that could be moved to privatization, Obama selects our space program. This detracts from the progress of our missile technology that is shared with our military, it inhibits our national defense, and it damages our national identity.Space X is Obama's choice for supplanting NASA. It appears Obama has picked another loser. Move over Solyndra.Let's begin with the performance to date of the ersatz space program called Space X....."Thus far, NASA has awarded at least $2.1 billion in SAA money to private space companies,including a total...

In case you haven’t seen the video, watch it. Drink it in. Obama campaign Deputy Communications Director Stephanie Cutter, in a craven and flailing attempt to salvage the White House’s ebbing credibility surrounding their response to the 9/11/12 attacks in Libya, said that it was her estimation that the attacks were only an issue because Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan made it one. In effect, Cutter said that this attack, one of the most comprehensive and successful Al Qaeda attacks on American assets since September 11, 20001 in which an American ambassador overseas was killed for the first time since...

Obama "This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility" Medvedev "I understand. I will transmit this information to Vladimir"

This week, Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski accused the Obama Administration of betrayal, saying, “Our mistake was that by accepting the American offer of a [missile defense] shield we failed to take into account the political risk associated with a change of president.… We paid a high political price. We do not want to make the same mistake again. We must have a missile system as an element of our defences.” In 2009, President Obama cancelled the deal the U.S. had with Poland and the Czech Republic to build an interceptor site and radar that would provide protection of the U.S....

(Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin oversaw the start of construction of one of Russia's newest generation submarines on Monday and vowed to boost nuclear naval forces to safeguard the country's position as a leading sea power. Warning that its navy would protect top energy producer Russia's interests in the oil-rich Arctic, Putin led the ceremony to begin building the submarine Prince Vladimir, named after the ruler who founded a precursor state to modern Russia. The vessel is the fourth Borei class submarine, designed to carry one of the country's newest and most powerful intercontinental nuclear missiles, the Bulava, or Mace....

<p>"And I confess the progress didn't come quickly, and it did not come easily," President Obama said about his time as a community organizer in Chicago. "Sometimes it didn't come at all. There were times where I thought about giving up and moving on. But what kept me going day in and day out was the same thing that has sustained the Urban League all these years. The same thing that sustains all of you. And that is the belief that in America, change is always possible. That our union may not be perfect, but it is perfectible."</p>

Moscow has recently reacted with caution and patience following the announced suspension of Uzbekistan’s membership of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), while leading Russian military officials and experts continue to emphasize that the General Staff regard the risk of military conflict in Central Asia to be growing. In fact, Moscow closely coordinated the resolution to the impasse with Tashkent in the CSTO through its strong defense relations with Minsk, in order to convey a message to Uzbekistan that it either had to cooperate more closely within the body or find a way to leave (RIA Novosti, July 5). Colonel-General...

The Obama Record: In pursuit of a world without nuclear weapons, the president finalizes plans to decimate our nuclear deterrent and reduce our warhead count beyond even treaty commitments. (snip) President Obama has decided that indeed we are going to tempt them with weakness. According to an Associated Press report on conversations with current and former administration officials, Obama is finalizing plans, perhaps to be released later this month, to cut the U.S. nuclear arsenal to between 1,000 and 1,100 warheads with the goal "in the longer term, (of) eliminating nuclear weapons."

Two Russian strategic nuclear bombers entered the U.S. air defense zone near the Pacific coast on Wednesday and were met by U.S. interceptor jets, defense officials told the Free Beacon. It was the second time Moscow dispatched nuclear-capable bombers into the 200-mile zone surrounding U.S. territory in the past two weeks. An earlier intrusion by two Tu-95 Bear H bombers took place near Alaska as part of arctic war games that a Russian military spokesman said included simulated attacks on “enemy” air defenses and strategic facilities. A defense official said the Pacific coast intrusion came close to the U.S. coast...

The Obama administration is moving toward decisions that would further cut the number of U.S. nuclear weapons, possibly to between 1,000 and 1,100, reflecting new thinking on the role of nuclear weapons in an age of terror, current and former officials say. The reductions under consideration are in line with President Barack Obama's vision of trimming the nation's nuclear arsenal without harming national security in the short term, and in the longer term, eliminating nuclear weapons.

Northcom says Russian nuclear bombers violated U.S. airspace during arctic war games The U.S. Northern Command and joint U.S.-Canadian North American Aerospace Defense (NORAD) Command said two Russian bombers violated U.S. airspace near Alaska during recent arctic war games.Disclosure by the command in charge of U.S. homeland defense followed a report in the Free Beacon quoting U.S. officials who said the Russian aircraft had threatened U.S. air space but did not cross into it and were met over the Pacific by U.S. F-15 interceptor jets. “There was a single out-of-area patrol by two Russian
long range bombers which entered the Alaska...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. forces using a new Raytheon Co interceptor missile downed another missile in space in a high-stakes test of a shield built to thwart growing capabilities of countries like North Korea and Iran. The mission off Hawaii late Tuesday was against a medium-range, separating ballistic missile, the Pentagon agency responsible for it said. The mock warhead split from the target's booster section, presenting what is supposed to be a more realistic attack scenario. "Initial indications are that all components performed as designed resulting in a very accurate intercept," the Missile Defense Agency, or MDA, said in a...

Technically, ballistic missile system Bulava is ready to be commissioned into Russian Navy, said its commander-in-chief Vice Admiral Viktor Chirkov on June 25 at the graduates honoring ceremony held in the Konstantinovsky Palace, St. Petersburg. "At present, we're preparing legal documents required to put the missile in service", said the naval chief. VADM Viktor Chirkov also pointed out that the lead submarine of Project 955 Borei K-535 Yury Dolgoruky would be commissioned before the Russian Navy Day which is to be celebrated on July 29 this year.

Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet his Iranian counterpart Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on the sidelines of a summit in Beijing next week as tensions rise over Tehran's nuclear drive, a Kremlin official said. "Meeting Ahmadinejad will let Putin personally feel the tension around the Iranian issue and how it is perceived in Tehran," Kremlin foreign policy aide Yury Ushakov told reporters last week in comments that were embargoed for release until Sunday. Putin and Ahmadinejad agreed to meet over the phone and the initiative came "from both sides," Ushakov said. The meeting will come as Russia prepares to host the latest...

NEW RUSSIAN ICBM IS NO SOLUTION Russian plans to upgrade their "Voyevoda R-36M2 Satan" intercontinental ballistic missile began in 2009, but are only now coming to fruition. Russian weapons maker NPO Mashinostroyeniya predicts the creation of a new liquid fueled ICBM will take a decade to design and deploy. And when it does do so, it won't be a panacea for current Kremlin concerns over European missile defenses; Russian experts fear that the missile, as currently designed, won't be capable of piercing the missile defense shield currently under construction by the United States and NATO. (RIA Novosti, May 8, 2012)...

A new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) so secret it has no name yet has been successfully tested in Russia, the defence ministry says. The new weapon is designed to penetrate Nato's European missile defence shield, Russian defence sources told the Interfax news agency. The test came days after Nato said its system had reached "interim operational capability". Nato says its shield is meant to protect members from a missile fired by a rogue state - understood to mean Iran. It plans to increase its capability by deploying further assets in the years ahead. However, Russia says the shield upsets the...

Democrats are crying foul over GOP suggestions that President Obama has a “secret deal” on missile defense with Russia. The fight began in March, when a hot mic at a summit caught Obama telling then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that he’d have more “flexibility” on the issue after the election. Medvedev famously responded that he would transmit that information to Vladimir Putin, who is now Russia's president. Republicans immediately attacked Obama for making a secret deal, and they used this week’s floor debate on the Defense authorization bill to highlight their argument. No one in Congress has been more vocal about...

Aviation authorities are scratching their heads over a mysterious flying object in the skies above Colorado that almost caused a mid-air crash. The object was sighted by a commercial jet pilot, who claimed to air traffic controllers that some kind of flying craft got too close for comfort on Monday. In a transmission that appeared on LiveATC.net, the operator of the Cessna Citation 525 CJ1 says: 'A remote controlled aircraft, or what? ... 9News reported the Citation was about 8,000 feet above sea level, or about 2,800 feet above the ground, at the time the pilot reported the seeing the...

Russia and the United States will begin their controversial first joint anti-terror military exercises on American soil shortly at Ft. Carson in Colorado. A special unit of Russian paratroopers departed for the United States over the weekend and will be working alongside American land forces as part of the war games. The Russian and U.S. special units will engage in joint gun practice as well as ... The drills are scheduled to end on May 31