Free Republic

Thrifty Lefties?: Media fret over missile defense waste by Daniel Clark In reaction to David Willman’s April 4th Los Angeles Times article, the media have expressed alarm over wasteful missile defense spending. The report, which the Pentagon disputes, says that several failed initiatives have cost the taxpayers $10 billion over ten years. Although this only represents about one-eighth of the Missile Defense Agency budget, liberals have seized upon it to claim that our entire missile defense system is a boondoggle. There are good reasons to be skeptical of the Times report. For one, it describes the Sea-Based X-Band Radar system...

Russia has gone on the offensive in the Baltic, warning Denmark that if it joins Nato’s missile defence shield, its navy will be a legitimate target for a Russian nuclear attack. “I don’t think that Danes fully understand the consequence if Denmark joins the American-led missile defence shield. If they do, then Danish warships will be targets for Russian nuclear missiles,” said Mikhail Vanin, the Russian ambassador to Denmark, to the Jyllands-Posten newspaper.

National Security: It won't generate the buzz that torture allegations do, but a provision in the defense spending bill requires the White House to explain why Russia developed a cruise missile in breach of a 1987 treaty. President Ronald Reagan coined the phrase "trust but verify" regarding dealing with the Russians for good reason. American security was to be guaranteed through the strength of our will and the genius of our technology, not through pieces of parchment, handshakes, clinking glasses at conferences, or reset buttons. Enter President Obama and the age of flexibility, back-stabbing our allies on things like missile...

With the recent nomination of Ashton Carter to head the Department of Defense many observers are not only wondering how Mr. Carter will differ in style from his predecessor, outgoing Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, but also how they will differ in substance. One area in particular is the vocal commitment to which Mr. Carter, assuming his nomination successfully navigates U.S. Senate confirmation, will give toward missile defense as a significant element of the nation's broad national security apparatus. The Missile Defense Agency (MDA), responsible for conducting "research, development, and acquisition" of ballistic missile defense systems for the Department of...

Defense Threat: China conducts its third test in a year of a hypersonic glide vehicle designed to evade our missile and other defense systems, including the Aegis defense system guarding our carrier battle groups. As we downsize our military, scale back weapons procurement and development, China proceeds at top speed towards weapons designed to counter our once-huge technical advantage and qualitative superiority. Case in point is the third flight test of a hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV), dubbed the WU-14 by the Pentagon, following earlier tests on Jan. 9 and Aug. 7 of this year. The U.S. Navy is particularly concerned,...

Defense: Members of Congress warn that the State Department is working on arms accords to demilitarize space and ban anti-satellite weapons, leaving Russia and China with a huge lead in military space capabilities. On Jan. 17, 2012, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton issued a statement announcing the Obama administration's intention to work with the European Union on an International Code of Conduct for Outer Space Activities. It was supposed to be sort of a "rules of the road" for space-faring nations to deal with issues such as the accumulating space junk jeopardizing satellites and manned space activities such as the...

National Security: Beijing is moving fast on a maneuverable, hypersonic glide vehicle designed to evade America's defenses, including the Aegis ballistic missile system guarding our carrier battle groups. On Aug. 7, China conducted a second test of its hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV), known as the WU-14, yet another example of its relentless pursuit of high-tech weaponry as the United States abandons what the administration dismisses as Cold War weaponry. The first test, conducted in January, saw China's HGV reach speeds in the vicinity of Mach 10, about 10 times the speed of sound. In the latest test, according to Internet...

Your first mistake is that you didn’t bring a MAN with you. The second is that you didn’t come in the dark and bring your masks to hide behind.-- Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn Jimmy Carter made me do it. I couldn’t help myself, and neither could you. The peacenik Democrat, (1st) Nobel Prize winner, Nuclear Know-Nothing and general Know-it-All reminded me today why I became a conservative in the first place. “Former president Jimmy Carter called on the West to recognize the U.S.-designated terrorist group Hamas as a legitimate ‘political actor’, that represents the bulk of the Palestinian population,” said...

Between the fall of the Jewish Commonwealth to the Romans in the first century A.D. and the founding of Israel in 1948, Jews were remarkably easy to kill. Not anymore. Today, thanks to an innovative missile-defense system called Iron Dome (in Hebrew Kipat Barzel), it’s harder than ever. Yet when it was first proposed, many Israeli defense experts (and one way or another most Israelis consider themselves defense experts) were reluctant to support the idea of a defensive response to rocket attacks from Gaza and Lebanon. Throughout the history of warfare there has been conflict between those who believe in...

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado (Reuters) - The United States on Wednesday announced the first live-fire test of a Raytheon Co SM-3 missile from the land-based version of Lockheed Martin Corp's Aegis missile defense system, which will be operational in Romania next year. Lockheed said it was the first test of the Aegis system using a land-based missile launcher. The test at the Pacific Missile Range Facility (PMRF) in Hawaii late on Tuesday marks a significant milestone for the Aegis Ashore weapon system, which is designed to protect U.S. and NATO forces in Europe from a ballistic missile attack. The Obama administration's...

AbstractOn February 28, Russian troops, aided by pro-Russian local militia, occupied important sites across the Crimean Peninsula under the pretext of “protecting Russian people.” Now Crimea is under Moscow’s de facto control and the Russian parliament has voted to annex the region into the Russian Federation. The failure of the Obama Administration’s Russian “reset,” the unilateral disarming of Europe, and the U.S. reduction of forces and disengagement from Europe have led Russia to calculate that the West will not respond in any significant way. The Administration can demonstrate America’s commitment to its NATO allies and support for the Ukrainian...

Mao Zedong said of the United States, “In appearance it is very powerful, but in reality it is nothing to be afraid of; it is a paper tiger. Outwardly a tiger, it is made of paper, unable to withstand the wind and the rain. I believe that is nothing but a paper tiger.” Osama bin Laden said, “We have religion, we have Islam. The American soldier may have the best weapons in the world, but on the inside, he is spiritually empty – a paper tiger.” Both were wrong. Mao found out by being held in check, and bin Laden...

Sending armed troops into a foreign country for the purpose of seizing territory is an act of war, and a line not often crossed in recent decades. But it’s what President Vladimir Putin has done in Ukraine – in clear violation of the UN Charter, the 1975 Helsinki Final Act, the 1994 Budapest Memorandum (which “guaranteed” Ukraine’s territorial integrity in exchange for the surrender of its nuclear weapons) and the 1997 Ukraine-Russia Bilateral Treaty. If the United States takes no serious actions in response, lessons will be learned – and not just by Putin. But what can an American president...

In response to mounting unhappiness in the West with Russia's acquisition of Crimea and plans to split Ukraine, Vladimir Putin has struck again. The Russian Defense Ministry released a statement over the weekend saying, "The unfounded threats... are seen by us as an unfriendly gesture," raising the possibility of "new circumstances, giving Russia the right to pull out of the inspections" required under the START treaty with the U.S.Now that is an "unfriendly gesture," and one that leaves the Obama administration in a bind -- unless it wants to adjust its thinking and right a six-year-old wrong.In 2009, one of Putin's...

The Obama administration's Russian reset, designed by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, was premised on the idea of Russia as a partner with the United States. Hand in hand, the former rivals would address the major international crises of the day. This initiative will be remembered as one of the biggest foreign policy follies of the modern era — a staggeringly naïve exercise in appeasement that emboldened Moscow at Washington's expense. From Damascus to Tehran to Kiev, the Russians have been running rings around a U.S. presidency that believes “leading from behind” is a serious strategy, rather than a policy...

.....Instead of seeking military and other hot line communications, the U.S. government should build on select military superiorities in order to deter China into the 2020s and beyond, Fisher said. “I don’t see this administration being seized with this real challenge,” he added. ....... .......Ian Easton, in a report published by the Project 2049 Institute, said China’s hypersonic weapons are part of what he called “the Great Game in space.” “If there is a great power war in this century, it will not begin with the sound of explosions on the ground and in the sky, but rather with the...

MOSCOW — Russia has deployed short-range ballistic missiles in the country’s west, a move that it contends does not violate international treaties, the Defense Ministry said Monday, though it conceivably would allow Russia to carry out a precise strike against the Baltic nations and Poland. The deployment of the Iskander missiles, which have a maximum range of about 250 miles and are capable of carrying conventional or nuclear payloads, has often been threatened by Russia as a response to proposed extensions of an American missile defense shield in Eastern Europe. However, the announcement on Monday was the first official confirmation...

Proliferation: As we shutter our ICBM squadrons and destroy our silos, Iran and North Korea are working on technology to deliver nukes Pyongyang already has and Tehran is a few centrifuge rotations from acquiring. As Bill Gertz of the Washington Free Beacon reports, groups of technicians from the Shahid Hemmat Industrial Group (SHIG), a unit in charge of building Iran's liquid-fueled missiles, have made repeated trips to North Korea during the past several months, including as recently as late October, to work on a new 80-ton rocket booster being developed by the North Koreans, That booster is believed to be...

Global Power: Moscow launches four ICBMs in a large-scale nuclear drill as Chinese state media, brandishing detailed maps, show how Beijing's nuclear submarines can attack U.S. cities. We press "reset," they press "launch." In March 2009, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton presented Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov with a red "reset button" to symbolize improved ties. The era of confrontation when American presidents demanded the tearing down of walls was over. From now on, we would make nice. Fast-forward to 2012, when President Obama met with Dmitry Medvedev, Russia's then-president and now prime minister, at the Nuclear Security Summit in...

U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) today spoke at the Heritage Foundation 4th Annual Jesse Helms Lecture Series. He outlined three simple principles by which U.S. foreign policy should be guided: •We should focus directly on protecting national security in the interests of the U.S. Advertisement •We should speak with moral clarity •We should always fight to win The senator then discussed how these principles should apply to challenges around the world, particularly to the current situation in Syria. He additionally highlighted the importance of modernizing our military and bolstering our nation’s missile defense. Excerpts of Sen. Cruz’s remarks are below....