I knew this would happen. The nickel-and-diming if not the big massive slash. Almost as deadly to program progress.
This is on top of an already Bush-impaired program.
This is why I was so very mortified and angry at the skin-flinty and "limited" approach to NMD that W took...and his appeasements and placations of Russia's Vladmir Putin and the same pledges of limits to the Chicoms...despite their deploying sophisticated new nuclear SLBM subs....and clearly deploying thousands of intermediate range missiles many that likely are nukes and could be ship-borne surreptitiously to within U.S.-range.
Bush has allowed the Xlinton-ordered-lobotomies limiting the Aegis Standard Mark 2 missiles to a significantly smaller upper stage than it should have to do its mission. Of course, that was Strobe Talbott's and Madeline Albrights and Clinton's intent. Keep our air defense from becoming a defacto NMD. They even squandered the reduced Navy's procurement and R&D budgets...to DOWNGRADE the SM-2 missile design after it was mostly finished. The Navy had two fixes. One called Navy Area Missile Defense, a new missile. And another, relatively inexpensive reversal of what Clinton did...by replacing the lamed-up upper stage (17 inches narrower than it should be) with the Standard Mark 2, Flight 4(a) upper stage. Featuring significantly greater range, altitude and closing velocity. Bush, despite repeated and numerous pleas from the Navy...refused to fix the damage done. He had his just-hired Deputy Secretary of the DOD, Gordon Englund knife without any replacement whatsoever, the previously-scheduled Navy Area Missile Defense program development and deployment...on cost-inflation grounds. [This absence of replacement is in stark contrast that there has been no change of Navy determination of the combat need for it] And Bush has sat on the SM-2 fix. And this was all perversely enough, while he sending the misimpression to the public that he was moving forward...because they were taken the DAY AFTER HE CANCELLED THE ABM TREATY.
Bush kept those Clinton-limits...and the lame conceptual architecture... in place...and unbeknownst to all Americans except a few defense-wonks in the Air Force and Navy, a few defense contractors and State Dept....bragged about them to the Russkies and Chicoms.
These were unequivocally Appeasement "gestures."
As Angelo M. Codevilla, Prof. Int. Relations, BU, and a Fellow of the Claremont Institute said last summer in an NRO symposium on North Korea:
The fundamental prescription is: At least stop talking loud and paying ransom. Why help our enemies while insulting them - and calling it negotiations? Second, get serious about missile defense. Few realize that the Bush program is “Clinton lite at twice the price.” Once we stop encouraging our enemies and start defending ourselves, we may begin to think offensively.
This view was amplified by Newt Gingrich decrying the practical consequences of Bush's willful dithering in testing and deployments (and reading between the lines...playing patsy with the Russian and Chinese dictators)...:
The American public is being reassured that we have a ballistic-missile defense that will work. No serious person believes this. None of the tests have been robust enough or realistic enough to assure us that we could intercept the North Korean ICBM no matter where it was aimed.
Bush, not content to slash almost 80 ships from the active fleet since he took office (most of them far from obsolete with more than half their service life unused going to waste) also tried to force closure of half of our remaining sub-building ship yards, and half of our destroyer-building shipyards.
We need vastly more "coverage" to protect the US and its interests abroad...and the best...indeed really the only feasible way...is from ships. Aegis-type ships. We need a whole fleet of additional, NMD-Dedicated destroyers which can be on-station and rotated in and out for crew and maintenance. Better than bogging down the existing fleet with just another mission that would impair their flexibility.
We need numbers of platforms...to maintain the "home-base" coverage, and have the flexibility to bring air...and space... cover where needed.
And it will all take more money...money now being nickel-and-dimed away....even if this Administration finally woke up and realized that it doesn't have the luxury of time...or resources or even of capability.
All the opportunities squandered...because of Bush. I now know which President he most clearly reminds me of.
No, obviously he's not Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton or as bad as any of the Rats... But, with his slashing of the Navy, dilatory and token recapitalization of the Air Force, and space capability (this despite needing them for the very real war we are in), and his "new tone" he is reminiscent of Warren G. Harding, and his "return to normalcy".
Warren Harding also exploited the "peace dividend" after WW-I, slashed the US Navy, and squandered his administration...leaving a record of a gravely weakened military and a lasting legacy of ignominy while his Cabinet covered him in shame...
Harding in the midst of a plethora of scandals plaguing his administration famously said. "I have no trouble with my enemies, but my damn friends, my God-damned friends... they're the ones that keep me walking the floor nights!"
Bush keeps those serious about U.S. defense walking the floor at nights...
I only hope we have the opportunity with either Duncan Hunter, or even a lesser Presidential candidate such as Fred Thompson or Mit Romney, to recapture the White House. Most all of them, excepting perhaps John McCain and Rudy Giuliani who promise more of the same mental mistakes as Bush, have, at least on paper, shown more defense-sense than the current "limited defense" Administration.