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Defense: Beijing tests a mobile missile capable of hitting the continental U.S. and prepares to deploy ballistic missile submarines that can do the same, while our commander-in-chief slashes our missile defenses. In a speech before the Space and Missile Defense Symposium in Huntsville, Rep. Mike Rogers, R.-Ala., chairman of the House armed services subcommittee on strategic forces, warned that the Obama administration has cut $6 billion from U.S. missile defense programs at a time of growing missile threats from potential adversaries. According to Rogers, Obama cut $1.16 billion from missile defense — a 10% reduction — in his first budget...

Weaponry: As the commander in chief calls for a one-third reduction in our nuclear arsenal, Russia builds new midrange missile banned under a 1987 arms treaty. How's that "reset" button working out, Mr. President? Trust but verify, said the president who won the Cold War. Ronald Reagan's "peace through strength" philosophy has been replaced with the "peace through parchment" strategy of Barack Obama. It emphasizes flexibility, not resolve, and relies on pacts such as the New Start Treaty and the pressing of imaginary reset buttons. Russia's playing host to Edward Snowden, arguably a traitor with secrets to share with Moscow...

National Security: Our secretary of state tells the Chinese we'll restrain missile defense activities in Asia in exchange for their help in reducing the threat of a nuclear North Korea. Isn't this where we came in? In a news conference after meetings with China's top leaders on Saturday, Secretary of State John Kerry said the United States would reduce its missile defenses in Asia if North Korea abandoned its nuclear weapons program. Well, at least he didn't bow. In response to North Korea's threat to fire some of its latest missiles, including the road-mobile Musudan, amidst news that it can...

Missile Defense: The administration beefs up our Alaskan-based interceptors it once downgraded in response to North Korea's threat, while ending the final phase of the Europe-based defense against Iran it once supported. We welcome the Obama administration's decision to place an additional 14 ground-based interceptors (GBI) at Fort Greely, Alaska, and Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., by 2017, as well as a second TPY-2 phased-array X-band long-range missile defense radar system in Japan following North Korea's deployment of a new road-mobile missile. We are reminded that if President Obama hadn't scuttled President Bush's plans, these added interceptors would already be...

Missile Defense: As Pyongyang threatens a nuclear strike, the administration says our missile defenses can handle anything they can throw against us or our allies. If so it's not because of anything the president did. 'I can tell you that the United States is fully capable of defending against any North Korean ballistic missile attack," White House spokesman Jay Carney said on Thursday after North Korea's raging runt, Kim Jong-un, said Pyongyang was scrapping the 1953 armistice deal that ended the Korean War. He threatened a "preemptive" nuclear strike against the U.S. Carney added that "our recent success in returning...

Defense: Plans to reduce our most effective fighting force by 20,000 will leave it unable to meet all its global commitments or respond to spontaneous threats from the shores of Tripoli to anywhere else. There is no greater symbol of America's apologetic retreat from world leadership under President Obama than the planned reductions in the size of the Marine Corps, cuts that were in the works even before sequestration mandated under the Budget Control Act threatened to cut even deeper. The Marines are on course to cut around 4,000 positions a year through 2017, decreasing the total number of Marines...

Defense: The fruit of unilateral disarmament, appeasement and promised "flexibility" patrols our East Coast near one of our largest ballistic missile submarine bases. Defense cuts and Russian subs — a double whammy. 'On June 1 or a bit later, we will resume constant patrolling of the world's oceans by strategic nuclear submarines," Russian Navy Commander Admiral Vladimir Vysotsky said in February. Keeping that promise, a Russian Sierra-2 class nuclear attack submarine cruised within 200 miles of our East Coast on the eve of a U.S. presidential election in which defense spending and priorities were a key issue. This is the...

Defense: The fruit of unilateral disarmament, appeasement and promised "flexibility" patrols our East Coast near one of our largest ballistic missile submarine bases. Defense cuts and Russian subs — a double whammy. 'On June 1 or a bit later, we will resume constant patrolling of the world's oceans by strategic nuclear submarines," Russian Navy Commander Admiral Vladimir Vysotsky said in February. Keeping that promise, a Russian Sierra-2 class nuclear attack submarine cruised within 200 miles of our East Coast on the eve of a U.S. presidential election in which defense spending and priorities were a key issue. This is the...

Common Defense: The president says it's OK to have fewer ships because today's vessels have much better capabilities. But each ship can be in only one place at a time. When Mitt Romney noted the shrinking Navy under Barack Obama's budget cuts and the sequestration his Office of Management and Budget director drew up, the president sarcastically replied: "We have these things called aircraft carriers where planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines. And so the question is not a game of 'Battleship' where we're counting ships; it's what are our capabilities." As we've...

Common Defense: The president says it's OK to have fewer ships because today's vessels have much better capabilities. But each ship can be in only one place at a time. When Mitt Romney noted the shrinking Navy under Barack Obama's budget cuts and the sequestration his Office of Management and Budget director drew up, the president sarcastically replied: "We have these things called aircraft carriers where planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines. And so the question is not a game of 'Battleship' where we're counting ships; it's what are our capabilities." As we've...

Defense Spending: Despite debate assertions, our commander in chief has in fact presided over a shrinking Navy and an Air Force with planes older than their pilots. And what's worse, he planned it that way. When Mitt Romney accurately said that under President Obama the U.S. Navy had fewer ships than in 1917, our commander-in-chief petulantly and contemptuously responded, "Well, governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature of our military has changed." As a Marine tweeted Fox News after the debate, they still use bayonets and, yes, we'll have fewer of them under the combined impact...

Budget: The GOP's vice-presidential candidate tells the president to either work to stop the mandated cuts to defense under budget sequestration, or tell us what the cuts will be and just what he'll be commander-in-chief of. From Day 1 of his administration, it was clear that President Obama had little use for the military except as a backdrop for the occasional photo-op. He saw it as an egregious example of the American exceptionalism and leadership for which he would incessantly apologize. He would let it wither, slashing our nuclear arsenal, gutting its budget, eviscerating missile defense and canceling major weapons...

Disarming America: The former vice president and defense secretary journeys to Capitol Hill to warn that looming mandated defense cuts will only imperil our ability to defend ourselves and our interests. If there's a common thread that runs through President Obama's policies, it's that they all seem to have the purpose of strengthening government power at home and/or weakening American power abroad. To President Obama, impending massive defense cuts merely means we can beat our swords into Chevy Volts. We have documented as part of our "Obama Record" series and before how the president has been dismantling America's defense brick...

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. President John F. Kennedy once said of those who would oppose us: "We dare not tempt them with weakness. For only when our arms are sufficient beyond doubt can we be certain beyond doubt that they will never be employed." That was the longstanding reason for our nuclear deterrence strategy. President Obama has decided that indeed we are going to tempt them with weakness. According to an Associated Press report on...

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. President John F. Kennedy once said of those who would oppose us: "We dare not tempt them with weakness. For only when our arms are sufficient beyond doubt can we be certain beyond doubt that they will never be employed." That was the longstanding reason for our nuclear deterrence strategy. President Obama has decided that indeed we are going to tempt them with weakness. According to an Associated Press report on...

Federal Priorities: A new report shows we have spent $70 billion on climate change since 2008 while our strapped military is ordered to become energy-efficient. Imagine weapons that don't harm the environment. Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., ranking member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, and a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, took to the Senate floor Thursday to decry the green agenda being imposed on the military by the Obama administration at the same time the defense budget is being sacrificed on the altar of runaway deficit spending.

Security: The president insists he wasn't trying to "hide the ball" until after the election, but the man who as candidate pledged to "end misguided defense policies" such as missile defense is fulfilling that campaign promise. Despite the administration's rap-dancing with the help of the usual suspects in the mainstream media, it's clear that the recent meeting between President Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in Seoul, South Korea, couldn't be more different in tone and meaning from the one President Ronald Reagan had with Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev in Reykjavik, Iceland, in October 1986. President Obama has tried to...

National Security: The president tells his Russian counterpart to give him space until November when, if re-elected, he'll be able to give away missile defense and the rest of the store without political consequences. It seems President Obama has a space program after all, one in which the Russians cool it on the dismantling of U.S. missile defenses until the least transparent administration in history can razzle-dazzle, smoke-and-mirror and divide-and-conquer its way into a second term. One of the subtexts of the 2012 campaign has been the fear of what a second-term Obama will do unfettered by the need to...

The Obama Record: The president's shredding of the Constitution began at the Preamble's provision for the common defense. He gave away our missile defense to appease Moscow and betray our allies. Derided as Star Wars, the Strategic Defense Initiative announced by President Reagan on March 23, 1983, was to be the fulfillment of his dream of being able to deter or even defeat a nuclear missile attack, rather than avenge one, with a multilayered system of defenses aimed at enemy missiles in all stages of flight. SDI and its concept of defending America and its allies were attacked as destabilizing...

Security: A deputy defense secretary tells Congress that the administration is indeed considering giving Moscow sensitive Aegis ballistic missile defense data. We've gone from "trust but verify" to "appease and surrender." Brad Roberts testified before a House Armed Services subcommittee Tuesday that the Obama administration was actively considering giving Moscow classified missile defense data to allay Russian concerns about the capabilities and intent of our proposed ballistic missile defense system based in Europe to guard against missiles launched from Iran. Roberts testified that the administration believes "cooperation could be well-served by some limited sharing of classified information of a certain...