Free Republic

Turkey's leaders have called Israel the "West's spoiled child," and the "bully" of the eastern Mediterranean. When a Tel Aviv soccer team showed up in Istanbul recently for a match, the welcome was less than warm. In September, Turkey kicked out the Israeli ambassador, suspended military and trade deals and threatened legal and naval action to challenge Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip. As roars of approval went up around the Arab world, few noticed another announcement quietly slipped in by Ankara: Turkey had signed off on a plan to host an American X-band radar system as part of a...

A test of the U.S. territorial missile defense system ended in failure because the sea-based cuing radar for the interceptor did not perform as planned, the U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA) announced Jan. 31. The Jan. 31 test was the first of the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system in which the Sea-Based X-band radar was the primary source of tracking and targeting information, MDA spokesman Rick Lehner said Feb. 1. “It was the only radar used in the test,” he said. Previous tests of the GMD system have relied primarily on other radar tracking assets, such as the very high...