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National Missile Defense

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Copyright © MDA, Public Domain
  • Obama vs. McCain: Seven Areas of Agreement, and Six of Disagreement, on Nuclear Weapons
    In a campaign that features back and forth on issues large and small, where Barack Obama and John McCain disagree on everything from taxes to offshore drilling to Social Security to Iraq, it is amazing how much agreement there is on nuclear weapons issues. As Executive Director John Isaacs told the Los Angeles Times on July 13, "We'll have major progress on nuclear issues no matter who is elected." In this short analysis, Isaacs lists seven areas of agreement, and six of disagreement, between Obama and McCain on nuclear weapons issues.
  • In a Nutshell: McCain vs. Obama on National Security
    Executive Director John Isaacs takes a look at the positions of McCain and Obama on Iraq, Iran, nuclear weapons, missile defense, and much more.
  • An Early Look Ahead: What to Expect from Clinton, McCain, and Obama on National Security
    Each of the three major presidential candidates left standing would make major changes to the national security and foreign policies carried out by the Bush administration over the last seven years. Not surprisingly, exactly what kind of changes will be made depends on who ends up on the steps of Capitol Hill taking the oath of office next January -- Sen. John McCain, Sen. Hillary Clinton, or Sen. Barack Obama. In this comprehensive analysis, Executive Director John Isaacs compares and contrasts the candidates' positions on Iraq, Iran, nuclear weapons, missile defense, and much more.

The Pentagon's ground-based, mid-course missile defense system (GMD), formerly called by the more descriptive name National Missile Defense, is being developed and deployed to intercept one or a very few warheads launched by inter-continental ballistic missiles (ICBM) against the United States. The administration is requesting $10.4 billion for missile defense, the largest single program in the fiscal year 2007 Pentagon budget. These annual costs could rise to $19 billion in a few years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. A large proportion of the missile defense budget is allocated to the GMD system.

History of program

The United States first began development of missile defenses in the 1950's. In 1952, the U.S. activated the first of three hundred Nike missile sites at Fort Meade, MD, to defend major cities and industrial areas against a Soviet air attack. Then the U.S. tried the Nike-Zeus and the Nike-X systems. During the 1970's, the U.S. actually deployed 100 interceptors at Grand Forks, North Dakota, but dismantled the system soon after declaring it operational.

In 1983, President Ronald Reagan launched the Strategic Defense Initiative with the goal of making nuclear weapons "impotent and obsolete." In the 1990's the Republicans pressed the Clinton Administration to deploy a National Missile Defense.

The common thread on these early attempts and more recently: despite claims of new technologies and better defenses, none of them has worked.

Problems with the system

Despite the many tens of billions of dollars spent on missile defense and the flagrantly inaccurate claims by proponents of missile defense systems, after 50 years missile defense remains an experimental system that has provided the United States with very few tangible results. Moreover, despite Pentagon claims that solving missile defense problems is merely an "engineering" problem, defending against missile attacks of any range remains a complex and extremely challenging problem that the expenditure of well over $100 billion has not solved.

A series of recent reports from the Government Accountability Office, the Congressional Research Service, and even from the Department of Defense Office of the Inspector General and the Pentagon's own Director of Operational Test and Evaluation, point out that the GMD system suffers from a number of critical deficiencies. These reports make it clear that the system has no proven operational capability; and currently there are no plans for operational tests -- tests in actual combat conditions conducted by soldiers -- of the system. Moreover, key elements of the system are years away from being fielded and, at this time, there is no prospect of the system's being able to deal successfully with countermeasures that any state capable of developing an inter-continental missile could easily employ.