Trump to Rapidly Expand U.S. Missile Defenses

 

Expanded missile threats from China, Russia spur policy shift

President Trump announced a major shift in U.S. defense strategy on Thursday, ordering the Pentagon to rapidly expand current missile defenses and build new interceptors, space sensors, and advanced technology to neutralize foreign missiles at multiple stages of attack.

The president announced during a speech at the Pentagon that missile defenses, currently limited to countering North Korean long-range missiles and future Iranian missiles, will no longer be constrained to rogue states.

US successfully tests ICBM defense system

 

The US military said Tuesday it had intercepted a mock-up of an intercontinental ballistic missile in a first-of-its-kind test that comes amid concerns over North Korea’s weapons program.

A ground-based interceptor launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California “successfully intercepted an intercontinental ballistic missile target” fired from the Reagan Test Site in the Marshall Islands, the military said in a statement.

Six Russian MiG-31 interceptor aircraft land in Damascus to rescue Assad regime

Six Russian MiG-31 Foxhound interceptor aircraft from Moscow landed Tuesday, Aug. 18, at the Mezze Airbase situated in Damascus international airport, debkafile’s military and intelligence sources disclose. They were followed shortly after by giant An-124 Condor transports, which delivered 1,000 Kornet-9M133 third-generation anti-tank guided missiles.

The Russian airlift of advanced weapons for Bashar Assad’s army will last for several days. It betokens Moscow’s intention to keep up its support for the Syrian ruler and counter – by military means if necessary – any secret Iranian diplomatic machinations for terminating the Syria war and with it the Assad regime – such as have been reported in the past week in Western and Arab capitals, especially in the Gulf.

The Pentagon’s $10-billion bet gone bad

Leaders of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency were effusive about the new technology.

It was the most powerful radar of its kind in the world, they told Congress. So powerful it could detect a baseball over San Francisco from the other side of the country.

If North Korea launched a sneak attack, the Sea-Based X-Band Radar — SBX for short — would spot the incoming missiles, track them through space and guide U.S. rocket-interceptors to destroy them.

Crucially, the system would be able to distinguish between actual missiles and decoys.

SBX “represents a capability that is unmatched,” the director of the Missile Defense Agency told a Senate subcommittee in 2007.

In reality, the giant floating radar has been a $2.2-billion flop, a Los Angeles Times investigation found.

Army Rapid Deployment Force to Secure U.S. Missile Defense Field in War Games

Large-scale U.S. military exercises held as Russia re-opens Arctic naval base

An Army rapid deployment force will practice securing the Pentagon’s strategic missile defenses base in Alaska this week as part of annual exercises involving both conventional and nuclear forces.

Defense officials said an Army Quick Reaction Force (QRF) of 55 airborne troops, along with weapons and vehicles, will parachute into Fort Greely, Alaska, on Thursday as part of exercises called Vigilant Shield.

The QRF, made up of highly-trained, extremely mobile forces, will quickly unpack vehicles and arms and move to set up a security perimeter around the Ground-Based Interceptor (GBI) field at the base—all within minutes of hitting the ground, said officials familiar with some details of the exercise. The exercises will continue through Oct. 28.

Russia Wants to Build New Missiles to Hit the U.S.

Get this: The General commanding Russia Strategic Rocket Forces, Lieutenant General Sergei Karakayev, said in December that the new Russian Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) are needed — because the existing ones are vulnerable to US missile defenses.

This is apparently the result of all that nice goodwill generated by the Obama administration’s “reset” of relations with Vladimir Putin’s Russia and the ratification of the New Start Arms Control Treaty. It should come as no surprise: nuclear weapons, along with oil and gas exports, are just about the only thing that still qualifies Russia as a “Great Power.”

If Russia’s leaders still resent their loss of superpower status and feel they have a strategic need to challenge the US wherever possible, then spending the money to build a new type of nuclear missile aimed at the US makes sense.

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Ever since Ronald Reagan gave his famous “Star Wars” speech in March1983, which lead to the rebirth of American missile defense efforts, opponents of the idea that it is not only possible but desirable to build defensive systems that can shoot down incoming nuclear missiles and their warheads have claimed that the technology cannot be developed. Yet now, a senior Russian officer has publicly admitted that America has built a system that can shoot down the solid propellent missiles that Reagan and his team thought were the most dangerous ones in the Soviet inventory. This is a major development: it proves that Ronald Reagan was right not to overestimate Soviet technological capacities.

Of course, as the US GMD system has fewer than 30 operational interceptors, the ability of Russia’s missile force with its hundreds of ICBMs and SLBMs to overwhelm the US defense system is obvious. However, if the US were to chose to build a much larger number of interceptors, and to build up a “multilayered” national missile defense system, as has been promised by Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney, Russia would no longer have an unquestioned ability to hit a wide array of US targets with nuclear warheads. The reliability of Russia’s missile strike force would be compromised.

If this is the motivation for Russia’s announced decision to build a new type of nuclear missile, then Russia’s commitment to “reset” its relationship with the US is based on a wildly false premise. After all, if the US does not threaten Russia’s territorial integrity, why should Russia worry about America’s ability to defend itself ? Or do Russia’s leaders still believe that a balance of terror, based on the old doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), is necessary?

Full article: Russia Wants to Build New Missiles to Hit the U.S. (Stonegate Institute)