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Progress on Missile Defense

The U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA) conducted a successful test on March 25  against an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) class target. This test was the first salvo engagement of a threat-representative ICBM target by two Ground Based Interceptors (GBI). The GBI-Lead destroyed the reentry vehicle, as it was designed to do. The GBI-Trail then looked at the resulting debris and remaining objects, and, not finding any other reentry vehicles, selected the next ‘most lethal object’ it could identify, and struck that, precisely as it was designed to do.

The threat-representative ICBM target was launched from the Reagan Test Site on Kwajalein Atoll in the Republic of the Marshall Islands, over 4,000 miles away from the two GBI interceptors, which were launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. During the test, space, ground and sea-based BMDS sensors provided real-time target acquisition and tracking data to the Command, Control, Battle Management and Communication (C2BMC) system. The two GBIs were then launched and the Exo-atmospheric Kill Vehicles successfully engaged the target complex, resulting in an intercept of the target.

 “This was the first GBI salvo intercept of a complex, threat-representative ICBM target, and it was a critical milestone,” said MDA Director Air Force Lt. Gen. Samuel A. Greaves. “The system worked exactly as it was designed to do

Thirty-five years ago, President Reagan first announced his “Strategic Defense Initiative,” (SDI) designed to provide an anti-ballistic (ABM) missile shield to protect the U.S. from nuclear attack.  Some historians believe the announcement was at least one factor in the Soviet leadership’s realization that they could not win the Cold War.  The move was resoundingly criticized by left-wing politicians and pundits, who pejoratively labelled the concept “Star Wars.”

SDI was never built, and even less capable systems were only marginally deployed. President Clinton cancelled a follow-up program known as “Brilliant Pebbles” and Barack Obama, first as a U.S. Senator, then as President, did everything possible to defund and even reduce various elements of ABM defenses.  in 2007, then-Senator Obama advocated cutting the anti-ballistic missile program budget by a greater amount than its entire allocated budget.

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The Wall Street Journal  quoted Mr. Obama’s 2001 comment: “’I don’t support a missile defense system,’ Mr. Obama said in 2001, when he was old enough to know better…Many Democrats have held that view since dismissing Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative. But engineers have proved they can hit a bullet with a bullet: 65 of 81 U.S. antimissile tests have succeeded since 2001…”

Two incidents stand out: Obama’s reversal of U.S. agreements with Eastern European nations to deploy ABM facilities, and his infamous “whisper” caught on an open microphone to Russian leader Medvedev, in which Obama promised that he would further cut U.S. missile defenses after his re-election.

President Obama proclaimed on Sept. 17, 2009, that he was unilaterally stopping the plan. The date he announced this was the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland. The President’s decision infuriated Warsaw’s leaders, who had to expend significant political capital to gain approval from their voters.  The resulting loss of Eastern Europe’s trust in the White House directly led to the Czech Republic’s withdrawal from related agreements.

According to the MDA , “[B]allistic missile proliferation continues on a wide scale today and could increase as the technology is transferred… A country with no ballistic missiles today may acquire them quickly, and these missiles could become available to non-state terrorist groups… The ultimate goal of missile defense is to convince countries that ballistic missiles are not militarily useful or a worthy investment and place doubt in the minds of potential aggressors that a ballistic missile attack against the United States or its allies can succeed. Missile defense technology being developed, tested and deployed by the United States is designed to counter ballistic missiles of all ranges — short, medium, intermediate and long. Since ballistic missiles have different ranges, speeds, size and performance characteristics, the Ballistic Missile Defense System is an integrated, layered architecture that provides multiple opportunities to destroy missiles and their warheads before they can reach their targets. The system’s architecture includes: o networked sensors (including space-based) and ground- and sea-based radars for target detection and tracking; o ground- and sea-based interceptor missiles for destroying a ballistic missile using either the force of a direct collision, called “hit-to-kill” technology, or an explosive blast fragmentation warhead; o and a command, control, battle management and communications network providing the operational commanders with the needed links between the sensors and interceptor missiles. All of our missile defense elements are operated by uniformed U.S. military personnel. The United States also has missile defense cooperative programs with a number of allies, including United Kingdom, Japan, Australia, Israel, Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Poland, Italy and many others. The Missile Defense Agency also actively participates in NATO activities to maximize opportunities to develop an integrated NATO ballistic missile defense capability.

The Report Concludes Tomorrow

Photo: March 25, 2019 – The ‘lead’ Ground-based Interceptor (GBI) is launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., March 25, 2019, in the first-ever salvo engagement test of a threat-representative ICBM target. The two GBIs successfully intercepted a target launched from the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site on Kwajalein Atoll. (Missile Defense Agency)