The Congressional Research Office, or CRS, has said that "hundreds or thousands" of space-based platforms would be necessary to "provide even a minimal defence" against incoming missiles - a potentially enormously expensive proposition.
Will fear, exaggerated threats, and pork-barrel politics be enough to keep the Pentagon and its contractors fat and happy, even as the urgent priorities of so many of the rest of us are starved of much-needed funding?
Theodore Postol, professor emeritus of science, technology, and national security policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge: the new review “is a policy document in a vacuum relative to science and technology,”
It’s the old Cold War routine repeated once again: The money goes south, but the risk and the waste stays up in Alaska.
There is probably no greater illusion in the field of national security than the idea of credible missile defense.
The United States is in the process of building a vast nuclear arsenal that appears to be aimed at having the ability to fight and win nuclear wars. The fact that the concept of fighting and winning a nuclear war is completely divorced from the realities of nuclear weapons effects has not deterred the United States from moving forward as if such an objective is possible.
Whether this week’s test is successful or not, the GMD system is still far from being able to provide reliable protection from a real-world missile threat.
We can tell, for sure, from video images and even photographs that the Iron Dome system is not working very well at all. It hits a targeted missile maybe 5 percent of the time—could be even lower. ... Meanwhile, the Israeli government presents Iron Dome's performance as part of a sophisticated public relations effort.
Why, given the failure of austerity economics, haven't we seen a policy shift to stimulation of the economy?...the push for yet greater austerity has less to do with a deep concern by Europe’s elites over debt—it is high but manageable—than as part of a stealth campaign aimed at dismantling rules and regulations that protect worker rights, unions, and the environment. Meanwhile Washington is concerned with the effect of the economic crisis on the viability of NATO.
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