DeanPatsFan

Reagan's vision

By John Carey
June 26, 2006


Ronald Reagan's vision that the United States would one day need a missile defense system was again validated last week when North Korea assembled and fueled a missile capable of delivering a nuclear weapon to American cities.
On March 23, 1983, President Reagan announced from the Oval Office, "I've reached a decision which offers a new hope for our children in the 21st century." He explained his vision -- and his defense budget's inclusion -- of the genesis of this nation's missile defense effort.
Liberals, and most of the media, derided the president's project as "Star Wars." Reagan's visionary effort, which included men like Edward Teller as an adviser, proposed to assemble "the best and brightest" minds of American technology to master what critics considered the impossible dream: the in-flight destruction of ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons headed toward the United States from hostile shores.
Now, again a grateful nation can pause to thank President Reagan.
Just last week, these activities underscored the success of this long struggle to master the difficult technological challenges of missile defense; challenges similar to those encountered by President Kennedy's decision to put men on the moon:
A U.S. Navy AEGIS cruiser at-sea detected, tracked and destroyed a ballistic missile. In eight at-sea tests, the Navy has been successful seven times.
A Japanese Navy AEGIS destroyer performed a surveillance and tracking exercise during the test, the first time any U.S. ally has taken part in a U.S. missile defense intercept test. Japan's indigenously produced destroyers combine U.S. and Japanese technology to provide the ballistic missile tracking system.
A third AEGIS ship used in the test linked up with a land-based missile defense radar to evaluate the ship's ability to receive and use target data from missile defense command centers. This vital technology, called "cueing," allows sensors to internet missile tracking data from one platform to the next. This technique will allow, for example, sensors in Japan to detect a North Korean missile launch and initiate launch orders to interceptors at-sea; or in the U.S.
Japan took custody of a long-range X-Band ballistic missile tracking radar at a base in northern Japan. This radar will one-day become a critical link in the "cueing" effort should North Korea ever launch a ballistic missile armed with a nuclear weapon.
Also in Japan, Foreign Minister Taro Aso and U.S. Ambassador Thomas Schieffer, signed an agreement which commits the two countries to jointly produce interceptor missiles. By previous agreements, the United States has been sharing missile defense information with Japan. But this agreement also allows the transfer of ballistic missile defense technology from Japan to the United States, a breakthrough for Japan which since World War II has adhered to a self-imposed ban on arms exports.
Finally, America's initial land-based ballistic missile interceptors were placed on a full war alert. These few missiles have only undergone their initial testing. But under a philosophy developed by the Bush administration to deploy capability incrementally (a little ballistic missile defense is better than none at all) these interceptors are now poised to face an attack by missiles on America.
These many achievements are neither an end nor a beginning. Rather, the ballistic missile defense effort, often-criticized, has been a long national investment effort of dollars, technology, but most importantly, the innovation and hard work of Americans and others.

Strategically, ballistic missile defense is changing the world. When Ronald Reagan made his famous missile defense address in 1983, "deterrence" was the trump card of the Soviet Union and the United States to "guard" against ballistic missile attack. That policy called for annihilation by nuclear weapons of the aggressor nation. Now, technology and years of hard work and scientific achievement have changed the strategic landscape.
Terrorists and rogue nations striving to attain nuclear weapons and long range missiles have also changed the strategic balance.
In an age where deterrence seems not to deter the likes of North Korea or Iran, and certainly not terrorists without a country, finally there are other options: missile defense options, for the president of the United States facing the bluster, coercion or even the warfare intent of another nation or even a terrorist cell.
President Reagan was right: We in the 21st century and our children, plus a generation of those born since 1983, owe him their thanks and gratitude.

John Carey served in the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization and was the commanding officer of an AEGIS ship.

Patters

Build your bomb shelters, the missile defense system isn't ready and, worse, under Bush North Korea now has 'em, and Iran is quickly developing them. Even worse, as experts have been poiniting out for years, there are many ways to overcome the system, including by coating the missiles with special materials or firing bogus missiles along with the real one. At any rate, anyone who shares Dean's paranoia, should move into caves or build a bomb shelter. Look out!

DeanPatsFan

Paranoia? I guess that's the only reply you have when you're a liberal who knows that liberals tried to kill the very program that is now helping to protect Americans from a missile attack.

Once again liberals have proven to be on the wrong side of history.

Patters

Dean, who's fired a missile at us? So far, diplomacy and our superior force have worked to dissuade our enemies. Broad-based nuclear disarmament would be cheaper and more effective. Once again, conservative paranoia is causing the world to become more violent and killing thousands of Americans. If we had a liberal in office, 9/11 might not have happened and certainly we would not have had 2,500 soldiers killed in Iraq. Too bad, Al Qaeda was smart enough to wait for a conservative before launching their big attack. They knew what they were doing. They knew conservatives would over-react and react ineptly.

PATSNUTme

So you don't call Bill Clinton a liberal? All the training and planning for 9/11 happened on his watch. All of the terrorist strikes on us WTCI, Embassy bombings, Blackhawk Down incident, Kobar Towers, The Cole, all happened on Clinton watch.

To be fair the planning for WTCI was probably done on Bush I's watch.


Now, this country should have a Manhattan Project type program to reasearch, test, and deploy a missle defense shield both land based and spaced based. Top Priority. We can do it if we really make it a top priority.

Too many rouge nations are getting missle and nuclear technolgy. Once again, your question to Dean "who fired a missle at us" shows that people on the left have a pre 9/11 mentality. Being reactive instead of pro-active.

scout

I am leaning toward building a missile defense system. There are problems with the one we currently have. Even the testing results on the system are bogus. If the current system has a high percentage of shooting down a missile, it should be used to shoot down North Korea's upcoming practice deployment. Letting every country in the universe know ahead of time that that is our plan. If North Korea thinks it has a right to fire a nuclear weapon practice round, we should then have a right to knock it down (provided our system is any good).
The Reagan vision concept always cracks me up. I always lose track of Republicans Star Wars spin. Was it a ploy to persuade the Soviets to compete with us, thus sending them into bankruptcy, because Republicans said it was never realistic. Or is it a viable defense system because what we said earlier doesn't count.

patsfan13

It was a long term vision when Reagan proposed it. The Russians understood that it could be done, hence them freaking out over it.

As to your last comment I would simply point out that the technology has advanced a lot over the past 20 years. What is viable in 2006 wasn' as viable in 1986. I thought everyone could understand that. Glad to make you aware of that.

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All_Around_Brown

I always find it humorous to find there are still morons out there that are all gung ho about a missile defense system that will cost a trillion dollars and still probably not guaranteed to work, and yet have a ***** fit when you suggest that the greatest threat is not a ballistic missile but a suitcase bomb going off in a major US city.

And how well have the Republicans done on increasing the security checks of cargo since 911?

There is still only about 5-7% of shipping inspected.

Doh!

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dryheat44

You're right. I vote that we become proactive and wipe every non-American off the face of the earth. With no other people in other countries, we can be assured that we won't face a missile attack from another nation. Turn the f@cking world into a parking lot, because if we don't, the terrorists will win.

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PatsFanInEaglesLand

I love how you come in a ***** on a thread and than it goes nowhere because most are laughing about your incoherint comments about nothingness. Maybe the dirty bomb will go off when we hold the civilian court trials for your friends at Gitmo