29 posts
Remarks by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld at the Seventh Annual Space and Missile Defense Conference are now available from the Department of Defense. CDI’s Victoria Samson, who attended the gathering, noticed a mildly Orwellian editorial decision: One part of…
In my August 6 post regarding the award of a contract to develop a hypersonic technology vehicle under DARPA’s FALCON/Common Aero Vehicle program, I neglected to mention the restrictions on the Common Aero Vehicle program that emerged from conference. The…
Despite the recent announcement that the United States supports a fissile material cut-off treaty, the United States is still blocking adoption of a work program that would allow negotiations to begin. The new President of the Conference on Disarmament in…
Looks like MDA is just as confused by the brackets around the $68.0 M for NFIRE as anybody else. Here’s what I can figure out: MDA will remove the Kill Vehicle (KV) from NFIRE satellite, leaving just the Tracking Sensor…
Josh Marshall points out a discrepancy in a recent speech by John Bolton that adds to the list of “repeated, public mistatements, exaggerations and distortions of intelligence about Iran” offered by the Bush Administration: … Bolton said that the Iranians…
Sumitra Rajagopalan, a freelance writer and Ph.D. candidate in biomedical engineering at the University of Montreal, has an opinion piece in the Toronto Star entitled, “The politics of space weapons.” I get a shout out, though I am quoted as…
While criticizing missile defense opponents, Secretary Rumsfeld invoked a favorite platitude–“weakness is provocative”–and, apparently inadvertantly, implied the President’s policy in Iraq has weakened the country and encouraged terrorist attacks: “History has taught us that weakness is provocative,” Rumsfeld said. “To…
President Bush took a cheap shot at missile defense skeptics today: I think those who oppose this ballistic missile system really don’t understand the threats of the 21st century. They’re living in the past. The Kerry campaign answered with a…
Michael Levi recently pointed out a disturbing episode when Porter Goss’ partisanship interfered with his professional judgment: The congressman’s more disturbing remarks in that half-hour June call with the press addressed North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. Goss said, “Clearly not…
A Military Intelligence Failure? The Case of the Parasite Satellite (Gregory Kulacki and David Wright, Union of Concerned Scientists, 16 August 2004) is now on-line. Take a moment to read it, then imagine the humiliation for the person who wrote…
