Back in 1970, I had the good fortune of taking a graduate seminar taught by Mort Halperin, who was then working on his book, Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign Policy, with the help of a very bright research assistant, Arnie Kanter. A second edition of this fine book was published in 2006. A key chapter, which …
A Sensible Missile Defense for NATO
by | 2009-09-17 | 33 Comments
The Obama Administration has replaced the ground-based missile defense architecture in Europe with a series of theater missile defenses centered on the Aegis system. I think this makes a lot of sense, as regular readers know, on both technical and political grounds. SECDEF Bob Gates and General Cartwright, Vice-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, gave a …
Pief Panofsky on Missile Defense
by | 2009-09-16 | 11 Comments
For reasons not worth going into, lately I’ve been reading an awful lot about ballistic missile warfare. Today’s cutting-edge theater missile made in Russia, China, or the United States is a precision battlefield weapon, suitable for attacking military bases or formations. Or crushing the occasional civilian vehicle, but hey, stuff happens. (See: SS-21 Debris In …
B61 Replacement and Vacuum Tubes
by | 2009-09-15 | 24 Comments
You may recall the little spring dust-up that Kingston Reif and I had with STRATCOM Commander General Kevin P. Chilton over whether he should be running around with a vacuum tube in his pocket to make the case for warhead replacement. We pointed out in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists that vacuum tubes are used …
