Start With Missile Defense
by Marion Harrison
Issue 119 - November 5, 2008

Judging by the limited media attention, it would appear that few people are interested in, much less concerned about, space-based missile defense. At any rate, the generally liberal media is unconcerned and/or thinks its audience is unconcerned.

However, it is expertly calculated that more than one hundred and twenty nations have fired ballistic missiles and twenty-seven nations have some measure of effective defense against missiles. What defense the United States of America has is somewhere between nonexistent and classified but, of course, the subject of speculation. It would seem to an amateur, as is this writer, that a nuclear or traditional weapon delivered by a missile would be extremely more damaging than one delivered by an aircraft - against which we Americans do have more recognizable protection. So why has there so little media coverage or candidate discussion?

Congress did recently appropriate $ 5 million to study space-based missile defense, the first such act in about a decade. The appropriation attracted little attention and was a lesser sum than that requested by the Bush Administration. Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ) has been a Congressional leader in espousing missile defense.

A guided, or somewhat guided, missile can be launched on purpose or by accident. If it lands in our country the cause or means or situs of the launch well could be irrelevant to the locale and measure of the damage afflicted. Likewise, whether the launch was offshore or otherwise short-range, or long-range, the damage could be equally devastating.

The Bush Administration missile-defense program presently is said to be limited essentially to interception by some of our Naval vessels and to some on-the-ground interceptor capability, mostly if not entirely in Alaska and California. In the George H. W. Bush Administration there was study, if perhaps not implementation, of missile defense which included space-based interception. Whatever that implementation or capability, the succeeding William J. Clinton Administration was more interested in defense against short-range missiles.

The Free Congress Foundation has long been an advocate of missile defense. It participates in a small, informal entity known - to the extent known at all (the relative anonymity of which may be an advantage) - as the Independent Working Group, which attempts to stimulate and evaluate missile-defense programs and opportunities. That endeavor benefits by the participation of a Member of the Free Congress Foundation Board of Directors, Mr. R. Dan McMichael, who in proper circles is recognized as an expert on ballistic missile defense and missile defense generally.

What the George W. Bush Administration and Department of Defense will do in the remaining few months before the January 20, 2009 Inauguration remains to be seen. Hopefully, it will move to rapid implementation. And missile defense would be a good place to start for the new president too.

Marion Edwyn Harrison is President of, and Counsel to, the Free Congress Foundation.