{"id":27408,"date":"2017-10-29T10:14:21","date_gmt":"2017-10-29T15:14:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=27408"},"modified":"2017-10-29T10:14:21","modified_gmt":"2017-10-29T15:14:21","slug":"president-trump-confident-in-missile-defense-in-the-grip-of-dangerous-illusion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=27408","title":{"rendered":"President Trump Confident in Missile Defense: In the Grip of Dangerous Illusion"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"President<\/p>\n

President Trump Confident in Missile Defense: In the Grip of Dangerous Illusion<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n

The US is pushing ahead with expansion of the nation\u2019s homeland ballistic missile defense (BMD). The effort enjoys strong bipartisan support in Congress and among experts. Many allies place a high value on BMD cooperation with the United States. However, there are ample reasons to question the efficiency of US missile defenses, especially the capability to protect against intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have missiles that can knock out a missile in the air 97% of the time,\u201d President Donald Trump said in his\u00a0interview<\/a>\u00a0with Fox News<\/em> on October 11, adding \u201cand if you send two of them, it\u2019s going to get knocked down.\u201d He was talking about the threat coming from North Korea to be repelled by the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) in Alaska and California \u2013 the $40 billion project administered by the Missile Defense Agency (MDA).<\/p>\n

The US military conducted the first-ever missile defense test involving a simulated attack by an intercontinental ballistic missile in May. The ICBM-type target was fired from the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands toward the waters just south of Alaska. The mission was to prepare for countering an intercontinental missile launched by North Korea. The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) described the test as an \u201cincredible accomplishment\u201d. According to Vice Admiral Jim Syring, director of the agency, \u201cThis system is vitally important to the defense of our homeland, and this test demonstrates that we have a capable, credible deterrent against a very real threat.\u201d The assessment\u00a0appears to be exaggerated\u00a0as the test was not conducted in a realistic environment.<\/p>\n

The next test of the GMD system is scheduled for late 2018 and, for the first time, will involve firing two interceptors against one ICBM target. It makes unsubstantiated the president\u2019s affirmation that two interceptors are enough to knock out a North Korean missile as no such tests have been conducted so far.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

President Trump Confident in Missile Defense: In the Grip of Dangerous Illusion The US is pushing ahead with expansion of the nation\u2019s homeland ballistic missile defense (BMD). The effort enjoys strong bipartisan support in Congress and among experts. Many allies place a high value on BMD cooperation with the United States. However, there are ample […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[16085,16762,16761,7844,2485,16760,8203,827,1796],"class_list":["post-27408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-andrei-akulov","tag-ballistic-missile-defense","tag-bmdf","tag-donald-trump","tag-illusion","tag-missile-defense","tag-strategic-culture-foundation","tag-united-states","tag-us-congress"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27408"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27408\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27409,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27408\/revisions\/27409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}