Great idea. Now go convince Congress to pay for it.
MN Johnnie: You nailed it. Amb Cooper always wants more and I love him. We have what we have: which was still hugely expensive. Asking for more at this point is a non starter.
There are stll many benefits of the system in place (and growing).
John
http://peace-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2006/09/missile-defense-many-positive-impacts.html
Real leadership would put it in the budget and go head to head and see what we will see. Instead, we don't have such leadership. Nor are we realizing any "savings" from the current approach.
Actually, the current approach is frittering the money away...with no serious deployments. We could have had 22 NMD-dedicated Aegis cruisers for full-time picket duty today right now...and with fixed SM-3 interceptors, btw. [The 21 inch diameter upper stage instead of the Xlinton-prescribed 16 inch ]
All for less than we have spent on the GBI, Ground Based Interceptor program in the last 5 years.
Brilliant Pebbles, with a full complement of over a thousand interceptor launcher satellites would have been only about $9 billion back in the the day, 1992. Dithering is what is costly. Look at how the liberals dramatically inflated the cost of the F-22 while refusing to deploy it.