Oh goody, new targets!
Oh goody, new targets!
Too bad we have so few Aegis interceptors to protect the fleet, versus the rather serious number of warheads likely to be fielded by China.
BTW: these particular missile warheads are likely too fast for the existing Aegis design...which is essentially what we were left with after Xlinton, Madeline Halfbright and Strobe "Bald Guy" Talbutt ordered (pursuant their insanely-sought "Demarcation Agreement to the ABM Treaty" in 1997) the Aegis SM-2 missile lobotomized after the design had already been developed...forcing the Navy to perversely spend what little "development monies" it had left under Xlinton to shrink the missile upper stage and slow it down, and limit its range.
Bush has been beseeched by the Navy to undo the Xlinton-fomented damage (and they point to the Chicom threat)...but he never budged...nor justified his refusals. The fix would offer a new upper stage, replacing the puny one with a fullsize stage...the one originally designed and developed! The White House also killed the TBM, Theater Ballistic Missile Defense which also would have had the range and speed to catch these kinds of warhads. Bush had Gordon Englund kill the program the DAY AFTER he announced we were withdrawing from the ABM treaty...
Hence, while committing us to NMD...he defunded likely one of the most important tools to actually accomplish it. And the naval requirement for the TBM has never been satisfied since he terminated it...nominally claiming that the project having exceeded inflation guidelines. So why didn't they rebid for anyone else to do it? Obviously "the fix" was in with a deal to appease Russia and China...we were going to have such a limited NMD system it wasn't a NMD system at all.
The administration is pretending the only real missile threat is from rogue states such as North Korea and Iran. Not realizing just how seriously rogue China and its ally Russia really are...
Unfortunately, Bush's father, George HW Bush and his DefSec Dick Cheney killed the programs most likely to put these threats to rest permanently: Excalibur, the nuclear-pumped X-Ray laser, and buried it under a heap of Lefty-disinformation about it not working. And then he killed off the lesser, but still valuable non-nuclear kinetic interceptors...Brilliant Pebbles when they were on the verge of deployability. All the R&D was squandered. Couldn't have the U.S. invulnerable to strategic blackmail...wouldn't be prudent for the Globalist nannystaters who want the UN to be the guarantors of Global Security.
A group of Airforce officers tried to regroup and redevelop and deploy Brilliant Pebbles as the cheaper and vastly better alternative to the ground-based interceptors (the Xlinton-plan) that GW Bush is fixated on.
Bush had Rumsfeld kill their efforts. At this point, no one should be surprised.