Free Republic

In last week's space spectacular, a U.S. missile did more than turn a dead satellite into bits of space scrap. It also blew another hole in hopes that the world's nations could forge a treaty making outer space a weapons-free realm, analysts say.Wednesday's orbiter shootdown by a U.S. Navy missile came just eight days after Russia and China, at the U.N. Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, submitted a draft treaty to ban weapons from space.

WASHINGTON, May 25, 2006 – A U.S. Navy ship shot down a long-range ballistic missile in its final seconds of flight during a test yesterday. It was the first successful ship-launched intercept of a ballistic missile in its terminal phase, U.S. military officials said. During the Navy and Missile Defense Agency test, Aegis cruiser USS Lake Erie, equipped with technology to detect and track intercontinental ballistic missiles, launched a Standard Missile 2 to intercept a missile fired from the Pacific Missile Range facility on Kauai, Hawaii. "The test yesterday was an opportunity to see if a modified configuration of the...

The Aegis combat system has been the undisputed champion of naval air defense since the USS Ticonderoga entered the U.S. fleet in 1983. The United States currently has 22 cruisers and 49 destroyers in service with this system, with another 13 destroyers on the way. Recently, though, a new system is on the way, the Principal Anti-Air Missile System (PAAMS). PAAMS is slated to enter service with three navies – the Daring-class destroyers in The United Kingdom, the Forbin-class destroyers in France, and the Andrea Doria-class destroyers in Italy. This system operates the ASTER family of surface-to-air missiles. There are...

The Defense Agency is planning to procure 124 Patriot surface-to-air missiles by the end of fiscal 2010 and to have a domestic defense contractor build them to replace imports, which will meet initial demand, informed sources said Saturday. The plan to procure Patriot Advanced Capability 3 missiles for deployment by the Air Self-Defense Force is part of the agency's missile defense program. The PAC-3 missiles are intended to hit incoming missiles at an altitude of up to 20 km that have escaped interceptor missiles launched by Maritime Self-Defense Force vessels equipped with the Aegis air-defense system. Costing an estimated 500...