Paper on the
Defense Against Ballistic Missiles," The Bridge,
Ballistic missile defense is exactly what it claims to be:
defense against ballistic missiles.
Building a
defense against ballistic missiles has been a chimera of Republican orthodoxy since Ronald Reagan proposed a Star Wars shield during the 1980s to render nuclear weapons "impotent and obsolete." The current missile defense plan has a more limited design: to parry missiles from so-called rogue nations.
The TMD system, proposed by Clinton in 1993, is designed to provide
defense against ballistic missiles within a radius of 3,000 kilometers.
"Star Wars,' the somewhat derisivename given to President Reagan's vision of a high-technology
defense against ballistic missiles, evokes a picture of something like light sticks delivering beams of energy that travel at the speed of light to encounter whatever the adversary has launched, and zap!
The goal is not only actual
defense against ballistic missiles but also the strengthening of U.S.
The TMD system is designed to provide
defense against ballistic missiles within a radius of 3,000 kilometers.
Uncounted are 2,800 Russian nuclear warheads providing air
defense against ballistic missiles, bombers, and cruise missiles.
Among its first efforts was Project Defender, the search for a
defense against ballistic missiles. Previously, space-based missile defenses were considered impractical because of the on-orbit mass associated with a constellation of nuclear-tipped interceptors.
