Missile Defense – It’s Not Just for ICBMs

It began in 2001.  Crude, homemade and unguided.  Indiscriminate as to objective or target – not meant to do anything but inspire terror.  It has a name – صاروخ القسام‎ ṢārÅ«kh al-Qassām; Comprised of a  simple steel rocket filled with explosives, powered by a homebrew mixture of sugar and potassium nitrate (fertilizer) with warheads made…

Multiple Kill Vehicle (MKV) Completes Hover Test

MULTIPLE KILL VEHICLE COMPLETES HOVER TEST, Dec. 3, 2008. Missile Defense Agency Director Lieutenant General Patrick O’Reilly announced that a test of the Multiple Kill Vehicle-L (MKV-L) was conducted Tuesday, Dec. 2 at the National Hover Test Facility at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif.  Preliminary indications are that planned test objectives were achieved. Objectives of…

Perspectives on Aegis BMD and Shooting Down a Failed Satellite

UPDATE: 20 Feb (21 Feb UTC) MARK INDIA – all indications intercept successful.  More to follow… In the 24 hours since the press conference announcing the decision to use a special modification of the Aegis BMD/SM-3 system to mitigate risk from the failed NRO satellite, reaction across the ‘verse (net) has been, well, predictable: “It’s…

Implementing the Maritime Strategy: New Naval Operating Concept (NOC) to be Written

Sometimes vindication comes quietly – as, say, a couple of years later in part of an interview and provides demonstrative proof that there is a core group that ‘gets it’: “In a Nov. 15 interview with ITN, Morgan said that when Navy officials wrote the NOC in 2006 “we knew we were doing the process…