“Iron
Dome will be cut,” Randy Jennings, a former Congressional aide on defense issues
and now a defense industry consultant, said at an event on Israel’s short-range
rocket defense system held at The Heritage Foundation.
“There will be no
sacred cows...All the programs will be hit,” he said.
Jennings
was referring primarily to the looming threat of “sequestration,” whereby some
$100 billion of next year’s budget will automatically be cut across the board
starting in January, unless a gridlocked Congress works out major compromises
before then.
The cuts are slated to continue for nine years and reach
over $1 trillion.
About half of the reduction is scheduled to come from
defense spending.
Israel has received hundreds of millions of dollars for
the Iron Dome system, on top of $3 billion in annual military assistance. Plans
are underway for hundreds of millions more for the short-range system, but
Jennings suggested at least some of that funding would be
vulnerable.
Military cooperation between the United States and Israel has never been stronger. Right....
Obama caught on open mic again, this time telling Medvedev to wait until after elections on missile defense
Remember that conversation that was supposed to be off mic back in November between President Obama and French President Sarkozy in which they had some not very nice things to say about Prime Minister Netanyahu? Well, it's happened again, but this time the matter under discussion is a lot more serious than what one world leader really thinks about another.
In what was supposed to be an off mic conversation, President Obama asked Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to be flexible on missile defenses 'until after my election' (more from Memeorandum). That ought to bump the etch-a-sketch comment out of the news.
The exchange was picked up by microphones as reporters were let into the room for remarks by the two leaders.
The exchange:
President Obama: On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this, this can be solved but it’s important for [incoming Russian President Vladimir Putin] to give me space.
President Medvedev: Yeah, I understand. I understand your message about space. Space for you…
President Obama: This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility.
President Medvedev: I understand. I will transmit this information to Vladimir.
When asked to explain what President Obama meant, deputy national security adviser for strategic communications Ben Rhodes told ABC News that there is room for the U.S. and Russia to reach an accommodation, but “there is a lot of rhetoric around this issue — there always is — in both countries.
A senior administration official tells ABC News: “this is a political year in which the Russians just had an election, we’re about to have a presidential and congressional elections — this is not the kind of year in which we’re going to resolve incredibly complicated issue like this. So there’s an advantage to pulling back and letting the technical experts work on this as the president has been saying.”
Yeah, sure.
The American people have just been given a clear message about one of the ways in which President Obama intends to sell out American security if God forbid he is given a second term. Will the American people respond appropriately? Or will this story be buried or whitewashed?
Brad Roberts testified before a House Armed Services subcommittee Tuesday that the Obama administration was actively considering giving Moscow classified missile defense data to allay Russian concerns about the capabilities and intent of our proposed ballistic missile defense system based in Europe to guard against missiles launched from Iran.
Roberts testified that the administration believes "cooperation could be well-served by some limited sharing of classified information of a certain kind if the proper rules were in place to do that." The Bush administration also sought cooperation on missile defense, he noted.
The only thing President George W. Bush wanted to share with the Russians was a heads-up on our plans to deploy long-range, ground-based interceptors, such as those deployed in California and Alaska, in Poland as well as missile defense radar in the Czech Republic.
He certainly wasn't offering them data such as the burnout velocity of Raytheon Co.'s Standard Missile-3 interceptors, the centerpiece of our Aegis ballistic missile defense system.
When the Russians protested, President Obama scuttled those plans and substituted a more modest, layered defense capable of defending Europe but not the continental U.S. against Iranian missiles. It was one of many concessions Obama has made to Russia as part of pressing the "reset" button in return for nothing but unfulfilled promises of cooperation on Iran.
Typical of the way the president has treated loyal allies such as Britain and Israel, the Poles were notified with a midnight phone call in September 2009, the 70th anniversary of their country's invasion by Soviet and German forces, telling them we were pulling the plug.
The Russians say our ballistic missile defense is really targeted against them, which is nonsense. It would take more robust systems and widespread deployment to pose such a threat. They are rearming, having recently deployed their Bulava submarine-launched ballistic missile, and want us as weak as possible.
Obama to share US missile defense secrets with Russia
At Big Peace, former Republican Congressional candidate Joel Pollak reports that the Obama administration has decided to share the United States' missile defense secrets with the Russians. Do you all want me to repeat that so that you will know that you are not hallucinating? At Big Peace, former Republican Congressional candidate Joel Pollak reports that the Obama administration has decided to share the United States' missile defense secrets with the Russians (Hat Tip: Jack).
Bill Gertz of the Washington Timesreports that President Barack Obama has indicated he is prepared to convey information about secret American missile defense technology to Russia:
In the president’s signing statement issued Saturday in passing into law the fiscal 2012 defense authorization bill, Mr. Obama said restrictions aimed at protecting top-secret technical data on U.S. Standard Missile-3 velocity burnout parameters might impinge on his constitutional foreign policy authority.
As first disclosed in this space several weeks ago, U.S. officials are planning to provide Moscow with the SM-3 data, despite reservations from security officials who say that doing so could compromise the effectiveness of the system by allowing Russian weapons technicians to counter the missile. The weapons are considered some of the most effective high-speed interceptors in the U.S. missile defense arsenal.
There are also concerns that Russia could share the secret data with China and rogue states such as Iran and North Korea to help their missile programs defeat U.S. missile defenses.
Even before this latest revelation, the entire enterprise of President Obama’s disarmament policy–from “reset” with Russia to selling out our European allies–had been a colossal failure, an exercise in cowardice and appeasement that placed the security of the United States at risk.
Four more years? Can the US survive it? Or are you all going to go out and work for the Republican candidate (after you make sure it's not Ron Paul)?
The air force is looking into installing an active protection system aboard its helicopters that would intercept enemy missiles, similar to a system recently proven in combat on IDF tanks.
The proposal comes in face of the growing surface-to-air missile threat against IAF aircraft from the Gaza Strip and Lebanon.
The requirement for such a system was recently issued by the IAF’s Helicopter Air Directorate in light of the success of the Trophy active protection system developed by Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, which intercepted a rocket-propelled grenade fired at a Merkava Mk 4 tank deployed along the border with the Gaza Strip in March.
The Trophy system, which weighs 800 kg, would not be appropriate for helicopters since it fires off a cloud of countermeasures that could damage the aircraft’s rotor. The Trophy consists of radar that detects threats and activates one of two launchers, which discharges a cloud of “hard-kill” countermeasures that physically attack incoming threats.
“We are looking into a hard-kill system for helicopters that would work like Trophy,” a senior IAF officer said. “It is still under review and consideration.”
In a huge concession to Turkey, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen will not name Iran as a potential threat that is meant to be countered by NATO's ground missile system. Instead, Rasmussen will say that there are many countries that could potentially threaten the NATO allies (Hat Tip: Joshua I).
“More than 30 countries in the world have missile technology, and some of them can hit targets in allied territory,” he said in an interview with The New York Times, published on Tuesday.
The remarks are expected to be welcomed by NATO member Turkey, which insists that no country should be singled out as a threat in the proposed missile defense system. Turkey, which has drastically expanded its economic and security cooperation with its neighbors under a policy of zero problems with neighbors in recent years, is especially concerned about an explicit reference to Iran, which is from where many in the West agree is where the threat comes. US officials have openly named Iran in several occasions, but Ankara is adamant that no NATO document on the issue should include a reference to Tehran. Classifying Iran as a threat may also sour the political atmosphere at a time when the US and European countries are considering a new round of talks with Tehran on its contentious nuclear program.
Russia, which opposed a previous version of the missile defense system plans drafted by the George W. Bush administration, is also not mentioned as a threat, given the desire for a better relationship with Moscow and the willingness of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to come to Lisbon and discuss Russian participation in the new missile shield.
What a world! No one is a threat and everyone is a threat. What could go wrong?
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
