Two Articles On Missile Defense

Scientist's New Missile Defense: Killer Drones -- The Danger Room

Stationing missile-defense interceptors in Europe has been, to borrow a phrase, a great way to lose friends and alienate people. The Bush administration's push to build a third missile-defense site in Europe infuriated the Kremlin, and caused no end of controversy in Poland and the Czech Republic.

It now looks as if President Barack Obama may be backing away from plans to put ballistic missile interceptors in Eastern Europe, but rogue regimes armed with ballistic missiles aren't exactly going away. So how to counter the threat from countries like Iran and North Korea?

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Defensible Missile Defense -- New York Times

IN his recent letter to President Dmitri Medvedev of Russia, President Obama offered to modify the previous administration’s plans for a missile defense system in Europe. He was right to do so. A continued impasse with Russia might have prevented future arms reductions, created divisions with our European allies, done irreparable harm at the 2010 review of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and impaired efforts to deal with Iran’s growing potential to become a nuclear weapons state.

President Obama has correctly shown skepticism about the missile defense system promoted by the Bush administration: its performance is unproven, it requires unending additional resources and it faces problems that cannot be solved with existing science. Russia, for its part, has long perceived missile defense as a threat to its security — a concern the administration chose to ignore, worsening tensions with Moscow.

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