Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Strategies & Market Trends : Booms, Busts, and Recoveries -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (5808)	7/13/2001 11:47:54 AM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 74559

One could argue that the recent long boom in US (and global?) prosperity was due in large part to the end of the Cold War. Jay made an interesting point about China having to be on its best behavior now that it's going to host the Olympics. If so, what about NMD? Now that we're all buddies - Russia thinking about joining NATO, China coming into the WTO - how can they turn us down? >> Bush Speeds Up Plans To Build NMD Shield By Carol Giacomo Reuters WASHINGTON - The Bush administration on Thursday outlined details of an aggressive program to develop multi-layered missile defenses that would soon break ground at an Alaska test site and "bump up" against the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in "months rather than in years." The timeline presented to the Senate Armed Services Committee underscored in more concrete terms than ever before U.S. President George W. Bush's determination to proceed as rapidly as possible with a defensive shield, which has raised alarms in Congress, with U.S. allies and with Russia and China. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said that before the "bump up" point he expected the United States to reach agreement with Russia, the other party to the 1972 arms control treaty, so that Washington could avoid violating the pact but at the same time "move beyond it." U.S. officials beginning next week will open a new phase of intensive discussions with the Russians on this subject. Nevertheless, Wolfowitz asserted: "We have never made a secret of the fact that the president fully intends to deploy a defense of the United States and … it should be no secret to anyone that Article One of the treaty explicitly prohibits such a defense of national territory. "So we are on a collision course, and trying to determine the exact point of collision or closest point of approach is what we are trying to do here. But no one is pretending anything about the idea that what we are doing is consistent with that treaty. We have got to withdraw from it or replace it," he said. Russia views the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty as the cornerstone of strategic arms control but Moscow's leadership has recently said it would consider amending the pact. Bush argues that with the end of the Cold War, U.S.-Russian ties should no longer be based on "Mutual Assured Destruction," and that the key new danger now is from what Washington calls "rogue states" like North Korea, Iran and Iraq. Democratic Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the committee chairman, expressed concern that Congress was being asked to act on Bush's proposed 2002 defense budget, including $8.3 billion for missile defense or 57 percent more than the current budget, without knowing for sure if the activities it envisions would abrogate the ABM. He and other critics have warned that Russia and China could subsequently build up their nuclear forces to counter U.S. defenses, prompting a new and destabilizing arms race. Wolfowitz said he could not now give a definitive answer. "As I tried to lay out very clearly in my testimony, at this very early stage of where we are at, the legal issues are just loaded with ambiguity" on whether U.S. planned actions would violate the treaty, he said. One ambiguity concerned whether developing a new test site with the intention of using it later as a deployed missile would be a violation. "We are in a gray area, Mr. Chairman, and that is why I use a fuzzy phrase like bump up rather than a very clear-cut phrase like conflict," Wolfowitz added. At the same hearing Lieutenant General Ronald Kadish, head of the Pentagon's Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, said new test facilities in Alaska would be developed next year and be built in 2003. Other Pentagon officials have said they expect to break ground in Alaska next month, doing such prepatory work as removing burned trees from a drought last summer. Kadish said the new test facilities would make use of early warning radars at Beale Air Force Base and Cobra Dane at Shemya Island, both in Alaska, and use the Kodiak Launch Facility in Alaska to launch targets and interceptors. "The test bed will also include up to five ground-based silos at Fort Greely, Alaska. We anticipate a prototype ground support capability, to include launch facilities, sensors and networked communications, will be developed in FY 2002 and built in FY 2003," he said. The U.S. financial year begins in October. The administration is planning to expand its test program to sites at Fort Greely and Kodiak Island in Alaska as part of what officials called a vast Pacific "test bed" to allow for more realistic intercept tests. Now the only integrated tests of interceptors designed to shoot down long-range missiles are launched from a range in the Kwajalein Atoll of the Republic of the Marshall Islands. In the three flight tests so far, interceptors have succeeded only once in smashing a dummy fired from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The new test bed "will allow us to test more than one missile defense at a time and exploit multiple shot opportunities so that we can demonstrate the viability of the layered defense concept," Kadish said. Although he insisted the new plan was "not a rush to deploy untested systems," he and Wolfowitz said the new Alaska range could be used for "emergency deployment" as well as testing, a decision that provides another opening for taking the program beyond research and development to the operational stage. The FY 2002 program is a "major change" in the U.S. approach to missile defenses as it "speeds development of established technologies, enables robust testing and evaluation of systems that are more mature and explores new missile defense concepts and technologies," Kadish said. Former President Bill Clinton authorized research on a system of ground-based interceptors but Bush has decided to develop a system capable of intercepting missiles of any range at every stage of flight and this will include ship-launched missiles and lasers mounted on airplanes, officials said.<< dev.themoscowtimes.com