Security

Missile Agency Boss: Defenses 'Work,' but Not Too Well

Air Force Lt. Gen. Henry Obering, is a man in a pickle. As head of the controversial Missile Defense Agency, he’s in the strange position of "selling" ultracomplex, ultraexpensive weapons to the American public — and to the "rogue" regimes those weapons are meant to counter — while also assuring nervous world powers that those […]

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Air Force Lt. Gen. Henry Obering, is a man in a pickle. As head of the controversial Missile Defense Agency, he's in the strange position of "selling" ultracomplex, ultraexpensive weapons to the American public -- and to the "rogue" regimes those weapons are meant to counter -- while also assuring nervous world powers that those weapons don't work so well that they undermine mutual nuclear deterrence. "It's not hard to see the irony here," Erik Sofge writes for Popular Mechanics.

"We are well beyond the question of 'Does this work?' There's no doubt in my mind," Obering told Sofge. This despite years of failed and allegedly faked tests of the MDA's flagship Ground-Based Interceptors (GBI) in
Alaska and California. "The Ballistic Missile Defense System is daily becoming more integrated, robust and global," Obering declared before Congress in April.

But not too integrated, robust or global. In the wake of last week's signing of a U.S.-Polish deal to locate 10 of the MDA's not-yet-designed "mid-course" interceptors in Poland, Obering must also convince an increasingly paranoid Russia that the mid-course missiles aren't capable of intercepting Russian ballistic nukes.

*They aren't fast enough, says
Obering, to catch up with an ICBM fired from Russia at the United
States. And even if they were, the 54 proposed interceptors spread out through Europe, Alaska and California wouldn't stand a chance against hundreds of Russian ICBMs. *

Question is: which side of Obering does Russia find more convincing? His optimistic salesman side, or the more cautious statesman side?

(Photo: MDA via PopMech)

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