Shorter version of the neocon think-tank's latest fearmongering: "Russia is still the real enemy! EMP! Iran missiles in New York! Chavez With Nukes! Aargh! Obama Bad! Brilliant Pebbles!!!!"

It always comes back to Reaganesque "Star Wars" weapons in space for Heritage. The wingnuts don't want missile defense systems to protect against rogue states. They want them so that the U.S. can attack Russia or China with a better chance of success than Russia or China could attack America. I looked hard at their wish for a U.S. first strike capability as part of their dreams of American hegemony back in 2008 and nothing about their position has changed since then.

Update Guy Saperstein emailed me to say:

Ten years ago, I prosecuted a False Claims Act lawsuit against the National Missile Defense Program and became familiar with the science of missile defense. I can tell you that this report from Heritage is TOTAL NONSENSE. We have NEVER conducted a successful intercept of an incoming mid or long-range missile under realistic operational conditions. The few tests where intercepts have been made were done by [1] informing the kill missile the exact time and trajectory of the target missile; [2] the launch was at the optimum time to increase visibility by timing sunlight bouncing off the target missile; [3] the target missile was pre-heated so that it would be more visible to the kill missile's infrared sensor; [4] deploying only one decoy and telling the kill missile in advance that the decoy was 15 times bigger than the target; and, since even these completely preposterous aids were not enough, [5] putting a radio transponder on the target missile so it could be accurately tracked.

Our mid and long-range missile defense relies on an infrared sensor which lacks the capacity to distinguish the target missile from decoys that any real missile would deploy. The system we have is complete junk and will never work; we are wasting $11 billion/year on junk.

The only system in our arsenal which has the technical capacity of actually working is a boost-phase missile defense, but this capability is limited because with a boost-phase system you have to have your kill missiles relatively close to the target missile as it rises slowly in the boost phase and is large and slow and easy to hit. Unfortunately, it is not possible to get close enough to many potential launch sites, which is why the NMDP has emphasized mid and long-range intercepts, which, as I said above, simply do not work.

To date, we have shoved about $200 billion down this rat hole and we essentially have nothing to show for it except the tightly-controlled knowledge that what we have doesn't work.

Reprinted with Guy's kind permission.