U.S. Missile Defense Woefully Prepared for 21st Century Threats
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By Jared Whitley
February 05, 2020
There’s a memorable scene in the first “Iron Man†movie where a naïve but well-meaning liberal journalist confronts Tony Stark with the nickname “Merchant of Death†and accuses him of war profiteering. Tony coolly responds, “It's an imperfect world, but it's the only one we've got. I guarantee you the day weapons are no longer needed to keep the peace; we'll start making bricks and beams for baby hospitals." The journalist has no comeback, surrendering to Tony’s reason (and his charm).
Although that scene was written to be funny, its basic premise is true and the reasoning inarguable: we live in an extremely dangerous world, populated by bad actors with no reservation of using weapons of mass destruction against civilian populations. Meanwhile, our nuclear superiority is decaying. The same year "Iron Man" came out, way back in 2008, Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned that, “No one has designed a new nuclear weapon in the United States since the 1980s, and no one has built a new one since the early 1990s. … At a certain point, it will become impossible to keep extending the life of our arsenal.â€
https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2020/02/05/us_missile_defense_woefully_prepared_for_21st_century_threats_115019.html
