The Washington Times:
With North Korea’s and Iran’s nuclear missiles and Russia-China collusion, the United States needs a credible, practical, cost-effective ballistic missile defense (BMD). A space-based interceptor (SBI) system would best achieve this objective, though others say it is too expensive.
The Pentagon’s top engineer Michael Griffin says he doesn’t understand why, since 1,000 SBIs would cost less than $20 billion — for a global defense capability.
Estimates by members of the National Academy of Sciences, the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Arms Control Community are much higher than the most valid, comprehensive cost estimates from President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), with which we — like Mike Griffin — witnessed being made.
Henry Cooper and the first SDI director, retired USAF Lt. Gen. James A. Abrahamson, in a July 21, 2017, letter to the editor disputed a June 26, 2017, Wall Street Journal editorial arguing that needed, more advanced BMD systems would be “no doubt expensive” and that “it’s difficult to score technologies still under development.”
