Dear Members and Friends,

Click here for a map of missile proliferation throughout the world.

Yesterday (May 1, 2005) without international warning, the government of North Korea test-fired a short-range ballistic missile into the Sea of Japan off of its eastern coast, which is believed to have traveled 65 miles. This incident clearly reminds all of us that the evolution and proliferation of ballistic missiles in the world, especially North Korea, continues unabated and unchecked.

This North Korean display of ballistic missile technology is not only a real and present threat to Japan, South Korea and our Asian Allies, but it is a threat to our nation. Short-range ballistic missiles, such as the ones North Korea have, can be loaded on sea-based platforms (container ships) which have complete access to international waters, twelve miles off of our coasts.

For more information on North Korea’s ballistic missiles, click here.

We at MDAA applaud the upcoming nuclear non-proliferation conference in New York and wish it great success, but we as a nation and world cannot rely on a single solution and one that has had a history of consistent non-compliance. Since the nuclear non-proliferation treaty was signed in 1972, the number of countries that have proliferated nuclear weapons has tripled.

Today, the United States has developed the technology and the initial systems for missile defense at the expense of our tax dollars to deal with ballistic missile threats. Those tax dollars and years of research & development must be put in play, deployed, made operational and with numerical superiority so that we and the world can have a solution in case all others fail.