Amb. Henry F. Cooper, Chairman               Lt. Gen. Daniel Graham, Founder

High Frontier . . Building Truly Effective Defenses . . Reagan’s Vision Lives!

 E-Mail Message 130128

Recent news reports highlight the continuing saga of North Korea’s efforts to develop nuclear weapons . . . and U.S. posturing, seeking to block their efforts.  With little doubt, we will see soon another repeat performance, like a parody of Lucy and the football in “Peanuts.”

Some analysts think that North Korea is ready for another nuclear test based on evidence derived from such as the satellite image below—provided to The Associated Press by 38 North, the website of U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Does anyone believe our efforts will do anything much, other than making concessions to North Korean interests in the hopes of getting them to cease and desist?

We will also most likely see fruitless benefits from our diplomacy in seeking to block Iran’s efforts to get nuclear weapons—their military and civilian leaders even mock the impact of sanctions on the pace of their efforts!

Seems we are slow learners.

Both nations already have ballistic missiles that can reach the United States.  Most folks think in terms of long range missiles—or Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) as being the primary means of threatening the U.S.  Both North Korea and Iran have launched satellites—which give them inherent ICBM capability; they only need to prove to themselves that they can mate a nuclear weapon to such missiles to threaten us from afar.

But, alas, that is not the only, or arguably even the most important, way to threaten us with a devastating attack.  A nuclear-armed short-range ballistic missile can do that if launched from a vessel off our coasts—and both nations have plenty of such missiles.

Even terrorists can buy that capability, for which the expense is not significant for al Qaeda.  It is well known that North Korea will sell essentially anything to anyone with money—and Iran tested such ballistic missiles from vessels in the Caspian Sea over a decade ago. 

One does not need Tom Clancy or Brad Thor to imagine daunting scenarios as to how these realities could be used by terrorists—especially Jihadists who seek to destroy the “Great Satan” America as well as the “Little Satan” Israel.

As an aside, note that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in one of her last acts as a senior administration official, testified to Congress that “Jihadists”  executed the Benghazi attack that killed our Ambassador to Libya and three other Americans. This was very significant testimony, because “Jihadists” accurately describes the threat that has confronted us for several decades, whereas senior government officials—including our Intelligence and military leaders—have used Politically Correct (PC) terminology to avoid accurately pointing to the Islamic threat we face.

The fact is that a possible Jihadist attack could kill hundreds of millions of Americans with the electromagnetic pulse (EMP) produced by a single nuclear-armed short-range or medium-range ballistic missile. For example, click here for food for thought.

As previously reported, we can defend against such attacks, if our missile defense capable Aegis cruisers and destroyers are prepared to do so as they “sail” along our East and West Coasts.  We should seriously plan to have and operate this capability, and test it repeatedly—especially in an East Coast Test Range, to discourage rogue states and terrorists from trying to attack us this way.

But our Aegis ships do not go into the Gulf of Mexico.

There we need to do what we are doing to protect our European allies from Iranian ballistic missiles.  We need to deploy “Aegis Ashore” defenses at military bases around the Gulf of Mexico—just as we are doing in Romania and Poland (to be operational beginning in 2015).

No additional development money should be required, and the deployment and operations cost of each U.S. site should be less than the cost of an overseas site.

Local Americans need to wake up to this existential threat and demand that their local, state and federal representatives provide for the common defense, as called for in the Preamble to the Constitution. 

Help us get that message to your friends—forward this email and suggest they review our previous reports and sign up for our future email reports!

Let Freedom Ring!