Correction, Please!

Shooting Down Defense

ITEM: Edward C. "Pete" Aldridge, under secretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, said the Defense Department on December 14, announced that "the Navy Area Missile Defense Program has been cancelled due to poor performance and projected future costs and schedules."

CORRECTION: Cancellation of this program, formerly known as Navy Area-Wide ballistic missile defense, killed testing scheduled to begin in February of 2002. And the Pentagon will still have to pay $300 million in termination costs, reports Aviation Week & Space Technology.

In August, the current chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff, Gen. Richard Myers, called the Navy Area program "essential to national security" and indicated to the under secretary that the chief of naval operations and commandant of the Marine Corps considered it "the number one priority among theater missile defense systems." There are, wrote Myers, "no alternatives to this program that would provide equal or greater value at less cost."

This decision essentially wrote off the $2 billion already spent. The problem was not technical. As described by former Strategic Defense Initiative Director Henry Cooper, "it employs on a ship the same technology used by the Patriot ten years ago in the Gulf War, and by the Israeli Arrow program that became operational" in 2000.

Cold-Blooded Customers

ITEM: The Associated Press on December 28th reported that China "reacted coolly to the end of American policy linking its trade status to human rights, saying President Bush only did 'what he ought to have done.'"