Why Is It That The Democrats Are Thought Of…..

…..As weak on defense? Oh, yeah. It's because they are weak on defense. They haven't even taken control yet and they promptly go right back to gutting the military and defense programs like it was the Clinton administration all over again. Welcome to a September 10 mindset.

Democratic leaders are poised to gut America’s missile defense - at the same time North Korea and Iran are testing long-range missiles that can strike the U.S. and its allies, including Israel, Japan and Britain.

Meanwhile, sources inside the missile-defense community tell Pajamas Media that the Bush administration is planning to ask Congress to begin funding development of an “orbital battle station.”

With these key developments, 2007 is set to be the biggest battle of space-based weapons since President Reagan proposed “Star Wars” in 1983.

The incoming chairman of the Senate’s Armed Services Committee is Carl Levin. Levin, a Michigan Democrat, has long been a foe of missile defense. In 1980s, he worried that President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative — which aimed to develop technology to destroy Soviet missiles during all phases of flight — was “destabilizing.”

Today Sen. Levin sings the same tune in a different key. “They’ve not done the operational testing yet that is convincing,” said Senator Levin during a post-election press conference. He was referring to the Ground based Missile Defense [GMD] system being installed in Alaska and California, to defend against North Korean missiles. He added that he favors stalling purchases of interceptor missiles - vital for missile defense — until after testing is complete.

In short, Sen. Levin and other longtime opponents of missile defense plan to use “testing” - set to an unrealistically high level - to stop missile defense.

How the Game is Played

Former Assistant Secretary of Defense Frank Gaffney explains how the game works: “The idea is that we put it [missile defense] on ice until absolutely everybody is satisfied. It is a formula for not having the missile defense we need.”

Critics hope to stop missile defense by devoting its entire budget to testing, which is costly. At $100 million dollars or more per test, a test or two could easily absorb the entire Ground-based missile defense budget.

Certainly testing sounds reasonable. Why not make sure the stuff works before blowing billions on it? But the testing fixation ignores that, like software, most successful weapons systems are best debugged after being deployed. And some weapons systems were never tested at all before deployment.

Complex weapons systems have often been used successfully without proper testing. In 1940, Britain’s new air defenses — radars, ground observers, anti-aircraft guns and squadrons of Spitfires and Hurricanes — had never been tested against even a small scale simulated attack. Yet they won the Battle of Britain. Likewise in the 1991 Gulf War the first two E-8A ground surveillance radar aircraft had only just begun a long testing process when they were shipped to Saudi Arabia. During the war they performed magnificently and now these aircraft are in high demand all over the world.

At a time when lunatics like Kim Jong Il and Mahmoud Amadinejad are trying to get nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them, our Democrats want to gut the programs that provide the only defense against these things. Again. Just as the system is showing real progress. Again.