Pentagon Officials Research Articles

Researchers Target Flaws in Ballistic Missile Defense Plan

More than three dozen scientists journeyed to Washington, D.C., this week to warn lawmakers that a proposed $60 billion U.S. missile defense system, designed to knock incoming warheads out of the sky, is technically flawed because it can't pick out real warheads from decoys. Pentagon officials heatedly deny a new report by one scientist that contractors have rigged trials to hide the problem, although they admit that some tests were simplified to save time. In the wake of these events, a leading Democrat is urging President Bill Clinton to delay a pending decision on building the system.

Placebo defense: Operation desert mirage? The rhetoric of patriot missile accuracy in the 1991 Persian Gulf War*

During the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the apparent success of the Patriot missile defense system served as the official centerpiece of a rhetorical campaign to portray Operation Desert Storm as an unprecedented mission ushering in a new era of American military dominance based on technological superiority. Post‐war disclosures have not only cast serious doubt on Patriot's wartime performance, but have also exposed a widespread program of strategic deception employed by Pentagon officials to protect the fiction of Patriot's Gulf War wizardry. This essay explains how Gulf War audiences were misled, assesses the rhetorical windfall flowing from perceived Patriot effectiveness, and criticizes the Pentagon's campaign of strategic deception as normatively bankrupt.

Clementine malfunctions, but Moon data secures place in history

The highly promising voyage of the National Aeronautical and Space Administration's (NASA) and the Defense Department's (DoD's) spacecraft Clementine has given way to disappointment: The second portion of its mission to film the asteroid Geographos has been tabled because of a computer malfunction that occurred last weekend. The “glitch,” which blocked communication for about 20 minutes last Saturday, triggered three thrusters to turn on and depleted the hydrazine fuel required to maneuver the altitude control, which points the spacecraft, Pentagon officials explained.

Dismantling the Cold War economy

Based on extensive interviews with defence industry executives, Pentagon officials and community and union leaders, this book shows in detail how Cold War technologies have distorted and drained the economy. It is a comprehensive reassessment of the military-industrial complex now that the Cold War has ended. Ann Markusen is the author of The Rise of the Gunbelt.

American Bases in the Philippines: A Journey to the Past

The American Administration is at present confronted with a set of apparently contradictory problems: how to close the unneeded military bases in its territory and how to retain its important military facilities and installations in the Republic of the Philippines, including the well-known Subic Naval Base and Clark Air Force Base. Studies undertaken by various United States’ Government agencies have estimated that the Defence Department could save from $ 1 billion to $ 5 billion annually by closing some of the unneeded bases out of a total of 3,800 located in various parts of the United States.1 And thus important Pentagon officials and key members of the US Congress are reportedly moving to stamp “surplus” on some of these bases with a view to closing them down.2 On the other hand, policy-makers in Washington still consider the US bases in the Philippines as “the irreducible minimum of American security and interests in the Pacific and the Far East.” And as part of the plan to retain the bases in the Philippines the United States Government recently approved a mini-Marshall Plan for the Philippine Republic. Negotiations to review the Military Bases Agreement (MBA) of 1947 began in April between the officials of the United States and the Philippines. The MBA has undergone more than forty amendments in the past four decades. But the current negotiations are significant because it involves extension of the term of the agreement that expires in 1991. Presence of foreign military bases and troops in a sovereign country has always remained a sensitive issue in international relations. After more than three decades since the signing of the MBA the Filipinos got their sovereignty formally extended over the US military bases in the Islands and the Filipino flags began to fly in US base areas since 1979. Yet the nationalist Fitipinos still continue to ask: Is national sovereignty compatible with American military presence on their soil? Are not these bases likely to invite attacks from America's adversaries? Is Philippines interest being served by US maintenance of bases on the Islands? Some Filipinos raised similar questions way back in the 1940s. But they did enter into a Military Bases Agreement with the Americans by virtue of which the US military presence is still continuing in the Philippine Islands. Why did they sign the agreement? What were the compulsions? How did it all happen? When similar sets of questions, among others of course, are being raised after four decades of changes in the national, regional as well as global power configuration, a journey to the past is perhaps called for, for clearer comprehension of the current situation. The present paper is based on archival materials and other primary source materials available in the United States. Secondary source materials available in India and the United States have been used in appropriate places.