The Missile Defense Agency enlisted lawmakers, Capitol Hill staff, and journalists this week in a war game demonstrating simulated missile attacks on US soil. According to Reuters news service, there was at least the semblance of some reality because the game planners allowed one of the US interceptor missiles to fail to launch, letting its intended target strike the Aleutian Islands. It remains to be seen whether the war-game gambit was successful in making missile defense system believers out of more legislators. We bet it will still be a tough budget sell.
The Pentagon is significantly bolstering airpower near Venezuela, dispatching the USS Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group to Latin America, it said in an Oct. 24 statement. The announcement came just hours after U.S. Air Force B-1 bombers and other U.S. assets flew near the Venezuelan coast on Oct. 23.
