Closing Velocity

Video: US Can Shoot Down North Korean Missile If Ordered By Obama

This ABC News report is certainly a milestone --- I believe that is the first time I've seen the high success rates of our missile defense system reported so matter-of-factly by the MSM. Why just yesterday it seems, the MSM was still in the knee-jerk missile defense skepticism mode it had adopted long ago during the dark Reagan years.

One day missile defense is a wasteful relic of the Cold War, and the next it's on alert ready to save the world. Funny, that:

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What A Perfect Place For A BMD Base, Part III

RIP: Azerbaijan's Air Force & Missile Defense Chief

Remember the 2007 Russian offer to give the US access to an old Soviet early warning radar in Azerbaijan in exchange for the US keeping BMD out of Eastern Europe? Well, the chief Azeri negotiator on that deal --- and head of the Azeri Air Force --- was just assassinated in his driveway:

"At approximately 8 a.m. (0400 GMT) at the entrance to his home the head of the air force and missile defense system was shot in the head and later died of his wounds in hospital," a source in the Interior Ministry said.

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Rzayez was the Azeri representative in stalled negotiations between Russia and the United States on use of the Qabala radar station in northern Azerbaijan.

Russia had offered Washington access to data from the Soviet-built radar station, which it leases from Azerbaijan, as an alternative to U.S. plans to station elements of its missile defense shield in eastern Europe.

Motives and suspects are unknown, though several different scenarios are swirling about:

• Rzayez's air defense portfolio has been responsible for huge defense expenditures during Azerbaijan's recent oil boom. A big money deal gone bad? See next... 
• Not unlike several former Soviet states, Azerbaijan has to deal with a vacuum-filling cadre of oligarchs, organized criminals, and power-wielding apparatchicks (cough-justlikePutin'sRussia-cough). Any number of conspiracies could spring from this festering political swamp.
• As mentioned in my first link above, Azerbaijan is on the jihadi hit list. Azeri's serve alongside the US in Afghanistan and, until recently, Iraq as well.
• And of course, lingering still-declared states of war sometimes become dangerous for military personnel like Gen. Ryayez (go figure) --- Azerbaijan is still officially belligerent with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh.

So again, why oh why would we ever doubt the sincerity of Putin's Azeri radar offer? Looks like a swell place to deploy a linchpin missile defense asset!

UPDATE: Welcome, Jawas.