A new compilation (large pdf) of official records, news releases and other documentation provides a fairly comprehensive account of the Sea-Based X-Band Radar (SBX), an ambitious missile defense program intended to track warheads in flight and to cue ground-based interceptor missiles.
The SBX, constructed aboard a modified semi-submersible oil platform, departed Hawaii last month and arrived this week in the waters near Alaska’s Aleutian Island chain, according to a February 7 release from the Missile Defense Agency.
Hundreds of pages of background material on the program were assembled by independent researcher Allen Thomson.
“The SBX story has been an interesting one, in my opinion, and I think it might become even more interesting when the history of NMD/GMD is written,” Mr. Thomson told Secrecy News. “Right now, I’m waiting to see if the second CS-50 platform nearing completion at Severodvinsk is going to be bought by Boeing for SBX-2.”
See “Sea-Based X-Band Radar (SBX) Sourcebook” by Allen Thomson (19 MB PDF).
Related background is also available from the Congressional Research Service in “Sea-Based Ballistic Missile Defense — Background and Issues for Congress” (pdf), updated December 19, 2006.
In anticipation of future known and unknown health security threats, including new pandemics, biothreats, and climate-related health emergencies, our answers need to be much faster, cheaper, and less disruptive to other operations.
To unlock the full potential of artificial intelligence within the Department of Health and Human Services, an AI Corps should be established, embedding specialized AI experts within each of the department’s 10 agencies.
Investing in interventions behind the walls is not just a matter of improving conditions for incarcerated individuals—it is a public safety and economic imperative. By reducing recidivism through education and family contact, we can improve reentry outcomes and save billions in taxpayer dollars.
The U.S. government should establish a public-private National Exposome Project (NEP) to generate benchmark human exposure levels for the ~80,000 chemicals to which Americans are regularly exposed.