Fort Greely News

Even on one of the most serious days of his life, Tony Shumate was all laughs. Standing at the door greeting friends, co-workers and fellow soldiers as they filed into Fairbanks City Hall chambers for his formal retirement from the Alaska Army National Guard on Friday, Shumate cracked jokes and yukked it up.

In order to test its missile defense technology, the United States intends to defend against a simulated attack that, according to reports on Iran's military capabilities, is not technically possible.

The fake ICBM will be launched from the Marshall Islands in the South Pacific, with the interceptor originating from California.

Last week, Senator Mark Begich beamed with pride about his efforts to get funding for the missile defense system in Alaska.

"Is it possible for us to witness a world without America and Zionism?" Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad asked at a "World Without Zionism" conference in Tehran in 2005.

Missile defense - as the term might suggest - is defensive, not offensive. Brilliant American scientists have developed sophisticated technologies to prevent missiles - including those armed with nuclear warheads - from reaching their intended victims.

Missile defence has come a long way since the late President Ronald Reagan called on American scientists in a speech in 1983 to create what became known as a "Star Wars" shield to protect the United States from a mass Soviet nuclear strike.

President Barack Obama's scuttling of George W. Bush's plan to deploy a missile-defense system in the Czech Republic and Polanda 'or, more particularly, the way he scuttled ita 'amounts to a remarkably shrewd bit of politics and statesmanship.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk insisted Thursday the United States and Poland remain close allies even after President Obama's decision to drop plans for a missile defense shield in the Eastern European country, but it's apparently not a sentiment he felt Wednesday night.

In a major policy reversal, U.S. President Barack Obama has scuttled plans to build a massive ground-based missile defense system based in the Czech Republic and Poland that the Bush administration intended to counter the threat posed by Iranian ballistic missiles.

Riki Ellison, Chairman and President of the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance www.missiledefenseadvocacy.org spent two days with the soldiers that operate the missile defense fields at Fort Greely, Alaska.

U. S. Army Alaska is wrapping up an Emergency Deployment Readiness Exercise. The drill involved operations at Fort Richardson, Fort Greely and Elmendorf Air Force Base.

The towns of Eagle, Tanana, Stevens Village and Fort Yukon have requested furniture through a post-flooding aid effort, an organizer said Thursday.

This article first appeared in Aviation Week & Space Technology. The likelihood of the U.S. establishing a fixed Ground-Based Midcourse Defense missile interceptor site in Poland appears to be waning as the Pentagon is more sharply focused on the quick fielding of a land-based SM-3 system to protect Europe from an Iranian ballistic missile threat.

One soldier's suggestion that the U.S. Army could help devastated Yukon River communities resulted in enough donated furniture to fill a couple of warehouses.

SDI: If you missed the news, which isn't hard given how poorly these things are covered, our "unproven" missile defense proved itself again last week, when a U.S. warship downed a simulated North Korean missile in flight.

It hardly seems the stuff of geopolitical significance: In forested flatlands about 100 miles from Fairbanks, Alaska, contractors are taking down 135 acres of fire-scorched spruce and birch trees on a closed military post.

SDI: If you missed the news, which isn't hard given how poorly these things are covered, our "unproven" missile defense proved itself again last week, when a U.S. warship downed a simulated North Korean missile in flight.

The leading health care reformers in Congress seem to have a clear idea of some expansion they'd like to see, such as making affordable insurance available to everyone.

Alaska Native corporations dodged a major bullet this week as Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Mark Begich headed off an effort by Sen.