Skip to footer

Blast-off: 6 recent missile advances

Missiles have been prominent in the news with India’s successful test, North Korea’s failed one, and much talk of missile defense systems in Europe and the Persian Gulf. Here are six recent noteworthy missile-technology advances.

4. US missile interceptors

  • By Arthur Bright Staff writer

With the increasing prevalence of missiles, ballistic and otherwise, around the world, there has been a corresponding interest in missile-defense systems.  The foremost proponent of such technology has been the United States.

As far back as the George W. Bush administration, US and NATO officials advocated a European missile-defense system to defend against Iranian launches. But the plan – which the Obama administration also supports, albeit in modified form – has irked Russia. The Kremlin says that the proposed system targets Russia and its large ballistic arsenal. NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen recently reiterated that the system “does not threaten Russia,” reports Radio Free Europe. 

And late last month, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with Arab leaders to set in motion the creation of a Persian Gulf missile shield, also set against Iranian launches, reports The Washington Post.  The US is planning the shield’s creation with several oil-producing countries, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Kuwait, which all already have US-made Patriot missile systems. The new shield would more closely coordinate the various countries’ defenses.

4 of 6
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.