Raytheon's on a roll.

Earlier this week, Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd. awarded defense contractor Raytheon two contracts worth over $100 million to design and develop the David’s Sling Weapon System. Yesterday the defense contractor announced that it won a $9.6 million modification to an existing Navy contract to provide services for the Ship Self-Defense System (SSDS). (Source)

As the platform systems engineering agent ,Raytheon will make complex warfighting improvements and integrate them with SSDS for aircraft carriers and amphibious ships. Raytheon also will integrate the Dual Band Radar as part of the Zumwalt-class destroyer program, the Evolved.

Robert Martin, vice president and deputy of Seapower Capability, said: "The Ship Self-Defense System has clearly demonstrated the benefits that open architecture technology provides the Navy, including the ability to upgrade system capabilities with relative ease. The system's high level of capability, affordability and modularity enables the Navy to defend against today's threats while providing the flexibility to adapt to counter the threats of tomorrow."

Facing North Korean missile threats, Japan's navy is incorporating Aegis capabilities as part of its defense. Although it's imperative that Japan strengthens its missile defense, the country's new government leaders didn't sound too concerned last month

"Missile defense is almost totally useless," according to politician Tsuyoshi Yamaguchi. "Only one or two out of 100 are ever effective." (Source)

Fortunately, Japan's military doesn't see it that way. Its navy successfully shot down a missile yesterday off Hawaii. A destroyer detected, tracked, and shot down the medium-range missile while in flight with an SM-3 interceptor rocket. (MDA – PDF)

The missile test, called the Japan Flight Test Mission 3 (JMSDF), is part of an Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense intercept flight test, and it's the third time a JMSDF ship successfully shot down a ballistic missile target.

"The JFTM-3 test event verified the newest engagement capability of the Japan Aegis BMD configuration of the recently upgraded Japanese destroyer, JS MYOKO (DDG-175)," according to the press release. "At approximately 6:00pm (HST), 1:00 pm Tokyo time on Oct 28, a separating, medium-range ballistic missile target was launched from the Pacific Missile Range Facility, Barking Sands, Kauai, Hawaii. JS MYOKO crew members detected and tracked the target. The Aegis Weapon System then developed a fire control solution and, at approximately 6:04pm (HST), 1:04 pm Tokyo time a Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) Block IA interceptor missile was launched."

Equipped with the Aegis radar system, the destroyer will take on addition SM-3 receptors before returning to Japan. The Obama administration said the U.S. will use SM-3 interceptors and Aegis radar as part of the new missile shield plan.

Defense contractor Lockheed Martin was awarded a $1 billion contract to continue developing the and create more Aegis-compatible warships. Aegis ballistic missile defense system. (Source)

Orlando Carvalho vice president and general manager of the company's surface-sea based missile defense unit said: "This further supports the increasing demand for Aegis BMD capability worldwide, especially in light of the administration's recent shift in policy in European Missile Defense."

Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd awarded defense contractor Raytheon two contracts worth over $100 million to design and development the David's Sling Weapon System, a joint program between the Missile Defense Agency and the Israel Missile Defense Organization.

The system is designed to defend against short-range ballistic missiles, high-caliber rockets, and terminal phase cruise missiles. Mike Booen of Raytheon said, "Large-caliber rockets and short-range ballistic missile threats are inexpensive, plentiful, easily concealed and largely exempt from international arms control accords. Stunner [interceptor] offers a near-term and affordable solution to this asymmetric threat." (Source)

Last week, Vice President Joe Biden visited Poland and the Czech Republic, the first such visit to the region by a high-level official since the President Barack Obama dropped plans to deploy missile defense shields to those countries. The Heritage Foundation's Peter Brookes commented on the new missile defense shield plan proposed by the administration.

"In pulling the plug on the Bush missile-defense plan in Eastern Europe last month," Brookes writes in the New York Post, "the White House came up with a new architecture based on a new evaluation of existing intelligence on the Iranian ballistic-missile threat…The Pentagon now insists Iran is moving faster on its short- and medium-range ballistic-missile programs than on its long-range ICBM effort, against which the Czech and Polish sites were aimed. (Of course, many experts think progress in one missile program supports another.)"

The new plan may protect Europe, but what about the Iranian threat to the U.S. and Israel? Land-based SM-3 missiles, designed to protect us and our ally, are in development. The target date for completion is 2020, but Iran could have an intercontinental ballistic missile by 2015.

"[T]he Obama administration thinks that if the Iranian ICBM comes online before the land-based SM-3s are developed and in place, the West Coast, Bush-era missile-defense sites give us some breathing room…Not really."

Brookes notes that the "West Coast" system was created to protect us from North Korea, not Iran. Sites that would protect us from Iran (in Alaska and California) may not provide adequate protection, especially since the administration reduced interceptors at those sites.

"That means there's a gap in our defenses against an Iranian ICBM strike until the land-based SM-3s are operational, which, by the way, will almost certainly face funding and engineering-development challenges."

Other problems with the new plan are cost, efficiency, and concerns that Russia will once again "negotiate" with the U.S. to curb development of the SM-3.

"It's…a good time to remind ourselves that the purpose of defense is to be technologically ahead of the threat, not behind it -- which is where we'll be if we're not careful," Brookes writes.

Read the full article at the New York Post.

On the heels of conducing joint missile defense exercise Juniper Cobra - which simulated a response to an attack by the Islamic Republic, Syria, and Hezbollah - Israel and the U.S. will conduct another on Wednesday. (Source)

As part of a biennial exercise between the two countries, this drill is called the "largest-ever" simulated attack on Israel. Testing air defenses, the drill will assess Arrow, THAAD, Aegis, Patriot, and Hawk defense systems. News source Yediot Aharonot noted that the "working assumption upon which the exercise is based is that the United States, in the event of a war, will provide Israel with missile defence systems that will operate alongside" the Arrow II.

The Arrow II is part of Israel's Iron Dome, an anti-rocket shield designed to defend Israel from Hamas and Hezbollah rockets and also serves as a major component in a multi-layered missile defense system.

It's Vice President Joe Biden's turn to visit Europe and assure allies we didn't abandoned them when we dropped plans to deploy missile shields, which would have helped defend the region from Iranian attacks.

Supporters of strong and comprehensive missile defense saw the move as an attempt to placate Russia, notoriously hard to please. President Barack Obama's decision ostensibly was based on new intelligence showing Iran's shorter-range rockets to be a greater threat than its long-range rockets.

Biden's three-day trip is the first such visit to the Poland-Czech Republic region by a high-level official since the plans were dropped. Tony Blinken, Biden's national security advisor, said Biden will discuss America's "strong commitment to missile defense and to a better system, a more effective system, than the one we had originally proposed."

The vice president will attempt to assure the two countries that the new missile defense system is better than the previous one. Will he try to convince them that the U.S. is not trying to appease the former Soviet Union? Although the administration denies the accusation, it looks like appeasement. Russia considered the shields a threat, and now the shields won't happen. The U.S. wanted Russia to issue tougher sanctions against Iran, and Russia so far has refused. The U.S. has received nothing in the appeasement deal, and we appear weak.

We doubt Biden will say anything to change that perception.

(Source: ABC News)

Last week we blogged about Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's visit to Russia, a country she claimed was being "extremely cooperative." She echoed the president's intent to "reset" relations with Russia and agreed to stop criticizing the former Soviet Union about its human rights abuses.

Russia has refused to issue tougher sanctions against Iran. In fact, the country's leaders didn't even want to discuss the matter. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said, "At the current stage, all forces should be thrown at supporting the negotiating process. Threats of new sanctions and pressure against Iran under current circumstances are counterproductive."

What, if anything, has the U.S. gained in talks between the two countries or the compromise we made on missile shields in Poland and the Czech Republic? Columnist Charles Krauthammer asks these and other questions (Source):

"[W]hat's come from Obama's single most dramatic foreign policy stroke -- the sudden abrogation of missile defense arrangements with Poland and the Czech Republic that Russia had virulently opposed? For the East Europeans it was a crushing blow, a gratuitous restoration of Russian influence over a region that thought it had regained independence under American protection."

Krauthammer notes that despite how the talks were reported in the media, President Dmitry Medvedev didn't budge on Iran sanctions. According to Lavrov, threats of pressure on Iran are of no use. At which point would it be productive to threaten tougher sanctions? The U.S. is retreating on missile defense, as Russia calls the shots, and Iran and North Korea defiantly continue their missile development.

Rather than dealing with Iran without Russia's help, the Obama administration appears indecisive and desperate at the expense of resetting relations with a country that has asserted itself and refuses to compromise with us.

"The Russian leadership, hardly believing its luck," Krauthammer writes, "needs no interpreter to understand that when the Obama team clownishly rushes in bearing gifts and 'reset' buttons, there is nothing ulterior, diabolical, clever or even serious behind it. It is amateurishness, wrapped in naivet, inside credulity. In short, the very stuff of Nobels."

The Navy awarded defense contractor Raytheon $7.7 million to provide services for the Rolling Airframe Missile (RAM) Guided Missile Weapon System, expected to be completed by August 2011. The missile defense system is designed to provide anti-ship missile defense for multiple ship platforms. (MoneyCentral)

The Air Force awarded defense contractor Lockheed Martin an $827.4 million contract to develop three C-130J, four HC-130J ,and four MC-130J aircraft. (Forbes)

The Theater High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) is an Army system designed to shoot down short- and medium-range ballistic missiles using a hit-to-kill approach. The Army began a second THAAD battery at Fort Bliss, Texas. Recently, the system successfully blocked its targets in a recent test-firing. (MDA – PDF)

Much like the various branches of the military, as well as DoD have journals for academic study and evaluation the Department of Homeland Security sponsors HSA. All of them use former employees or service members, as well as those who have spent time focused on the variety of topics they cover and must study in order to improve future tactics, policy, and planning.

“Homeland Security Affairs (http://www.hsaj.org/) is the peer-reviewed online journal of the Naval Postgraduate School Center for Homeland Defense and Security (CHDS), providing a forum to propose and debate strategies, policies, and organizational arrangements to strengthen U.S. homeland security.  The instructors, participants, alumni, and partners of CHDS represent the leading subject matter experts and practitioners in the field of homeland security.”

The issues that DHS must study have a huge range, as one can understand based upon the threats we are facing and may have to survive through. One month you have an evaluation on “Inaccurate Prediction of Nuclear Weapons Effects and Possible Adverse Influences on Nuclear Terrorism Preparedness.” Obviously the nuclear threat is real, and while maybe a little less likely is something that must be prepared for. But as well conventional threats like “Paramilitary Terrorism: A Neglected Threat” are addressed, as well:

“The seizure of Beslan School #1 in the Russian republic of North Ossetia in 2004, where over a thousand hostages were taken, and hundreds of schoolchildren and other innocents were ultimately killed by Chechen terrorists. This attack was conducted by terrorists using conventional weapons and tactics, and required technical expertise less challenging and far more common than the piloting skills that guided commercial jets into American buildings on September 11, 2001.”

With a wealth of information from a variety of authors that are all taking on the dangers that affect our homeland security to prevent problems, and if need be, respond. This is one more journal to bookmark along with the others like “Armed Forces Journal.” By keeping tabs on as many as possible one can see how the overlapping hopefully prevents holes but also how all sides operate as a team. Actions taken overseas can have just as much effect on what happens here at home, at the same time the resources and policies need to be prepared to spring in to action if called upon.

The views expressed above are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Heritage Foundation.