Reuters missile defense reporter Jim Wolf has struck again. This time his June 16 article “General ’90-percent-plus’ sure on U.S. Missile Defense” selectively quotes some experts and fails to identify others as long time anti-missile defense crusaders.

Wolf’s article begins by noting that Vice Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff General James Cartwright recently told Congress he believed the odds of defeating a long-range North Korean missile attack were “ninety percent plus.” Wolf then immediately quotes Lisbeth Gronlund who he identifies as “an expert on missile defense at the Union of Concerned Scientists in Cambridge, Massachusetts.” Gronlund dismissed Cartwright’s estimate as “irresponsible and based on wishful thinking’ not based on facts. What Wolf fails to report is that Gronlund has always been a consistent critic of missile defense and has not published an article on the subject since 2002. The current ground-based mid-course defense system has evolved significantly since then. Although Gronlund frequently participates in groups conducting analysis of missile defense, it is not clear what her current assessment is based on.

Wolf then continues:

Charles McQueary, who retired as the Pentagon’s top independent testing official last month, said in a report in December that flight testing of the so-called Ground-based Midcourse Defense, or GMD, “to date will not support a high degree of confidence in its limited capabilities.”

This quote suggests McQueary doubts the efficacy of missile defenses. But this is just plain false. In Congressional testimony in 2008, he stated “Hit-to-kill is no longer a technological uncertainty; it is a reality, being successfully demonstrated many times over the past few years.” Although, McQueary acknowledged he did not have adequate data yet to fully, “complete my assessment of BMDS [ballistic missile defense system] capability,” he concluded his testimony stating, “Integrated ground testing of the BMDS continues to demonstrate that the war fighters understand and can operate the system confidently and effectively.”

What McQeary’s testimony in fact makes clear (and what Wolf did not point out) is that General Cartwright’s estimate of missile defense should be seen as a subjective assessment reflecting the military growing confidence in the ground-based midcourse system, not a technical evaluation.