Missile Waste – Moon of Alabama

December 15, 2004

Missile Waste

The Defense Department spends $10 billion per year on Missile Defense.

Some 10 interceptor rockets are already stationed in Alaska, but the system has never been tested successfully. Those tests that occurred were are deemed unrealistic and even then three out of eight attempts failed.

A complete test was planed to take place late 2003. It was delayed until yesterday and then – the system failed. The interceptor (pdf) did not even take off.

The first test in nearly two years of a multibillion-dollar U.S. anti-missile shield has failed after the interceptor missile shut down as it prepared to launch in the central Pacific, the Pentagon said.

…

The aborted $85 million test appeared likely to set back plans for activation of a rudimentary bulwark against long-range ballistic missiles that could be fired by countries like North Korea.

…

In 2002, President George W. Bush pledged to have initial elements of the program up and running by the end of this year while testing and development continued.
Reuters

Missile Defense

is a system that does not function
could be easily cheated by fake targets
is useless against cheap kind of attacks like 9/11 or from cruise missiles fired from sea
is useless against new Russian ICBM developments

It is the most useless way to waste money I can think of.

Posted by b on December 15, 2004 at 11:14 UTC | Permalink

Comments

Somewhere in his mountain palace, Kim Jung Il is laughing loud.
Same for Putin, of course.

Posted by: CluelessJoe | Dec 15 2004 12:06 utc | 1

It may look poor at the moment, but wait for the multiplayer version, which will be a hit.

Posted by: teuton | Dec 15 2004 14:09 utc | 2

U.S. missile defense test flops

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The first test in nearly two years of a multibillion-dollar U.S. anti-missile shield has failed after the interceptor missile shut down as it prepared to launch in the central Pacific, the Pentagon said.
About 16 minutes earlier, a target missile carrying a mock warhead had been successfully fired from Kodiak Island, Alaska, according to a statement from the Missile Defense Agency.
The aborted $85 million (44 million pounds) test appeared likely to set back plans for activation of a rudimentary bulwark against long-range ballistic missiles that could be fired by countries like North Korea.
In 2002, President George W. Bush pledged to have initial elements of the program up and running by the end of this year while testing and development continued.
An “anomaly” of unknown origin caused the interceptor to shut down automatically in its silo at the Kwajalein Test Range in the Marshall Islands, said Richard Lehner, a spokesman for the Pentagon’s missile agency.
The test followed a week of delays caused by weather and technical glitches, including malfunction of an internal battery aboard the target missile on Tuesday, he said.
“This is a serious setback for a program that had not attempted a flight intercept test for two years,” Philip Coyle, the Pentagon’s chief weapons tester under late President Ronald Reagan, said in an e-mail exchange.

Posted by: OkieByAccident | Dec 15 2004 15:09 utc | 3

George Bush was up here in Canada last month pressing our Prime Minister to sign on to this asinine plan. Here’s what I propose: sure, we’ll buy in to your program, once you’ve passed our test. Arrange an exercise with Russia whereby they will fire 10 “dummy” missiles at the testing ground in Alaska. Two will be marked “warhead” while the other eight are marked “decoy”. You will not know from where the missiles were launched, at what time, speed or angle. Your system must successfully repel the attack.
Considering that they can’t even get one interceptor to launch and hit a missile they fired themselves (so they know the specifics of its trajectory), this should be fun.

Posted by: kat | Dec 15 2004 15:28 utc | 4

Come on, there are other ways to waste 10 billion bucks… and BushCo is using several of them.
Flattening Fallujah and littering other bits of Iraq with various matallic parts (previously in the form of ammunition of vehicle parts) comes to mind (and the cost does not even include the value of what was destroyed, in purely material terms, not to mention the human cost).
The “Leave-no-lobbyist-behind” bill (the energy bill as described by McCain) was also a nice try, although it’s been blocked so far…

Posted by: Jérôme | Dec 15 2004 17:04 utc | 5

the reasons why that test didn’t work, sir? sorry, that information is classified.

Posted by: DeAnander | Dec 15 2004 17:21 utc | 6

DeA,
That link went to a “page-not-found” msg at boston.com.

Posted by: rapt | Dec 15 2004 17:33 utc | 7

try None Dare Call It Fraud (removed markup at end of url string)

Posted by: b real | Dec 15 2004 17:45 utc | 8

Noah Shachtman of Defense Tech has some additional information on the missile test.

Posted by: b | Dec 15 2004 21:03 utc | 9

thanks B! brain too finely subdivided.

Posted by: DeAnander | Dec 15 2004 21:05 utc | 10

Thanks for the correction B. I recall that MIT scientist(s) also swore up and down that the govt story on WTC collapse is correct, that kerosene and paper fire melted steel beams.
When I was a high school kid looking at colleges (60s), MIT was top dawg; getting in required perfection and more. Now it appears that part of that institution (and therefore all, in view of name/rep) is part of this O-so-familiar criminal gang we have in govt. When I ask – where does it all end? – I face an answer that is still hard to grasp: It goes to the top and beyond.

Posted by: rapt | Dec 15 2004 21:36 utc | 11

I did go to MIT in the ’60s. It has ALWAYS been a part of the military-industrial complex, and a leader in the development of ingenious ways to kill people at a distance and/or enrich corporations at taxpayers’ expense. There were demonstrations against the I-Labs (Instrumentation Labs – later named Charles Stark Draper Labs) – ICBM guidance systems were their business. The political problem was solved – the I-Labs were spun off from MIT, no longer a part of the institution. A kind of success for the demonstrators – the hollow kind of success.
I’m much struck by how much these days remind me of those days – except that they seem worse, somehow. The atrocities committed by our country’s military seem larger-scale, and the enemies we’re making are deadlier. Langston Hughes has a poem with a line – “America has never been America to me” – I used to think that someday it might be, but now I don’t know. Maybe the many at the bottom are too vicious and stupid, and the few at the top are too committed to a world of lies, greed, and death.
May the Creative Forces of the Universe (if any) Stand Beside Us, and Guide Us, through the Night with the Light From Above (speaking metaphorically).

Posted by: mistah charley | Dec 15 2004 22:59 utc | 12

another example of duckspeak – President Bush recently said that those opposing missile defense “don’t understand the threats of the 21st century.” “They’re living in the past. We’re living in the future,” he told a crowd of Boeing employees in Pennsylvania. Missile Defense All Over Again

Posted by: b real | Dec 15 2004 23:32 utc | 13

“duckspeak”…
very useful word, that.

Posted by: Citizen | Dec 16 2004 8:26 utc | 14

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