About That Missile Defense Test Earlier This Month....

The Star Wars project, if one includes all the various systems tried since Reagan first proposed a missile defense system, is more than twenty years old. It has been a very lucrative source of income for defense contractors with very little practical result from all those years of research. I've been keeping an eye on the research from time to time ever since the early Star Wars proposal for what was then called the X-ray bomb, a virtually magical machine that would instantly track and send powerful directed X-rays (by way of a specially designed nuclear device) to knock out missiles launched by the Soviet Union, the main threat at the time.

The X-ray bomb turned out to be an illusion and the research for it died, at least as far as I know. But funding continued on other defense and tracking methods and tests are done from time to time with pretentious claims the missile defense system is close to operating in real world conditions. Sometimes, despite all the bells and whistles, the tests haven't been much more sophisticated than locking a pistol in a vise and aiming it at another pistol in a vise with a precise timer for both pistols in a windless room and calling it a success if by chance one bullet hits the other. There are better ways to ensure the safety of our nation. But over the years, Republicans and some Democrats have loved the project because it brings so much bacon back to the home district.

Philip Coyle has a post in Neiman Watchdog about the 'successful' missile defense test on Sept. 1:

The latest flight intercept test conducted on September 1, 2006, is a case in point. The defending missile hit its target, and the test was immediately declared “a total success” by Obering.

(snip)

...the interceptor did hit the target and MDA officials and contractors must have been both relieved and delighted. They had not had a successful flight intercept test for four years, not since October 14, 2002. Since then, in two different attempts the interceptor failed to get off the ground, and in the flight intercept test before that the kill vehicle failed to separate from its booster and couldn’t reach the target.

(snip)

Prior to and immediately following the test, Lt. Gen. Obering said that the most recent test “was as close as we can come to an end-to-end test of our long range missile defense system.”

This is surprising because the Sea-based X-band radar, recently laid up in Hawaii for repairs, was not in the loop, the early warning radar at the end of the Aleutian chain, called Cobra Dane, couldn't see the target because it is a fixed radar pointed the wrong way, and two planned missile-tracking satellite systems, SBIRS-High and the Space Tracking and Surveillance System are not yet on–orbit being years behind schedule and tens of billions of dollars over budget. Also, adequate discrimination of the exo-atmospheric kill vehicle interceptor, tracking radars and satellites all working together to guide the interceptor to the target has not been demonstrated.

Also notably, this latest test did not include any countermeasures. As Lt. Gen. Obering put it in response to a reporter’s question after the test, “No. we didn’t use countermeasures on this flight.”

All the previous GMD flight intercept tests have included countermeasures.

(snip)

Having no decoys or other countermeasures, the September 1, 2006, test was the simplest flight intercept test ever conducted in the GMD program.

They had not had a successful flight intercept test for four years, not since October 14, 2002. These tests are under ideal conditions that poorly simulate real world conditions and they are successful once every four years? That's not good. One has to ask: was this a serious test or just a publicity stunt for the Bush Administration? I don't know the answer.

Looking back over twenty years, the results are so poor for the amount of money and time we've been spending on missile defense one even has to ask if perhaps some of the missile defense money is secretly being diverted elsewhere? In any case, whatever the real budget happens to be, and it's huge despite any money that may be getting diverted, it's an obscene waste of money; and it underscores what is essentially a strategic error. With Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld in charge, this nation is not safer than it was six years ago.