{"id":181355,"date":"2016-07-21T19:36:00","date_gmt":"2016-07-22T00:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2016\/07\/21\/weve-known-this-for-thirty-years\/"},"modified":"2016-07-21T19:36:00","modified_gmt":"2016-07-22T00:36:00","slug":"weve-known-this-for-thirty-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2016\/07\/21\/weve-known-this-for-thirty-years\/","title":{"rendered":"We’ve Known This for Thirty Years"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reagan’s “Star Wars” missile defense shield continues to reveal itself to be an expensive mirage<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The system designed to defend American cities and towns against a nuclear attack by North Korea is \u201csimply unable to protect the U.S. public\u201d and will remain ineffective unless Congress exerts rigorous oversight, according to a new report.<\/span>

<\/span>The report, to be released Thursday by the Union of Concerned Scientists, recommends that the Obama administration halt the expansion of the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system, known as GMD, until its technical problems have been solved.<\/span>

<\/span>\u201cThe story of this system is a cautionary tale about how the lack of appropriate oversight of a politically charged missile defense program has led to a system in tatters,\u201d said the report, written by three physicists with expertise in missile defense.<\/span>

<\/span>\u201cDespite more than a decade of development and a bill of $40 billion, the GMD system is simply unable to protect the U.S. public,\u2019\u2019 the authors wrote.<\/span>

<\/span>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>

<\/span>The report notes that in \u201cheavily scripted\u201d flight tests that are \u201cset up for success,\u201d GMD interceptors have often failed to hit mock enemy warheads. In the seven most recent tests, interceptors destroyed their targets just three times, the report says — a finding consistent with conclusions of the Pentagon\u2019s operational test and evaluation office.<\/span>

<\/span>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>

<\/span>The report said members of Congress and Pentagon officials insisted on deploying and expanding the system at a rapid pace\u2014at the expense of sound procurement and engineering.<\/span>

<\/span>\u201cRepeatedly,\u201d the report said, \u201cthe Pentagon has sacrificed quality, shortened engineering cycles and sidestepped acquisitions best practices to meet a deadline imposed by political rationales rather than technical realities.\u201d<\/span>

<\/span>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>

<\/span>The physicists write that \u201cthe continued development of the GMD system without adequate oversight and accountability, and the continued fielding of interceptors without adequate testing, means the system is not even on a path to achieving a useful ability to intercept ballistic missiles.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As if the F-35 weren’t proof enough, it’s clear that our defense industry  is completely dysfunctional.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reagan’s “Star Wars” missile defense shield continues to reveal itself to be an expensive mirage: The system designed to defend American cities and towns against a nuclear attack by North Korea is \u201csimply unable to protect the U.S. public\u201d and will remain ineffective unless Congress exerts rigorous oversight, according to a new report.The report, to …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[970,1008,987,1096],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-181355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corruption","category-defense-procurement","category-fail","category-missile-defense"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181355"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181355"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181355\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}