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LA Times: Missile Defense System Doubts
EFL
The Defense Department won’t know whether its multibillion-dollar missile defense system will be able to accomplish its mission when it becomes operational in Alaska in September. In a report to Congress, Thomas P. Christie said that because of a limited testing schedule that had been hampered by engineering setbacks, "it is not clear what mission capability will be demonstrated prior to initial defense operations."
How long did it take for us to put a man on the moon?
The fledgling system is to be based in Alaska, with a second component in California, and is intended to help protect against a long-range missile attack from North Korea. After years of debate over the wisdom of building such a complex and expensive system, President Bush vowed early in his term to have a system built before the end of his first term. Defense officials maintain that it is better to start with a rudimentary defensive system than to have none at all. They say that a continuing series of tests and upgrades will improve the capability of the system, which is now being erected at Ft. Greely, Alaska, and Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. But critics seized on the report by the Pentagon’s own expert.
How unsurprising.
"We won’t know what this system can do, if anything," said Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. "This is a rather severe indictment." He said the system’s capabilities would be unproven even if two flight tests scheduled to be held before September were successful.
You know sentator we have never really proved the viability of the MOAB either. What is your home address?
John Isaacs, president of Council for a Livable World, an arms-control group in Washington, who’s negative oppinion was easier to obtain than one from a real scientist said the report is "essentially confirmation that the deployment is essentially a sham, and that there’s no evidence it will work. He called it a political deployment." The Pentagon is spending about $9 billion a year on various missile defense programs. Estimates of the final cost of the evolving system range from tens of billions to hundreds of billions of dollars.
I imagine that the cost overcoming this system to the PRC will be economically crippling and lead to regime deatbilization
-Snip- Strong endorsement of an O-5 in the military which was obviously immaterial to the issue.
In his report, Christie said assessments of the system’s capabilities were based primarily on modeling and simulation and developmental testing of components, rather than on testing of a complete system. He said that because of "the immature nature of the systems they emulate, models and simulations 
 cannot be adequately validated at this time."
Says a missile expert, Dr. Tim Conway, "we thought that the juche-enhanced minions of the evil Mr. Kim may have taken time out from their current project, creating fire by rubbing to sticks together, and come up with an innovative way to defeat our state-of-art scientific modeling." His esteemed compatriot and fellow rocket scientist, Dr. Harvey Korman, proved unable to read his well prepared comments as he turned red-faced from the cameras in an attempt to cover the sound on snickering.
He also said additional tests of the Cobra Dane radar that would be critical to the system were "currently not planned." One of two booster rockets is on schedule for development and production, but a second has encountered problems and is behind schedule.
Sounds like every innovative project in history I am familiar with.
Christie has previously voiced concerns about the schedule but not the eventual viability of the concept. In an interview three weeks ago with Inside the Pentagon, a trade publication, Christie noted the problems with the booster rockets. "I’m a little concerned, frankly," he said.
Posted by: Super Hose 2004-01-25
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=25016