UPDATE 1-U.S. missile-defense test fails over Pacific

Successes in most every endeavor are usually preceded by a series of setbacks. So this news does not concern me. Thank goodness Boeing and DOD continue testing the missile defense shield and that they admit the system sill has shortcomings. Protection from hostile ballistic missiles is critical in the face of existing threats from rogue nations and groups. Eventually, the bugs will be worked out and the defense shield reported to be functioning reliably. Therefore, I urge continued testing in order to get this thing right.

Well, better that they test it and figure it out. They’ll never figure out how to hit a bullet with a bullet by running computer simulations.

Need to have some edge other than MAD

Only hit 8 of 15 tries? No problem, just put up 3 times as many interceptors as expected incoming targets.

Just like the ending of the movie “Spies Like Us”!

This story could have been written by the left in America. The liberals have been dead set against a missile defense system from the beginning and just 5 years ago they claimed “it is impossible to hit a bullet (a missile) with another bullet and we are wasting the money even trying.

Even at this early stage of development we have a success rate of over 50% and are decades ahead of anyone else in this area of national defense.

This announcement seems most damaging compared to wiki leaks !

How many rockets did we blow up before we got to the moon? How many light bulbs failed before edition found the right filament? As long as you learn something, it’s not a failure.

Total incompetence by total incompetants. The bugs won’t be worked out until we get rid of the Socialist pigs in Washington DC.

This stirs up suspicion of the mystery launch off the west coast a month ago…..who was that missile anyway?

Why are we spending the money on missle defence?? When at present the real security risk is coming across our boarders in waves. Our true enemies’ are probing our weaknesses and know how porous our boarders our! The fact is that every pound of crystal meth, or cocaine, or pot, that makes it to its destination could in reality be enriched uranium or even a bio-weapon!! The terrorist version of a smart bomb is one that has SHOCK and AUH effect by mass casulties caused by a weapon that has yet to be used with a smart low tech delivery system with feet!!! So maybe instead of the politician spending money on wasted pork barrel projects designed to keep them in office, they should increase the pay of the military and boarder patrol personel and give them the equipment to do their job to secure this country. I also find it insulting for Homeland Security to pat themselves on the back for diverting an attack that through the chance of luck misfired. Instead of securing the boarders to prevent the terrorist attack that will eventually get through!!!

Boeing shouldn’t have fired all of us engineers last year. They’ve lost their knowledge base. Filling-in with inexperienced engineers on a “catch-as-catch-can” will only add variation and uncertainty to the system’s performance. Blame PRESBO for these latest anti-missile system failures.
The ironic thing is that I worked around many Obama supporters in Huntsville in 2008 and they all denied that PRESBO would kill the system. Now that we are all out on the street and when I run in to them, they blame Republicans. Go figure. The mindset is amazing. Freud was right about psychological defense mechanisms.
Before they let thousands of us engineers go, I had confidence in the system. I did reliability work on it, and it was more than good. I do not know what has happened to degrade the system since the MDA quit worrying about reliability. I tried to get hired by the MDA to do reliability work and they said that with 10 years experience and two Master degrees, I was not qualified. Now, I am digging a shelter in my back yard like my father had to do under John Kennedy. How does the saying go? “Rags to rags in three generations…” Well that is real progress under the Democrats. Rags to rags in one generation.

If at first you don’t succeed, buy another Senator………

Eight successes out of fifteen tests is a very poor result!! Given the very serious consequence of a failure to intercept a real ICBM, the nation should not rest until it has a 100% success rate whenever a test is attempted.
When Hitler’s regime sent flying bombs to London in WW2, the counter to this was to scramble the Air Force and try to shoot them down– and many were shot down. But many were not, hence the need for a fool-proof system, especially now that the destructive power of a missile is so much greater than just an explosion. Efforts must be redoubled to get it right EVERY time when tested. Meanwhile is the Air Force trained at intercepting test targets?? With a 100% success rate?

They’ll get there. They blew up plenty of ICBMs before they worked the kinks out of those.

For close to thirty five years they have been working on a missile defense system. Reagan started it with “Star Wars” and it has been a complete waste of money. Billions of dollars have been spent on a fools errand. Imagine for a second that they can develop a system with a 90 or 95% success rate. Then imagine that a hostile country with ballistic missiles “Russia, North Korea” etc. launch 100 missiles at the largest US cities in a massive attack. Now with a 90 to 95% success rate 5 to 10 missiles will hit their target. 5 to 110 nuclear missiles would wipe out those cities,this system can’t be effective unless it has a 100% success rate and that is never going to happen. They would better of spending billions of dollars preventing this crazy countries from getting ballistic missiles in the first place.

I expect some of the first airplanes crashed. If an episode of failure is a reason to stop the effort we would never have aircraft now. The issue is whether the failure was due to some unescapable law of physics or whether it was just a technical issue to be overcome. On another note the recent success of rail gun technology is an incredible development worth googling if you have not seen it. This is a way of making non-explosive, non-nuclear artillery with a range of hundreds of miles and an absolutely devastating impact – really expands the range of our navy potentially allowing us to withdraw land troops and still be able to suppress the North Koreas of the world.

This is corporate welfare at its worst.

Time to re-read Eisenhower on his warnings about the Military-Industrial complex. But now we need to add the Homeland security nonsense to the complex.

Spending more on “defense” than the rest of the world combined it surely bankrupting us.

Not that big of a deal. There will be more failures, but in the end this will succeed. A bet. Success is simply never giving up! Took the words
right out of my mouth bamacharm.

I think we need to provide more tax dollars to military contractors. If people go a little hungrier, so be it. We need to be well-protected against those who are out to get us. The fact that we spend more on our military than the next 15 nations combined spend on their defense industry simply means we’re doing okay. We can and must do better to defend our country against our enemies.

As complicated as these missle intercept systems are I believe multiple kill warheads on top of a larger delivery rocket would be more effective. If your running a 50% kill ratio placing 3 warheads on each rocket in theory should bring it up to 100% with sometimes a third warhead left over.
The expense of these systems calls for a quality product a 50% kill ratio is better than nothing but leaves allot to be desired. A drone capable of mach5 equipped with laser and a payload of killer warheads
may very well be a better setup you’d have a reusable delivery device and multi diverse kill systems.

We can’t even control our borders. Sound the retreat. America is crashing.

With these tests they know where the enemy missile is coming from where it is going and when it was launched and they still can’t even get close.
If by some miracle it did work an enemy would simply deploy counter measures.
As upstater wrote this is welfare for Boeing.

You know Gorbachev offered to get rid of all the Russian Nukes if the US would do the same, Reagan said no.

If America really believes Iran or North Korea has the ability to attack, or that they would attack if they could (and face absolute annihilation), then America is dumber than I previously thought.

Texas can’t tell if aircraft cross the border and now if we detect something, we’re unable to stop it. Not surprising since perpetual failure is the administration’s top priority.

Billions should be invested to study this immediately and apply it to other areas of the government!

It is absolutely absurd that we continue to waste money on this farce. For anyone who isn’t aware yet: The problem is not that it’s hard to shoot down missiles. We could do that if we set our mind to it. The problem is that it will ALWAYS be cheaper to fire more decoys than our system can track and neutralize. We could be completely bankrupted by much poorer nations simply because upgrading our system to handle more missiles is monumentally more expensive than it is for them to fire more decoys.

We’ve known this since the 1980s. This whole project is just a political football that a bunch of moronic politicians who don’t know that the scientists know better than them have managed to keep in the air.