Respectfully submitted by Lawrence E. Rafferty (rafflaw) Weekend Contributor
Forty Billion Dollars is a heck of a lot of money. It seems like an even larger number when you realize that just one defense program spent that large sum, and it has arguably been a disaster. I am talking about the highly political missile defense system program. You have probably heard about that program. It is supposed to stop any wild-eyed dictators from successfully sending any ICBM’s into our air space. It may just be an amazingly expensive pipe dream!
“Within minutes, the interceptor’s three boosters had burned out and fallen away, and the kill vehicle was hurtling through space at 4 miles per second. It was supposed to crash into the mock enemy warhead and obliterate it.
It missed.
At a cost of about $200 million, the mission had failed.
Eleven months later, when the U.S. Missile Defense Agency staged a repeat of the test, it failed, too.
The next attempted intercept, launched from Vandenberg on July 5, 2013, also ended in failure.
The Ground-based Midcourse Defense system, or GMD, was supposed to protect Americans against a chilling new threat from “rogue states” such as North Korea and Iran. But a decade after it was declared operational, and after $40 billion in spending, the missile shield cannot be relied on, even in carefully scripted tests that are much less challenging than an actual attack would be, a Los Angeles Times investigation has found
The Missile Defense Agency has conducted 16 tests of the system’s ability to intercept a mock enemy warhead. It has failed in eight of them, government records show.” LA Times
I think one of the most amazing facts in this story is that these tests issues are much easier than the problems an actual attack might present. So would an actual attack produce results even worse than 50%? Not only has the GMD failed one half of the time, it may be getting worse as the years and money drag on. According to many experts the GMD system was put into operation even before it had been proven to be successful.
“Despite years of tinkering and vows to fix technical shortcomings, the system’s performance has gotten worse, not better, since testing began in 1999. Of the eight tests held since GMD became operational in 2004, five have been failures. The last successful intercept was on Dec. 5, 2008. Another test is planned at Vandenberg, on the Santa Barbara County coast, later this month.
The GMD system was rushed into the field after President George W. Bush, in 2002, ordered a crash effort to deploy “an initial set of missile defense capabilities.” The hurried deployment has compromised its effectiveness in myriad ways.
“The system is not reliable,” said a recently retired senior military official who served under Presidents Obama and Bush. “We took a system that was still in development — it was a prototype — and it was declared to be ‘operational’ for political reasons.” LA Times
Not only is this system an expensive boondoggle to hand produce, it costs at least $200 million dollars just to set up one of the elaborate tests that have proven to be ineffective. What could this country have done with Forty Billion dollars in the last decade alone? How many roads, bridges, high-speed rail advances could have been made with that kind of capital?
Of course, politicians of many stripes have bought into the system, even with its repeated failures. These same politicians balk at paying for unemployment compensation, or for food stamps or the many infrastructure and social programs that this country desperately needs, but they have no problem forking over Forty Billion to save us from rogue states that don’t even have the capability to hit us with offensive missiles.
When will we as a country take control of the military industrial complex( MIC) that keeps siphoning large dollars from legitimate defense programs and much-needed domestic spending? Can we possibly gain control of the MIC without getting money out of our political elections? Can we gain control over the defense industry when they have such control over the politicians approving these huge sums of money for unproven systems?
While many experts have called for an end to or a reduction in this expensive enterprise, many politicians are trying to expand the scope and cost of the GMD program. “Despite GMD’s problems, influential members of Congress have protected its funding and are pushing to add silos and interceptors in the Eastern U.S. at a potential cost of billions of dollars.
Boeing Co. manages the system for the Pentagon. Raytheon Co. manufactures the kill vehicles. Thousands of jobs in five states, mostly in Alabama and Arizona, depend directly or indirectly on the program.
The Obama administration, after signaling that it would keep the number of interceptors at the current 30, now supports expanding the system. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has called for deploying 14 new interceptors at Ft. Greely by late 2017.
Missile Defense Agency officials declined to be interviewed for this article. A spokesman, Richard Lehner, said in a statement that the agency was working “to conduct component testing and refurbishment of the interceptors currently deployed to … improve their reliability.” ” LA Times
It is obvious that the military industrial complex has control of many in Congress and in the White House. Therefore, it may be an uphill battle to try to stop the program. However, if we do not try to at least force the program to prove its worth, how will we ever find the funds to heal our nation’s workforce and infrastructure?
If you had the call, what would you do with the money? Should the GMD program be halted or reduced? Can we ever gain control over the military industrial complex? If so, how?
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DOD:
I don’t know if the laser canon could handle a multi head warhead, or a missile farther away, but that was COOL!
To address all the absurd “warmonger” rhetoric, are people completely unaware of how many terrorist plots get foiled annually? If we disbanded the army, and gave everyone a flower lei, what do you think the countries would do who start their day teaching elementary kids to chant, “Death to America” as they do in Iran? What about Russia? If we had absolutely no military, how long would he covet our resources from afar? Would he just respect our indefensible borders and use diplomacy? And then there’s Iraq, the Taliban, Al Qaeda . . . hmmmm . . . what do you think they would do if they did not fear our military? Right now, they continue to try to sneak in terrorist attacks. But with no military, why sneak? ISIS has taken over the chemical WMD compound from Saddam, containing Sarin gas. It also has a biological laboratory set up to test lovely things like Anthrax on primates. Nothing could go wrong, right?
You don’t poke a sleeping bear because it will eat you. A strong military makes us that bear, instead of a rabbit. Other countries with weak military survive through alliances with stronger countries.
Dredd:
You speak often about the unfairness of “income inequality.”
I am against “golden parachutes,” and executives looting companies they mismanage. They smacks of fraud to me. But I am not against “income inequality” simply because two people make different amounts of money.
Let’s take several examples to explain why:
My husband used to work for someone else. He decided to start his own business, and invested his savings in work trucks, equipment, etc. He went out on his own with zero help from anyone. During the first few years, he almost lost his house. But he finally got on firmer footing. Over the next 25 years, he paid his guys before he paid himself. There were months he made zero and lived off of savings. Now he has a successful business. Still today, if the economy gets bad enough, and his business goes belly up, he’ll lose everything. Now let’s talk about income inequality. Is it unfair that he makes more than his lowest skilled worker? Is it fair that he makes more than his most trusted worker? He treats his workers very well, but he does not pay himself the same as them. Should the guy who sweeps the floor make what the boss makes, even though he shares zero risk?
Now let’s take a few more real life examples of income inequality. Take the people who drop out of school, get bad grades, do drugs, become criminals, get pregnant as teenagers, or take a series of entry level jobs, get bored, and never get serious about their life. We all know people in this category. Is it “unfair” that they make less money than their classmates who went to school, said no to drugs, followed the law, got good grades, and waited to get married to start a family?
Sometimes, people are in financial troubles through circumstances outside their control – illness, for example. And sometimes it’s because of their own choices. We can have programs like tutoring programs, intervention to try to keep kids in school and out of jail, but we cannot make their choices for them. And sometimes those choices are hard.
I support programs that help give kids their best chance at life, and to help those struggling through hard times. But to blithely say that income inequality is unfair on its face is disingenuous.
If a business owner was going to make the same amount of money as the guy who sweeps the floor, and the same amount as he did as an employee, how many small businesses do you think there would be? Would people put in the risk, the long hours, the months without pay, just out of the goodness of their heart? For fun?
Dredd, those videos and the realities of wealth distribution is illuminating and depressing. No wonder the super rich now can buy our democracy and turn it into an oligarchy. When average Americans can no longer afford Walmart goods, the Waltons may feel the pain, or perhaps they’re so rich with such a thick cushion, they’ll never feel the pain.
Yeah, some folks mentioned the laser canon technology
The laser canon…..Seems to work in the Lockheed demo video. Land test here.
Not sure how this would handle a multi-warhead like a Trident missile with 6 H-bomb projectiles.
The warmonger economy is controlled by a small group of people who are professional treasury plunderers (Let’s Not Forget Duane Andrews and SAIC).
The little money goes to wage earners, the BIG MONEY goes to the warmongering corporations (CBO, Wikipedia).
Karen S
Dredd:
From the article, “Thousands of jobs in five states, mostly in Alabama and Arizona, depend directly or indirectly on the program.” I don’t think all those thousands of people are in the 1%.
But there is something rotten in the state of our procurement system.
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That school of thought flunked the income test:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=QPKKQnijnsM
BTW, the AHC seems to like the new F-35 fighter. Have not seen anything on the defense system.
We are getting the F-35s at Williams AFB in Glendale, AZ. Everything I hear about them so far is pretty good. We are at the point where we need a replacement fighter and this is a ‘good enough’ fighter.
” In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the Military Industrial Complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”
President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Farewell Address 1961
Pete,
F-15s are great airplanes. I am familiar with that incident, but you have to admit that was a once-in-a-million accident that turned out to be survivable. However, they are from a previous generation. Here is s Sukhoi Su-35s and an Su-37 at a demonstration in Dubai.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhigI6ioKLM
Then you might want to Google Sukhoi T-50 Pak FA. Fifth generation fighter.
O S
pay the extra and buy american, pilots ain’t cheap.
Chuck,
do you have a patent on that fly killing machine?? 🙂
Nick Spinelli
Karen, Putin knows he has a Prez he can push around and play w/ like a cat w/ a mouse, for 2 1/2 years. It could get real ugly.
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we gotta make dubya a “special” envoy so he can go over and look into putins soul again.
you betcha
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_14_torpedo
We have a war economy.
Issac, Us policy is not to wipe out any country that attacks us BUT to wipe out any country that EVEN THINKS about attacking us. Thanks to George Bush.
Karen, Putin knows he has a Prez he can push around and play w/ like a cat w/ a mouse, for 2 1/2 years. It could get real ugly.
Saucy ~
I guess we know who’s actually calling the shots. The system has been gamed.
paulette92122 wrote “we weren’t supporting the troops by being at these shows but were being manipulated by manufacturers of these weapons”
A few months ago, SecDef announced that the subsidy for commissaries would be slashed (currently at $1.4 billion, new amount $400 million). This is a reduction of pay for military families and retirees.
Around the same time he declared that the new LRS-B bomber, starting at $550 million each, was essential for our national security. He said this even though the F-35 is over budget, under specification, hard to maintain, and unreliable. Did you know we started buying F-35s a year before we started flight tests, i.e. before the bugs were discovered? Frank Kendall, under secretary of Defense for Acquisition, called it “acquisition malpractice.”