The Worst Bluff Ever
The Associated Press has an unintentionally hilarious (to me, anyways) headline to an article about the governent’s possible responses to a North Korean missile test :
U.S. weighs shootdown of N. Korea missile
There’s a slight problem with that plan. After untold billions of dollars poured into the Star Wars program since the 80’s, we still don’t have the ability to shootdown a missile. In fact, as far as I know, even the article’s acknowlegement of this is too kind :
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said he could not say whether the unproven multibillion-dollar U.S. anti-missile defense system might be used in the event of a North Korean missile launch. That system, which includes a handful of missiles that could be fired from Alaska and California, has had a spotty record in tests.
Spotty? Has missile defense in any of its incarnations ever worked? If I remember correctly, the only successful tests have been rigged to include homing devices or omit decoys that could fool our still-not-ready-for-primetime system. Unless we can convince Kim Jong-il to shoot one of those “training wheels” missles at us, maybe our efforts would be better spent trying to prevent the North Koreans (or anyone, for that matter) from shooting a missle at us in the first place, rather than continuing the charade that we can pluck a missile out of the sky.
8 comments »
Copy link for RSS feed for comments on this post
Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>
Spotty? Has missile defense in any of its incarnations ever worked?
LOL - good question! Even the Patriot anti-missile system deployed in Israel during the Gulf War was widely aknowledged as likely having completely missed all but one or two of the SCUDS Saddam kept launching at Israel. Ditto for it’s record in Saudi Arabia during the same period. What’s even more interesting about that, to me anyway, is that the ever inventive Israeli’s took the core concept and made it vastly more effective by building their own version of the Patriot. And I think everyone would aknowledge that the Patriot’s record has always been a great deal less “spotty” than that of this regurgitated Star Wars system that Whitman vastly overstated.
Excellent post, Greg! You covered the precise issue which first ran thru my mind when I first heard that our government was talking up a missile defense in response to North Korea’s expected missle test.
Comment by Kevin — June 21, 2006 @ 9:34 am
You know, this would be a GREAT subject for a X-prixe kind of competition.
Only problem is, who will provide the titan missiles to practice with?
Comment by Blogtopus — June 21, 2006 @ 12:06 pm
Missiles in N Korea = Bad Medicine foe all of us.
Comment by KA — June 21, 2006 @ 1:16 pm
Even if the system does work, we are tipping our hand just to stop a test. Sure the world will be surprised and impressed by our ingenuity, but why waste it now?
Comment by Aaron — June 21, 2006 @ 2:00 pm
Yeah, this is really just embarrassing. In a competent administration, whatever moron actually said in public, “Oh yeah? Well we’ll just shoot the missile down!” would be out of a job. In this administration, they’ll be up for a Medal of Honor.
If they actually go through with this, it’s going to make us look [more] pathetic on a global scale. It’s like entering a pissing contest when you’re wearing a catheter. Not a good idea.
Comment by Joe — June 21, 2006 @ 2:34 pm
I recall reading a few years back that the Government was trumpeting the good news that they successfully blew up a test rocket. Huzzah!! It works!
Inconvenient Fact 1: The rocket had a homing device in its nose & was travelling on a pre-determined set of co-ordinates.
Inconvenient Fact 2: That rocket was one of five, all with the same homing device… the other 4 sailed safely by.
Inconvenient Question: There’s a missile heading towards you/your family/your city - how confident are you in your 1-in-5 odds?
Do you feel lucky, punk? Well, do ya?
Comment by raff — June 21, 2006 @ 3:02 pm
The important thing to remember is that before Bush and his cronies started robbing America blind under the guise of the war on terror, they wanted to rob the country blind by building a missle defense system. The war on terror isn’t going so well, fortunately we’ve found a missle we might have to shoot down. Anybody got anything left in their 401k? Send it to the white house….
Comment by Kamachanda — June 22, 2006 @ 4:38 pm
This all just makes me want to jump right up and ask if I can pay my taxes twice and pay them early……….really it all makes me sick.
Comment by KA — June 24, 2006 @ 9:31 pm