The US continues to spend billions of dollars to implement a missile defense system that cannot work because enemy ICBMs can be easily equipped with inexpensive and 100% effective countermeasures. Even without countermeasures, the “hitting a bullet with a bullet” concept has proven technologically impossible to date. That hasn’t stopped the Obama administration from committing another $9.9B for 2011 on missile defense.
The cold war ended two decades ago, but dreams of an impenetrable missile shield from Ronald Reagan – who once called the Soviet Union an “evil empire” – are firmly back on the US national security agenda.
Late on Wednesday, the US tested its newest round of interceptors, spending $100m to blast a missile from the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean towards California.
The anti-ballistic missile system failed, as the kill vehicle designed to blow the projectile out of the sky missed its target, adding to a long-list of unsuccessful tests for the expensive weaponisation scheme.
So why continue to support an expensive and pointless strategy? Theodore Postol, a professor of science and international security at MIT, suggests the very people promoting missile defense simply don’t understand the science behind it.
“The Obama administration is making false claims about the technical capabilities of missile defence, like the Bush administration before it. As someone who supported Obama, I find this very disappointing,” Postol said.
Unsurprisingly, Lehner from the Missile Defense Agency thinks the programme is technically sound, despite Wednesday’s failed tests.
“In total, we have had 46 successful intercepts in 58 tests since the integration of the BMDS [a ballistic missile defence system contracted to Boeing] in 2001,” he said.
But Postol says the tests themselves are “basically rigged” with “minimal standards applied to the contractors of what constitutes success”.
Tom Sauer of the University of Antwerp in Belgium suggests a plausible explanation for the futile effort.
Boeing, a primary contractor for missile defence systems, maintains operations in all fifty US States. Thus, if an unsuccessful weapons programme is cancelled, local politicans will rally to protect it, for fear of losing local jobs and votes, Sauer said.
“Many representatives in Congress would like to see more money for these programmes, they are part of the military industrial complex,” Sauer said.
“It is basically a job creation programme in the US.”
This may explain why the Pentagon continues to insist, despite all evidence to the contrary, the program will work “if it has to”.
The Missile Defense Agency said the rocket, which is an updated version of those in the ground in Alaska, released its “Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle,” but it did not hit the target, according to the Associated Press.
The “kill vehicle” weighs about 140 pounds and is supposed to collide with an incoming missile about 120 miles above Earth at a speed of about 22,000 mph.
At a press conference Thursday, Gen. James Cartwright, vice chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, said he was not worried that the existing system, which has about two dozen missiles underground at Fort Greely, would work if it has to.
