A $10 Billion Missile Defense System Gets Added to ‘Government Waste’

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

The Pentagon’s $10 billion--and counting--missile defense system is facing serious scrutiny after reports claim the entire operation as a “boondoggle” that isn’t capable of protecting the United States.

After the September 11 terrorist attack, the Pentagon allocated billions of dollars to build a massive defense system that was supposed to have the capabilities to identify and destroy any type of missile heading for the United States.

Just yesterday, the top official of the U.S. North American Aerospace Defense Command, Adm. William Gortney, told reporters that he believes North Korea has the ability to launch an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of hitting the West Coast of the U.S. with a nuclear weapon from a mobile launcher.

Though Gortney said he was concerned about North Korea’s capabilities and the issues plaguing the country’s missile defense program, he said he was “confident” that the U.S. has the ability to “knock it down.”

Those comments come just days after reports highlight an extremely grim picture of some of the U.S.’s major missile defense systems.

In fact, more than a decade and $10 billion later, at least three of those programs have been scrapped—while a fourth is under intense scrutiny for not working properly while continuing to rack up an enormous price tag at the taxpayers’ expense.

A new investigation by the Los Angeles Times concluded that the $2.2 billion Sea Based X-Band Radar, which is responsible for spotting enemy missiles, doesn’t work and is essentially nothing more than an enormous waste of tax dollars that has left the U.S. vulnerable to an attack.

The report says that although SBX is supposed to scope out missiles soaring toward the United States, it has an extremely “narrow field of vision” that could prevent it from identifying a large stream of missiles.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/a-dollar10-billion-missile-defense-system-gets-added-to-%e2%80%98government-waste%e2%80%99/ar-AAaDyDW

http://graphics.latimes.com/missile-defense/

[arcane1]

1. Cracking down on the REAL "welfare queens" sounds good to me!

[HassleCat]

2. It Will Work

I'm sure this latest version of Reagan's Star Wars missile defense system will work. Some day. Sort of. They made the vertical takeoff plane, the Osprey, work, and it only took 30 years and untold billions, plus a few lives due to crashes. Remember the Patriot missile, the "Scud Buster?" OK, it never really worked, but the media credited it with shooting down scuds and saving Israel from certain destruction, so Congress kept pouring money into it. Who knows? Maybe it works now, 25 years later. That's the way defense systems work. They suck up billions for ten or fifteen years, providing retired military personnel with nice second careers where they don't really do anything, and then quietly fade away, or maybe get recreated and re-funded. Joint Strike fighter plane, anyone?