Your tax dollars at work in the Defense Department.

[Cleita]

MSNBC

Vandenberg Missile Launch Fails
KSBY-TV
Friday, May 25, 2007

Reported by: Amber Lee

VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE

After being delayed once this week for weather related issues, our nation's missile defense system scheduled to launch out of Vandenberg Friday failed.

All systems were a go for the Missile Defense Agency, part of the United States Department of Defense, as an interceptor missile out the Vandenberg Air Force Base awaited to collide with its target missile launching from the Kodiak Islands in Alaska.

But shortly after the target missile from Alaska launched, all systems were not a go.

"It just fell into the ocean. But the interceptor that is here at Vandenberg Air Force Base is fine and we can use it for a test which will probably take place in a month or two," said Rick Lehner from the Missile Defense Agency.

More at: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18872028/

I'm just wondering how much health care ten million dollars could buy, or how much day care or any number of problems we could solve with this money that we are wasting on missiles. We really have to start changing our priorties. Spending millions on military hardware that doesn't work very well to point at an imaginary enemy is disgusting IMHO. You can't use missiles in the war on terror because they are not easy targets. Pointing missiles at North Korea because Bush doesn't like Kim will kill millions of innocent Koreans.

[eridani]

1. And we STILL can't even adequately armor our soldiers and their vehicles

Reuters link.

http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSWAT00758820070525

The United States scrapped on Friday a key test of an emerging missile-defense shield after a dummy missile that was to have been the system's target went astray over the Pacific.

"The target did not reach sufficient altitude to be deemed a threat, and so the ballistic missile defense system did not engage it, as designed," said Air Force Lt. Gen. Henry Obering, head of the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency.
The event was officially designated a "no test" when the target, launched from Alaska's Kodiak Island, failed to reach the defended zone, said Richard Lehner, an agency spokesman.

[Cleita]

2. This says it all.

"Critics maintain the tests prove little even when successful because they are highly scripted. An attacker would use decoys that would likely foil U.S. defenses, they say."

What a waste of money that is needed elsewhere.