The U.S. missile defense system, Ronnie Reagan’s beloved Star Wars, has failed again, the second flopperoo in a row, and seventh out of fifteen tries, according to Reuters.
“This is a tremendous setback for the testing of this complicated system,” said Riki Ellison, chairman and founder of the Virginia-based Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance and a former NFL player for the San Francisco 49ers and Los Angeles Raiders. “Much more troubling is the confidence in the GBI [Ground-Based Interceptor] system that is currently deployed in Alaska and California.”
The West Coast GBI system protects us from attacks from North Korea. Fortunately for us, they don’t have a missile that can reach the West Coast, and, if they did, they wouldn’t use it. So it’s not that bad that this, um, multi-multi-billion dollar system isn’t worth a pitcher of warm piss.
Afterwords
How appropriate is it that the founder and chairman of Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance is a former football player? Jim Wolf, writing in Reuters, filed the main dispatch on this fiasco, and he quotes Riki as well, but omits the fact that Riki is an ex-jock, even though he is so identified in the Alliance’s press release, where Jimbo got the quote. It’s almost as if Jim, or Reuters, doesn’t want us to know the truth!
Afterwords, Part II
Kudos to Jim, however, for this information on yet another missile-defense flopperoo: “In October, a converted Boeing 747 jumbo jet equipped with a chemical laser failed to knock out a target ballistic missile over the Pacific, marking that system’s second such failed intercept test in a row. The flying laser has been scaled back to a kind of science experiment, no longer a development program aimed at eventual deployment.”
A “kind of a science experiment.” That is to say, it’s so much bullshit that even we can’t pretend that it will ever work, but we’re going to keep doing it anyway, because it’s fun, and, anyway, it’s not our money.
