Posted on 10/01/2007 6:12:53 AM PDT by RDTF
The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) announced today it has completed an important exercise and flight test involving a successful intercept by a ground-based interceptor missile designed to protect the United States against a limited long-range ballistic missile attack. The flight test results will help to further improve and refine the performance of numerous Ballistic Missile Defense System (BMDS) elements able to provide a defense against the type of long-range ballistic missile that could be used to attack an American city with a weapon of mass destruction.
The interceptor was launched from the Ronald W. Reagan Missile Defense Site, located at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. For this exercise, a threat-representative target missile was launched from Kodiak, Alaska.
The exercise was designed to evaluate the performance of several elements of the Ballistic Missile Defense System (BMDS). Mission objectives included demonstrating the ability of the Upgraded Early Warning Radar at Beale Air Force Base, Calif., to acquire, track and report on objects. The test also evaluated the performance of the interceptor missile’s rocket motor system and exoatmospheric kill vehicle, which is the component that collides directly with a target warhead in space to perform a “hit to kill” intercept using only the force of the collision to totally destroy the target warhead. Initial indications are that the rocket motor system and kill vehicle performed as designed. Program officials will evaluate system performance based upon telemetry and other data obtained during the test.
The target was also successfully tracked by the Sea-Based X-band (SBX) radar and an Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense ship using onboard SPY-1 radar. The Missile Defense Agency is developing and deploying an extensive network of land and sea-based radars to detect and track all types of ballistic missiles and to provide targeting information to interceptor missiles through the Command, Control, Battle Management and Communication (C2BMC) system.
The Ground-based Midcourse Defense system currently has interceptor missiles deployed at Ft. Greely, Alaska, and Vandenberg AFB, Calif. Several U.S. Navy Aegis-class cruisers and destroyers with advanced SPY-1 radar have been modified for integration in to the command, control, battle management and communication element of the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system.
Wait, didn’t the Democrats say this would never work?
Yeah but Democrats flunked science. And economics. And history.
And life in general.
Bingo!
Not by their standards. Life is power. They pretty much run the show.
Great news...
But will our wacky liberals give away, or allow this important tech to be stolen. Cases in point the give away to the ruskies of our docking tech, and the theft of out sat launch tech.
Ted was swearing at it saying just how 1) impractical it is to do, 2) its too expensive and 3) its absolutely scientifically impossible since its like using a bullet to shoot another bullet!!
And all of this while Russia had 12,000 anti-ballistic missiles literally ringed around Moscow. So its ok for the Russians to have them but its too expensive & impractical and unsound technology for USA???!!!
I swear, I never believe anything anymore coming out of a democrat's mouth and I always thinks "where is the double-speak"? What and How is the American Conservative Family gonna get screwed on what they are proposing?
I always thought that those arguments (you summarized them well) didn't exactly hang together well. For instance, Argument #3 (Scientifically impossible) is a fallacy. Nothing in the laws of physics prevents 1 bullet from hitting another. The Second Argument (Expense) essentially derives from the First (Practicality) and is therefore redundant. The practicality of the system was an engineering problem. An engineered solution takes time & money. The only way to guarantee that there will be no solution is to fail to try.
With the notable exeption of BMD, Congressional Democrats like to spend on defense R&D so long as we don't actually field any of the weapons that are products of that research.
Yeah but they were outstanding in self esteem and communism.
For some years now I've always had a gut feeling that a lot of our military secrets (deployed + those in advanced development) are being stolen and sold (or given away) to a hostile enemy power.
Mind you its almost a fact of life that China, Russia, Venezuela, Iran, etc are actively trying to steal our secrets, but my feeling is that someone very high up in the Govt on the Democrat side is giving the barn away.
The rusty hinge problem was fixed last year. The previous test didn’t go because the target was faulty. The 20 ABMs at Fort Greely are operational. As reported when this was breaking news on last week’s thread.
One of the democrat’s ideas of ‘peace’ is to have every country on par with us.
One of the reasons Clinton gave our secrets to the Chicoms was to establish ‘parity’ between us. Plus a major money maker to boot.
He as much as admitted it once.
(I don’t have documentation to back that up though)
Don’t forget liberal arts as well
Thanks for the video of this missile test.
“Glory Trip” fodder...
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