Frowning takes 68 muscles.
Smiling takes 6.
Pulling this trigger takes 2.
I'm lazy.
Posted on 12/16/2010 11:19:31 AM PST by FromLori
VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. -- An interceptor missile launched from California on Wednesday failed to hit a target fired from a Pacific atoll 4,000 miles away during a test of an anti-ballistic missile defense system, the Air Force announced.
The missile, called a ground-based interceptor, lifted off from coastal Vandenberg Air Force Base at 12:03 a.m. and released a device called an Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle, or EKV, that was to plow into a target missile fired from the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands.
The interceptor's sensors worked and the EKV was deployed, but it missed, according to a statement from Rick Lehner, a spokesman for the U.S. Missile Defense Agency.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
From what I understand, the Russians had a nuclear ABM battery protecting Moscow which could have destroyed incoming warheads through the brutally simple expedient of taking it out with another nuclear explosion. Obviously, this would have caused its own problems, but it would have been preferable to allowing a direct hit on a major city...
Why is the US even letting on that these test even happened, let along report their success or failures?
Could you imagine 65+ years ago reading “Tests on the Mark VI torpedo found it to have defects in it’s depth setting”.
Or if the Trinity test had been a dud “Today in Alamogordo, NM, the Army’s first test of an atomic weapon was a failure”.
“the Russians had a nuclear ABM battery protecting Moscow “
I think this was called the Galosh system. It was like our Nike-Ajax systems we had here and there. Yes it was nuclear, as was Nike and Ajax. We got rid of ours to comply with some treaty, the treaty allowed Russia to keep galosh in place.
Both systems were more anti-bomber than anti-missile.
Well, it was a missile, after all...
The interceptor system from back in the 60’s or so was called Sprint.
>> No big deal.
Exactly right.
In the late ‘70s I was part of the crew of the submarine that was the test platform for the Tomahawk cruise missile.
We had some spectacular failures. I remember one where we were going to fire a Tomahawk while submerged. It was a big production — lots of military and civilian brass, including SecDef, and the press also, in bleachers, waiting for it to break the surface and fly away.
Ha ha! It never did. Engine failure. You talk about egg on the face (not the crew’s faces as much as the contractors’).
Around then there was a lot of talk about the sub-launched cruise missile concept being a waste of time and money, a bad idea, never work, should be canceled, yadda yadda yadda.
We all know how that one turned out in the end.
R&D is R&D. Failures are part of the process. It’s not like they don’t learn from them.
And frankly... if you REALLY want government stimulus that REALLY WORKS to create lots of GOOD jobs — pump money into defense R&D.
FRegards
There were actually two interceptors that were probably in development and test during the 60’s and were deployed in the mid 70’s before the programs were cancelled. The high altitude interceptor was Spartan, a 3-stage missile. The low altitude interceptor was Sprint, a 2-stage interceptor that was intended to intercept warheads not hit by Spartan. Both had nuclear warheads.
>> The interceptor system from back in the 60’s or so was called Sprint.
Did Sprint’s coverage suck as bad then as is does now? :-)
Kind of makes flack jackets a little obsolete...
GALOSH is designated ABM-1b (Anti-Ballistic Missile). They have other systems for manned and unmanned air-breathers.
No one today would consider the AIM-9X Sidewinder a failure; but even today it does not have a 100% success rate. Early on the Sidewinder was selected not because it was such a killer, but because the Navy Sidewinder FAR exceeded the performance of the USAF radar-guided competitor.
My point is that this exo-atmospheric kinetic kill device is NEVER going to have 100% kill ratios, even when out of development and initially deployed. To expect otherwise is only the expected territory of our politicians.
Thanks, PLMerite.
Kwaj ping
“That said they could do this back in the mid 60s according to my dad who worked at the missle base on the Marshall Islands at the time. He didn’t go into detail.”
Probably because the ABM warhead was a nuke.
That’s why those old ones “worked.”
The new ones are just a perpetual boondoggle, Star Wars Part Deux.
Why the heck does the gubmint announce to the world every time one of these tests fails? Seems counterproductive, unless it didn’t really fail and this is misinformation.
Just as it was intended to with START pending before the Senate (see, guys. you aren’t really giving away anything valuable here)
need more quarters!!!!
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