Yesterday brought more news of failure from the missile defense system Americans are being told will defend them from nuclear weapons.
The test of the missile defense system was scrapped because the simulated nuclear missile didn’t go exactly where it was supposed to go. The missile defense system they’re building, you see, only works when enemy nuclear missiles follow the kind of flight path that the missile defense system expects them to. How likely do you think it would be for an enemy with a nuclear weapon to be so obliging?
“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,” explained Lieutenant General Henry Obering of the U.S. Air Force. So, nuclear missiles with a low altitude trajectory could completely evade the proposed missile defense system, even after they figure out how to get the system to work?
What kind of missile defense is that?
It’s just another reminder that this so-called missile defense system is based upon technology that doesn’t exist yet. The military started trying to create the technology for missile defense back in the 1980s, and still hasn’t been able to get it right. That’s not stopping the Bush White House from spending billions of dollars to build the missile defense system anyway.
If we’re going to spend money on building systems that depend upon imagined future technology, then how come we’re not spending any money on an interstellar personal transportation system, or an interdimensional electrical generation facility, or a time-reversal highway that gets us to our destination before we leave?
These systems would be just about as real as the missile defense system.
