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DRoseDARs
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"My god, it's full of peas..."
Jul 2002
time: 21:17
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A shocking, totally unexpected, wholly unforeseeable development:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitem...12/s1266063.htm
'Son of Star Wars' missile test fails
The first test in nearly two years of a planned multi-billion dollar United States anti-missile shield has failed, with the interceptor missile shutting down on its launch pad in the central Pacific before it was launched, the Pentagon said.
About 16 minutes earlier, a target missile carrying a mock warhead had been successfully launched from Kodiak Island, Alaska, the Pentagon's Missile Defence Agency said in a statement.
The aborted mission appeared likely to set back plans for activation of the rudimentary bulwark, known as "Son of Star Wars", against ballistic missiles that could be fired by countries like North Korea.
The system is a scaled-down version of a ballistic missile shield first outlined in March 1983 by President Ronald Reagan and derided by critics as "Star Wars".
In 2002, President George W. Bush pledged to have initial elements of the program up and running by the end of this year, although critics say that tests like the one on Wednesday failed to demonstrate any real-world capabilities.
"This is a serious setback for a program that had not attempted a flight
intercept test for two years," Philip Coyle, the Pentagon's chief weapons tester under Mr Reagan, said in an email exchange with Reuters.
The Missile Defence Agency said an unspecified "anomaly" had caused the interceptor to shut down automatically in its silo at the Kwajalein Test Range in the Marshall Islands.
The test had not been tied to the question of when to declare the system operational, said Richard Lehner, an agency spokesman.
"That's something that will have to be considered," he said.
Earlier this week the Missile Defence Agency postponed the test flight due to the failure of a radio transmitter.
It is not known what impact the failure will have on the Missile Defence Agency's plans for a fully-fledged intercept attempt next March or April.
In earlier tests, target missiles have been successfully intercepted in five out of eight attempts, but those have been under artificial conditions using some surrogate components.
Since the last test in December 2002, flight tests have been delayed or cancelled six times.
In December last year, Defence Minister Robert Hill announced that Australia would participate in the US missile defence program.
-Reuters
*********
Kimmy must be paralyzed with ...uh, not fear... erm ... laughter!
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Geronimo
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st cloud USA
Jan 1970
time: 05:17
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Like most of you I am dismayed that so much money was spent on a largely untested system at a time when the US faces fewer ICBM threats than ever before.
However, since we are now stuck with this huge boondoggle regardless, I've been trying to think of scenarios in which it could serve it's purpose.
One idea that came to me was that a large islamic country would experience a viruently anti US revolution and gain access to ICBM's while under the leadership of islamic fundementalist wackos who would believe one successful missle strike on the US would unite the entire rest of the Islamic world against the US once the US retaliated by cratering the islamic revolutionary country.
Seems really unlikely to me but i suppose if it ever did happen the missle shield could be of some use.
Has anybody been able to come up with any other scenarios where the missle shield might make any difference?
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Jon Miller
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well, our system wouldn't work against the USSRs of the world
and not even the China's
I guess I we are just hoping it will work agains tthe North Koreas and Irans..
Jon Miller
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10-12-2004 02:10
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