Missile Defense Update, because you're not feeling ripped off enough today

[swag]

Looks like Raytheon will be able to afford to continue throwing those big Texas-style barbecues, the likes of which our President enjoyed so much, for Republican candidates and their cronies :

A couple of highlights from the Center for Defense Information's latest missile defense update ( http://www.cdi.org/program/index.cfm?programid=6 ):

Missile defense chances are "better than zero"

U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Trey Obering, head of the Missile Defense Agency, told reporters on July 21 that the Ground-based Midcourse Missile Defense system had a "better-than-zero chance of successfully intercepting, I believe, an inbound warhead." This assessment is quite a step down from earlier allegations of the system's effectiveness. During a March 2003 hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, then- Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition Pete Aldridge claimed that the GMD system would be 90 percent effective. Obering's latest statement comes after three GMD flight test failures in a row. The date of the system's next test system is uncertain. According to Obering, the GMD flight test program will start up again in the fall and is scheduled to hold four tests in the following year. He optimistically asserted that "'the odds that we would have the kind of failures we've had with two interceptors in a row are very low."
(Dow Jones News, July 21, 2005; Miami Herald, July 22, 2005)

House committee worries about missile defense oversight

The House Appropriations Committee, in its report accompanying its version of the 2006 Defense Appropriations Act, worries that the format of the Missile Defense Agency's budget requests would not allow for sufficient outside review. Committee members point out that the agency's official budget request for FY 2006 of $7.8 billion has only 12 lines and that "his level of funding in an individual program element obscures funding details and creates significant oversight issues." The Missile Defense Agency is waiting to see how the Senate Appropriations Committee feels about the matter before responding to the criticism.
(Space News, June 27, 2005)

[firefox]

1. Yeah, the targets will send out better signals...

and the flight path will be fed to the seeking missile. I mean better than the last time.

[SalmonChantedEvening]

2. Better than zero?

Well Hell's Bells, throw that program endless gobs of cash!! Of course you know this means all them useless literacy programs will just hafta do without..

:grr:

[swag]

3. There may be a more egregious single example of corporate welfare,

but this is a contender for cake-taker.

[SalmonChantedEvening]

5. Gotta keep Poppy and Uncle Bucky flush with cash! n/t

[wli]

4. for f***'s sake

I know at least 20 programmers personally who could bang out image recognition and pursuit code on embedded systems as fast as they can type it. This is far sadder than a joke, this is fraud.

[swag]

6. An added note - Bush's hurry to deploy a system by 2004 has caused

what MDA's scientific review group politely implied was and is a rush to failure.

http://www.cdi.org/program/document.cfm?DocumentID=3049&StartRow=1&ListRows=10&appendURL=&Orderby=D.DateLastUpdated&ProgramID=6&from_page=index.cfm

Unfortunately, the Bush approach prevails, to the benefit of his friends and relatives in the defense industry and to the detriment of our bank balances and our national security.

[GreenPartyVoter]

7. Nothing to say to this except

:banghead: