Whittle a beak series

Ilsm continues his whittle the beak series:

Professor Theodore Postol, MIT, is a continuing and outspoken critic of Missile Defense Agency, Star Wars and numerous related components such as Patriot and newer science projects. He made news in 1992 pointing out that 37 of 38 disintegrating SCUD missiles fired by Iraq during Gulf War II were missed by the patriot interceptor missiles.

Postol’s latest Op Ed Apr 15 2008 in the Boston Globe, is about the utter dismissal of outcomes of star wars tests of interceptors against ‘decoys’.

He states that of two tests attempted neither gave any positive results and failed against the least difficult decoys. He also states that there are allegations that the missile defense agency hid these dismal results and caused researchers to eliminate all references to failed intercept tests.

This shows one of the great foundations of weapon testing: tests ‘not failed’ are passed. Goes for tests not done and ignored.

Missile defense agency’s very busy public affairs office responded that there have been 5 tests of decoyed targets and all have provided “actionable” results. Got lots of things to fix. Tests are supposed to show things work, not show what is wrong with the object being tested. There is huge scrap and rework, and it is far more expensive to fix design errors after the system is in the field, but the tests succeed in justifying more money for these wooden beaks.

Star wars is so important it will be funded, built and deployed in Poland and be as useful as the Maginot Line.

Tests are success oriented. Never will a failure slow the profits. Disregard the failed tests full speed ahead! Scrap and rework is business development, revenue growth reward for failure.
This is not new, in Fall 2000 the Director of Operational Test stated that the MV 22 Osprey did not complete effectiveness tests and failed reliability and maintenance tests. The DoD was going to build it anyway, despite the negative report until an MV 22 crashed killing the crew in Dec 2000.

Congress needs to sustain these superlative design companies. As the interceptors are deployed no tests have been done to show that the interceptors can launch from alert with no script, will complete a mission cycle and get to target if needed. All the tests are highly scripted, and look like shuttle launches delayed for maintenance weather or what ever. Good thing North Korea cannot feed their children lest they might nuke us through star wars.

Might as well whittle a beak for all the good the untested interceptors will do.
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This by ilsm.