Serious flaws revealed in U.S. anti-missile nuclear defense against North Korea
Source: Los Angeles Times
Two serious technical flaws have been identified in the ground-launched anti-missile interceptors that the United States would rely on to defend against a nuclear attack by North Korea..
Pentagon officials were informed of the problems as recently as last summer but decided to postpone corrective action. They told federal auditors that acting immediately to fix the defects would interfere with the production of new interceptors and slow a planned expansion of the nation's homeland missile defense system, according to a new report by the Government Accountability Office.
As a result, all 33 interceptors now deployed at Vandenberg Air Force Base in Santa Barbara County and Ft. Greely, Alaska, have one of the defects. Ten of those interceptors plus eight being prepared for delivery this year have both.
Summing up the effect on missile-defense readiness, the GAO report said that "the fielded interceptors are susceptible to experiencing
failure modes," resulting in "an interceptor fleet that may not work as intended."
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Read more: http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-missile-defense-flaws-20150530-story.html#page=1
Carewfan
(58 posts)when North Korea should be taking care of Kim Jong Un and putting him in prison, getting out of the totalitarianism that they have had since Kim Il Sung.
iamthebandfanman
(8,127 posts)how totalitarian regimes work right ?
kinda like asking a Christian in the dark ages to overthrow God... but with actual risk of retaliation.
Carewfan
(58 posts)We're talking about one person.
Are they *that* brainwashed?
christx30
(6,241 posts)of rebellion, who can you trust? You have to tell people that Kim has gotta go. You have to trust that the person you tell isn't going to report you and you spend the rest of your life in a prison camp.
Even saying that you disagree, or sitting on a newspaper with the guy's picture can get you killed.
awoke_in_2003
(34,582 posts)yes, they are every bit as brainwashed as people who watch Fox News.
jeff47
(26,549 posts)It's one person on top of a whole lot of military, secret police and oligarchy. The rest of those people don't want to get rid of the dictator either - they're doing quite well living under him. All of them would fight to keep Kim in power.
And they are the ones with the weapons.
L0oniX
(31,493 posts)DRoseDARs
(6,810 posts)jtuck004
(15,882 posts)sulphurdunn
(6,891 posts)is disturbing on many levels.
jtuck004
(15,882 posts)"I protected us from North Korea, baby".
"Seriously"?
...
I know it's not funny, and people lost their lives to these idiots. They have missiles, could cause great tragedy. Yeah. Absolutely.
But they are scary like one of those round-bottom blow up dolls. You hit them, they might bounce back and break your glasses, but they seem mostly air.
And I find it hard to believe that we haven't fostered this to keep sales up, and a place for us to start shit with China.
L0oniX
(31,493 posts)jeff47
(26,549 posts)What's the failure rate due to these flaws? I didn't see that in the article. It's probably not in the unclassified version of the GAO report.
Failure rate 90%? Yeah, that's really fucking outrageous.
Failure rate 0.1%? Ok, it needs to be fixed, but delaying the fix to finish getting all of the units in place is probably a good idea - 0.1% is rare enough that you will be better off with more than with perfect. And both problems sound like something that could be detected by inspecting/testing the relevant parts in the silos.
erronis
(15,336 posts)The MIPC has its lying PR cadres. The think tanks have their own cadres that need to justify their monthly stipends/existence.
In reality almost no equipment is even close to 80% ready to roll until its been tested. The best way to test military stuff is to engineer a reason to use it. Maybe that's what the NORKs are doing. Maybe that's what the US is doing.
What could possibly go wrong with a little tit-for-tat with nuklear stuff?
Oh, and don't forget a real combat gets a new flyspot on your chest.
PosterChild
(1,307 posts)yuiyoshida
(41,861 posts)or a "BIG oOps!" ??
cosmicone
(11,014 posts)The warheads shed so many decoys along the way that there is no way any interceptor, even working perfectly would be able to get them all. The so called missile defense systems are just to rattle powers that have ICBMs and nukes - like Russia.
So far, even with perfect knowledge of the target re: location, bearing, altitude and velocity, over 70% of the interceptors failed to take out the target.
PosterChild
(1,307 posts)...of the Israeli "iron dome"?