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unhappycamper

(60,364 posts)
Thu Jun 26, 2014, 07:45 AM Jun 2014

Fort Greely may get 14 missiles at $75 million apiece, though they may soon be obsolete

http://www.adn.com/2014/06/25/3534383/fort-greely-may-get-14-missiles.html?sp=/99/188/



A long-range ground-based interceptor is launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, to intercept an intermediate-range ballistic missile target launched from the U.S. Army Reagan Test Site on Kwajalein Atoll in the Republic of the Marshall Islands during a test Sunday, June 22, 2014.

Fort Greely may get 14 missiles at $75 million apiece, though they may soon be obsolete
By Dermot Cole
June 25, 2014 Updated 9 hours ago

FAIRBANKS -- While the successful missile test over the Pacific Sunday increases the likelihood for a $1 billion addition of 14 missiles at Fort Greely by 2017, the Missile Defense Agency hopes to start flight tests in 2018 of a "kill vehicle" that would replace those it plans to buy for the new missiles.

The question of whether it is worth spending $75 million per missile on a kill vehicle -- a device with sensors and an on-board computer intended to hone in on a target high above the Earth -- that the Pentagon says should be replaced by 2020 continues to divide supporters and critics of the missile defense system.

The current plan before Congress is to spend $99.5 million in the next fiscal year to start designing the replacement. A new version would be more reliable, more available and easier to maintain, test, produce and upgrade, the agency said in its budget overview in February.

~snip~

Critics say it is a waste to buy more units of a kill vehicle that has already been deemed deficient and not as reliable as it ought to be. The system has had a poor record so far, mainly caused by the political pressure to do something fast, they say. The weekend test was the first successful intercept in nearly six years.
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