Ronald Reagan’s ‘Star Wars’ project still hasn’t met original goal 30 years later

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/05/23/ronald-reagans-star-wars-project-still-hasnt-met-original-goal-30-years-later/



Ronald Reagan’s ‘Star Wars’ project still hasn’t met original goal 30 years later
By Agence France-Presse
Thursday, May 23, 2013 10:43 EDT

Three decades after Ronald Reagan launched his “Star Wars” project, the costly missile defense program has become a pillar of US strategy despite lingering doubts about its technology.

No longer designed to counter a Soviet nuclear attack, the anti-missile network is supposed to thwart a “limited attack” from North Korea or Iran. But numerous experts question if the system even works.

While Reagan’s blueprint provoked bitter debate in the 1980s, today’s program is now firmly entrenched in Washington. The project, however, still requires a daunting technical feat — to hit a ballistic missile travelling outside the atmosphere with another missile.

Supported by advanced radar, SM-3 interceptors aboard 26 naval ships and ground-based interceptors in silos in Alaska and California are designed to collide with long-range missiles, including intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), as they speed through space.



unhappycamper comment: Each one of the SM-3 missiles we have bought (the ones that can't shoot down incoming ICBMs) cost somewhere between $9 ~ $24 million dollars each --> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SM-3

For nine million dollars I would expect to hit whatever the SM-3 is designed for. For twenty four million dollars I would expect to hit everything incoming. Neither one of those expectations will be met with the current crop of not-ready-for-prime-time SM-3 missiles.

SM-3s and the whole missile defense project should go in the same bucket as our one trillion dollar F-35 project, our forty billion dollar Ford-class aircraft carriers, our two point two billion dollar B-2 bombers, our new Ground Combat Vehicles which start out at two hundred and fifty grand a copy, and our four hundred eighteen million dollar F-22s that have never been in combat.