from the "what's wrong with this picture" department ...

[welshTerrier2]

as long as they bomb us on a sunny day, we'll be fine ...

you keep hearing about all the waste, fraud and abuse in the military-industrial complex ... you keep hearing about how the so-called missile shield is an incredible boondoggle and amounts to little more than a corporate welfare system ...

as the US budget deficit continues to spiral wildly out of control, the chickenhawks and their enablers continue to pour money into ill-conceived weapons systems ...

from the "what's wrong with this picture" department comes this latest idiocy from the "War Department" ... the missile shield, which has failed virtually every test it's taken, didn't exactly fail the latest test ... of course, it didn't exactly pass the test either ... the thing is, the Pentagon boys decided to postpone the $85 million missile defense test because, well, ummm, the weather wasn't good enough to shoot down missiles ...

maybe they could build a weapons system that could be outfitted with a raincoat and an umbrella ... maybe that would help ...

source: http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=politicsNews&storyid=2006-08-31T194421Z_01_N30346169_RTRUKOC_0_US-ARMS-MISSILE-USA.xml&src=rss&rpc=22

A test of key parts of an emerging U.S. anti-missile shield was scrubbed on Thursday because of bad weather in Kodiak, Alaska, where a target missile was to have been launched, the Defense Department said.

The $85 million test -- designed chiefly to collect data, rather than shoot down the target -- may be rescheduled for Friday or Saturday, said Cheryl Irwin, a Pentagon spokeswoman.

"Bad weather and lightning at Kodiak" forced the postponement, she said in an e-mail.

The exercise would be the first involving a live target since ground-based interceptor rockets failed to leave their silos during tests in December 2004 and February 2005. <skip>

[Redstone]

1. Ever hear of the Sargent York? It was a ridiculously expensive, tracked

anti-aircraft gun system, "developed" in the late 1970s/early 1980s.

In one of the late tests (NOT an early test), its radar system did NOT detect a drone helicopter that was its intended target. It did, however, detect the exhaust fans from a nearby kitchen building.

And it proceeded to blow the hell out of those dangerous exhaust fans.

Some things never change.

Redstone

[jayctravis]

2. Well, this depends...

The reason they need clear visibility *could* be because they of course want to film the test. If they can't keep track of it with telescopic lenses they won't be able to document.

If it's because the system doesn't work in the rain...well...then yeah...that's stupid.