The flight test of a sea-based missile defense system in the Pacific was aborted yesterday after an interceptor missile failed to launch from an Aegis cruiser, the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency said.
It was the latest setback in an ambitious sea-based missile defense program that will cost more than one billion dollars in 2007.
“In developing a global ballistic missile defense (BMD) system, the Department of Defense (DOD) currently is modifying 18 Navy cruisers and destroyers for BMD operations, and has placed a large BMD radar — the Sea-Based X-Band Radar (SBX) — on a modified floating oil platform,” according to a new report of the Congressional Research Service.
But sea-based systems are still far from providing a satisfactory resolution to the quest for a reliable missile defense.
The new CRS report (which does not fail to mention that Aegis “is named after the mythological shield carried by Zeus”) is a superb presentation of the current state of sea-based missile defense. Full of hard-to-find details, the 37 page document asks and begins to answer a range of questions about the future of this program.
CRS does not release its reports to the public. A copy was obtained by Secrecy News.
See “Sea-Based Missile Defense — Background and Issues for Congress,” December 4, 2006.
No one will be surprised if we end up with a continuing resolution to push our shutdown deadline out past the midterms, so the real question is what else will they get done this summer?
Rebuilding public participation starts with something simple — treating the public not as a problem to manage, but as a source of ingenuity government cannot function without.
If the government wants a system of learning and adaptation that improves results in real time, it has to treat translation, utilization, and adaptation as core functions of governance rather than as afterthoughts.
Coordination among federal science agencies is essential to ensure government-wide alignment on R&D investment priorities. However, the federal R&D enterprise suffers from egregious siloization.