The Pentagon appears to have a loose construct of time and savings when it comes to the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) program. Originally intended to give the United States guaranteed access to space, it instead has done in its seven painful years of existence nothing more than give government regulators a giant headache. An …
IEER on Missing Plutonium
by | 2005-12-02 | 2 Comments
The Insitute for Energy and Environmental Research released a report on 29 November 2005 (written by two scientists, Brice Smith and Arjun Makhijani), detailing the amount of weapons-grade plutoinum that is in the soil or being stored as waste at Los Alamos. It contained this startling claim: There are major discrepancies in the materials accounts …
Is ABL going gently into that good night?
by | 2005-12-01 | 1 Comment
Missile defense programs generally don’t die; they fade away. They’re born of great hope and expectations, which they gradually piss away with poor performance and unbelievable cost growth until they can be quietly put out to pasture. Airborne Laser (ABL) seemed to be one of those unstoppable programs. Laser too heavy for the aircraft? Problems …
MDA's New Test Vehicle
by | 2005-12-01 | 2 Comments
TTV in all its infrared nerdporn glory … On 17 November 2005 the Missile Defense Agency conducted Flight Test Maritime 04-2 (FTM-2)—a test of its Aegis based missile defense system. A SM-3 interceptor did what its name implies and hit a dummy warhead jettisoned from a Medium Range Target (MRT) vehicle. This test is considered …
