Avatar photoPerformance Anxiety: MDA Booster Fails to Rise to the Occassion

Integrated Flight Test (IFT)-13C was aborted “after the interceptor missile experienced an anomaly shortly before it was to be launched.” The target, perhaps representing a North Korean ICBM hurtling toward a U.S. city, performed flawlessly. Let’s be clear: This test was a big deal. Thomas Christie, the Pentagon’s Director of Operational Test and Evaluation, told …

Avatar photoMapping the Intelligence Budget

In the debate over the National Intelligence Director, news stories often report that the Secretary of Defense “currently controls up to 80 percent of the estimated 40-billion-dollar intelligence budget.” This estimate is either asserted, phrased in the passive voice or attributed to unnamed “experts.” So, where does the estimate come from? The 80 percent part …

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Avatar photoRichelson on MISTY

The National Security Archive has posted the passage about MISTY from Jeffrey Richelson’s The Wizards of Langley: Inside the CIA’s Directorate of Science and Technology, (Boulder: Westview Press, 2002).