Back to the Drawing Board
US Missile Defense Agency in conjunction with the Japan Ministry of Defense conducted a developmental test of a new Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) Block IIA missile off the coast of Hawaii.
At approximately 7:20 p.m., Hawaii Standard Time, 21 June, a medium-range ballistic target missile was launched from the Pacific Missile Range Facility at Kauai, Hawaii. USS John Paul Jones (DDG 53) detected and tracked the target with its on-board AN/SPY-1 radar using the Aegis Baseline 9.C2 weapon system. Upon acquiring and tracking the target, the ship launched an SM-3 Block IIA guided missile. Unfortunately, the missile did not intercept the target as planned.
Program officials will conduct an extensive analysis of the test data. Until that review is complete, no additional details will be forthcoming.
This is the fourth live fire test of the system and the second intercept test. The first intercept test in February was successful.
The SM-3 Block IIA is being developed cooperatively by the U.S. and Japan to defeat medium- and intermediate-range ballistic missile threats. Currently in the developmental test phase, the SM-3 Block IIA is being designed to operate as part of the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense system.
Disappointing, but this is why we test. A very wise old tester once told me that failure is always an option, as long as you learn from it.
Category: Politics
Well this is a different system from the successful ICBM test last month?!
http://www.defensenews.com/articles/direct-collision-for-us-homeland-missile-defense-interceptor-test-against-icbm-target
Yes, you are referencing an Air Force long range, ground based ICBM interceptor system. This article is about a joint US Navy and JMSDF medium and intermediate range ship based ABM system.
A number of relevant quotes from Thomas Edison:
-“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
-“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”
-“When you have exhausted all possibilities, remember this – you haven’t.”
-“Negative results are just what I want. They’re just as valuable to me as positive results. I can never find the thing that does the job best until I find the ones that don’t.”
Things can look absolutely perfect on the designing board (or on a computer modeler) but real-life tests have a way of pointing out our mistakes.
At least tax money is being spent on things that matter.
Who needs missiles when we have infantry!
who needs infantry when we have artillery; except to protect the guns, of course.
Infantry is the Queen of battle, but Armor is the chastity belt the keeps that bitch from getteg raped
LMAO! RIGHT ON, Eric! Oh wait too much tanker enthusiasm this early on a Friday may be counter productive…NOT. 🙂
Sighs, unfortunately the older and slightly less dumber version of me grudgingly admits that Armor/Cavalry need the other guys…
What really gripes my ass is knowing that the Logisticians (EGAD did I really type that word!?) are sorta kinda necessary too…
“…but Iron, cold Iron, is master of them all….”
Then again, -someone- had to issue it…..
“Build a little, test a little, learn a lot.” RADM Wayne E. Myer, father of the AEGIS weapons system, arguably the most successful weapons system ever developed by the US.
Is this going to make my ATK stock go down?
One of the most fascinating men I ever met was one of the original designers of the Polaris missile system. He told me he had a fantastic time blowing up government paid for hardware. They worked their asses off for that program, for their country. I could tell, short of raising a great family, it’s the proudest thing he’d ever done.
Spend the money, make great missles, make great citizens. Repeat.
And there were a LOT of failures in that program, but they learned tons with each one.
Exactly. We sold our SLBMs to the Brits because they work. Hell, The Hermit Kingdom of a Sick Puppet Master (read: N. Korea) can’t seem to get them right and it’s even reported the Russians are having difficulties with the Borei class, if they ever really ‘got it’ at all. It ain’t easy as blow, light, zoom.
MDA was the most frustrating place I ever worked. Their bureaucracy makes everywhere else look positively efficient. It is all a big puzzle, change one piece and all the other pieces have to change as well.
My family has roots to the Pacific Missile Test center going back more than a half a century. As a kid I had a pretty unusual awareness of cold war missile types. Mostly because mock-ups were on display. I also had an old missile identification guide. It was cool as hell. I once grabbed a stack of those place mats that restaurants had with the map of the world we could color. For months I played a pencil and protractor version of thermonuclear war. Which in retrospect was a little odd. But it was the cold war.
So oddly enough missiles and missile systems remind me of childhood.
Cool story Derek.
You’re not the only Cold-War child to have done that with the world-map placemats. I grew up in the US Army’s Pershing Missile community, and several of us children got together and developed and played our own version of Nuclear Missile Risk.
So? somehow in all that you “blew your mind?”
There is a longstanding reason they are called “missiles”
(Puts on sunglasses)
Instead of “hittles”.
YYYYAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH
There is a legendary story…
Whilst his forces were getting beaten by Israeli aircraft, beaten like a cheap rug, an Arab leader sent a terse message to the USSR.
“Cease all shipments of surface to air missiles. Begin immediately shipping surface to AIRCRAFT missiles.”
The drawing board is constant and time consuming but we will get it right. I have faith in that system. In 1999 (gee I am old) while on board the USS Shiloh CG-67 we had the first successful launch of the SM 3 into the outer atmosphere on the same test range.
Why go through all this crap. Just dust off the Safeguard project, upgrade the tech (battle management radar and computers) pull the plans for the missiles from the archives and lets have at it.
Bada Bing, Bada Boom.
That’s brilliant. Let’s re-start a program over 40 years dead, which used nuclear warheads to kill incoming targets. Let’s not talk about the fact that the computers are gone, and the code would have to be re-written anyway.
Let’s fire that sucker up. All we need to do is upgrade the radar and the software. That shouldn’t take more than 10 years or so, and what we ended up with would be something like our current BMD in the 1990s at best.
…During which time the current BMD would be improving…
P.S. While we’re at it, let’s re-start the F-4 production line. All we need to do is update the engines, avionics, control systems, weapon systems, and software.