MOONIE TIMES HEARTS MISSILE DEFENSE

Were these guys even on the same call? If you read the Moonie-​​owned Washington Times yes­ter­day, you would have thought every­thing was just hunky-​​dory with the mis­sile defense sys­tem — never mind all those tests in which the inter­cep­tors couldn’t get off of the ground.

U.S. defenses against enemy mis­siles are pro­gress­ing toward full deploy­ment and a new sea-​​based ver­sion hit a sim­u­lated Scud mis­sile flight dur­ing a test last month, Pentagon offi­cials said yes­ter­day.
Air Force Lt. Gen. Trey Obering, direc­tor of the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency, told reporters that the basic sys­tem of inter­cep­tor mis­siles, sen­sors and track­ing devices is work­ing and is a crit­i­cal national secu­rity weapon.
“Overall I’m very opti­mistic,” Gen. Obering said dur­ing a tele­phone con­fer­ence. “This is a crit­i­cal capa­bil­ity and I think that peo­ple will real­ize over time that we absolutely need this for our secu­rity, and I think we’ll look back and say thank good­ness that we were able to develop this sys­tem when we did and get it into the field.”

But now, check out what Defense Daily — the military-​​industrial trade e-​​journal, not exactly regarded as a bas­tion of left-​​wing thought — had to say about Obering’s chat:

The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) direc­tor Air Force Lt. Gen. Trey Obering is dis­ap­pointed with recent flight test prob­lems in the ground– based mid­course defense arena.
“I’m very dis­ap­pointed in this last test because of the sim­plic­ity of the fail­ure,” Obering said in a tele­con­fer­ence yes­ter­day.
“The flight test inter­cep­tor aborted as designed,” Obering said.
“We had a fail­ure of one of the ground sup­port equip­ment arms to ade­quately clear out of the way as it should have” within the silo.

Or how about this, from the Washington Post?

The gen­eral in charge of the Pentagon’s fal­ter­ing effort to develop a sys­tem for defend­ing the United States against bal­lis­tic mis­sile attack said yes­ter­day that he has ordered a thor­ough review of all ground equip­ment used in test­ing and appointed a senior Navy offi­cer to over­see future test prepa­ra­tions.
The moves by Air Force Lt. Gen. Henry A. “Trey” Obering III fol­low failed attempts in December and February to launch inter­cep­tor rock­ets in tests of the fledg­ling sys­tem. Both fail­ures have been blamed on what defense offi­cials say were minor glitches — a flawed soft­ware code in December and a faulty silo retract­ing arm in February.
In a con­fer­ence call with reporters, Obering expressed con­tin­ued con­fi­dence in the sys­tem. He said that even with­out the launch of the rock­ets, the recent tests scored some suc­cesses by demon­strat­ing the system’s abil­ity to track tar­get mis­siles and gen­er­ate inter­cept instruc­tions. But he acknowl­edged frus­tra­tion at the ten­dency of sim­ple glitches to foil the tests.
“The hard things about mis­sile defense we are accom­plish­ing,” Obering said. “The easy things are what we’re hav­ing trou­ble with.”

So here’s my ques­tion: Did the Moonie Times’ Bill Gertz actu­ally sit down and think, “Hmmm, let me carry the Administration’s water today”? Or is blind accep­tance so pre-​​programmed into the paper’s DNA that this kind of cheer­lead­ing becomes auto­matic?
(Thanks to Victoria for the catch.)
THERE’S MORE: On sec­ond thought, maybe this all has some­thing to do with lit­tle pig­gies. Or with get­ting high on the job. Sneak a peek at Dr. A.C. Wonk’s take on the mis­sile defense hackery.

March 11th, 2005 | Missiles | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.