Pentagon Building Cruise Missile Shield To Defend US Cities From Russia

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 Pentagon Building Cruise Missile Shield To Defend US Cities From Russia
A JLENS aerostat is seen on White Sands Missile Range.

    By Marcus Weisgerber Read bio

June 18, 2015



The military moves to set up an expensive sensor-and-shooter network, but is the threat real?

The Pentagon is quietly working to set up an elaborate network of defenses to protect American cities from a barrage of Russian cruise missiles.

The plan calls for buying radars that would enable National Guard F-16 fighter jets to spot and shoot down fast and low-flying missiles. Top generals want to network those radars with sensor-laden aerostat balloons hovering over U.S. cities and with coastal warships equipped with sensors and interceptor missiles of their own.

http://www.defenseone.com/threats/2015/06/pentagon-building-cruise-missile-shield-defend-us-cities-russia/115723/?oref=d-dontmiss

[EC]

Do they never learn?

From 2014:

The United States’ missile defense system will never work — which is why we’re spending more money on it

For almost 20 years, the United States has poured money into developing a missile defense system that would be capable of shooting down ICBMs and cruise missiles before they impact their launch targets. Despite the effort, the system has never worked. Last month, the General Accountability Office (GAO) released a report on the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) program slamming multiple aspects of the program’s design, administration, and field tests.

Despite these failures and problems, the House voted this week to spend an extra $20 million on developing an East Coast deployment of the GMD, while the Army has deployed multiple interceptors to Alaska and plans to order more. The total program cost through 2017 is estimated at $40 billion.

The problem is, this is a missile system has never been tested against an intercontinental ballistic missile (the major type of threat it’s supposed to defend against) and has only demonstrated, in the words of the Pentagon’s Director Operational Test and Evaluation report, “a limited capability against a simple threat.” That language has been used to describe the situation since 2003.

Missile defense system (theoretically)

In plain English, this is the worst kind of boondoggle — an expensive, protracted program that consumes resources chasing a goal that might be impossible. Yet other countries, like Israel, have successfully deployed a missile defense system. So what’s wrong with the United States’ program?

https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/182175-the-united-states-missile-defense-system-will-never-work-which-is-why-were-spending-more-money-on-it