Star Wars:
Insanity is No Defense
It took me a moment to parse it.
Update: Coincidentally, the Washington Post reports (*) that the American Physical Society issued a 400-page technical report (*) saying that intercepting solid-state rockets in boost phase is technically infeasible. Here’s the APS’s own one-paragraph summary of the report:
Intercepting missiles while their rockets are still burning would not be an effective approach for defending the U.S. against attacks by an important type of enemy missile. This conclusion comes from an independent study by the American Physical Society into the scientific and technical feasibility of boost-phase defense, focusing on potential missile threats from North Korea and Iran.
Does anyone think for a moment this is likely to matter? To an Administration committed to the idea that policies should dictate facts rather than the other way around, this is no more than a PR problem, and a pretty minor one at that. But it’s time for Democrats to start pointing out that spending money on defenses that don’t work means not being able to spend that same money on defenses that do work: for example, developing, producing, and mass-administering a low-side-effects smallpox vaccine.
In the context of the current budget and security situation, continuing to throw money down the Star Wars rathole isn’t just wasteful: it’s profoundly unpatriotic.