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The US Missile Defence System Is the Magic Pudding That Will Never Run Out
Poland is just the latest fall guy for an American foreign policy dictated by military industrial lobbyists in Washington
It's a novel way to take your own life. Just as Russia demonstrates what happens to former minions that annoy it, Poland agrees to host a US missile defence base. The Russians, as Poland expected, respond to this proposal by offering to turn the country into a parking lot. This proves that the missile defence system is necessary after all: it will stop the missiles Russia will now aim at Poland, the Czech Republic and the UK in response to, er, their involvement in the missile defence system.
The American government insists that the interceptors, which will be stationed on the Baltic coast, have nothing to do with Russia: their purpose is to defend Europe and the US against the intercontinental ballistic missiles Iran and North Korea don't possess. This is why they are being placed in Poland, which, as every geography student in Texas knows, shares a border with both rogue states.
They permit us to look forward to a glowing future, in which missile defence, according to the Pentagon, will "protect our homeland ... and our friends and allies from ballistic missile attack"; as long as the Russians wait until it's working before they nuke us. The good news is that, at the present rate of progress, reliable missile defence is only 50 years away. The bad news is that it has been 50 years away for the past six decades.
The system has been in development since 1946, and so far it has achieved a grand total of nothing. You wouldn't know it if you read the press releases published by the Pentagon's missile defence agency: the word "success" features more often than any other noun. It is true that the programme has managed to hit two out of the five missiles fired over the past five years during tests of its main component, the ground-based midcourse missile defence (GMD) system. But, sadly, these tests bear no relation to anything resembling a real nuclear strike.
All the trials run so far - successful or otherwise - have been rigged. The target, its type, trajectory and destination, are known before the test begins. Only one enemy missile is used, as the system doesn't have a hope in hell of knocking down two or more. If decoy missiles are deployed, they bear no resemblance to the target and they are identified as decoys in advance. In order to try to enhance the appearance of success, recent flight tests have become even less realistic: the agency has now stopped using decoys altogether when testing its GMD system.
This points to one of the intractable weaknesses of missile defence: it is hard to see how the interceptors could ever outwit enemy attempts to confuse them. As Philip Coyle - formerly a senior official at the Pentagon with responsibility for missile defence - points out, there are endless means by which another state could fool the system. For every real missile it launched, it could dispatch a host of dummies with the same radar and infra-red signatures. Even balloons or bits of metal foil would render anything resembling the current system inoperable. You can reduce a missile's susceptibility to laser penetration by 90% by painting it white. This sophisticated avoidance technology, available from your local hardware shop, makes another multibillion component of the programme obsolete. Or you could simply forget about ballistic missiles and attack using cruise missiles, against which the system is useless.
Missile defence is so expensive and the measures required to evade it so cheap that if the US government were serious about making the system work it would bankrupt the country, just as the arms race helped to bring the Soviet Union down. By spending a couple of billion dollars on decoy technologies, Russia would commit the US to trillions of dollars of countermeasures. The cost ratios are such that even Iran could outspend the US.
The US has spent between $120bn and $150bn on the programme since Ronald Reagan relaunched it in 1983. Under George Bush, the costs have accelerated. The Pentagon has requested $62bn for the next five-year tranche, which means that the total cost between 2003 and 2013 will be $110bn. Yet there are no clear criteria for success. As a recent paper in the journal Defense and Security Analysis shows, the Pentagon invented a new funding system in order to allow the missile defence programme to evade the government's usual accounting standards. It's called spiral development, which is quite appropriate, because it ensures that the costs spiral out of control.
Spiral development means, in the words of a Pentagon directive, that "the end-state requirements are not known at programme initiation". Instead, the system is allowed to develop in whatever way officials think fit. The result is that no one has the faintest idea what the programme is supposed to achieve, or whether it has achieved it. There are no fixed dates, no fixed costs for any component of the programme, no penalties for slippage or failure, no standards of any kind against which the system can be judged. And this monstrous scheme is still incapable of achieving what a few hundred dollars' worth of diplomacy could do in an afternoon.
So why commit endless billions to a programme that is bound to fail? I'll give you a clue: the answer is in the question. It persists because it doesn't work.
US politics, because of the failure by both Republicans and Democrats to deal with the problems of campaign finance, is rotten from head to toe. But under Bush, the corruption has acquired Nigerian qualities. Federal government is a vast corporate welfare programme, rewarding the industries that give millions of dollars in political donations with contracts worth billions. Missile defence is the biggest pork barrel of all, the magic pudding that won't run out, however much you eat. The funds channelled to defence, aerospace and other manufacturing and service companies will never run dry because the system will never work.
To keep the pudding flowing, the administration must exaggerate the threats from nations that have no means of nuking it - and ignore the likely responses of those that do. Russia is not without its own corrupting influences. You could see the grim delight of the Russian generals and defence officials last week, who have found in this new deployment an excuse to enhance their power and demand bigger budgets. Poor old Poland, like the Czech Republic and the UK, gets strongarmed into becoming America's groundbait.
If we seek to understand American foreign policy in terms of a rational engagement with international problems, or even as an effective means of projecting power, we are looking in the wrong place. The government's interests have always been provincial. It seeks to appease lobbyists, shift public opinion at crucial stages of the political cycle, accommodate crazy Christian fantasies and pander to television companies run by eccentric billionaires. The US does not really have a foreign policy. It has a series of domestic policies which it projects beyond its borders. That they threaten the world with 57 varieties of destruction is of no concern to the current administration. The only question of interest is who gets paid and what the political kickbacks will be.
© Guardian News and Media Limited 2008
80 Comments so far
Show AllThe American empire is a fraud, and The United States of Everything is rapidly declining. The only question is, whether it will kill itself before it destroys the whole earth.
Hoa binh
Great Great Article! Full of delicious quotes.
"So why commit endless billions to a programme that is bound to fail? I'll give you a clue: the answer is in the question. It persists because it doesn't work."
"But under Bush, the corruption has acquired Nigerian qualities"
Awarding contracts is what is behind everything in the US at the moment. The banality of greed that motivates our policies, domestic and foreign, is hard to imagine. The "fight against terrorism" and other slogans are to keep us looking the other way.
BTW - Of course this article was published in the UK, not in the New York Times or Washington Post.
We have the ability to live in peace.
Pursuing peace in an active way is much cheaper and more effective in securing our interests and security.
Brilliant article
Great Article - I never thought a (WHITE PAINT) punch line could have me rolling on the floor.
As usual, the most insightful articles about the U.S. are published in other countries, and most Americans never read them.
The real danger is that the United States believes its own hype on the effectiveness of these systems making a nuclear exchange more likely.
pk
U.S. capitalism apparently knows no end to the lust for power and wealth. A vibrant democracy is the only opposing force to the greed of capitalism. That is why corporate capitalism is the enemy of democracy.
The rights of capital has made the U.S. a war mongering nation, waging war in the interests of Wall Street, U.S. corporations, and a very profitable defense industry. The overwhelming power of these institutions has imprisoned the U.S. Congress.
Unfettered Western capitalism has now planted the seeds of its' own destruction.
Now the US and Poland just have to convince every other nation with missles to add radio transmiters to their warheads, so they might have a chance of hitting one or two of the potential thousands raining dowen on poor dumb poland.
these missle "defence" systems we banned under the nuclear treaties between USSR and USA simply because the cause a new arms race...if you can shoot dowen 1 or 2 of my missles, then I will simply fire 20 instead.
"The Russians, as Poland expected, respond to this proposal by offering to turn the country into a parking lot."
___________________
Monbiot's articles are usually witty, trenchant, and clever, but this one is too clever by half.
The Russians may decide to play it safe by turning the US, as well as Poland, into a parking lot.
They are aware that ballistic missile interception is largely a scam on US taxpayers. But are they willing to stake their lives on it? And should Americans be willing to stake their lives on the willingness of Russians to stake their lives on the fallibility of US anti-missile technology?
Would the neocons tolerate a Russian anti-missile system in Cuba, or would they turn Cuba and Russia into a parking lot first, regardless of the reliability of Russian anti-missile technology? Haha.
You think Monbiot's one-liners are funny? This one will crack you up : the Russians will (correctly) perceive a US anti-missile "defense" system in Poland as a US nuclear first strike, and respond accordingly.
But a little hitch like that won't stop neocon ideologues from deploying their Doomsday Machine; if anything, it will probably spur them on. Time to add human beings to the Endangered Species list.
The System Is the Magic
Are we somewhere between the endless bounty of Strega Nona's pasta pot and Chicken Little's falling sky?
I can recall the enormous orginazition built and maintained through the centuries on the idea that everyone was born with 'original sin' and could only be 'saved' through their sacriments. Once we built temples to the sky but now we point weapons at the sky. It's small wonder that we were kicked out of Eden.
If the system were to work, which is doubtful, it will have little impact on cruise missiles.
I'm really glad that this article has got onto CD today - I was knocked out by it when I read it over my breakfast this morning.
Perhaps the best discussion point of all in it: "The US does not really have a foreign policy. It has a series of domestic policies which it projects beyond its borders."
a single nuclear strike in any country would overwhelm the capacity of that country to cope with the casualties - any country. so, in contrast to any other weapon, where a 2% success rate would be considered dismal, with nuclear weapons, a 2% success would inflict severe trauma on the adversary, a scientific american article pointed out 40 years ago.could any country survive as a society with the destruction of their 2 largest cities?
hence a system with 90% success against nuclear weapons delivery systems is a failure, and the current systems are far from that rate of success , as the article above points out. the "few hundred dollars worth of diplomacy" is clearly the better way to go.
Too bad Poland didn't wiggle out of the neocons' coalition of the coerced in time to avoid missle deployment in their country.
Chernoble overwhelmed the old Soviet Union's capacity to deal with the refugees, the loss of power of shutting down 20 nuke plants, and the food that had to be destroyed.
Katrina overwhelmed the US capability to respond. Although that is more a political failure on the part of the Republicans and the Democrats.
A nuclear weapon strike would be much worse.
"Perhaps the best discussion point of all in it: "The US does not really have a foreign policy. It has a series of domestic policies which it projects beyond its borders.""
Typically, this is how mighty empires fall. They stop making rational decisions like they did when the empire was first being formed (or seized), and instead everything becomes 'court politics'. Whatever makes the court around the emperor rich is what gets done. Because the people at that level are so obsessed with their own power and infallibility that they thing their great empire can't fall, so why not steal a few billion by doing something silly.
"US politics, because of the failure by both Republicans and Democrats to deal with the problems of campaign finance, is rotten from head to toe. But under Bush, the corruption has acquired Nigerian qualities. Federal government is a vast corporate welfare programme, rewarding the industries that give millions of dollars in political donations with contracts worth billions. Missile defence is the biggest pork barrel of all, the magic pudding that won't run out, however much you eat. The funds channelled to defence, aerospace and other manufacturing and service companies will never run dry because the system will never work."
A very nice succint statement of what's wrong. The only problem is that he blames it on 'Bush' when Clinton was just as bad at this stuff. And probably most other Presidents back through say Ulysses S. Grant and other notable crooks.
PS ... and don't believe that putting Obama and the Chicago political machine in charge is going to make things any better. If anything, that might be replacing bumbling amateur crooks with true professional crooks.
There had to have been some kind of strong-arming (no pun intended) on the part of the USA to put anti-missiles inside Poland. What Russia should have done was to make Poland a better offer to join their side.
Poland - enjoy the capability of driving cars and heating your homes and businesses while it lasts.
So I hear that there is some diplomatic negotiations with Russia and Europe regarding Georgia (it was smart for the Americans to not take an active role in this dispute. Honestly, I think was one of the best decision that George has ever made as the selected resident of the USA). I want Americans and NATO people to know that Russia probably will accept nothing less than complete abondament of the idea that Georgia will join NATO. Will not happen... Russia will do everything in its power to make sure that Georgia does not join NATO - whether USA, EU or any other nation on Earth likes it or not.
The Russian occupation of Georgia, in my opinion, serves as a reminder to the world and any other organization that Russia will not be trifled with or tolerate any of its bordering nations from striking deals that are against Russia interests and (oh what is that phrase again? I forgot! Hmmmmmm oh yes...) its National Security. "The West" has had a field day for almost 20 years and had a apparent mistaken notion that the USA is the "sole superpower." I think Russia just wanted the world to know that Russia means business if it is messed with and they merely used Georgia, Ukraine, and soon Poland as examples in the hope that the nations of the West come back to reality as it were. Remember Americans and Europeans, humanity is at stake and the world does not revolve around you.
What is the matter Americans and Europeans? Russia does not deserve to have its interests paid attention to - that its national security interests do not matter to anyone? That Americans and European organizations can just do anything and everything they want? That figures...it is part of your arrogance as you have been spoiled with fantasy thinking of delusions of grandeur for almost twenty years now. Well, the USA, EU, NATO, and most western alliances can do most things negative throughout the world EXCEPT make Russia mad. NATO should have kept this in mind when considering expansion. Hopefully, NATO will think twice before proposing former Soviet Union nations to join it.
Samson said: "If anything, that might be replacing bumbling amateur crooks with true professional crooks."
EXACTLY! That's the point we've been trying to get across to the blind Obama supporters. To no avail I must add.
Not only are our Leaders blathering idiots they are also suicidal. Threatening Russia is like hunting lions with a switch.
This is the best article I have read on CD in a long time...
Witty and hard hitting.
"This proves that the missile defence system is necessary after all: it will stop the missiles Russia will now aim at Poland, the Czech Republic and the UK in response to, er, their involvement in the missile defence system."
"...and so far it has achieved a grand total of nothing."
"It's called spiral development, which is quite appropriate, because it ensures that the costs spiral out of control."
(That last one sounds like any Government project to me...)
SECRETARYBIRD...Your comment is very thought provoking...I would have largely lost that point in the article. Now I will have to think on it for some time.
George Monbiot is wrong. The program has been a great success. Just how much US (tax-payer) treasure has been handed to the coporations for this gig?
Our "policy" has ALWAYS been one thing, APPETITE and the skills of violence to feed it where and when we please. A terrific lucid first paragraph here laying out pure passive-aggressive insanity that calls itself defense. As usual. When the psychopathic Pilgrims pre-emptively murdered a dozen Native New Englanders (who'd been helping them) for a "plot" that didn't exist, they hung the heads on top of their church---and posted a white sheet dipped in the blood of the Native men butchered. America's first flag, friends. http://ancientgreece-earlyamerica.com
Don't worry. As soon as we're done SLOPPING up the remains of fossil fuels and nuclear shit, these silly "defense" programs will wind down. Until then, SHUT UP and SING and quit complaining !
The intelligent thing to do, if the reason for the missiles weren't bullshit, would be to involve Russia in the system. We could let them help protect Europe from missiles originating in Korea or even Iran. They could also benefit from such defenses. But by excluding them and building up NATO aligned countries on their borders, we are sending the signal that we don't trust them or want them as part of a global community. This makes a cold war inevitable.
Brother and sister, Power and Avarice go hand in hand down the lane.
Together, they incestuously breed Arrogance and then Incompetance.
It's kind of like the Olympian gods with a Friday the 13th twist
The Hopi prophecies state this land pretty much gets burnt off the face of the earth by man made fire that is now a reality that can happen.
George Monbiot - what you write here is valid, but you are watching the wrong hand! The magician chuckles!
Yes, this article does a great job revealing how bogus the pentagon storyline re the missile defence system is. Sure, graft and corruption are involved as they are in all military projects. But that is the straw dog - chase that and you are missing the point.
Critique it as a doomed to fail defence system and you are fooled again.
The missile defence system is not intended as a defence system at all. It is the groundwork for a space based attack system. Stacked in three layers (ground, mid altitude, and space) each component has offensive purposes and abilities. They are going for weoponization of space and those spaced based weapons are the final piece in the 'missile defense' system.
I don't have time right now to provide comprehensive links to explain this... anyone who has background information to make this clear, please post!
here is a start:
http://www.ucsusa.org/global_security/space_weapons/
thanks
Outstanding article!
Madlib... I think you misspoke. Didn't you mean to say "This makes a HOT war inevitable."?
Frankly I don't understand how this Doomsday crapshot 'best defense is a stupid offense' weapon can promise to save any lives whatsoever. I mean we're talking about shooting down Neutron bombs and such... particular nuclear weapons that were designed to dramatically INCREASE radioactive pollution with the stated goal of poisoning and killing off the enemy forces long long long after the blast has passed. In a nuclear war- every square inch of America would instantly become uninhabitable for 200,000 years. But this missile defense system proposes to blast the Neutron bombs out of they sky? Thereby only spreading the radiation globally through the upper atmosphere? Thanks BushCo. & Conspirators Incorporated!!! Great f*cking idea!!
George Monbiot deserves an A-plus for this editorial expose. Well researched and very well written.
Along with the factors Monbiot identifies - campaign financing, grandiose pork barrel for Pentagon contractors, billions more in appropriations for DARPA and the descendants of Curtis LeMay and Dr. Strangelove - there should be a tip of the hat to acknowledge the partisan political legs this missle shield scam has in our two-party system.
We should never forget how Ronald Reagan dropped Star Wars on Walter Mondale in a one-on-one presidential debate setting. The Dems never knew what hit them.
Perpetuating the technological quick fix fraud of today's missle defense shield not only assures the GOP of a bread-and-butter issue to peddle to the weaponry manufacturers in all fifty states. It also sets up the GOP's staple, inevitable counter-attack partisan ads for recycled use against any public figure that is courageous enough to stand up and denounce the Star Wars scheme as a fraud: real men and responsible leaders know it's always better to be safe than sorry where national security is at stake, so wimps and weaklings better shut up and stand aside.
It worked for Reagan. The fix is in for McCain to use it on Obama.
Either way it shakes out as a tool for framing partisan attacks in the fall election season, the US military/industrial complex wins. The big boys keep laughing all the way to the bank.
Bill from Saginaw
This article & all comments take as gospel that the missiles to be placed in Poland are defensive.
Reminds me of the Lonny Donegan song, Rock Island Line. To avoid a toll on pig iron, a train engineer tells the stationmaster, "I got all livestock, I got all livestock."
After he's waved through, he shouts back, "I fooled you, I fooled you. I got pig iron, I got pig iron. I got all pig iron."
Dick Cheney showed George Wanker Bush a map that said it was from National Geographic. The map clearly shows both North Korea and Iran bordering Poland. Bush believed it then and still believes it now. If you ask, he'll show you that map. If you argue with him, or show him a different map, you'll disappear into America's gulag in Eastern Europe where you will spend the next year or so with your testicles plugged into a wall socket. P.S. Cheney also recently gave McCain a copy of the same map and he (McCain) will gladly show it to you if you ask him.
"...ground-based midcourse missile defence..." = GMD = Grand Maginot Disaster.
Ahuramazda August 19th, 2008 2:22 pm
"Hopefully, NATO will think twice before proposing former Soviet Union nations to join it."
Et tu Brut! NATO will not think twice, for NATO was, is and ever will be just the code word for the same Empire of financial capital.
I remember an old saw: a Pole is praying God to send Mongols to Poland and Almighty asks him, Are you crazy? What would be your benifit after such disaster?
- I know, I know... But Mongols will pass Russia twice and that is my benefit!
So Poles must be happy.
Print and distribute... especially in countries under MSM brainwash control.
bill from saginaw.......but something different is happening in 2008,so it won't work as well this time....we'll see what happens on november 4th........americans are FED UP" with warmongering attutides and empty cowboy bluster......NOBODY IS AFRAID OF THE BIG BAD U.S.OF A. ANYMORE......we can't even secure a sandbox (iraq)and we are losing in afghanistan...(a desolate country)
More seriously, think of the alternative productive uses to which the money thus spent on this Grand Maginot Disaster in the sky could have been put. Better railways...proper flood defences for New Orleans...bridges needing repair...schools and houses that need building...
Any more, please?
I hear the Poles were strong armed into relinquishing their present defense system in favour of this one...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missile_Command
It's not a defense system. That's why it won't work as one. Forget about showing why it won't work as a defence and how much money is being wasted building something that won't stop incoming missiles.
It will work just fine for it's (hidden) true purpose: endless pre-emptive war. Let's talk about that.
http://www.space4peace.org/sales.htm
Book Description
The expansion of space militarization forms a common thread with the explicit unilateral empire-building of the Bush administration. But just as Star Wars did not begin with the Missile Defense Agency, preventive war theory did not originate with Donald Rumsfeld. Advocates of military space always were on the front line of those demanding global dominance. Loring Wirbel argues that the seeds for the current space supremacy doctrine were sown at the end of the Cold War, in the early days of the Clinton administration. Examining the evolution of space-based tools, Wirbel shows that missile defense strategy is part of a dangerous US move to wage endless preventive war and demand global supremacy over allies and adversaries alike.
Star Wars: US Tools of Space Supremacy provides a fresh look at the role of space as an enabler of the Bush administration's plans for endless preventive war. It debunks the benign notions of missile defence, and expands the definition of space supremacy beyond that of weapons in space, to include the unilateral misuse of space-based intelligence, communications, and targeting technologies.
About the Author
Loring Wirbel has been involved in military conversion & peace work for 25 years. He is currently editorial director for communications initiatives at CMP Media LLC, headquartered in New York & London. Wirbel worked with Mobilization for Survival in the American southwest on campaigns to end the mobile basing strategy for the MX missile, & to phase out Rocky Flats as a plutonium factory. His cover story on the National Security Agency for The Progressive magazine took a top Project Censored award in the early 1980s. A series on Reagan's Star Wars programs won a Scripps-Howard award
Even McCain must be smart enough to see that anti-missile system isn't going to work
And another:
" …their purpose is to defend Europe and the US against the intercontinental ballistic missiles Iran and North Korea don't possess. This is why they are being placed in Poland, which, as every geography student in Texas knows, shares a border with both rogue states"
Come to think of it, it might be a bit subtle, and also beyond not solely Texans' geographical knowledge.
All true...but the line "yet there are no clear criteria for success" reminds me of Dubya and his cabal- they have NO clear criteria for success as MOST human beings on Earth would understand it- why should their PROFITABLE little projects have any success measures either?
McCain might be elected- what are his "sucess measures"- rivers of blood, shattered lives, body bags,destrucion of whole communities- or Dividends/PROFITS based on all of the above? Certainly the latter, more of the same if he Swift Boats in...
Success in the old sense of the word means NOTHING after Dubya and his merry murderers, and their dumb ass supporters get through with it...
George W can defuse Russian worries about missiles in Poland by sitting down with his good mate Vladimir and agreeing to Russian nuclear bases in Mexico to facilitate Russian defence against possible future attack from Brazil.
Given the apparent lack of fitness for stated purpose of missile defence bases, the entire scheme is a domestic media excuse for other hidden goals. The first goal is the establishment of a well guarded and secretive US base of operations in Poland. I cannot imagine that the US will allow Polish nationals or anyone else not in US services to view the insides of its missile defence secrets. The bases requires protection, communications interception, spies, radar, soldiers on duty round the clock and logistic support. Probably a large airplane runway is required as well. It is not so much a missile defence system, it is probably more of a large US offence base, with offensive weaponry. Russia obviously finds it very offensive.
It may serve as a kind of take-over insurance for Poland against Russia to have a large sensitive US base on its soil. It is surprising that Georgia did not have one of these installed as insurance prior to launching a US styled invasion of South Ossetia. The US would not let Russia take over such a base, and would be forced to open warfare. Imagine those supposedly effective secret defence systems being appropriated by the Russians. But such bases probably take a long time to setup, and one so close to Russia would be too obvious a threat and too far for the Iran excuse.
The Polish government must have got a good deal on the base installation. Money must have changed hands. Poland is not so far from Russia, and I am sure this defence system is not very good against masses of Russian tanks, planes and troops, so it may be just a matter of time before Russia declares the base to be a national threat and takes a close personal examination of the insides of the Polish US missile defence base.
A very clear book to digest is richard rhodes '' ARSENALS OF FOLLY '' he quotes very extensivly the nuclear warriors responsible for our current stockpile . the long and short of it is that ALL missles past the magic number of 400 collectily on the part of the America and Russia will do rather nicely to obliterate both nations..and all missles past 400 are political chips played to expand their repective budgets and to use politically to get reelected in our country and to expand the politcal power of the Poliburo in russia..the same goes for Missle Defense
Of course such bases could also be a very big confidence sham game, designed to pay billions to US Military Military Corporations for nothing very effective, and push powers like Russia into spending big money on military offence systems so as to cripple their economy, just like the nuclear missile race with the former Soviet Empire. Since decoy systems are cheap and may not even be needed it is hard to see how the Russians will fall for the same trick twice. Expect more spending on Russian troops, tanks and planes. The political game is being played to keep Europe in the NATO and US fold, against Russia.
PLEASE READ THIS
The missile defence can hit a target if it knows the location of the target.
Now if it is programed into the missile the target location wouldn't knowing where RUSSIAN missile silos are sort of helps ????? That is the whole point of the missile defence it is an offenive weapon. The story is USA smoke an mirrors boys CD is again acting to help the pentagon