Star Wars Missile Defense

September 4, 2016, the San Antonio Express-News published a Tribune News Service report that the Pentagon gave Boeing a $2 billion performance bonus although the Ground-based Midcourse Defense System (GMD, formerly known as Star Wars) “failed to destroy their targets in six of eleven tests.” If a student gave the wrong answer on six out of eleven questions, that would be failure. If a teacher had several students who missed six out of eleven questions, the teacher would be fired.

Although it has never worked, the GMD is still regarded as the correct answer. On 9/11, Condoleezza Rice was scheduled to introduce a new national security policy with the GMD missile defense as a cornerstone and terrorism as an afterthought. (Washington Post (04/01/04) Her speech was interrupted by 19 hijackers.

There is a bright side. Reagan pledged that when the missile system worked he would give it to the Soviet Union (about halfway in the Reagan-Mondale Presidential Debate). If the missile defense worked, a President Trump might fulfill Reagan’s pledge and give GMD to his friend Vladimir Putin.