US Missile Defenses Against Rogue Attacks Called 'a Disaster'

The missile defense system being devised to counter attacks from rogue states like North Korea is "a disaster," say scientists who advocated the project, and it has no proven capability to protect the United States, reported Reuters.

The ground-based midcourse missile defense system, which has deployed 30 interceptors in Alaska and California, has been tested under highly scripted conditions only nine times since being deployed in 2004, and failed to destroy its target two-thirds of the time, the Union of Concerned Scientists said in a report on Thursday.

"After nearly 15 years of effort to build the GMD homeland missile defense system, it still has no demonstrated real-world capability to defend the United States," said Laura Grego, a UCS physicist who co-authored the report.

Deficiencies in the program, which has cost $40 billion so far and is being expanded to include 44 interceptors by 2017, are due largely to a Bush administration decision to exempt the system from normal oversight and accountability, to rush it into service by 2004, Grego said in an interview.

"Instead of getting something out to the field that worked well or worked adequately, in fact this has been a disaster. It's done the opposite," she said.

The Obama administration's efforts to improve oversight while keeping the system outside the normal development and procurement process have contributed to the problems, she said.

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