BOONDOGGLE PRIME

In this story are the tales of 4 missile defense programs that spent 10 billion dollars but none of them worked.  As with most military adventures of the past few decades we were rushed to production on a large batch of fear-mongering that turned out to be unfounded.

But these 4 missile programs are special.  All were basically pipe dreams rushed to production without much testing and like all complicated systems , none worked any where near their design criteria.

The SBX Radar system

A 2.2 billion dollar submariners dream.  To catch one of these monsters in your periscope would be a dream come true.. This slow moving or anchored target would be the first thing to be taken out prior to an attack.  But not to worry the damn thing doesn't work anyway.  It spends most of it's life nowadays in mothballs in Hawaii.  It's field of vision was so narrow it proved unworkable..

Next up the Airborne Laser system a really expensive toy,coming in at 5.3 billion dollars.  So not powerful that it proved to be not a viable weapon.  Not to cheap  for a flop.

Next up Kinetic Energy Interceptor a real screw up.  To big to fit the ships it was designed for , and on land it required siting too close to enemy lines to be effective. But a steal at 1.7 billion.

Multiple Kill Vehicle designed to take down multiple warheads.  Test flight never flown program was cancelled after 4 years.. But a very low cost flop.. 700 million.

To put a little icing on this boondoggle a retired head of these programs blamed Obama for not doubling down on funding for these misguided programs..

Good thinking wouldn't you say , the damn things don't work so throw more money at them.  I wonder how much you could trim off our defense budget if you just threw out the junk.