What do you think of this missile defense failure?

I once read where Thomas Edison was asked about all the failures he had when trying to develope a working light bulb. The reporter asked Edison how he felt about being a failure and failing over 9000 times to find a way to make a light bulb work. I recall Edison said: "I now know 9000 ways how not to make a light bulb. Success is almost within my grasp!"

Back to the proverbial drawing board!!! So much waste in the military let alone government overall. We definitely need some sort of missile defense system but spending 40B on a system that basically doesn't work. Well. :(

Having worked on the target (threat) end of these mission scenarios, I can say the successful intercept today was a huge milestone. If you read the LA Times article, you'll find some key lessons learned in the GMD development history. One of the biggest issues on this program was the decision to go 'pencils down' on engineering and head into full rate production. The system hadn't fully matured and been tested sufficiently before the design was essentially locked down.

GMD is a system that needs to be there as it is our highest tiered and longest range defense shield. Each flight test we learn more about how to hit a bullet with a bullet in the exoatmosphere. Failure in a developing system like this is a given. The problem is, GMD has been in a 'half development' and 'half production' sate of existence for several years. Data review and post flight analysis are so critical in systems like this. You get one shot to hit your mark and if you don't, it's one of the hardest CSI crime scene investigations to reconstruct and figure out why not. At the end of the day, it could've been a shock event experienced in flight, over-temp, wire routed improperly by an operator, or a component smaller than your thumb just failed to perform it's intended purpose.

On a personal level, I'm proud of my good friends, operators, and engineers that have dedicated so much of their lives to working on a mission that I feel very strongly about. Many will say that we can spend our money better or more efficiently in other areas, but I will say the flight tests we read about every few months are critical and our allies and adversaries do note our successes and failures closely. Nuclear missile threats by rogue and established states are real and they are not going away anytime soon. I congratulate the USAF, MDA, Raytheon, Boeing and Pac Sci teams for their hard work and awesome success today.