I speak about it today in my latest video, but this requires additional elaboration. But before, harking back to halcyon days of Reagan's weapons programs, which we all saw, failed miserably in real combat, I want to point this out :
The question that now remains is: How has the US Navy managed to conceal all its glaring faults, bad policies, and weaknesses for all these years? Part of the answer is that the Navy has a history of not telling the full truth to Congress. It is well known that senior US Navy officers have a tradition of omitting information about the Navy’s weaknesses and deficiencies during public testimony. For example, in the early 1980s, wrote Scammell, Navy officers tried to conceal the shortcomings of the new Aegis system by using unrealistically easy operational tests, then by classifying the poor results: “An amalgam of sophisticated seaborne radar, computers, and surface-to-air rockets ten years in development, Aegis was built to simultaneously track up to two hundred aerial targets and to control thirty killer missiles. But in sea tests against sixteen easy targets – easy because they were lobbed in one after another instead of all at the same time, as they would arrive in combat – the supershield missed all but five…” Consequently, “The results of the sea trials were immediately classified, ostensibly for reasons of national security, and it was announced that the tests had been successful. When Congressional overseers eventually learned they had been duped –a gain because not everyone in the fiasco interpreted ‘patriotic duty’ as ‘staying silent’—the Aegis program was very nearly scuttled.” According to Representative Denny Smith, a Republican from Oregon and former F-4 fighter pilot, Navy officers deliberately deleted key passages from their initial test reports on the Aegis system to keep him in the dark on its failings.
You see. It is a fine American tradition of embellishing everything which relates to, well, just about anything when one needs to prove that everything American is the biggest, bestest and most democratic of them all. So, oversight and ACTUAL testing for real combat, not some BS of bombing backward nation into the stone age, is not required. Well ...
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s decision this week to cut more than half of the Pentagon’s test and evaluation office personnel was driven, in part, by concerns over the office’s plans to provide testing oversight for the Trump administration’s $175 billion Golden Dome missile defense project, multiple sources told Defense News. ... The decision sparked concerns from some congressional Democrats, including Senate Armed Services Committee Ranking Member Jack Reed, D-RI, who called the move “reckless and damaging.” “With staffing reduced to a skeleton crew and limited contractor backing, DOT&E may be unable to provide adequate oversight for critical military programs, risking operational readiness and taxpayer dollars,” Reed said in a statement. “This kind of politically motivated interference undermines independent oversight and leaves warfighters and the public more vulnerable to untested, potentially flawed systems.”
Ahh, we all know what is this all about. I am on record--the US Air and Anti-missile Defense is a joke, as is the overall development of combat missilery. The idea behind Golden Dome is fabulous--stick a bunch of satellites into orbit that they can see and track launches of hypersonic weapons. OK, that's fine, you know--detect, track and even develop (allegedly, we know it is a BS but for the sake of argument) firing solution. And here comes the issue--firing solution for what? SM-2, SM-3, what else? As the story of the US high-end weapon systems demonstrated--most of it was always a carefully tailored propaganda which lacked substance (same goes for Euro chihuahuas). To hit hypersonic weapon one needs: S-300V4, S-500, S-550 or at least S-400. US has nothing, zilch which comes even close to these systems.
And that is where we come to this rather shocking news, the oversight is being removed because Golden Dome will yet again be a Reaganesque allocation of funds for fat cats in the US military-industrial complex, which at this stage is stuck in the realities of 1990s and no amount of money can help close the gap in missilery which was opened and is being widened by Russia (and China) as I am typing this. It will be "Star Wars" cartoons (now CGI) all over again against the background of exposure of sheer military incompetence of Washington. Read my lips: bar some poor men's attempts or deploying some shrapnel in the path of the hypersonic weapon (a dubious proposition at best) or creating some super-pooper laser (also dubious in the extreme) and given the reality of incredibly difficult technological challenges, not to mention the fact that those devious Russkies design their weapons with the capability of fake targets, one needs to have a kinetic mean to hit the hypersonic missile. The US is not in this league hence the removal of oversight and testing--to sell to graduates of the school of advanced military studies of Top Gun: Maverick a cornucopia of exciting military porn BS. Hey, may be they will get lucky and will be able to hit 5 out of 16.
P.S. Ah, yes, to test Golden Dome you need REAL hypersonic weapons. The US doesn't have any.
