There was a time when we, the United States, became extremely upset about the Soviets putting up a missile defense system around Moscow. We are now building a missile defense system of our own, it is called the New Field Infrared Experiment or NFIRE. First let's take a look at exactly what NFIRE is. It includes satellites that are equipped with very sensitive infrared sensors. The idea is that the sensors will be so sensitive, that they will be able to detect ICBMs in their boost stage and use new targeting systems and killer missiles to shoot them down. I can't help but wonder if this is just a ploy to sent more billions of dollars to defense contractors. First lets look at what has happened in the past. We tried using lasers and that didn't work out at long ranges because the laser would need too much power. We also have been trying to shoot down missiles with other missiles and we miss way more than half the time even knowing the exact location of the target before hand. The tests have done nothing to increase our ability to shoot down anything resembling an ICBM. The amount of money we have spent is enormous

How lucrative is this contract? I don't know exactly, but the original holder of the contract was Spectrum Astro and General Dynamics acquired them. Was this just a coincidence? I really don't think so. Maybe this was the plan all along, who can say? Be that as it may, this is the sort of project where the true cost may never be known. Part of the funding could be hidden anywhere in the Federal Budget. What I would like to know is what is going to be our reaction when other countries begin to do the same thing, specially countries that we feel may be potential enemies in the future? Will we be outraged? Will we have to launch an anti anti missile buildup, will they start an anti anti anti missile program? We may have outspent the Soviet Union but we will never outspend countries like China which is getting richer every day, while we get poorer. This is the problem with weapons, there are always more advanced ones over the horizon. Lord knows, we would be much better off with a true ballistic missile treaty that everyone would respect and police.

Many people believe that the worst threat we face now is from terrorists and they don't use ICBMs. Getting back to NFIRE, the schedule began to slip a couple of years ago. One of the big problems for destroying missiles that were just launched is trying to discern between the missile itself and it's plume or exhaust. Many times the intercepting missile will head for the exhaust rather than the missile itself. NFIRE has been criticized as a Bush Administration plan to weaponize space. What I am about to tell you next may sound silly to us lay people but the government decided to conduct the test without a kill vehicle. This is know as a simulated kill. Apparently it is much easier to "hit" the target this way. Many members of the senate became outraged and wanted the missile interceptor put back into the tests.

Hey why do that when it causes you to miss the target too much and make you look foolish? Not only that, but it seems the weapons system was never classified as a project in the Ballistic Missile Defense Technology Program. Putting it in that category upsets the backers of that program. They feel that this indicates it is a space based weapons system which they really don't want to admit.

I would like to say that I feel that there is certainly nothing wrong with defending your country but one has to look at the history of major weapons development. It doesn't take a genius to see that every time we developed a major weapon, it was stolen in short time and acquired by other countries, just look at the Atom bomb and the Hydrogen Bomb. It certainly didn't take long for the Soviets to acquire the plans for those two weapons systems. So here we are again, we will spend billions upon billions developing a missile defense system and it will probably fall into the hands of other countries within 4 or 5 years at the most. At that point two things will most likely happen. Measures to make missiles more stealthy will be developed and improvements to our system will take place, but not by us, by the country that has stolen the plans and is building it's own missile defense. Now we will have to improve our system. The wheel just keeps turning. It does make you wonder about the sense of all this, doesn't it?

Many people state that the U.S. is violating the Outer Space Treaty which it signed. I am not a lawyer but this is what I found in the treaty:

Article IV
States Parties to the Treaty undertake not to place in orbit around the Earth any objects carrying nuclear weapons or any other kinds of weapons of mass destruction, install such weapons on celestial bodies, or station such weapons in outer space in any other manner.

There is more to this article but I didn't think it was pertinent to this matter.

While we might be violating the spirit of the treaty with the NFIRE system, it doesn't seem to me that we are violating the treaty since NFIRE is neither nuclear or a weapon of mass destruction, but that is for the lawyers and politicians to argue about.

The Pentagon's Fiscal Year 2007 (FY 07) budget requests funds of nearly a billion dollars in programs that could provide dual-use space weapons capabilities. This doesn't count funds for black projects that will not be in the budget or hidden under other programs. The kill vehicle is gone again in NFIRE testing and many people are getting upset with this program. Some are claiming that many of the objects being launched into space will be dual use objects capable of being weapons and that there are no guidelines for their use. They are again accusing President Bush of weaponizing space.

Will the NFIRE system continue to drain our treasury and use simulated target acquisition? I hope not but again, who can predict what goes on in Washington. All I can say is that any government that exports about 37 billion in goods to China but imports over 200 billion from the same country is not exactly sharp. Using this as a guide of sorts I am ready to expect almost anything to happen.