【据参考消息网4月7日报道】美国《洛杉矶时报》4月5日发表了戴维·威尔曼的题为《五角大楼斥资100亿美元研发的导弹防御系统彻底失败》的报道，编译如下：（编者按：任何一种媒体声音都有其背景目的性，随着世界战略格局及力量对比的变化，M帝开始喜欢唱衰自己，渲染他国威胁，望诸君明辨之）。

这不，老M子的RT电视台也跟着唱衰……

Billions down the drain_ Costly US missile defense project turned into major flop 时长2分钟

美国军事规划者试图打造一个防范导弹偷袭的防御系统，冒险开展了一个成本高昂的项目，结果多个项目失败，致使美国国土防御出现漏洞。

导弹防御局的主要官员曾对这一新技术赞不绝口。导弹防御局局长2007年对参议院的一个小组委员会说，海基X波段雷达“具备无可匹敌的能力”。

事实上，《洛杉矶时报》的调查发现，这种庞大的浮动式雷达是个耗资22亿美元的废物。尽管它能够有效地放大远距离目标，但其视野非常窄，在防御专家们认为最可能出现的袭击形式——掺杂着假目标的一连串导弹——方面几乎起不到作用。

机载激光武器系统

问题：由于激光的距离有限，每架波音747飞机都不得不飞到敌方边界附近或领空之内，因此容易受到防空导弹的攻击。要在更安全的距离飞行，激光的效力必须增强20至30倍。此外，激光的氢氧化钾和过氧化氢燃料对机组人员构成严重的安全危险。

状态：2012年取消。

成本：53亿美元。

动能拦截导弹

问题：动能拦截导弹的长度达40英尺（约合12米），会是现代海军舰船发射的最长的物体。要携带该拦截导弹，海军军舰将不得不进行改装，成本可能高达数十亿美元。此外，拦截导弹的射程十分有限，不能作为陆基导弹，必须部署在接近目标的地点，因而易受攻击。

状态：2009年取消。

成本：17亿美元。

多目标杀伤器

问题：研制发射能够在空中找到并摧毁更重型弹头的小型“杀伤器”的技术挑战被证明是难以克服的。除了大量其它困难之外，现有的陆基导弹将不得不进行改装或更换。这一概念从未发展到可以进行试射的阶段。

状态：2009年搁置。

成本：7亿美元。

海基X波段雷达

问题：雷达的视野太窄，不能可靠地跟踪一连串来袭导弹。其灵敏仪表设备在海上易受腐蚀，此外，即使短时间运行，也需要价值数百万美元的燃料。

状态：降级为“有限测试支持状态”。2013年，它在夏威夷珍珠港被闲置了8个多月。

成本：22亿美元。

该项目不仅浪费了纳税人的钱，还导致国防出现漏洞。研究过这一问题的专家认为，投入该项目的资金本可以用于研制能力更强、能够跟踪远程导弹的陆基雷达。

犯代价高昂的失误已成为导弹防御局的一大特点。导弹防御局是五角大楼下属的一个机构，肩负保护美国军队和军舰以及美国国土的任务。

《洛杉矶时报》发现，过去10年来，导弹防御局在海基X波段雷达和另外三个项目上投入了近100亿美元，而这些项目在证实不可行后被迫取消或搁置。

来源：《参考消息网》

图片、视频及原文链接编辑：《电科防务研究》

编后感：前日有TX留言，说“编辑，今天怎么发这个？还是电科防务吗，最近情感很丰富啊。小心发这个被领导批评哦”，还真是预（WU）言(YA）家（ZUI）啊……昨日果真被领导“批评”了，“既然是防务，就要鹰派点”……好吧，保证以后尽量不发休闲的东东了:)BTW，我们领导可是好领导哦，这是出于保护编者的考虑啊:)

The Pentagon's $10-billion bet gone bad
By David Willman April 5, 2015

http://graphics.latimes.com/missile-defense/

Trying to fashion a shield against a sneak missile attack, military planners gambled on costly projects that flopped, leaving a hole in U.S. homeland defense.

Leaders of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency were effusive about the new technology.

It was the most powerful radar of its kind in the world, they told Congress. So powerful it could detect a baseball over San Francisco from the other side of the country.
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If North Korea launched a sneak attack, the Sea-Based X-Band Radar — SBX for short — would spot the incoming missiles, track them through space and guide U.S. rocket-interceptors to destroy them.

Crucially, the system would be able to distinguish between actual missiles and decoys.

SBX “represents a capability that is unmatched,” the director of the Missile Defense Agency told a Senate subcommittee in 2007.

In reality, the giant floating radar has been a $2.2-billion flop, a Los Angeles Times investigation found.

Although it can powerfully magnify distant objects, its field of vision is so narrow that it would be of little use against what experts consider the likeliest attack: a stream of missiles interspersed with decoys.

SBX was supposed to be operational by 2005. Instead, it spends most of the year mothballed at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.

The project not only wasted taxpayer money but left a hole in the nation’s defenses. The money spent on it could have gone toward land-based radars with a greater capability to track long-range missiles, according to experts who have studied the issue.

Expensive missteps have become a trademark of the Missile Defense Agency, an arm of the Pentagon charged with protecting U.S. troops and ships and the American homeland.

Over the last decade, the agency has sunk nearly $10 billion into SBX and three other programs that had to be killed or sidelined after they proved unworkable, The Times found.

“You can spend an awful lot of money and end up with nothing,” said Mike Corbett, a retired Air Force colonel who oversaw the agency’s contracting for weapons systems from 2006 to 2009. “MDA spent billions and billions on these programs that didn’t lead anywhere.”

The four ill-fated programs were all intended to address a key vulnerability in U.S. defenses: If an enemy launched decoys along with real missiles, U.S. radars could be fooled, causing rocket-interceptors to be fired at the wrong objects — and increasing the risk that actual warheads would slip through.

In addition to SBX, the programs were:

• The Airborne Laser, envisioned as a fleet of converted Boeing 747s that would fire laser beams to destroy enemy missiles soon after launch, before they could release decoys.

It turned out that the lasers could not be fired over sufficient distances, so the planes would have to fly within or near an enemy’s borders continuously. That would leave the 747s all but defenseless against antiaircraft missiles. The program was canceled in 2012, after a decade of testing.

The cost: $5.3 billion.

• The Kinetic Energy Interceptor, a rocket designed to be fired from land or sea to destroy enemy missiles during their early stage of flight. The interceptor was too long to fit on Navy ships, and on land, it would have to be positioned so close to its target that it would be vulnerable to attack. The program was killed in 2009, after six years of development.

The cost: $1.7 billion.

• The Multiple Kill Vehicle, a cluster of miniature interceptors that would destroy enemy missiles along with any decoys. In 2007 and 2008, the Missile Defense Agency trumpeted it as a “transformational program” and a cost-effective “force multiplier.” After four years of development, the agency’s contractors had not conducted a single test flight, and the program was shelved.

The cost: nearly $700 million.

These expensive flops stem in part from a climate of anxiety after Sept. 11, 2001, heightened by warnings from defense hawks that North Korea and Iran were close to developing long-range missiles capable of reaching the United States.

President George W. Bush, in 2002, ordered an urgent effort to field a homeland missile defense system within two years. In their rush to make that deadline, Missile Defense Agency officials latched onto exotic, unproven concepts without doing a rigorous analysis of their cost and feasibility.

Members of Congress whose states and districts benefited from the spending tenaciously defended the programs, even after their deficiencies became evident.

These conclusions emerge from a review of thousands of pages of expert reports, congressional testimony and other government records, along with interviews with dozens of aerospace and military affairs specialists.

“The management of the organization is one of technologists in their hobby shop,” said L. David Montague, a former president of missile systems for Lockheed Corp. and co-chairman of a National Academy of Sciences-sponsored review of the agency. “They don’t know the nitty-gritty of what it takes to make something work.”

This leads, he said, to programs that “defy the limits of physics and economic logic.”

Of the SBX radar, Montague said: “It should never have been built.”

Retired Air Force Gen. Eugene E. Habiger, former head of the U.S. Strategic Command and a member of the National Academy panel, said the agency’s blunders reflected a failure to analyze alternatives or seek independent cost estimates.

“They are totally off in la-la land,” Habiger said.

Senior officials who promoted the four programs defend their actions as having helped to create a new missile defense “architecture.” Regarding SBX, they said it was much less expensive than a network of land-based radars and could be put in place more rapidly.

Henry A. Obering III, a retired director of the Missile Defense Agency, said any unfulfilled expectations for SBX and the other projects were the fault of the Obama administration and Congress — for not doubling down with more spending.

“If we can stop one missile from destroying one American city,” said Obering, a former Air Force lieutenant general, “we have justified the entire program many times over from its initiation in terms of cost.”

The agency’s current director, Vice Adm. James D. Syring, declined to be interviewed. In a written response to questions, the agency defended its investment in the four troubled programs and asserted that the nation’s missile defense system was reliable.

“We are very confident of our ability … and we will continue to conduct extensive research, development and testing of new technologies to ensure we keep pace with the threat,” the statement said. It called SBX an “excellent investment.”

Boeing Co., the agency’s prime contractor for homeland defense, designed SBX. Raytheon Co. built the system’s radar components. Both companies are among the world’s biggest defense contractors and are major political donors.

A Boeing spokesman said that SBX has “sufficient capability to execute its role with speed, precision and accuracy.”

Representatives of Raytheon declined to be interviewed.