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Demonstrating again that anti-missile missiles work best under carefully controlled circumstances, a test of such a weapon fired from Hawaii has missed its target.
The US$30 million test was fired from the Kauai Aegis Ashore site in Hawaii. It was supposed to see a SM-3 Block IIA anti-missile missile intercept a target representing an incoming missile that was launched from an aircraft.
The US Pacific Command, contacted by CNN, confirmed that a test took place but not the outcome, saying only that the test took place on Wednesday morning.
The Raytheon SM-3 Block IIA is a joint US-Japan development built to provide a defence against medium-range and intermediate-range ballistic missiles.
Defense News noted that without further information from the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) it's impossible to know whether the problem was in the interceptor, the targeting radar, or the Raytheon-developed Aegis weapons system used by the US Navy was at fault.
Additional Coverage at DefenseNews and USNI News.
The Raytheon SM-3 Block IIA Interceptor.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 02 2018, @03:56PM (4 children)
Just suck it up.
The wealthy have got the world cornered, and whatever you do or don't do, they'll get large amounts of capital from everybody else.
If the tax was left in your pockets, there would be more disposable income in circulation, and the prices would go up, so you would lose that money anyway, perhaps only with some less grumbling. All you are complaining about is that it didn't seem you made them take your money.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Immerman on Friday February 02 2018, @04:06PM (3 children)
Prices are not determined by the customer's available money - they're determined by the market's available *alternatives*. Doesn't matter how much money you have, if somebody offers the same product at half the price, that's the one most people will buy. In anything remotely resembling a free market, prices reflect manufacturing costs plus just enough profit margin that it's not worth it for the competition to try to undercut your price. In a fictional idealized free market the profit margin is naturally pegged at zero.
Granted, modern realities only vaguely resemble a free market, but outside of a few highly collusive markets, and those suffering from regulatory capture, there are plenty of alternatives with very low profit margins.
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Friday February 02 2018, @05:43PM (1 child)
Yeah, well about that free market... Look, I'm as libertarian as anyone here, but with things like missile defense systems one does have a legitimate problem: There aren't a lot of potential customers, which means that there aren't a lot of companies competing to enter the market.
That said, single-supplier cost-plus contracts are an abomination. This is clearly one of those systems where the government doesn't understand that it needs to cut its losses, instead of issuing even more single-supplier cost-plus contracts to fix a system that problem cannot be fixed. But it would be career suicide to tell Congress "oopsie, we wasted $2 billion dollars and 10 years, sorry about that". Probably Congress wouldn't want to hear that either, so they'd fire you and find some yes-man to say "sure, for just another $100 million, we'll fix that right up". And another $100 million, and another, and on it goes. Just like the continuing F-35 boondoggle.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday February 02 2018, @06:27PM
Oh, I agree completely - but the post I was replying to was saying that leaving money in circulation (rather than funneling taxes into rich-people's pockets) would cause prices to go up and put the money in their pockets anyway. And that's not how even remotely free markets work. Certainly it's going to end up in rich people's pockets regardless, the question is how much good it does before it gets there.
And no - I'm not actually opposed to taxes, assuming they're spent responsibly. I just hate seeing people so badly misrepresent how markets work - I see the exact same argument a lot against minimum wage increases.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by HiThere on Friday February 02 2018, @07:01PM
You're neglecting up front costs of entry. If there's a high cost of entry, then a small group of vendors can have a rather high profit, because if someone new tries to enter they can temporarily cut prices below costs to drive them out of business paying for it by using the banked profits they got earlier (and expect to gain later after driving out the new competition). This doesn't even require formal agreements if the current vendors are few enough in number. 2 or 3 is probably the limit before you start needing informal agreements. I'd guess that at around 6 you start needing formal agreements, which would make you a cartel. Proving this, however, can be quite difficult.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.