How do we stay alive?

Ignoring the more germaine question of "why" for a minute.

Recently I posted about the Pentagon's answer to the lack of armored Humvees in Iraq: The Stryker tank that won't withstand RPGs. Under one of those cosmic winks, Bob Harris posted on that same day about some other problematic weaponry.

The first flight test in nearly two years of a planned U.S. missile-defense shield has been scrapped two days in a row this week because of bad weather, the Pentagon said on Friday.

[...]

The test would be the first since a December 2002 failure in which the "kill vehicle" -- a Raytheon Co. -built 120-pound package of sensors, chips and thrusters -- failed to separate from its booster rocket. Of eight intercepts attempted so far, five hit their targets, but under highly scripted conditions.

Reuters article

Well, we hope that when we are attacked, the weather isn't bad.

A highly classified intelligence program that the Senate Intelligence Committee has tried unsuccessfully to kill is a new $9.5 billion spy satellite system that could take photographs only in daylight hours and in clear weather, current and former government officials say.

[...]

Among the champions of the program, officials said, has been Porter J. Goss, the new director of central intelligence...

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So let's do a cost-benefit analysis. We can look at historic weather data and see how many clear daylight hours over enemy territory we've had in the past and see if $9.5b is a good price.

[April 2000] So ... why are you buying the B-2 Stealth Bomber?

Believe it or not, the General Accounting Office reports that this boondoggle of a bomber, this prodigious piece of Pentagon pork, can't go out in the rain! Also, the thing can't be exposed to heat or humidity! It turns out that even a little dab of nature destroys the thermoplastic "skin" of the plane, which is what makes it "stealthy," capable of not showing-up on enemy radar.

I would laugh, but it costs too much. In 1981, the Pentagon said that it's contractor, Northrop Grumman, would build 132 B-2s for $22 billion. A decade (and 22 billion bucks) later, one plane had been built. One! And it failed its flight tests. The cost of this plane is roughly equal to three times its weight in gold.

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And you "Red Staters" (a state of mind) think the objective is to protect us. The government counts on your ignorance. And thanks you for it.