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CounterPunch
September
25, 2002
Haywire:
New Navy
Fighters Flunk Bomb Tests
by JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
This will provide scant comfort to Iraqis, who
are even now refamiliarizing themselves with the quickest route
to the nearest Baghdad bomb shelter, but a recently leaked memo
from Pentagon's top weapons inspector warns that the Navy is
deploying for battle "an increasing number" of combat
systems that may be seriously flawed.
Thomas Christie, director of operational
testing and evaluation for the Department of Defense, sent his
memo to Gordon England, the Secretary of the Navy last month.
The memo was leaked to the Project on Government Oversight, a
Washington-based Pentagon watchdog group.
"I am concerned about an apparent
trend by the Navy to deploy an increasing number of combat systems
into harm's way that have not demonstrated acceptable performance,"
wrote Christie. "I strongly recommend that you adopt a policy
of deploying new deploying new combat systems after they have
demonstrated appropriate performance during adequate operational
test and evaluation."
Christie cited the weapons systems used
by the Navy's F/A-18E/F Super Hornet fighter as being the most
suspect. The Super Hornets are the Navy's top fighter aircraft
in the Persian Gulf and Arabian Sea. In an all-out war against
Iraq, the Super Hornets, based on the US aircraft carrier Abraham
Lincoln, are expected to lead the Navy's air campaign against
Iraq.
When the big new weapons systems fail
their testing, instead of asking the contractors to fix the problem,
the Navy, ever anxious to have the newest and latest hardware,
simply "dumbs down" the test. It's like lowering entrance
examines for high-yield explosives. Christie's memo says this
happened with two classified weapons systems for the Super Hornet,
one is unnamed and the other is a shared reconnaissance model
called SHARP, which is supposed to allow pilots to see images
up to 50 miles away at altitudes of 50,000 feet in all kinds
of weather.
Christie also warned that the Super Hornet's
infrared missile targeting system, known as ATFLIR, failed to
measure up to expectations during a round of operational testing
in April. The AFLIR uses a small visible light camera to detect,
classify and track both air-to-air and air-to-surface targets.
In the April test of laser-guided bombs, however, the AFLIR system
only worked two out of seven times.
An even more widespread problem is likely
to be encountered if the Navy proceeds with plans to install
the Joint Standoff Weapon (JSOW) on the USS Stennis aircraft
carrier. The JSOW is a guidance system for the Navy's new generation
of "smart bombs" and is slated to be used not only
on the Super Hornet, but also on the F-16 fighter and B-52 and
B-2 bombers. Christie says that the JSOW has yet to demonstrate
"acceptable performance" in operational testing.
All of this brings back memories of the
first Gulf War, when the Pentagon hailed its new technological
prowess, featuring its integrated arsenal of AWACS, Stealth fighters
and bombers and smart bombs. Well, it turned out that these new
systems didn't turn out to be very efficient or very smart. The
stealth systems didn't work in cold weather or heavy winds. The
smart bombs hardly lived up to their advanced billing or the
daily Pentagon videos of missiles dropping into Iraqi smokestacks.
In fact, post-war bombing assessments showed that the smart bombs
hit their targets only about 30 percent of the time. Needless
to say, we didn't get to watch Schwartzkoft explain with a telestrator
what went wrong when the smart bombs missed their targets and
hit neighborhoods filled with Iraqi women and children.
In the end, even the Pentagon figured
out that the war couldn't be fought with the smart bombs and
resorted to old-fashioned carpet bombing with B-52s. More than
90 percent of the bombs dropped on Iraq were conventional ordinance.
Similarly, the sleek and expensive new fighter planes gave way
to old war-horses, such as the A-10, which most independent defense
analysts credit with destroying the entrenched Iraqi tank divisions
in Kuwait and southern Iraq.
The mad rush to get these unproven systems
operational before the bombing of Baghdad gets under way has
a simple explanation. The Pentagon always wants new and more
expensive war toys and its contractors make sure that congress
appropriates the money to make that desire a reality. The Super
Hornet is built by Boeing. The Navy has already ordered 222 of
these fighters, at a price tag of $57 million per copy. And it
wants to buy 300 more. There's 29 billion reasons to move as
quickly as possible-test scores be damned.
The Pentagon, of course, probably views
Iraq as the ultimate testing ground for its menu of new bombing
systems. Given Iraq's decimated air-defense system and inept
air force, there's little risk of US planes being taken down
through the failure of any of these systems. And, given the tight
constrictions on press coverage that have been in place since
the first Gulf War, there's also little chance that the flaws
in these multi-billion dollar systems will come to light during
the impending war.
But when one of these missiles misses
its target and slams into a house or marketplace because of a
glitch in the new Boeing war technology, it means that more innocent
Iraqi's will die, unwitting victims of the "operation testing"
of a technology which will have only proven its capacity to kill
without discrimination.
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September
21 / 22, 2002
Alexander
Cockburn
An Entire
Class
of Thieves
Tom Gorman
The Press & Sabra
and Shatila
Amelia Peltz
Anniversary with Life
in Palestine
Susan Martinez
By the Hand
of the Father
Ben Tripp
Advice from
a Polemicist
Adam Engel
From Above:
Forgetting bin Laden
Chris Clarke
The Ann Coulter Test
Tariq Ali
Doing as the
Romans Did
Mokhiber / Weissman
The Bush Victory
in Iraq
Ralph Nader
Greed Without Limits
Thomas Croft
The Life of Jim Cummings
Anthony Gancarski
Concerned Citizen:
a serialized Novel,
Episode One
Wolff, Dailey, Metres
& St. Clair
Poet's Basement
September
20, 2002
Joan Hoff
Debating
War:
the Forgotten Tradition
Norman Madarasz
Lessons from a Cyncial Master Jean
Chretien's
New York State of Mind
Mitchel Cohen
Toxic Wastes
and
the New World Order
Peter Lee
Why Bush
Wants This War
Bruce Jackson
20 Questions
About Bush's
War Against Arabs
Krystal Kyer
Greenwashing the Marketplace
September
19, 2002
Ron Jacobs
Cheney's
Vermont Breakfast
Ilija Trojanow
/ Ranjit Hoskote
Who Cares
for Human Rights?
It's a "Just" War
Jordy Cummings
How
to Silence
Pro Palestinian Voices
Salam Rahal
The Rape
of a Nation
Richard Falk
& David Krieger
War with
Iraq:
It's Not Bush's Decision
Ralph Nader
How Congress
Can Fight Corporate Crime
Kurt Nimmo
Bush Senior:
Hating Saddam, Selling Him Weapons
September
18, 2002
Rep. Cynthia
McKinney
Goodbye
to All That
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Cancerous
Air
Born Under a Bad Sky
Ben Tripp
Smoking
Gun
of a Hatchet Job
Peggy Thomson
20 Years
After:
Sabra and Shatila
Thomas Mountain
September
1982
Sabra and Chatila (Poem)
William Cook
Yet Another
Bush Doctrine
Kathleen Christison
Israel's Other Voices
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