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US spends billions on failed missile defense system

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A missile defense system that cost a fortune for the Pentagon has been proved to be a total failure, leaving the United States’ defense system vulnerable, a new report says.

The Pentagon has spent $2.2 billion into the Sea-Based X-Band Radar (SBX) which was proved to be unworkable, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) which claimed the radar would be the most powerful radar of its kind in the world has left it idle in Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. The giant floating radar was supposed to be operational by 2005.

“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,” the report said.

It was said that the radar would be able to distinguish between actual missiles and decoys.

“If we place it in Chesapeake Bay, we could actually discriminate and track a baseball-sized object over San Francisco,” Henry A. Obering III, a retired director of the Missile Defense Agency, said at a Senate hearing in April 2007.

He said the project was failed because the Obama administration and Congress did not double down with more spending.

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

David Montague, former Lockheed Martin Missile Systems chief, however, said “It should never have been built.”

“You can spend an awful lot of money and end up with nothing,” said Mike Corbett, a retired Air Force colonel.

“MDA spent billions and billions on these programs that didn’t lead anywhere,” said the colonel.

The Missile Agency has wasted almost $10 billion over the last decade into SBX and three other projects that were proved not to be effective, according to the Times.

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