One of the most outrageous scams underway in Washington DC are proposals to purchase more Aegis DDG-51 destroyers than planned so the U.S. Navy can deploy a ship-based National Missile Defense (NMD) system.  This idea seems appealing because a Navy ship shot down an incoming theater ballistic missile with the new Standard Missile 2 Block 4.   However, this missile is far too small to reach larger missiles which fly much higher.

     This scam was launched by racketeers at the Heritage Foundation in 1998 when they released a bogus report claiming a screen of 22 Aegis cruisers could provide a NMD shield.  They must have known that Navy Standard missiles have a maximum vertical range of only 40 miles and cannot reach Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles (ICBM)s flying 200 miles above Earth.  The U.S. Army's planned land-based ICBM interceptor (left) is ten times larger than a Standard missile.  The Navy liked the Heritage report recommendation to buy dozens more ships, but the lie was rejected by Congress so a new scheme has emerged.

     The Navy NMD racketeers are now selling the idea that a Navy ship could hit a rising ICBMs soon after launch.  However, the Navy Standard missile has a maximum range of only 115 miles, and only a third of that range vertically.  This is far too short to provide any reasonable coverage, something a Navy officer pointed out in the Navy's professional magazine "Proceedings" last year.

     An ICBM flies almost vertically after launch, so a ship would have to be within 50 miles of the launch site to have any hope of launching a Standard missile (right) to chase down and hit a rising ICBM.  Navy ships don't like to cruise within 25 miles of an enemy shoreline anyway because of shore based missile threats.   In addition, nations usually locate missile facilities far from the ocean to protect them from naval attack.

     The Navy knows this, but the NMD cash cow is too strong a temptation.  The Navy, two powerful shipyards, and their paid front men in Congress, have no qualms about lying to the American people.   They claim that a longer range missile can be built, but this latest Standard 2 Block 4 is already designed to maximize range.  The Navy would need a missile with at least a 200 mile range, and this is only possible if a new class of ship is built to accommodate a much larger missile.  However, the Navy is not truly interested in NMD, it just wants more DDG-51 destroyers.                    

           Carlton Meyer  editorG2mil@Gmail.com