Free speech in the Land of the Free?

[rynner2]

If the government is planning on spending millions on some high-tech system, but then a highly qualified scientist comes along and says "This will never work, it's just a waste of money", you'd expect the govt. to be grateful for the information, and change its plans.

You wouldn't expect them to muzzle him, and accuse him of being disloyal (or worse), would you?

Of course you would, that's why you're reading a conspiracy thread. The story is here:

http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0146/koerner.php

A wide ranging article on free speech, weapons technology, and more.

 

[intaglio]

Wasn't there the test of an anti-ballistic missile, hailed as a success by the military although the target rocket had been broadcasting its position to the interceptor?
And in Britain the Bulldog carbine was so spectacularly fragile that it took a war before any modifictions were made. neither of these 2 reports were kept from the press but were "underemphasised.

 

[Spookdaddy]

Wasn't there a similar thing going on with Patriot missiles in the former difficulties with Iraq? Their performance was so piss-poor that the definition of a direct hit was expanded to include just being in the general area of the intended target. There was a BBC documentary on this a few years ago where even some of the guys who had worked on the missiles development admitted to it's drastic shortcomings.

 

[intaglio]

In the UK several *whistleblowers* have been removed from their jobs in the NHS for revealing shady practices. The have been found guilty of breech of contract

 

[Anonymous]

Intaglio: what you are thinking of is probably a recent test with the missile defence system. They send two rockets, of of them a decoy and the other one was the real thing. Their system was then able to find out whch one was the decoy and shoot the other one down. It was considered a great succes, showing the efficiency of the system. Problem was the decoy was emitting a signal showing it was a decoy, and the defence system had as far as I remember already been told what trajectories the missiles would follow.

 

[FelixAntonius]

The warhead encased in a decoy balloon sounds like the chevron system used by the UK about twenty years ago, for the then, already superannuated polaris missile system.

One of the three polaris warheads were replaced with a device that deployed decoy balloons, the remaining two warheads were encased in similar balloons, by this means it was hoped that any missile detection/defence system would be overwhelmed.

 

[Anonymous]

This reminds me of a news article a couple of years ago. A US stealth bomber doing a demonstration in England was picked up perfectly by UK radar, much to the embarrassment of the USAF.

 

[Anonymous]

Yeah, well !!!

The stealth bomber isn't completely invisible to radar, it merely throws back a significantly reduced radar footprint, perhaps the size of something the size of a bird. So, if the radar operators know the direction from the which the stealth fighter\bomber were coming in from, they would probably be able to indicate which radar reading was the fighter\bomber. The technology relies on the element of surprise also.....so if the fighter\bomber is detected by one radar station, as happened over Yugoslavia, it can be tracked from one station to another, and then shot down.

Moggadon