It seems America’s missile defense was a little under the weather last summer—just in time for the launch of some North Korean Nodong’s.
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If anyone cares to read the link they’ll see that the flooded missile silos were empty ones. Looks like there are 26 (?) or so total silos in various stages of construction; to the best of my recollection, there were (still are?) only eight actual interceptor missiles located at Fort Greely.
I assume all eight of these were loaded in non-flooded silos and ready to fire, at the time of the NorK “test” launches last summer. If anyone knows otherwise, I’d be happy to read a supporting link.
And of course, being “ready to fire” doesn’t mean “ready to hit anything”. But–I’m a believer in missile defense and thus think it’s vitally important to have another option available (I mean an option besides wringing your hands and then having to decide whether or not to annihilate all possible remaining North Korean missile sites, to include any deliberately located in populated areas).
I’ll even help any of you anti-missile defense chaps who might care to comment with your arguments, in the interest of fairness. (Where are you O Canada, I know you’re out there somewhere like thousands of tundra mosquitoes, itching to get in another anti-anti-missile bite or even two).
There was a possibly more serious problem with AK missile defense last summer. Some sort of huge radar array was supposed to be erected as part of the infrastructure for this thing (somewhere in Alaska, but not necessarily on Fort Greely itself). But — it was not even present in AK last summer, due to some unanticipated inefficiency in getting it transported to AK waters (an inefficiency equally gross to this reported one of empty silos being flooded).
WSJ print edition carried the story, I think it might have been sometime last fall, I read it in the hard copy and am not a subscriber on-line so am unable to provide a specific link to what I remember. Maybe I can find another link that covers it, will take a look.
As I recall, the array was constructed ok (maybe on the east coast of US?) but then had to be towed at sea, or maybe carried on some special ship. Something happened to the ship, it was down long-term for maintenance (?) and so getting the array to AK was overdue by as much as a year or more.
Seems to me last I heard (a couple months ago?) the array had finally arrived in Hawaii and was due to be towed or shipped to AK, so maybe it’s finally arrived by now and is being set up. I hope so, anyway.