Missile defense as costly as the Apollo Moon program.
According to Bloomberg, the U.S. has spent as much on missile defense as it did on the Apollo moon program:
Before Congress voted to cut $2.4 trillion from government expenses over the next decade, lawmakers budgeted a 1.2 percent increase, to $8.6 billion, for all missile defense programs in fiscal 2012. That would raise total costs to about $150 billion, or roughly the inflation-adjusted amount poured into the Apollo program sending men to the moon in the 1960s and 1970s....The Pentagon has made â??accountability and transparency elusiveâ? by exempting the missile agency from standard acquisition regulations, including requirements for independent cost estimates, according to Cristina Chaplain, an investigator for the Government Accountability Office, the congressional watchdog agency.
It is a program with â??an undefined destination at an unknown cost,â? Chaplain said in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee in April.
And at least the Apollo program worked - it successfully delivered men to the moon and back. Missile defense? Not so much:
The system â??has demonstrated a limited capability against a simple threatâ? and has yet to engage in â??operationally realisticâ? tests, J. Michael Gilmore, the departmentâ??s top weapons tester, told Congress last year.
In tests, national missile defense has a 53 percent success rate. Shorter range theater systems have a much higher success rate, Bloomberg noted.
(AP Photo)
