Price of US' missile defense system is `too steep' for Japan

[dArKeR]

The US government has asked Japan to pay more than half a billion dollars for a joint missile defense system being developed that would be capable of warding off a possible attack by North Korea, but Tokyo finds the sum too high, a news report said yesterday.
Washington estimates it will spend some US$545 million on the high-tech defense project between the 2006 and 2011 fiscal years, and has requested Japan make an equal contribution, the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper said without specifying sources.

slash in spending

But, the Yomiuri said, Japan planned to negotiate with the US for a significant cut in the cost as Tokyo has been trying to slash defense spending amid mixed signals on the direction of the economy.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2005/06/21/2003260139

[BrightKnight]

1. healthcare, education, body armor, PBS -- n/t

[Spinzonner]

2. Maybe they should hold out until there's one that works

[dArKeR]

3. Performance of the Patriot Missile in the Gulf War

The Patriot missile system was not the spectacular success in the Persian Gulf War that the American public was led to believe. There is little evidence to prove that the Patriot hit more than a few Scud missiles launched by Iraq during the Gulf War, and there are some doubts about even these engagements. The public and the Congress were misled by definitive statements of success issued by administration and Raytheon representatives during and after the war. It is probable that many of the individuals giving such statements, including the President of the United States and Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, were not aware at the time that the claims of success were false.
http://lambda.eu.org/special/gulf/extraits.html


Postol Questions Success in Gulf War

It sounds more like fiction than fact: An inquisitive professor decides to investigate military claims that Patriot missiles successfully engaged 96 percent of the Iraqi Scud missiles hurled at Israel and Saudi Arabia during last year's war in the Persian Gulf, on a hunch that the figure was a gross overestimate.

After submitting his findings -- that at most one Scud out of 50 was destroyed by a Patriot -- for publication, the professor suddenly finds himself the subject of a Defense Investigative Service probe. The professor does not know when the investigation commenced or whether it is officially over.

"It was a Franz Kafka kind of situation," said Theodore Postol '67, a professor of science, technology, and national security policy. "The DIS never told me in writing that I was either under investigation or that the investigation was over or the nature of the claims against me. ... which is a very, shall we say, unorthodox way to do business."
http://wt.mit.edu/V112/N26/postol.26n.html


MIT professor faults operation of Patriot missile
http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/news/2004/040430-patriot-faults.htm