When I was in school, a passing test score was 70%. That 70% meant a grade of “D.” If you are a contractor building weapons systems for the Department of Defense, a score of 45% merits a $2 billion performance bonus.
We taxpayers have spent $40 billion to date building the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system, or GMD. $21 billion of that went to the Boeing Company as prime contractor. The urgency of the project caused then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to exempt the missile agency from standard procurement rules and testing standards.
The Pentagon has conducted eleven tests of the homeland missile defense system. The system destroyed an incoming missile five of those times for a test score of 45%. For this, we paid Boeing $1,959,072,946 in performance bonuses. The tests were a lot like having the answers written on your hand.
“Personnel operating the GMD system know ahead of time approximately when the targets will be launched and from where, as well their expected speed and trajectory — information they would not have in an actual attack.”
The original contract specified the “primary performance criteria” were whether the interceptor destroyed its target during the test. Later contract documents based bonuses on “mission execution.” Actually destroying the target was no longer mentioned.
What this means in practical terms is that when North Korea sends a nuclear warhead our way, we’d need to fire four or five interceptors to stop it.
Sleep well tonight.
Details from the Los Angeles Times.
