{"id":6899,"date":"2003-06-19T17:45:00","date_gmt":"2003-06-19T22:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2003\/06\/19\/6899\/"},"modified":"2010-09-29T19:21:08","modified_gmt":"2010-09-30T00:21:08","slug":"6899","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2003\/06\/19\/6899\/","title":{"rendered":"Scandal: Defects Uncovered During <i>Testing!<\/i>"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Headline on CNN:  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2003\/US\/West\/06\/19\/missle.defense.test\/index.html\" target=\"new\">Missile misses target, officials call it a success<\/a>.  Implication seems to be that the <i>officials<\/i> (military-techno-industrial complex!) are, um, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.moorelies.com\" target=\"new\">Mooring<\/a> the truth a little, too say the least.<\/p>\n<p>After all, the lead intones:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The Missile Defense Agency conducted a missile defense test over Hawaii Wednesday, and while the warhead did not strike the target, officials said they still considered the exercise a success.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I wouldn&#8217;t call it a failed test, because the intercept was not the primary objective,&#8221; said Chris Taylor, a spokesman for the MDA. &#8220;It&#8217;s still considered a success in that we gained great engineering data. We just don&#8217;t know why it didn&#8217;t hit.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Well, the missile test also did not:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Fix the economy.<\/li>\n<li>Prevent the Oracle hostile takeover of PeopleSoft.\n<li>Repair France&#8217;s image problem with American tourist money.\n<li>Vote for my slogan at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imao.us\/archives\/000725.html#0007\" target=\"new\">IMAO<\/a>.<\/ul>\n<p>However, none of these was the objective of the test, and hence none represents criteria for success.  The engineers, who are working on the project, probably have a reasonable idea of where they are in the development cycle.  As a matter of fact, the officials indicate (but are not quoted in their own words) as saying:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Three previous flight tests were successful, Taylor said, but they used an earlier version of a system to control the warhead&#8217;s aim and maneuvering. Information from the earlier tests was used for a <b>new design<\/b> of the system, which was used in Wednesday&#8217;s test, the Defense Department said. <i>[Emphasis mine]<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So the MDA or its engineers redesigned a part of the system and are testing it out for the first time?  Note how CNN uses a &#8220;but&#8221; conjunction in the quote above.  I wonder if the second clause, or whatever source from which it came, opposed the first clause.  I doubt it.  I suspect criteria for the test might have included things like the operations of the independent systems within the interceptor.<\/p>\n<p>No matter the criteria in this individual test, I am glad to see the flaws shaken out before the system&#8217;s deployed.  If the MDA hadn&#8217;t caught this flaw now, it would have made living in Los Angeles or Seattle much more dangerous a couple years from now.  Permanent shadows don&#8217;t log defects.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe the media should understand the goals and process of testing before they start pontificating.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Headline on CNN: Missile misses target, officials call it a success. Implication seems to be that the officials (military-techno-industrial complex!) are, um, Mooring the truth a little, too say the least. After all, the lead intones: The Missile Defense Agency conducted a missile defense test over Hawaii Wednesday, and while the warhead did not strike [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6899"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6899\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8109,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6899\/revisions\/8109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}