Friday, June 10, 2005

U.S. missile defense: A bad idea, getting worse by the minute.


Did someone mention quality control?

An outside panel chartered by the Pentagon has concluded that the rush to deploy a national antimissile system last year led to shortfalls in quality controls and engineering procedures that could have better assured the system would work, according to the panel's final report.

Bent on meeting President Bush's deadline to install the first elements of the system by the end of 2004, Pentagon officials put schedule ahead of performance, the report says. Among risky shortcuts that were taken, the panel says, were insufficient ground tests of key components, a lack of specifications and standards, and a tendency to postpone resolution of nettlesome issues.

Some unintentional hilarity in the next short paragraph:

"Manage quality first and then schedule," the panel advises.

And we all know how well this administration takes advice.

1 comment:

Cathie from Canada said...

This is hilarious, really.
Bush was so determined that he had to 'show off' missle defense before the election, that nobody had any choice about the schedule. Then the military gets blamed for rushing the schedule?
Oh, I am so glad we are not associated with those guys in this stupidity.