The French Media Menace

You've gotta hand it to those French journalists, they sure know how to write a black cloud into every silver lining.

An interceptor missile failed to fire in a missile defense test last month because a support arm in the silo did not clear when it was supposed to, a senior Pentagon official said Wednesday.

Air Force Lieutenant General Henry Obering, director of the Missile Defense Agency, said the program to field a system capable of intercepting long-range ballistic missiles was going through "a period of disappointment."

Now, you should take two points of clarification out of this story, gentle reader.

The system itself didn't malfunction; it was a single support arm that didn't clear. Easily fixed, not a major malfunction.

The next test they ran was a success, and they've had several successful test firings.

And the money shot?

The interceptor missile has now failed to launch in two successive tests because of what officials described as relatively minor glitches.

Obering said that in the latest test on February 14 the interceptor missile shut down when a support arm in the silo failed to move out of the way prior to launch.

This article would have you believe that the missile defense system is a failure. It's not. Thanks to the AFP staff for their vote of confidence and objective journalistic integrity.