No my charge was that the project was far too immature to rely on in a combat situation. Its so easy messing with a delusional Vietnamese boy who denies America can do wrong.
Now
THAT is funny. The original article was about one test in a series. The criticism was that the test, not the entire BMD program, was...errrr...'rigged'. It is too late. You got caught with your pants down.
Its a little more than just testing at night or day.
Absolutely it is. That is why we have 'rigged' tests.
Let us take a look at your NY Times article...
Antimissile Testing Is Rigged To Hide a Flaw, Critics Say - NYTimes.com
...have been rigged to hide a fundamental flaw: The system cannot distinguish between enemy warheads and decoys.
''that none of the tests address the reasonable range of countermeasures,'' or decoys that an enemy would use to try to outwit an antimissile weapon.
First...Were these tests
INTENDED to include those factors? If they were not, then the charge is ludicrous even though the final intention of the program is to have the ability to distinguish decoys from the 'real' warhead. That is what an incremental testing regime supposed to do:
EXCLUDE certain factors and inject them later. So if the criticisms of these tests are based upon the final intention of the program, then those criticisms are unfair no matter the credentials of whoever made those criticisms.
Second...At what point do these decoys are supposed to be deployed? Who is supposed to be the one distinguishing the decoys from the real warhead, the ground radar or the interceptor itself? If the system is supposed to have the ground radar to be the discriminator, then the criticisms are still unfair in the absence of these details.
For a nuclear ICBM, this is what the 'bus' that holds the warhead looks like...
None of those are decoys. So for a non-nuclear theater level ballistic missile, decoys are actually detrimental because they reduce the odds of producing sufficient level of disabling damages to the target. Ever heard of circular error probability (CEP)? Here it is for the conscript rejects to learn...
For a non-nuclear theater level ballistic missile, we want 'High accuracy, High precision' if we have the technology to do so. If not, then we want 'High accuracy, Low precision' but that would mean an increased number of warheads in both singular and multiple missiles assault. Decoys would take away the odds of having that disabling and debilitating damages to the target.
A nuclear warhead is a much more expensive weapon to lose from a high atmospheric interception, so decoys would be valuable.
So if the program intends for the ground radar to be the discriminator of decoys from real, then we need the details of the particular tests before we can determine if there are any deliberate deceptions and where they might be. If the ground radar cannot perform as expected, then the interceptor cannot be faulted. We need details. But since am talking to a bunch of gullible conscript rejects, details would be irrelevant.
I have yet to see anything from you conscript rejects close to what I have posted so far.