The Military's Missile-Defense System Cannot Be as Good as It Says

"The Defense Department is notoriously picky about films that depict military and national-security issues, and understandably so. Many movies that feature the military get a lot of things wrong, including innocent flaws such as actors who are the wrong age for the rank on their costume, or scripts that invent procedures or terms that don't exist. Sometimes, the Defense Department cooperates with Hollywood and provides advice; other times, it takes a pass, especially if the subject raises touchy issues."

"Now the Pentagon is annoyed with the director Kathryn Bigelow's new movie, A House of Dynamite,a sweaty thriller about civilian and military leaders trying to cope with a surprise missile launch against the United States. It's not too much of a spoiler to note that in the early part of the movie, America launches GBIs, or ground-based interceptors, from Alaska-a system that really exists at Fort Greely, near Fairbanks-to shoot down the mystery missile. Those interceptors miss. Twice."

"This depiction of a failed interception, along with some discussion in the movie about the overall chances of America's GBIs shooting down enemy weapons, has the very real Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency, or MDA, concerned. According to a mid-October internal memo obtained by Bloomberg, MDA felt the need to send around talking points so that the agency leadership "has situational awareness and is not 'surprised' by the topic, which may come up in conversations or meetings.""

Pentagon officials object to a portrayal of U.S. missile-defense failures in the film A House of Dynamite, which shows ground-based interceptors (GBIs) launched from Fort Greely, Alaska, missing a mystery missile twice. The Missile Defense Agency circulated a mid-October internal memo with talking points so leadership "has situational awareness and is not 'surprised' by the topic." The Navy previously declined involvement with Crimson Tide. The film portrays characters asserting that U.S. interceptors have only about a 61 percent chance of shooting down an enemy missile, a figure that alarmed MDA.

Read at The Atlantic