Lt. Gen. Michael A. Hamel, head of Space and Missile Systems Center in Los Angeles, offered the symposium audience this wry view: “If you listen to the pundits … everything is broken, so we should go home and forget it.” Hamel reminded the crowd that the recently retired Titan program set the record for consecutive successful military space launches. But, he emphasized that it would take a concerted effort by industry and government to move past dead ends and dragging programs.
The cost of the nuclear AGM-181 Long-Range Stand Off missile has come down slightly and the program is on track, but several technologies it relies on are still considered immature, the Government Accountability Office found in a report. Meanwhile, the GAO also assessed the LGM-35A Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile as…