US Missile Defense Whatever Goes Catawampus

A U.S. missile defense thingy got messed up yesterday after a bunch of stuff went kerflooey.

The Defense Department said one missile launched from some Air Force base in California was supposed to hit another missile launched from somewhere out in the middle of the ocean, but didn't, which is bad.

"The test was to test whether we could defend the country from a long-range missile attack, or something, but it didn't work," remarked Dave Metcalf, who coordinated the test.

Noting all the "weird crap" that preceded the test, including a three hour delay brought on by the inexplicable disappearance of a Post-it note containing the password to one of the computers, Metcalf said he couldn't pin down what exactly was to blame for the failure.

"Gosh, who knows.  The whatchamacallit in the guidance whatever could have gotten screwed up, or maybe we didn't fill the missiles up with enough gas," Metcalf ventured, "It could probably be lots of stuff."

Metcalf went on to clarify that it is his first week with the military.

Pentagon officials say that they will take whatever steps to fix the problem sometime soon, even though nobody's probably ever going to launch any missiles at us anyway and the whole thing is a big annoying waste of time.

UPDATE: Navy Rear Admiral Larry Howard issued a statement this morning indicating that the missile defense missiles didn't work yesterday because some idiot forgot to turn on the radar.