El Presidente saying words during his SDI speeh

• 1984. The Strategic Defense Initiative Organization is established. Reagan puts Lt. General James Alan Abrahamson from the USAF in charge, a past Director of the NASA Space Shuttle program. On retrospective, not a good sign.
• 1987. The SDIO develops the idea of the Strategic Defense System Phase I Architecture, a system that included ground and space based sensors and weapons, all controlled from a central location. This is a concept that still works today.
• 1991. George Bush Sr. changes Reagan's tune and changes the focus of SDI to a more limited, more regional oriented. The Global Protection Against Limited Strikes is born.
• On 18 January 1991 a Patriot interceptor missile is reported to have engaged a SCUD missile over Saudi Arabia during the Persian Gulf War. Later, it was found to be just a computer glitch. No SCUD ever launched on that day. The accuracy of Patriots was close to zero, according to analysis after the war. The success rate during the war was claimed to be 97% by George Bush Sr. (reportedly, the Israelis were so dissatisfied with the system they planed to retaliate against Iraq on their own.)
• 1993. Bill Clinton closes the SDIO and forms the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization.
• During the George Bush Jr. administration the concept has been revived, forming the National Missile Defense and Ground-based Midcourse Defense.
• 20 February 2008. An Aegis missile successfully intercepts a defunct spy satellite the size of a bus falling down to Earth.

[Wikipedia]

The B-2 Spirit follows the same ideas pioneered by John Knudsen Northrop, who founded Northrop to pursue his flying wing designs, and the Nazi Horten Ho-IX, one of the most advanced planes at its time, designed by the Horten brothers.

The Ho-IX, also called Gotha Go 229 or Ho 229, took off for the first time in 1944 and was the only plane to meet Luftwaffe's chief, frustrated transvestite and absolute nutter Hermann Göring 1000-1000-1000 performance standards: the Horten was capable of transporting 1,000 kilograms of bombs (2,200 lb) over 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) at 1,000 kilometers an hour.

Fortunately, it never reached production and most airframes were destroyed by US forces to avoid the Soviets getting their paws all over them. The U.S. VIII Corps of General Patton's Third Army captured one, however, and its low-drag, no-unnecessary surfaces live now in the B-2.

Unlike the experimental Horten and the flying wing designs that Northrop designed in the 40s (like 1948's Northrop YB-49, a jet-based variation of the 1946's YB-35 strategic bomber) the Spirit became fully operational.

The B-2 bombers are amazingly efficient: like its 20 sister vessels still in service, the Air Vehicle-12 Spirit of Kansas was capable of delivering both conventional and nuclear bombs to any target around the world in a few hours, with just one refueling. Powered by four General Electric F118-GE-100 turbofans capable of 17,300 pounds of thrust each, the aircraft can reach 410 knots (470mph) at a maximum altitude of 50,000 feet.

Another advantage of its simple design —coupled with its radar-absorbing coating, called Alternate High-Frequency Material—is that their radar profile is extremely low. Coupled with its operational altitude, this make them extremely hard to detect and shoot down. That's the reason why this crash, with no known reasons yet, is so exceptional. That and the effect of watching $1.2 billion dollars disappearing in an crater in a concrete runway.

According to the Air Force, an investigation is currently under way about why the Spirit of Kansas went to Oz at Guam. But don't worry, taxpayers, I'm sure you will get a cool 3D simulation of how it all happened from the Wizard in Chief, General Dorothy and Commander Toto, at the Pentagon. [Military.com, Ho-XI at Wikipedia, Jack Northrop at Wikipedia, Air Force — Main photo by Bobbi Garcia for the AFFTC]

The mission was simple. At 10:26PM EST, a standard missile 3 carrying a kinetic warhead was launched northwest of Hawaii from the USS Lake Eire, a Ticonderoga Class missile defense cruiser. 24 minutes later, at 10:50, the Joint Space Operations Center at the Vandenberg Air Force base confirmed the breakup of the satellite at 153 nautical miles above the Earth from a direct hit.

While they can't confirm completely the destruction of the tank, which was needed to release the toxic fuel that may have posed a danger to us Earthlings, the Pentagon has declared the mission a complete success and with good reason. Some experts criticized the plan as probable failure during the past days, with the argument that the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense, part of the Ballistic Missile Defense System being developed by the US Missile Defense Agency, wasn't designed to do this and, therefore, it wasn't going to be able to hit the target and destroy it effectively.

Their reasons were three: first, the kinetic warhead, launched in a long range standard missile 3, a isn't designed to destroy targets by explosion but by the sheer force of multiple impacts. While this is enough to destroy other incoming missiles, the critics said that this wasn't going to be enough to destroy the much larger satellite. Second was the speed of the target, which was traveling at double the speed of the missiles which are the usual target of the Aegis. And third, the tracking system, which wasn't originally designed to operate in high orbits.

The video, however, shows that the direct kinetic hit has completely obliterated its target. Now the world can rest at peace. Until A542B, that asteroid ten times bigger than Texas, finally arrives. [Wikipedia, Defense Tech Org and BBC]

The Navy is researching rail guns because they would weigh less than conventional ones, and since they rely on electromagnetics to fire rounds, you wouldn't need a big, dangerous pile of explosives stored in a magazine. All of that means a lighter ship, and a much more deadly ship: a combat-ready rail gun would be able to fire Mach 5 projectiles over 200 miles with pinpoint accuracy, hitting 5 meter targets.

Yesterday's test firing at the Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division used just some of the potential 32-megajoules the laboratory test gun is capable of, and that's only half the 64-megajoules the Navy is aiming at for the final weapon. Expect even more dramatic videos, sometime soon. [Navy Times and Danger Room]