$60B a year. Sustainment costs are the big driver.

"Even with this grand investment, the ability of the space-based interceptor layer would only be able to engage 10 targets simultaneously, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

CBO released a detailed cost estimate of what it described as a notional "National Missile Defense System" yesterday. CBO's $1.191 trillion figure covers various expenses over a 20-year timeframe.

This is more than double the projected price tag that CBO had put forward last year."

TOO GOLDEN?

Has ANY government program EVER not exceeded its orighnal cost estimate?

F4GIB71: Three questions...

1. Has any government program ever solved a problem?
2. Has any government program started ever really end?
3. What's with your handle? Story / background / secret Masonic code?

He'll be on here to respond, but it means that he flew the F-4 as the Guy In Back (navigator). He is one of my outfit buddies Class of '71.

One of the very few in our class who served in combat during Vietnam.

I'm proud to know him.

Thank you Trip. You got that right. Only thing is we did not like to be called navigators. That was the rating but Navs fly in big aircraft. Officially we were Weapon Systems Officers, WSOs.

The term Guy in Back was orgiinally meant to be pejorative. When the AF first got the F-4, they put young pilots in the backseat and called them PSOs, Pilot Systems Officers. They just wanted to move to the front ASAP and didn't focus on learning the job in the backseat. The AF decided to try Navigators who ended up being more motivated. Most of us embraced the term GIB. Kinda like Coon Ass in Louisiana.

One side note. I was Army ROTC at A&M and even had my branch assignment to Infantry, when I heard about the AF putting Navs in F-4s. I switched my last semester. Best thing I ever did. We commissioned about 200 into the Army and 100 into the AF in May '71. By then, they had given the ground war over to the ARVN. A large number of our Army classmates were sent to OBC, then put into the inactive Reserves unless they could find a Guard or Reserve slot. The Guard and Reserves were filled with people trying fo avoid the draft.