The following Fact Checker email from the Washington Post is dated October 13, 2017:
In discussing the threat posed by North Korea and its rush to perfect an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), President Trump offered a reassuring image: a missile defense so robust that a single interceptor had a 97 percent success rate and just two interceptors would assuredly knock the missile out of the sky. Is this anything close to reality?
Nope. Trump appears to be referring to the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) in Alaska and California, which is administered by the Missile Defense Agency. Some $40 billion has been spent on developing the project, which is supposed to prevent ballistic missiles from attacking the homeland. MDA officials have been optimistic about the program’s effectiveness, tossing around statistics that sound a bit like Trump’s 97 percent figure. Continue reading “No, President Trump, U.S. missile defense does not have 97 percent success rate.”