New Weapon Against Terror . . . . The Doobie Brothers

[hellbender]

The naval base where I work is slated to receive another 300 well-paid technology jobs related to the Aegis Anti-Ballistic Missile program.  While trying to learn more about this new major tenant, I discovered where the original idea came from to utilize standard missiles launched from Aegis vessels to provide anti-ballistic missile defense.  The idea was first advanced by Jeff "Skunk" Baxter, one of the original founders of the rock group Steely Dan and guitarist for the Doobie Brothers.  Truth is stranger than fiction.  See:  http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10480407/ 

 

[Nords]

The naval base where I work is slated to receive another 300 well-paid technology jobs related to the Aegis Anti-Ballistic Missile program. 
The idea was first advanced by Jeff "Skunk" Baxter, one of the original founders of the rock group Steely Dan and guitarist for the Doobie Brothers. 

One of the major flaps of the early AEGIS years was discovering that the radar was detecting objects in space. Some policy wonk pointed out that this would violate the ABM treaty and the software's range gate had to be crippled to avoid the issue.

Much of today's ABM program has consisted of trying to figure out how the original programmers crippled the software so that it can be "uncrippled".

Now I see that it was all Baxter's fault. But I'm glad that he kept his mustache & ponytail!

The real story I want to hear is how the DIS or DSS (or whatever we're calling it today) was able to finish the SSBI to give him all those clearances. I imagine that they felt obligated to track down each & every one of the backstage crew at all those concerts and learn all the legends-- so who talked?

 

[HFWR]

A better question would be "Who remembered?"

(Maybe it was one the other "founders" of Steely Dan... )