US Defense Budget: ¿Where goes the money endly go?

¿Where does the money of the US taxpayer really go?

Watching the scene from outside US, it results difficult to understand how some countries with much less defense budgets are achieving better results.

Let us think on Avangard Hypersonic Glide Vehicle made by Russia: As reported,  it has been launched from the Dombarovskiy missile base in the southern Ural Mountains, and successfully hit a practice target on the Kura shooting range on Kamchatka, 6000 kilometres (3700 miles) away, reaching speeds close to Mach 25, what means roughly 10 Km/s or 6 miles/s.

¿Truth or lie? If the above is truth, this would mean that no US anti-missile could knock it down. In another words: United States could lay fastly out of combat in case a military conflict against Russia.

So, again: ¿Where has the money of the US taxpayer really gone?

Sergei Ivanov, a former Russian defence minister, has said in televised comments that the Avangard constantly changes its course and altitude while it flies through the atmosphere, chaotically zigzagging on its path to its target, making it impossible to predict the weapon’s location.

¿Truth or lie? If truth, ¿United States has something similar? For the moment, it seems simply that the answer is "no".

So, again: ¿Where has the money of the US taxpayer really gone?

Ivanov has stated also that the Avangard Hypersonic Glide Vehicle has cost hundreds of times less than what the US has spent on its missile defence system.

¿Truth or lie? Well, bearing in mind the russian defence budget, it can not be a lie at all.

And now the the cherry on the cake: Ivanov has revealed that Russia began to develop the Avangard after 2002 when the US withdrew from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and began developing defences against ballistic missiles.

¿Truth or lie? Well, this is not the right question. The right question is -or should be- the following :  If a dwarfy budget as the russian defence budget has allowed Russia to get something like the Avangard in just 16 years, ¿Where has the money of the US taxpayer really gone during these 16 years?

India Is Developing Its Own Missile-Defense Shield

A decade later, New Delhi has finally begun setting up a two-layer ballistic missile defense shield that initially will protect New Delhi and Mumbai. The Prithvi Air Defense (PAD) system will provide long-range high-altitude ballistic missile interception during an incoming missile’s midcourse phase, while the Advanced Air Defense system offers short-range, low-altitude defense against missiles in the terminal phase of their trajectory. Reportedly the first batteries have begun installation in two villages in Rajasthan.

At first glance, the Prithvi Air Defense missile seems quite capable, with a range of 1,250 miles and a maximum altitude of 260,000 feet, making it an exospheric interceptor. The missile is programmed prior to launch by the BMD command center on an intercept trajectory, which it maintains using an inertial navigation system. It receives midcourse updates to its trajectory using data from the Swordfish radar, and then in the terminal approach phase switches to its own active radar seeker and destroys the target with a proximity-fused warhead.

For defense at low-altitudes, the solid-fuel Advanced Air Defense system, or Ashwar, uses an endospheric (within the Earth’s atmosphere) interceptor that knocks out ballistic missiles at a maximum altitude of 60,000 to 100,000 feet, and across a range between 90 and 125 miles for local defense. The AAD has performed successfully in most tests against targets at altitudes of 50,000 feet, though an improved model failed a test in April 2015 before succeeding in subsequent attempts. It is claimed the Mach 4.5 missile might also have application against cruise missiles and aircraft.

However, a major limitation of the PAD is that the second phase of the two-stage rocket uses liquid fuel. As liquid rocket fuel corrodes fuel tanks when stored for long, the PAD could not be on standby 24/7. Instead, it would need to be gassed up during a period of crisis in anticipation of trouble. This is less than ideal for a weapon intended to defend against an attack which might come at any moment.