Sorry dude I don't defend Fletcher...you've got me confused with LaryCJR.  "MR Bright" that you are SUPPOSED to be, might have remembered that...oh Almighty Perfect One.

 CREF above. Must have made an impression on you since you remembered. I sort of lose track of the names after six montghs.

But that is a good point of take-off.  You see what you proclaim as "FACT" turns out to be interpretation.  Larry gave as good as he got in those debates...and in the end you weren't obviously the winner.  Because you all are debating an interpretation of the facts, was Fletcher or Halsey a decent commander?  The answer is NOT a fact a fact, it is an interpretation of facts...

Well about Fletcher you can debate if you want; the scholars who try to rewrite him are lining up, not that I find ANY of theior stuff credible  .  Halsey was an idiot, That judgement is NAILED down solid.

The ability of the ASTER Missile and its radar to share telemetry is a fact, whether or not that makes ASER any good or not is an interpretation.  You confuse the two things, and in your mind Interpretation BECOMES "fact."  It's not and many see that in you, even when you do not.

No I don't.  Now you stray into my field. Data is data. The results on that rocket are in, and it is a crap rocket. You want to know why, read my posts. 

It's obvious that Fletcher was NOT a "nitwit" BTW, he was a highly regarded and successful Naval Commander...only in Herald Land is someone of that caliber a nitwit...Herald, who as far as we can tell has never commanded any vessel larger than a power boat, nor any combat vessel larger than an RC battleship in a local pond...now has the Chutzpah to call Fletcher a Nitwit.  That?s your problem; you're convinced of your own ineffable correctness...as I say get over yourself.

Sorry, pending new evidence, his stupid decisions made at the time remain his stupid decisions.  I won't change opinion. Note the word OPINION based on available FACT.

Sure we can make a judgment that ASTER has serious flaws and that Fletcher was not as good as Commander "X" or made a number of mistakes, but they are judgments, and not merely facts, and it's obvious, that in the case of Fletcher, that that interpretation is contested and contestable...Only Herald can't see that.  ASTER, being a technical question, lends itself to more permanent and verifiable conclusions, IF we knew that the missile can't update, an IF because we are not privy to secret data are we, Then we can say that ASTER will not perform as advertised.  But it STILL might have value as a naval weapon system if it performs other duties well, and then the job of interpretation takes over, "was ASTER worth the investment of several billion Euros for the effect(s) achieved?"  Some would answer might answer "yes" in that it performed as an effective short-ranged SAM and was the first high-performance Euromissile of its class and that it provided valuable technical/managerial lessons for its partners.  Others would say "No", saying even if it was good as a short-ranged SAM or as an AShM it was a failure at its designed mission and that for a lesser cost the Europeans could have had Aegis...it IS debatable.  It's not just a matter of FACT.

Unless you did the math and talked to the guys who built that ASTER rocket?. About Aster there is NO argument  

And so to end, this that's your problem, you find your interpretations as FACT, when in truth they are interpretations of FACTS, and those interpretations are not always correct...only in Herald's mind are they infallible facts.