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US Missile Shield already Defeated?
Anonymous Coward writes "Forbes is reporting that although interest in the missile defense system has waned while the US military addresses more pressing matters of immediate concern, the Russians have already developed an anti-missile-defense missile designed to defeat the system. Were the US military to actually prove that the missile defense shield worked, the Russian rocket's "zig-zag" flightpath taken en route to it's target would render the shield useless. Russian President Vladimir Putin says that the non-ballistic trajectory would leave the projectile virtually impossible to down or divert. The author feels inclined to say that the missile defense shield was intended as a defense against rogue states such as North Korea that have not acquired this technology yet."
Well since this is like the second attempt at creating this missle defense system, why dont we wait till version 3.0 comes out. I am sure they will have a patch to cover this scenario, but then we will discover that through a buffer over run you will be able to defeat the system.
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But hasn't the shield failed to even stop missiles when their trajectory is known before th test even starts? I think that this is one of those things that is simply too difficult a task to make work under battle conditions. At least for now...
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How are they even supposed to get their missles over the Iron Curtain anyways? =)
The missile system is designed to protect the US against rogue states that might like to buy their missiles...if we don't pay up our protection money.
All we need now is an Anti-Anti-Anti-Missile-Missile to shoot down their Anti-Anti-Missile-Missile.
Yay, let's build a new Maginot Line in the sky. Then, the North Koreans can send their missiles through Belgium, just like the Germans did....
the missle defense system arent we already going to be in big trouble. I hardly think that a first strike today would only consist of ICBM launched from across the globe. If effective it would only help minimize damage.
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As far as I know, a fixed trajectory only eases the acquisition by targeting systems, but is not a prerequisite for a missile-defense system even working. All that is required is enough lead time for the targeting systems to get a bead on the inbound target, and then it's vapor city.
Were the US military to actually prove that the missile defense shield worked, the Russian rocket's "zig-zag" flightpath taken en route to it's target would render the shield useless.
Welcome to the game. If you build a better mousetrap, someone will come up with a better mouse. This will then force someone to come up with an even better mousetrap, and so repeats the cycle.
Personally, I'd much rather have the technology than not. As long as the technology exists, it can be improved upon. Perhaps to the level where the zig-zag isn't good enough. Perhaps we'll reach a parity whereby we'll be able to stop 50% or more of any anti-shield equipped missile. We won't know unless we try. And every bit of progress drops one more small threat out of the equation, leaving us free to concentrate of the big threats.
The alternative is to throw up your hands and give up.
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Why don't we just not go around pissing off other countries?
It'd be easier than spending all this money on trying to perfect something that people will always find a way around.
As far as I am aware, North Korea doesn't actually have ICBMs, so it wouldn't be relevant for them anyway. I was under the impression they only had medium to long range surface-to-surface missiles, so their main deterrent has always been the threat of attacking South Korea or Japan. Correct me if I'm wrong but I didn't think anyone was anywhere near having a land-based anti-missile system for surface-to-surface missiles.
...I surely would have gone bankrupt feeding quarters into Missle Command. Damn game was hard enough without the zig-zags.
Not to sound too critical, but this Russian rocket zig-zag pattern is done on purpose right, not because of bad engineering and poor quality construction?
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
From TFA: Sounds like some clever froods over in Russia decided to 'pull a Microsoft' and bill a bug (defective guidance system) as a feature (anti-missile defense guidance system).
____
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It will be a suitcase bomb delivered by a madman.
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What I've never been able to figure out, is why are we trying to get a missle that can hit another missle? That is HARD. Laying aside the question as to whether the entire system is a good idea or not, why not design an EMP-based weapon that will detonate NEAR the other missle? Nukes are complex and can't detonate without some sort of computer running the show. Instead of trying to detonate the missle (and spreading its radioactive payload all over the place) it seems like it would be better to kill the computer and keep the weapon confined to its impact crater.
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OK, so who owns the freakin' IP on sharks with freakin' lasers on their heads? Whoever does will win this little pissing contest... sharks with lasers > zig-zag missiles, no doubt.
..if this is true or not. Remember our misinformation campaign during the Cold War that helped bankrupt the Soviet Union? Additionally, how would we know if the US missile shield can't hit these new missles? I could imagine that the technology has advanced from the failures reported in the media since the start of the project. Just because we haven't said we can do something does not automatically mean we can't do that thing. It just means the public doesn't know...that you and I are not privy to such information, and for good reason.
As our Tow, Dragon, and Tomohawk systems use to avoid being shot down on their way to the target. And they're right- there ain't no defense against it YET.
I can think up a possible defense, but it'd be rather nasty on the environment- large microwave generators at a high enough power broadcasting a cone that cooks the electronics of any missile within range, thus making evasive missiles purely ballistic. But like I say- it'd also be cooking birds, wildlife, destabilizing the Ozone Layer.....
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
EMPs are difficult to produce from a small machine. Large machines could probably generate a fluctuating field that acts as an EMP but any small device that creates an EMP is most likely some form of nuclear warhead.
So you want to fight fire with fire? Please do include how your device creates an EMP without itself being a nuclear warhead.
Slim Pickens: "Well, boys, I reckon this is it - nuclear combat toe to toe with the Roosskies. Now look, boys, I ain't much of a hand at makin' speeches, but I got a pretty fair idea that something doggone important is goin' on back there. And I got a fair idea the kinda personal emotions that some of you fellas may be thinkin'. Heck, I reckon you wouldn't even be human bein's if you didn't have some pretty strong personal feelin's about nuclear combat. I want you to remember one thing, the folks back home is a-countin' on you and by golly, we ain't about to let 'em down. I tell you something else, if this thing turns out to be half as important as I figure it just might be, I'd say that you're all in line for some important promotions and personal citations when this thing's over with. That goes for ever' last one of you regardless of your race, color or your creed. Now let's get this thing on the hump - we got some flyin' to do."
My work here is dung.
A missile that zig-zags eh?
I really wonder what this will do to the accuracy rating of that missile. Russian standards are pretty low as Russian radar and targeting systems are dreadfully behind current US military tech, and with the additional variation in trajectory who the hell knows where that thing will fall?
If you look at the history of the development of ballistic missiles, the Russians focused on huge missiles with tons of warheads so that it could go ridiculously off course and still damage the target. The US went for things like the cruise missile, that had a small number of warheads but was very accurate. Thats why we have "Aegis" class radar.
Oh, and Putin's bragging about the fact that his missiles can change trajectory in flight? *gasp!* Obviously thats thousands of times better than our amazingly advances unmanned drones which can be equiped with small missiles or used for laser guided targeting.
All sarcasm aside, I wonder if the Russians are still using the very dangerous and unmanagable liquid fuel in their missiles?
I am and always will be a stereotype, because who in their right mind prefers mono?
Wasn't that one of the intentions of designing the new super machine guns you've beenh hearing about that can put a thousand rounds in the air before the first one hits?
President Putin also mentioned that while the Russain Federation has developed the technology, Russsia does not have the funding to actually launch the missle. "With all our rotting submarines, and degrading nuclear facilities, it would just be too costly to construct and maintain one of these new-fangled 'zig-zag' missle. Really, the purpose of this press release is to inspire, uh, what is the term, ah, yes, FUD."
The views expressed are mine own and do not express the views of my employer.
Shooting down a ballistic missile that you fire is hard enough. The scale of the problems is immense. They're trying to shoot down an object that is somewhere in 10 billion cubic miles of space, that's going as fast as 15,000 miles per hour. The physics of the problem are near impossible for graceful newtonian arcs, let alone the engineering of such a feat. The solution to the problem is such a tenuous single state solution that adding any other factors (zig-zagging missiles, decoy missiles, or something as expected as slight shift in air density) make the task functionally impossible, given the little or no warning that a nuclear missile attack tends to arrive with.
Now they can sell this technology to US itself and revive their dying economy..
They called me mad, and I called them mad, and damn them, they outvoted me. -Nathaniel Lee
And yet the vast majority of Russia lives in poverty.
It's good they've built a better mouse. That's what the people need. *note sarcasm*
Anyone find any numbers on what these "zig-zagging" missiles cost to develop? Anyone else sick of seeing countries burn money on defense while their people starve?
What it's come down to is simply Fruedian penis...err...missile envy.
My work here is dung.
...is that the Russians are running their mouths about their nuclear capabilities again. To channel the president, the best defense against Russian missiles is a democratic Russia.
Russia really is not the problem. If Russia decides it wants to nuke the US, the US is getting nuked. End of story. Sure, a missile defense system might blunt the blow a little, but the truth is there is no good way to stop a few thousand nukes. If Russia bites, it is going to hurt. Both nations are going to end in a nuclear cloud.
The real danger is that North Korea or Iran scraps something together that can just barely make it to the US. Then, through political instability, fanaticism, or provocation they lob a few nukes at the US. Such nukes would probably just barely be able to reach the US, and certainly would not have any fancy zig-zagging capabilities. In such a case a missile defense shield would be a damn nice thing to have, even if it can't stop a full Russian assault.
The real issue is cost / benefit. What are the chances that a nation is going to develop such fanatical fever that it thinks nuking the US and promptly getting glassed over in response is a good idea? The US position on nukes is pretty clear. Nuke us, and we are going to glass you, so it isn't like they are going to be confused by the response.
It would be nice to throw a few dollars at it and have technology waiting in the wings should we need it or should it ever become cost effective. If I could get an effective ballistics defense system for the cost of an aircraft carrier, I would merrily be all over that. If it is going to cost a fleet of air craft carriers, I am far less enthusiastic. A defensive weapon in the arsenal is nice, but not if it takes Apollo like time and effort to achieve it.
I would like to see low level funding of a ballistics defense system. I do not want to kludge together a half-working system at massive expense. Work towards getting the technology ready should it be needed, but don't go all out building an elaborate defense system that is massively expensive and only kinda-sorta works until there is a clear threat.
So where have North Korea invaded lately? They don't seem very "rogue" compared with another certain country who has invaded two other countries in the past few years with no justification, and is building up to invading another.
Suitcases, international shipping containers, cars on ferries, tunnels from mexico and small sailing vessels all come to mind as better delivery platforms for such a weapon. Missles are not going to be the choice of a rogue nation.
That said, in the crazy poker meets chess meets jenga meets russion roulette game of geo-military politics it's probably worth a trilion dollars to prop up your bluff that you're holding THE MOST AWESOME DEFENSE SYSTEM EVER. Do you care if it works as long as it changes the game in your favor?
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Why worry about (and spend on) an missle defence system when adversaries are more likely to use the Federal Express package delivery system to send a bad-bomb?
The magic bullet theory was true!
The KGB really did kill Kennedy!
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
I doubt a rogue state would use missiles. Why spend a few billion on a fancy missile system when you can drive the nuke over the border, fly it over in a cargo jet, or float it over in a shipping container?
Besides, missiles are very visible and give away the country of origin. If North Korea fires a nuclear tipped missile, we'll know exactly where it took off and respond accordingly. If it comes over quietly, we really won't know exactly who sent it.
I was under the impression they only had medium to long range surface-to-surface missiles, so their main deterrent has always been the threat of attacking South Korea or Japan.
Except for the North Korean warhead they allegedly found in Alaska.
But that's only Alaska, so who gives a damn.
I would rather not have the technology, and spend the $1 Trillian (with a Capital T) on something more useful for American citizens.
l )
Right now the system is dubious at best, and if technology exists that can defeat it, all that money was wasted.
So you are right on one point, this will take care of one small threat. But then we won't have any money left to address the big ones! That's not where I'd like to be.
(Source for figure: http://www.armscontrolcenter.org/nmd/fullcost.htm
Moderation: Put your hand inside the puppet head!
It would be relatively simple and cheap to overwhelm the system with much cheaper drones. Star wars has been and always will be about economics. In the early 80s it was about bankrupting the Soviets, as well as giving us an extra chip to play with in disarmament negotiations that they did not have. Now it's about a President who is faced with an amazingly complex foriegn affairs landscape, and wishes to deal with it in a simplistic way (while making defense contractors rich).
"Our nuclear threat will not be coming to us in the nose-cone of an SS-20, it will come to us in a Ryder Truck" - Me discussing missle defense on the Bernie Ward show 9/10/2001
Of course, if we get to the point where a country is lobbing nukes at us, things are already very, very bad. The best way to prevent a nuclear strike is to stop it not while the warheads are already on their way down, but before it even launches in the first place. Unfortunately, diplomacy is something with which the current administration is not familiar. This thinly-veiled military complex kickback is more likley to start another Cold War arms race than save anybody's life.
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
He did not want the US/Canada to develop a missle shield to begin with. Then says his rockets can do somersaults at will to dodge tracking missles...
Develop the laser based missle defense and forego trying to knock one out with another missle.
Of course, the missle shield never worked anyway, for a simple reason, decoy missles.
t m
The idea is that the missle defence 'kill vehicle' will launch after it has been confirmed a rogue nation has launched a missle against the US (or North America), and will hunt down and intercept it. The difficult is *not* actually hitting the target, which has been accomplished, but knowing which one the real target is.
Obviously, any nation sending nukes against the states would send decoy ones as well. As Theodore Postol (an expert on missle defence) recently said in a speech at McGill, not sending nukes would be like making a tank without armor, assuming the enemy doesn't have anti-tank weapons.
Even the most up to date missle defence technology really doesn't have a good way of differentiating nukes from fakes, if we don't know what the fake would look like in advance.
More info here: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/0902-03.h
Shared economies. The zig-zag missle won't fly if by blowing you up their economy takes a hit.
I actaully have no clue.
So even though it may be harder to get the ballistic trajectory, the missle isn't going to be going as fast. And we can still track objects even if they zig-zag, pretty darn accurately too. (Extended Kalman Filter anyone?)
This just sounds like Russian gusto to me.
I'll form my OWN solar system! With blackjack! And hookers!
You have to take this to its logical conclusion.
Both the missle and the anti-missle will be like small, remotely piloted jet fighters. Either pilot may choose to arbitarily change their weapon's vector at any time, as much as they want to.
The anti-missle will be armed with smaller, higher-velocity rockets to shoot at the missle to:
1) Make the missle prematurely detonate
2) Destroy the missle's thrusting capability
3) EMF jam the missle
The missle will be armed with smaller, detachable countermeasures such as:
1) Make the anti-missle fire its rockets at decoy targets
2) Fool the anti-missle into following a decoy target all together
3) Destroy the anti-missle's thrusting capability
4) EMF jam the anti-missle
The missle's disadvantage is a lot of its mass has to be devoted to delivering a highly destructive payload to its target.
The anti-missle's disadvantage is it has to actively tail a small moving target.
The costs of waging missle war with an anti-missle defended country will become prohibitively expensive.
The cost of a country to become properly anti-missle defended will become prohibitely expensive.
But really it will be robotic planes vs. robotic planes.
"Love heals scars love left." -- Henry Rollins
No, wait--that's what they WANT us to think...
-Loyal
I aim to misbehave.
All this complex tech doesn't stop a fanatic with a backpack nuke in a major city....
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Why this system was good enough in the 60's (and not hugely expensive), and now 40 years later has to be replaced by a much more complicated (and less likely to work) boondogle is for some reason almost never discussed in the media...
Because the purpose of having nukes and missles is to threaten others, not use. They are leverage in high stakes situations. Now a terrorist group would just blow stuff up and would rather be sneaky. But a nation will want everyone to know what they can do (i.e. lob a nuke into your backyard). But they would never actually use it unless they figured they were doomed anyway.
Which leads to the correlary: You don't actually need the capability, just for everyone else to believe you have it. The Soviets played during the Cuban missle crisis. Russia could be playing this game with their new missle. The US could be with it's defence sheild. And Saddam certainly played it (he may not have had WMD, but used the uncertainty to appear more powerful than he actually was).
So weapons (and fake weapons) are just a way of coercing others into giving you what you want. Using them is just one way of doing that.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
Regardless of whether it is a good idea to have an effective ABM system in place, the technology will work. The rocket problems (which are a decade past due) are eventually being worked out, as several unrelated weapon systems are dependent on the same rocket technology working correctly. The question is not whether it can work (it can) but whether or not deploying and maintaining a comprehensive ABM system is worth the expenditure, which it may not be. The money spent on the guidance package is widely reused, and the rocket technology is slated to replace many existing rocket powered systems, once they work out the kinks. In that respect, the military research has not been a waste as the primary components are or will be used in many other places. The new ABM systems they are testing have very little relation, either in design or technology, to the old existing systems; most of current "ABM missiles" like the Patriot are anti-aircraft systems where they hacked the software to hopefully hit missiles outside the original design envelope.
This really should be a policy and fiscal argument, not a technology argument, as the technology will eventually work as originally designed. The argument that there is something fundamentally wrong with the design is a loser and poorly informed, but a much stronger argument can be made about the mission of such a weapon system.
Wouldn't the laser equipped 747 still be able to nail something like this? And why are we going for a ballistic anti-missile system and not a laser one? http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/01/12/airborne.las er/index.html
We can retaliate, but this idea that we can "glass their a$$" if they nuke us is just false. We may, and may is really strong word, be able to drop a tactical nuke. But that is about it.
Why would we not just wipe them out, you ask? Because we do not have "limited theater nuclear weapons." That's the fancy term for "we cannot stop the fallout from moving." So if NK attacks and we just send in one ICBM, we will spread fallout over NK, Japan and China. NK - well they got what they asked for. Japan - they are an ally and we would be really sorry. China -- well they are going to look at this about the way we would if China nuked Mexico (assuming Mexico deserved it), and Texas became a wasteland.
The middle east? Just as bad. Nuke Syria and you are going to glass a bunch of desert and poison a lot of people. These will then become terrorists of tomorrow (or freedom fighters depending on your view). On top of which Israel would be drawn in, they would use a nuke or two and suddenly you can get all the oil for free but you need a lead suit to fill up at the pump.
In reality, if they get one to us, they would hurt us big. Not because they would win the war (the knew that would not happen), but they would ruin the economy. Look at post 9-11 economics, four buildings and 2600 people die (very bad). It took two years to get the economy back and we could go to ground zero that afternoon. Now imagine 9-11b where Los Angeles is uninhabitable for even 5 years and having to move 7 million people to other areas of the country.
As someone said on the Sunday talk show circuit, we have to be right 100% of the time, without creating a prison for our population. They only have to get it right once.
If you are willing to accept the argument that a small nuclear explosion in the upper atmosphere is better than a large nuclear explosion closer to the ground, above a heavily populated area. If so, then it is a simple matter of having some missiles that are designed to detonate 7-14 km in front of the inbound ballistic missile. At the speeds that are involved with a ballistic missile, it won't have time to maneuver to avoid being destroyed. Moving at ~7km/s, this would give the blast radius 1-2 seconds to expand and only 1-2 seconds for the inbound target to maneuver. Even maneuvering at 20g's, it would only be able to move 400m, at most, which wouldn't be nearly enough to avoid the physical shockwave, let alone the radiation pulse - either destroying the missile outright or frying its detonation system.
Does this cause an EMP that will do a lot of bad things to electronics, including communication systems and satellites? Yup. But is better than having an entire city in ruins.
Really, the hard part is trying to avoid any bad side-effects of using the system. That's why it seems nearly impossible - everyone wants it clean.
The effect a nuke would have on the economy of the US and the world would be devastating. The question is, are there countries with leaders fanatical enough to do it?
Unfortunately I think there are.
This shield was never designed to deal with what Russia could lob at us. Putin just comes out with speeches actings AS IF we were actually trying to defend from Russia. He has to do this as the sorry state of their military has to be kept from their people. What better way than to latch on US stories of missile defense with some of their own propoganda?
I don't think you can put a cost on what a strike would cost.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I see a lot of knocks against Russian engineering in here from people who obviously don't study history or current events. Russian engineers are some of the most creative and imaginative in the world and some of the things being turned out by their aerospace industry currently is top-notch. Don't forget we're riding their "junk" into space and their new Sukohi fighters are the match of anything we have with the possible exception of the F-22 Raptor... and the Sukohis are cheaper. If you have any doubts about the ultimate capability of vast quantity over quality just ask anyone living in Berlin in 1945.
Regardless... never doubt the capabilities of Russian equipment when they have the resources and the guy turning the wrench actually reads the blue prints.
Historical revisionism at it's finest! When Reagan proposed the v1.0 missile defense, the USSR/Eastern Bloc was the only potential enemy. Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden were allies back then. Who else might Reagan have had in mind?
So - it is mostly against the "rogue" state.At least that is the current excuse. Much like the justification for the invasion of Iraq, I expect that the rationale will change as circumstances require
The other thing that people don't realize is that this is a system of systems. There are several levels of defense that are being worked on.The fundamental issue is still the same: how to shoot down a bullet with another bullet. It doesn't matter how many layers of abstraction you have, it never becomes any less complex than that. The physics of the problem suggest that the best way to stop a missile from landing is for it not to be launched in the first place. I don't see Bush pressing for disarmament though.
Besides, a missile is an expensive and complex toy. There are much simpler and cheaper ways to launch a nuclear attack. Some people in this thread have suggested a suitcase bomb. It would be much easier to utilize cargo containers as a delivery mechanism.
Patriots have been upgraded to do a better job than they did during Desert Storm,Well, it wouldn't take much:
The field-test results of what is currently available has not been encouraging. There are failures even with advance knowledge of the exact trajectory of a slow-moving target missile...
I think it has more to do with corporate welfare than actual defense. Defence department cronies get tons of federal cash and nobody really expects to see a finished product. They just have to rig up an an impressive looking prototype from time to time.
It's a bad combination - cronyism and PR.
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
Why not use an EMP to knock missles out of the air?
1. Hard to get a big enough EMP (unless you're using nukes - see below).
2. Biological warheads are still very dangerous even without any sort of electronic system in the head.
3. Not needed - the missle shield is already effective when you realize that we'll be putting nuclear warheads on the anti-missle missles.
There are too many easy ways to defeat the shield - another really easy choice is to drop dummies all over the place (like missle command, except only a few are live - and you don't know which ones). Balloons can be used to distract targetting too. I went to a pretty convincing talk about this at the Hopkins Physics department.
No, the only way it can be effective is to have nuclear-tipped missles, and they know that. They're just getting us ready for it slowly. "Oh, it worked, but now they have this, so we'll need to use nukes. And we've already spent $183947374984 on it, after all."
--LWM
ATGMs are as related to a ballistic missile as a tricycle is related to a dump truck.
Similarly, a cruise missle such as a tomohawk, which has no evasive capabilities either, is irrelevant to a discussion of ballistic missle interception. The problem there is little different from shooting down a small, low level, and relatively low-speed jet aircraft, and there are plenty of SAM and AAM systems that can do an excellent job of shoooting these down. What parallels you can draw between a tomohawk and a free-flight hypersonic payload entering the atmosphere are fanciful at best.
While your point is a good one, it's not what Bush has in mind, no doubt. Likely the American people will never get a straight answer, just as we haven't from this administration for any number of borderline or flagrantly illegal or stupid acts. My guess is that the "extraordinary act" that Bush would be most likely to cite is a combination of 9/11 and "rogue states with WMDs" even though it's pretty clear that neither of these would really apply to this treaty. The major reason for this is probably to allow the Bush camp to pursue their true dream of authorizing the use of so-called "tactical nukes". I must admit I don't know much about the ABM Treaty, but I'm willing to bet it has some more of those pesky international statutes that get in the way of Bush authorizing low-grade nuke strikes against anyone he pleases. Remeber, the department of DEFENSE has been in the business of OFFENSE for decades. Don't look to the defensive reasons (possibly functional missle shield) for these changes in policy, look to the offensive reasons (better war toys). There you will find the true motivations.
Just my gut feeling from the way everything else has been spun and twisted by this administration. As the grandparent post said, please correct me if I'm wrong.
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
US Missile Shield is already defeated because of sheer number of Russian ICBMs. What this announcement really means is that "The Father of the Nation has a new shiny super-duper weapon to hurt those arrogant americans". I'm quite sceptical about reliability and (especially) accuracy of this system. I think it's just another PR step in ongoing anti-american campaign...
Until some psychotic prez decides that we can go and attack someone because some general has told him that our missile defence shield will save the day
Welcome to the game. If you build a better mousetrap, someone will come up with a better mouse. This will then force someone to come up with an even better mousetrap, and so repeats the cycle.
But building a better mousetrap is rather difficult, which is why we have the saying about it.
The problem is that this "cycle" is so overwhelmingly stacked in favor of the attacker that treating it like some kind of treadmill you just have to have the dedication to stay on is foolhardy and doomed to fail. The problem of disabling an incoming missle is inherently orders of magnitude more difficult than the problem of landing a missle in the vicinity of a target.
It's always been this way in the battle between attack and defense. Knights' armor was easily penetrated by the English longbow. Once the cannon was invented, the reign of the castle ended almost overnight. Or look at a modern day example: The M1A1 Abrams, with all that technology first deployed in the 90s, has pretty good survivability against should-carried infantry weapons invented in the 60s, or cobbled-together explosives made in some insurgent's garage. Against a similarly modern weapon system, like an A-10's cannon, that super-advanced armor might as well not be there for how easily it is breached.
The way you stop a nuclear missle assault is not with a techonological shield that can never keep up due to its inherent disadvantage. You do it with psychology -- make the opponent not want to launch the missle. This is the basis for MAD, and it has been proven to be effective. Unlike this missle defence shield which fails even the most optimistic of tests rigged in its favor.
The sad part is that for the only enemy against whom MAD won't work -- rogue terrorist groups not tied to a nation they don't want to see remodelled into a glass parking lot -- are also the ones against whom missle defense will never work either, because they won't use missles.
The only benefit of a "missle defense shield" is that it keeps military contractors employeed and makes people who don't want to think too hard about this kind of thing anyway feel safe. Worth every penny, if you ask me!
The enemies of Democracy are
According to public reports I have read, both North Korea and Iran have some old Russian intermediate range missles from the 1960's, with homegrown improved versions at an advanced development stage (at least). North Korea could probably hit Hawaii and some of our island territories right now, and might be able to hit Alaska (depending on how far the developments are along). Iran can hit anywhere in the middle east and probably into Greece, maybe small areas of Italy (?). The Russian IRBM's and the homebrew upgrades they are working on threaten all of Western Europe, which is why Germany and France are pissing their pants over the Iranian bomb project--given that the Iranian president has an outstanding arrest warrant in Austria for murder, this seems perfectly reasonable on their part!
Conventional surface to air missiles have a limited range anti-missile capability, some missiles vastly better than others. Back in the 1970's, the option of putting Nike Hercules missiles in the areas of our strategic missiles was considered an option in times of extreme tension. The old Russian ABM system wass all nuclear and more danger to their homeland than the American missiles they would have been fired at. Basically, conventional surface to air like the old Nike Hercules would be a point defense against anything within 10 miles horizontal range and intercept at about 50,000 feet--awfully low for the BIG nukes the Russians were supposedly throwing at the time.
The Patriot did absolutely nothing in the first Gulf War, and was basically a public relations triumph with no substance behind it. The upgraded Patriots probably are not much better--not enough better to be worthwhile when folks are throwing nukes. I'm extremely skeptical about the suggested prowess of the Aegis, etc., as ABM's, and my recollection is that their vastly improved radar (currently being upgraded in the fleet) would be required to be linked to the actual deployed ABM system for the West Coast of the US--needed to wake the boys up early and give tracking data for the boost phase. And, of course the actual missile they are proposing to spend $60 billion on to deploy has never had a real operational success against missiles flying known paths and carrying transponders! Rumsfeld's Religion is what I call it. The man is obsessed and just doesn't have a good sense of priorities, or nobody has had the balls to tell him what a turkeythe ABM is, or....
And of course, you can defeat all this with a Cessna or sailboat returning to the US from Acapolco, or whatever, assuming your bomb might be detected in a shipping container or FedEx flight. There were studies back in the Cold War every few years about how many people/bombs the Russians could have smuggled into the country without detection, and the verdict was always greater than zero, even allowing for the propensity for those in the analysis field to always predict some level of threat.
The working alternative is MAD. I.e. if anyone attacks US we will have enough time to respond.
MAD is an excellent way of deterring an enemy that wants to live. What do you do if your opponent is perfectly willing to die just to kill you? For example, let's say that there was a hypothetical country in the middle east that was run by religious fanatics that thought that dying while killing their opponents would let them go to their religion's version of heaven. Then suppose that, being a state entity, they put their resources into acquiring the technology and knowledge needed to construct and deploy nuclear devices via missile. How would MAD provide any sort of deterrence to keep them from acting against their enemies?
I don't really think that the missile shield was intended to protect us from an attack from the former Soviet Union. Perhaps a stray missile that was fell into the wrong hands, or more likely, an attack from a rogue state.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
If an eminent rocket scientist like V. Putin says that the zig zag technique will defeat all missile defenses, then we'd be fools to even investigate the technology.
When will our government learn to stop basing our policies on the well intentioned advice of foreign leaders? After all they've never lied to us before!
and build a fucking great bullet proof dome
come on US, do it, build a giant bubble and lock yourselves in
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
This was known a long time ago (Regan Era). It was thought that reflective coatings, spiraling flight paths and other rather simple alterations to ICBMs would render every Star Wars system useless - as a defensive system. This news simply proves what was suspected. The reason the Russians hated Star Wars was because they knew it was nothing more than a more powerful weapon system that the US public would buy off on. They knew that anything that could take down an ICBM, especially one designed to be difficult to shoot down, would be faster, more precise and potentially deadlier than any nuclear weapon. I think the only reason the Russians have spent the time and money to prove this point is to show that the Shield is pointless as a defense and hopefully cause the US public to ask the pointed questions.
They use magnetized missiles whose polarity is opposite that of the iron curtain... duh! ;-)
It's always nice to have a financial magazine writing an article on a technical subject based off of political comments made by the leader of another nation on a project whose practical details are classified. :-/
The article doesn't state it, but it appears to be talking about the ground based interceptor (GBI). This is only one part of the missile defense project. Other portions under development include the THAAD (tactical interceptors), the airborne laser, the Naval Standard upgrade, and a guided boost phase interceptor (which I haven't read much on). Even if you can guarantee that you can defeat the GBI's, that doesn't guarantee that a warhead will get through.
Of course, there's not really any more guarantee that they can defeat the GBI's than there is that the GBI can hit the missile. Presumably, Putin's "non-ballistic" missiles are simply ballistic missiles that have the ability to make a mid-course trajectory change. This, of course, also means the missile will land somewhere else. I assume the added navigational considerations are primarily what has kept such missiles from being developed earlier, but I digress.
Everything I've read on the GBI indicates it is terminally guided. That means it tracks its target continuously from the time it begins "end-game" until the instant of impact (and subsequent disintegration of both the interceptor and the target, non-explosively). If the sensors indicate that the interceptor will not hit its target, it fires its thrusters to correct the problem. If the target is going to avoid the interceptor it either has to count on luck (not a bad bet based on the test success rate so far), or change it's own velocity faster than the interceptor can. Furthermore, if the target performs its "jinking" too early or too late, it will have either already exhausted its bag of tricks before the GBI begins tracking it, or it will be space dust before it can try. There is nothing about this announcement that fundementally invalidates the GBI concept.
As this was covered quite in depth in Scientific American article Holes in the Missile Shield . To sum it up, all possible counter measures are shockingly cheap compared to the infrastructure and technology needed to defeat them.
So really, we lose economically.
Read up on where the Ruskies have been spending their defense dollars. Functional anti-ABM missiles is very possible.
Sunburn/moskit/Brahmos http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/russi a/moskit.htm
The 3M82 "Mosquito" missiles have the fastest flying speed among all antiship missiles in today's world. It reaches Mach 3 at a high altitude and its maximum low-altitude speed is M2.2, triple the speed of the American Harpoon. The missile takes only 2 minutes to cover its full range and manufacturers state that 1-2 missiles could incapacitate a destroyer while 1-5 missiles could sink a 20000 ton merchantman. An extended range missile, 9M80E is now available.
http://www.sinodefence.com/missile/antiship/3m80.a spThe missile is armed with a conventional 300 kg penetrating warhead containing 150 kg of high explosive, or (in the Russian Navy) a 200 kiloton nuclear warhead. Even with a conventional warhead, 3M-80E missile is large enough so that one hit from a single missile could seriously damage or possibly even sink a U.S. Navy major surface combatant, a hit from one or possibly even a few conventionally-armed Moskit missiles might not be enough to halt flight operations on a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier because of the carrier's much larger size and its high degree of compartmentalization. A nuclear-armed 3M-80E Moskit, however, could easily destroy a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier (and any other nearby ships), even if the warhead detonates at some distance from the carrier.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/india /brahmos.htmIndia expects to significantly enhance its long-range strike abilities with the BrahMos cruise missile, jointly developed by New Delhi and Moscow. The supersonic missile -- which derives its name from the Brahmaputra and Moscow rivers in both countries - has a range of almost 300 km and is designed for use with land, sea and aerial platforms. The Indian Air Force (IAF) is reportedly considering the possibility of fitting the BrahMos on its Su-30 combat jets. The production will commence by end of 2003 for induction in the year 2004.
http://www.hinduonnet.com/2005/04/16/stories/20050 41602941400.htmBrahMos is essentially an anti-ship supersonic cruise missile that flies at a speed of 2.8 to 3 Mach (2.8 to three times the speed of sound). It can take out targets 290 km away.
http://www.brahmos.com/Brahmos web page SS-27 / Topol-M / RS-12M(1|2) http://www.missilethreat.com/missiles/ss-27_russia .htmlhe Russian SS-27, or Topol-M, is an intercontinental-range, ground-based, solid propellant ballistic missile. It represents the pinnacle of ballistic missile technology, incorporating modern fuel and warhead designs, as well as being capable of being launched from both missile silos and Transporter-Erector-Launcher (TEL) vehicles. Current Russian accounts stress that the SS-27 is invulnerable to any modern anti-ballistic missile (ABM) defenses. Yuriy Solomonov, director of the Moscow Institute of Heat Technology and designer-general of the Topol family of missiles, has stated that the SS-27 will be the foundation of the Russian strategic nuclear arsenal by 2015.
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/russia/icbm/rt-2pmu. htmThe single-warhead RT-2UTTH Topol-M is an advanced version of the silo-based and mobile Topol intercontinental ballistic missile. The SS-25 Topol is generally similar to the American Minuteman-2, while the more sophisticated SS-27 Topol-M is comparabl
How much is going to be spent on an anti-anti-missile-defense missile missile and the anti- anti-anti-missile-defense-missile-missile-missile?
One more program an anti truck bomb missile
Which one? The one they talk about publicly, or the electromagnetic one? And how about the black budget quiet/ultrastealth hypersonic planes, can they shoot those down yet?
It's not that EMP's from "small devices" are difficult (They have working devices that can electrically kill any unshielded device within a football field sized area that fit into a glide bomb...) it's that EMP attacks are of limited usefulness against the missiles. A Flux Compression Generator will produce a nuke-like EM pulse that'll take out something nearby it, but, it's not TOO difficult to shield against that sort of pulse, even with older warheads- and they started shielding against EMP once they H-Bomb tests revealed that EMP was possible and could take out gear (Gotta make sure that the first inbounds don't disable the others, you know...).
EMP's not going to be the effective way about this unless you can come up with EM radiation intense enough to take out electronics that'll pass through the shielding (Millimeter waves? Focused Gamma Rays?)- and be able to pack a compact enough power source for it to be deployable.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
The system has proven to be quite effective in shielding cold war era military cash-flow channels.
To be fair the system is also effective against all of the ICMBs which aren't there.
N.Korea? Iran? Anyone-but-former-USSR? They won't be using ICBMs, they'll be packing el-cheap-o delivery into fishing boats and casually floating through international waters.
...inbound birds you have and how closely they're clustered together. If you can catch the damn things at apogee, they're going to be largely in space and relatively few in numbers- well placed low-yield warheads might do the trick; but you've still got fallout issues, just nothing like you'd get with warheads larger than .1-1kt (Which we DO happen have warheads that small...).
The shockwave will disrupt things, the EMP probably won't- as I've discussed in a separate thread, they knew about nukes and EMP back in the H-Bomb testing era... The birds are very probably shielded against a nuke or Flux Compression Generator EMP attack- got to ensure the first inbounds don't cripple the later in birds.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
You missed the point. The calculation isn't cost vs. cost. It is our ability to bear the cost vs. their ability to bear the cost.
If we can afford the anti-missile technology, and the enemies that concern us cannot afford the counter-measures, then we win. The cost of either doesn't matter.
A system that makes major mid-course adjustments is outside the capability of enemies that are only now getting basic ICBM capability. Those adjustments require fuel. That fuel must be boosted. Therefore the rocket must be substantially larger or field fewer warheads. Either way, we've forced them to diminish their striking power.
The only concerns would be the minimal fallout (which will occur- the media of the bomb still produces things like Sr-90), and the problems the EM pulses from the detonations would cause.
Honestly, I'd take having to pick up the smoking pieces of a largely successful defense with the current crop of missiles with low-yield nukes than trying to clean up after the mess of even a percent failure level- not that I want to have us do something like this. Disrupting the world this way is waaay stupid and there's other ways to do things...
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
In Soviet Russia, Defense systems dodge you..
Purple, because ice cream has no bones.
The methods are only good against specific types of target, so any kind of cruise missile is going to get straight through an anti ballistic missile system. Drones and "intelligent" self-controlling vehicles will also go right through. Of course, this all assumes anyone would use a missile. Why bother, when a robot with tracks - dropped near the coast - could drive itself to its target? The DARPA contest proved quite nicely that robots can handle just about any terrain and go from A to B without the need for human intervention.
The "correct" design needs a combination of mechanisms. I would put a visible light camera, thermal camera and RADAR on the anti-missile missile, as the combination will defeat just about any jamming mechanism and - because you're tracking directly - would not rely on guesswork on trajectory, would not be specific to a type of target. I'd also have two airborne tracking systems, which the missile could direct, to maximise information available and minimise the risk of failure in any one component.
Such a system would need to also be designed with maximum manoeverability in mind. Winglets, steering jets, whatever it took to be able to turn the thing quickly in any direction. You'd also need to take a lot of space up with the computer needed to be able to handle all of the navigation and prediction. For that reason, I'd probably go with a ramjet over a rocket, to reduce the space needed for fuel. (To start the ramjet, you'd use a gas cannon to give you the initial velocity needed.)
If you designed a system this way, it should be fairly effective against any kind of attack - EXCEPT ones involving EMP (as it would wipe the computer systems) OR ones that were travelling so fast that convergence was impossible within the range of the sensors (hydrogen-fuelled ramjets can go up to mach 6, but the hypersonic system being tested by the USAF is supposed to do mach 20 and the Australian scramjet status is completely unknown - other than it works).
"But our enemies don't have US-built systems!" Uhh, a certain Osama Bin Laden was supplied with US weapon systems, as was Saddam Hussein. Not all US allies are terribly careful with who they sell to, either. It is not sane to assume the best possible case for a system that is designed specifically for the worst possible scenario. If you are already assuming that you're in the worst of all possible worlds, don't deliberately weaken the scenario for the sole purpose of artificially reducing the problem to something that looks good to the ignorant but won't do anything for you in practice.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Well, we'll just make an anti-missile-defense-missile-defense shield!
Modesty is one of life's greatest attributes
Will somebody please make up an 'In Soviet Russia' joke?
What's wrong with you, slashdot? Somebody? Please?!
The saddest poem
No 2.0 will be a big leap forward. 3.0 will be almost perfect with only some minor promlems. Wait for 3.11 to really kick ass. And then a new millenium starts. Version: 95
Isn't it obvious? These missiles are developed for defense. These two coutries are in a race to develop nuclear weapons before they are invaded. Once they have these weapons, it's a totally different game.
The only problem with the so-called "missile shield" is that they're so intent on calling it a shield when it's not. What we really need is to move into giant domed cities. A huge physical shield overheard would protect us from just about anything, including the daily terror that is weather.
This is the most intelligent, coherent comment ever posted in slashdot history. Is the world coming to an end?
.. an American built missile defense shield that has already met or exceeded its mission goals of being a political tool and vast pork barrel for military contractors. Youre fooling yourself if you think it was ever meant to shoot anything down. Its simply a tool for leveraging against North Korea and for providing defense industry jobs back home.
The system was designed to deliver the payload to the targets, and it does just that. The payload being billions of taxpayer dollars, and the targets being defense contractors, of course. Any nonsense you hear about "missiles" or "nuclear weapons" is window dressing.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
So you're saying the Ottomans didn't claim to be the Caliph? Was Selim confused when he called his empire the Caliphate and conquered Eqypt, Palestine, Mecca and Medina? Were the Ottoman armies lost when their armies tried to march through Vienna? (twice! 16th and late 17th century!) Maybe it was a peaceful gesture towards the Christian states of Europe when Suleiman sent armies through Serbia, Hungary, and the rest of SE Europe?
You can debate character, motives, morals, ethics, philosophy, culture, etc - but names, dates, and places are names, dates, and places. And as I originally stated, those pesky Ottomans (who just happened to represent most of the Islamic world neighboring Christian Europe) put the lie to your rhetorical flourish.
Come on, give them a break.
I always test incomplete software with various hacks to enable it to function.
Do you think I should not?
Would you claim that "it doesn't work, and noone knows when it will, if ever. Any claims to the contrary are pure astroturf"? Oh please, it's an engineering problem. While failures are common enough to annoy, I will most likely succeed.
It's done for all sorts of engineering projects. Without testing, it sure would fail.
Taiwan
Got it?
Along time ago, reading about some airliner that went down off the East Coast of the USA, a suggestion was raised that a spark in the airliner's fuel tankes was caused by EMR by Aeigis and other carriers in the vicinity. Of course the Navy never admitted to anything but I followed this up with some people I know...I had the same theory, couldn't EMR be used to down rockets like this?
"No", was the answer. I didn't get an expanded answer but I didn't have reason to doubt the person saying so.
Consider that a nuke is being constructed to fly and operate in an environment where other nuclear weapons are currently exploding or have been. If any but the initial first two are to work then they must be EMP proof, right?
So I think you will find that the housing for the guidance electronics, etc, in nuclear rocket based weapons is made in such a way that they're somewhat impervious to an EMP. Or it is if you're savvy about the construction of these things.
Use something else to deliver your payload.
Current research targets all three phases of flight. You can wish all you want but if you nail the missile body in the boost phase, all the MIRV's are dead, period. Zig-zag will avail you nothing. In the final trajectory phase, the energy delivery vehicle, based on land or in space, will nail the MIRV body, although not as efficiently as during the boost phase. The only reason that the zig-zag will give you anything is against something like our smart or brilliant pebble system and I'm not even sure that will work very well given that the pebble will have a much smaller body weight and thus will require a much smaller RCS versus that of a RV.
So, the case seems to be that this is more a system against rogue states rather than a technologically superior state such as the US or Israel (which is also developing such technology), or even Japan.
"[I]t is a wise man who admits the limits of his knowledge or skill, and that pretending either causes harm." --Terry Go
...method. The same method we proposed to defeat the ABM sites around Moskva in the 80's. Dummy targets. A warhead bus is modified to carry warhead 'dummies', especially on systems designed for higher yield weapons (think megaton range(s)) which tend to carry fewer warheads in any case. As long as no obvious ballistic or material properties are evident with these 'dummy targets' during atmospheric translation, the missile defense system would likely not be able to discriminate which warheads were real or which were fake. There were many other 'spoofing' ideas as well, all of which precluded the possibility of a valid defense against a determined and large scale nuclear attack.
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One worked the way you stated (Little Boy), the other worked by imploding a sphere with a spherical cavity at its centre (Fat Man)
Our defence budget is limited, we can't spend insane amounts of money unworkable solutions to improbable threats. It's way more logical to spend the money on something immediately useful and tangible, like border security.
You are preaching to the choir. Go back and re-read my post. I wasn't making arguments for an anti-missile shield, I was simply pointing out that the concept of MAD deterence falls short when you are faced with an opponent that is willing to acccept mutuial destruction as an option.
Your comments about a everyone being willing to die are somewhat faulty. The only person involved with nuclear weapons that has to be willing to die for the MAD concept to fail is the person who can push the button. At that point, everyone else's thoughts on the matter are rather moot.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
We can discriminate between decoys and warheads with a very high degree of accuracy.
It isn't as hard a problem as you might thing (not that it is trivial).
Spend about four hours REALLY THINKING about how one might do this before you fire off a knee jerk reply.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
No you can't, and perhaps you should elaborate on how you think we can tell a 17,000 mph dummy warhead with the same radar and heat signature as a real warhead from a real warhead...? This should be interesting. Stick to your Tom Clancy novels.
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Putin just comes out with speeches actings AS IF we were actually trying to defend from Russia.
:)
Yes, you were actually trying to defend from Russia? Security is a layer thing. The more layers - the better security. Those designing these systems in the US seem to know it
He has to do this as the sorry state of their military has to be kept from their people.
You got that wrong too. He had to mention this fora whole bunch of reasons. The sorry state of the Russian military cannot be kept from our people. Its all over the papers.