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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."
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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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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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.
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.
Star Wars is just toys for the boys and pork barrel contracts.
init 11 - for when you need that edge.
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.
Yes, there is still a good point in having such a shield, even if it has been beaten: it reduces your list of dangerous enemies to those who have the anti-shield technology. And it presumably adds cost to every missile even those enemies build, reducing the efficiency of their economy.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
As long as we have mutually assured destruction, getting attacked with nuclear missiles by Russia or any other State is not likely to happen because they know it would be suicide. The only reason one would create a missile shield would be to be able to attack with impunity. Even then, unless you can guarantee that the system would be 100% effective (an impossible task) you wouldn't want to risk attacking and relying on your shield. Maybe I'm just old-fashioned, but I think the idea of America launching a nuclear missile attack on ANYONE from safely behind a missile shield is quite un-American. The only vaguely plausible threat would be from rogue groups somehow infiltrating a missile silo and somehow managing to launch one. Considering how heavily guarded those probably are, and that the perpetrators would probably still need launch codes, etc, the idea is unrealistic. If the security is that weak, our money would be much better spent helping those countries secure their missiles.
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
All this complex tech doesn't stop a fanatic with a backpack nuke in a major city....
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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
/* The alternative is to throw up your hands and give up. */
The working alternative is MAD. I.e. if anyone attacks US we will have enough time to respond.
The "missle shield" is unworkable - well, it does it's job of fooling taxpayers into funding Raythenon, but so far it can't even intercept test missles with known trajectory. And even if we somehow manage to make it "work", it will still be useless against, say, a torpedo with nuke hitting any of our coastal cities. Or against a hijacked airliner with nuke. Or against a nuke delivered by car.
At the same time customs don't have enough resources to scan all the cargo coming into US, because huge amounts of money are spent on unworkable pork barrel projects like this "missle shield".
Obama 2012: our incompetent asshole is slightly less of an incompetent asshole than the other incompetent asshole !
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?
Tell me again why one of these rogue states would bother with a very complex, and very visible, ballastic missile system when they could simply send it to the US in a cargo container? Maybe it can't get past the dock (which is hardly a given), but it would still cause immense immediate and economic damage to blow one in a busy port.
For that matter, blowing it a few miles offshore would still be enough to cause extreme civil disorder and economic chaos.
Finally, don't forget that launching a missile makes it clear who launched the missile... and invites massive US retaliation. A cargo container leaves a lot of doubt.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
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. --
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!
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and invites massive US retaliation. A cargo container leaves a lot of doubt.
Bush however will probably find a way to blame it on Saddam. Or maybe Iran, if that support his agenda better.