US Missle Interceptor Tests a Success

An anonymous reader writes to mention that the U.S. Missile Defense Agency and Lockheed Martin recently reported success in the test flight of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile system. "THAAD is designed to defend U.S. troops, allied forces, population centers and critical infrastructure against short- to intermediate range ballistic missiles. THAAD comprises a fire control and communications system, interceptors, launchers and a radar. The THAAD interceptor uses hit-to-kill technology to destroy targets, and is the only weapon system that engages threat ballistic missiles at both endo- and exo-atmospheric altitudes."

Comments

Whew...

[Lord_Slepnir]

At first, I was thinking "Great, now all we can defend ourselves against all of those ICBMs that Al-Queda has laying around". But then I realized that there are countries that don't have the luxury of having a few thousand miles of ocean between them and their enemies. I think this technology would be great if deployed to South Korea, Japan, Tiawan, or Isreal. Nothing says "Screw you, Kim" like a system to completely nullify the technology that he's spent years and an equivalent of about his entire country's GDP to develop. Or a note from the IDF to hezbollah: "Can you please stop shooting missiles at us? I'm getting tired of re-loading the launcher".

The article fails to mention...

[Codename46]

whether or not the system can defend against the recently developed random-trajectory missile developed by Russia.

Re:Not anymore.

[mi]

The current nuclear powers should disarm and the united nations should resolve that the mere development, construction or preperation to construct or develop nuclear weapons is itself a crime against humanity. Nuclear weapons should be utterly understood by all concerned to be off the table.

Why? They have their uses and are not that inhumane — supposedly, the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombings have taken less lives, than the weeks of conventional bombings before them (something like 150K lives per night is allegedly attributable to the latter).

And they ended the war, possibly several months earlier...

Today, for another example, using "tactical" nukes to bust Iran's nuclear-research bunkers would, likely, be quite efficient and kill fewer people than any alternative... It would, of course, be a political barrel of worms with anti-Americans world wide screaming their heads off (I wish they did!), but in cold blooded objectivity, it would be rather beneficial for all concerned, including Iranians (tough love and all).

It should be patently obvious to virtually anyone that a nuclear arms race is utterly immoral.

Arms race is just a part of the general race (technological, cultural, scientific). There is nothing particularly immoral about it. Killing people sucks (and is often immoral), but it sucks even more to be killed — or seeing someone dear being killed...