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US Tests New Missile Defense
pumpkinpuss writes "The US military yesterday shot down a missile in a test simulating a long-range ballistic missile attack by a potential adversary such as North Korea or Iran. The target missile was launched from Kodiak Island, Alaska, at 3:04 PM Eastern time, tracked simultaneously by several ground and ship-based radars, and intercepted by a 'kill vehicle' 3,000 kilometers away over the Pacific 25 minutes later, according to the Missile Defense Agency. Lt. Gen. Patrick O'Reilly said, 'The kill vehicle was sent to a very accurate spot in space giving us great confidence.'"
Reader gilgsn points out the testing of a different "multiple kill vehicle" by Lockheed Martin, which was able to hover over the ground and track a target. Video of the test (WMV) is also available.
Nice to see that our tax dollars are going towards a good cause.
We don't need it anyway. If we are attacked during the Obama administration, he would call up the people that launched the missile, and after they talk, the aggressors will will see it Obama's way and press the self destruct button.
I can understand N. Korea since they can actually reach the Aleutians... but Iran? I'd like to see some propaganda that actually is realistic and Iran coming up with a missile that can reach the US is something of a fairy tale.
Maybe using it to stop a missile from reaching Israel.......
What a beautiful machine! I really love it's completely evil and aggressive look. The way the camera shakes because of the massive amounts of unergy it uses to keep hovering. This thing will be a hit computergame enemy.
I am a pacifist but i love military tech. Is that sick?
By all accounts, these tests are completely rigged, and the system can be fooled by the simplest of tactics. The only way to really test it, is to set up a game, where you allow a completely independent team to try to fool the system and another team to try to shoot it down. It is really dangerous to kick off another cold war in order to deploy a system which is a complete fraud. This is yet another way to funnel money to defense contractors...
Deconstruct the State
However, he said the 40-year-old target missile failed to deploy its countermeasures -- such as decoys or chaff -- which were supposed to add realism to the test.
I guess it still qualifies as a valid test against a virtual enemy using archaic or not well maintained ICBMs.
I submit that it is sad because in my opinion, the next threat to US security will not come from countries like N. Korea. It will come from home grown terror.
After all, one can simply walk into the US from Mexico and Canada. If the terrorist is well facilitated, they we could be in big trouble.
I wonder whether we as a nation, are borrowing from China to finance this already absolete technology...if the Russians are to be believed.
Obama can do Jedi mind tricks?
Better. Even if you are the biggest and baddest, you still treat others with respect. It works miracles.
According to the WaPo article, the program has cost $100 billion since 1999. With a budget like this, failure is not an option.
What a waste.
Free Manning, jail Obama.
Looks like a military propaganda video out of a cheesy sci-fi movie. In fact, it reminds me of the military commercials in Starship Troopers. Still, it shows how these things should work.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDgIBES9U9M
Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
The one lesson we (should) have learned from the past 20 years is assymetric warfare. Just because a country has all the shiny new, high-tech toys doesn't mean that an adversary will oblige by using the methods they've spent trillions on defending against.
This trinket is much more a victory for the defence companies who suckered a gullible government into paying for them to develop what they wanted, rather than what a defensive system needed. Still I suppose it's all they deserve.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
I am a pacifist but i love military tech. Is that sick?
There are those who would argue, that military tech guarantees peace.
Of course, if your game has wackos instead of rational players, all bets are off.
Even when the Cold War started to heat up, the US and the USSR were wise enough to keep their fingers off the buttons.
I am not so sure if the Next Generation Nuclear Players will have this same wisdom.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
I think Dodge should release a version of the old PowerWagon and call it "Multiple Kill Vehicle". Wonga-Wonga.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
True! The so-called "missile defense" system is in fact aggressive rather than defensive in posture. It is the shield you need to have in one hand while you club somebody with a weapon held in the other hand. It's useless to ward off attack from a strong enemy (unless you have launched a devastating surprise attack against them already), and it's useless against an sneak attack even from a weak enemy. Frankly the idea that Iran, DPRK, Venezuela, etc, would attack the US with ICBMs is simply ludicrous.
Love how they say it simulated a long range missile attack from NK or Iran, but failed to mention that because the target only flew a few thousand km, instead of the 9,000+ km from one of those 2 to the US, that it was moving at only 40% of the velocity of the real thing.
This was from two years ago. They can change the pitch and it looks much more agile. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGvlNufdeL8&feature=related
I know the russians systems are supposed to be working well. But could someone give some links to various systems or explain some differences and so on? Will this one be superior to the russians systems if they get it to work? Or are the russians systems so good enough that it doesn't really matter? Are there any known development of better systems by the russians?
You should just had ordered theirs =P
Two terrorists are standing in the middle of a desert. One asks "Hey, where did all the bombs go?". The other replies "Oh, I tested them to make sure they all work."
I'm not a warmonger or anything like that, but if the system has a 1 in 10 chance of stopping a nuclear missile or other rogue missile launched at a U.S. city (say mine), i'd rather have that chance than zero chance if we don't have the system.
You say Obama will just fix all the countries hating us with his new world diplomacy, but there will always be people who don't like us (this isn't Star Trek Utopia), so the likelihood of there being at some point in the future some sort of threat similar to this to us or one of our allies, is highly likely.
They've had many successes with the system so far and already have it deployed on some ships and land-based areas. Also, who says if a real missile were launched at us we wouldn't launch multiple kill vehicles. If we have 50 interceptors sitting at one base and a missile coming in, nothing says you can't launch more than one to try to take it down and/or deal with the counter measures.
"To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." - Tennyson
but there will always be people who don't like us
OK, here's a test: name any country that "doesn't like" Belgium, or New Zealand or Sweden or ... or (the list goes on).
Maybe the best defence system would be to become more like all these countries that no-one "doesn't like".
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
The biggest advantage of operational missile defense is that it can temper paranoia regarding hostile states aquiring some missile and nuclear tech.
Also, it makes it less attractive to even seek that kind of tech in the first place, which is a nice boon.
As for the test, the fact that the ICBM chaff, etc. failed isn't really very important. What the program has achieved is plainly amazing from a technical standpoint.
I would not have expected them to get this far in ICBM interception. (Also, the difficulties in deploying countermeasures is nice in a way. If countermeasures are hard to deploy successfully, it will make the system more robust.)
Why should they build an expensive and inaccurate vector to deliver nukes, when they can simply carry them here by other means, drive them where they want to, and set them off?
Considering our borders security, and consider that not everyone is stupid in this world, people use to find the easiest way to get around obstacles.
Spend the money for more useful means, and leave the 20th century Maginot Line out of taxpayers costs.
Thanks God the last 8 years are now gone, and warlords can go back to where they belong to. Hell.
This was a fantastically successful test and demonstrates (for the 8th time) just how well this system works. It is immoral--and I use that word with precision--for a nation or individual to be defenseless.
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
That is a knock off of our KV and is launched on our Sea Based AMB system off of one of their Kongo class destoyers - thier big innovation is reallt the nose cone that splits on half so that they don't have to change pitch during the intercept to jettison the nose cone.
However when they tested their system, they launched against a simulated missile not a real target, and the missile was launched off our ship (the Lake Erie). (I was at this test it was in '06 called Stellar Tsuru.)
So, basically everything you see of the Japanese missile defense effort is an add on to our existing Aegis/SM-3 based system. They innovated a nose cone, and are redoing the second statge of the rocket motor so they can get 50 or so extra miles of range with the system. The attitude control system you see was developed jointly by Raytheon and Lockheed, the Japanese modded it to add extra telemetry.
Note that this KV can egage one target. The KV shown in the video that you dissed can engage multiple targets.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
For that much money I demand great justice!
Here ya go. The Russian system uses nukes whereas our system is a "hit to kill" system. Rather like the old game Missile Command, they fly up and detonate to catch incoming warheads in the blast.
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
It's been known for quite a while in defense circles that it's generally a poor idea to have a weapojg, defensive or offensive, that can be gotten around at miniscule cost to the other side.
For example, defensive missles, due to the basic geometry of the scenario, can only protect from missles coming through a very narrow cone. You see missles can't slew sideways worth a darn when in boost, and not at all post-boost. The incoming missle is bearing down at 18,000 MPH or more, even a small angle off results in an impossible to hit target. I know, in the movies and artistic simulations you ALWAYS see missles hit at ridiculous angles, but in the real world it's a no-go.
So all the bad guys have to do is target a place that is a couple hundred miles from the nearest interceptor base, or launch from an unusual angle, or use low-trajectory missles, or use say a Cessna to deliver the bomb. Voila, or whatever the word is in NK-speak, you've bypassed a trillion dollar defense system.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It only seemed to work because the blatant stupidity of it terrified the much more rational USSR.
We already have a way to prevent anyone from launching an ICBM at the US, or a NATO ally, or Israel. A method that has a proven track record, and doesn't require gimmicks and rigged tests to seem worth something. It's called "enough nukes to turn the country launching a missile into a glass parking lot". MAD works, and unless it's Russia (maybe China) then it wouldn't even be "Mutually".
Say whatever you want about suicide bombers and martyrs. The leaders of Iran, North Korea, Russia, and whatever other possible nuclear threat you want to name, are not suicidal, not idiots, and not about to sacrifice all the power they've acquired and their entire country in order to destroy a city or two before being completely wiped out.
Obama's not going to make all our enemies stop hating us. Much more likely, he's just going to start mending relations with our allies. He's also not going to go and preemptively invade North Korea, or try to liberate a few more Muslim countries. So he doesn't have to make our enemies like us, he only has to not attack them and force them to retaliate in order to make it nearly inconceivable that a nuclear ICBM would be launched at us.
No, what we have to worry about are shipping container nukes, suitcase nukes, whatsit we can hide in the bottom of a fishing boat nukes. Nobody who wants to launch a preemptive strike is going to give us a hemisphere-sized parabolic fucking ARROW pointed at them, much less a chance to shoot their device down. They're going to smuggle a nuke in so we never see it coming. Which makes a missile shield kinda worthless for defense against a first strike. It'll just be sitting there doing nothing when the bomb goes off.
This, by the way, is why some theorize that the true purpose of the shield is to allow us to launch a first strike, and counter any missile-based retaliation. Russia says so, anyway. I don't really buy it, though I'm sure it's a bullet point feature in the minds of some. I just don't see it being politically acceptable or necessary any time soon, especially not based on assuming the defense shield can reduce the cost to us to an acceptable level. Russia, at least, has nothing to worry about. Their stockpile has deteriorated, but it's still enough to put the M in MAD. A 75% effective defense field wouldn't cut it, much less 10%. If they can even hack that, when Russia also has the tech to play the measure/counter-measure game and use the built-in advantage of being the attacker.
It may not be useless to have around, just in case, I suppose. I haven't been very impressed with their "successes", it seems like more of a boondoggle than anything and I don't think it shouldn't be a priority. Our priority should be the biggest threats, and well, ICBMs just aren't it.
The enemies of Democracy are
so the MKV should be heavier, and thus less agile? the smaller KVs that it releases will have their own propulsion systems?
that'd buy what, 10 hummers?
Mod this up!
I could not tell you about weights even if I knew (I don't). Regarding agility... well they test against the same targets.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Most of you know nothing about war, war is all about first strike and counter strike. Obviouslly the US will most likely never first strike a nuclear country unless it had a full backing from allies and full reason to do so. Rogue terrorist nations always fall into 2 groups. 1# They always go after their mortal enemy at all costs (suicide run) or 2# They always initiate provocation thru other means for a greater threat (force someone to first strike using terrorism, spys, bad intel, etc)
North K. will go after Japan and South K.
Pakastan/Iran/Etc will go after Isreal and India
Part of Ronald Reagans huge increase in military spending was SDI. Ignoring the ABM treaty they tried to make a "missle shield" work in the 80s. And it didn't work. And apparently it is far from working now. But the effects are the same. They are pouring massive amounts of money into it and only get a new arms race, but no added security (remember, it doesn't work at all in real conditions, the test was to send a "kill vehicle" and a rocket to a pre determined spot to have them meet there and were watching everything on radar).
Is that what is in the best interest of the American people? New arms race and lots of money spent?
Blowing something up generally makes chunks, not vapor.
Also it's far less devastating for many reasons. First of all, it probably hits something low-value instead of the carefully selected target. Second of all, those ideas about plutonium (which probably isn't the material in use) getting equally distributed to every person's lungs are pure fantasy.
You don't leave your door unlocked just because somebody could climb in through a broken window.
Proper defense is multi-layer and it covers as much as possible. If you insist on absolute protection, you'll give up and you'll get nothing. This isn't a time or place for perfectionism.
A proper defense includes:
* border fences
* subsurface ocean monitoring
* nuclear non-proliferation treaty
* direct diplomatic discussions
* hacking into launch control systems
* return fire hitting the launch sites
* return fire in general, as a threat
* sabotage
* boost-phase anti-ICBM
* cruise-phase anti-ICBM
* terminal-phase anti-ICBM
* redundant infrastructure
* bomb shelters
* well-prepared emergency responders
* evacuation plans
* air-superiority
* probably 50 other things
With everything at risk, it would be incredibly irresponsible and evil to skip on a multi-layered defense.
Sounds sort of like a were-car.
We might ward off an attack from a strong enemy. We can build a damn large system if we wish.
Even if unreliable, the enemy can't be certain that their attack will work. That's a pretty good disincentive. They'd be pissing us off without any assurance of hurting us.
If it is reliable and they do attack, we just saved our asses. Wonderful!!!
If it's not reliable, well wouldn't you still rather have it in an attack? Compare the destruction of 3 cities to the destruction of 2000 cities. The destruction of 3 cities is awful, perhaps 10x as bad as Katrina. The destruction of 2000 cities results in a country like Somalia.
Anyone who thinks North Korea is a "potential adversary" of the United States is more of a problem in and of themselves than North Korea ever will be.
I hate these astroturfing dingbat conservative talking point stories. Guaranteed the OP thinks putting missiles in eastern Europe is a good idea, and that the gov of Alaska would have made a fine VP.
Did it occur to anyone sponsoring this program that a rogue state could bypass this entire defense system by, say, putting a nuke in a civilian freighter and detonating it once the boat it's on reaches the dock?
You picked two states with some of the poorest missile delivery ability in the world. You might as well have said Somalia because NK and Iran have no ability so launch ICBMs.
But the effects are the same.
Causing the enemies of the U.S. to spend vast sums of money on military buildup and too-early efforts at attack that eventually bankrupt and weaken their position?
Yes, that did work rather well with Russia, and it's also forcing countries now like Iran to hasten missile development to launch attacks before they are really ready.
You only cherry pick the negative aspects of the situation without considering the whole.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Tell you what, we'll let you loose in a prison ward for a few hours and see how far respect gets you.
Respect only works with people that care what you think, or indeed hold rational views. How much respect is Obama really going to garner from people that already consider him a "House Boy"? A demure posture of "respect" would only reinforce beliefs and a distinct lack of respect they already hold.
Obama realizes this as well, which is why he picked the people he did for Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense and so on. In that sense he seems far wiser tahn many of his supporters.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Did it occur to anyone sponsoring this program that a rogue state could bypass this entire defense system by, say, putting a nuke in a civilian freighter and detonating it once the boat it's on reaches the dock?
Yes, thus radiation monitors around bays and border crossings and so forth.
Did it ever consider to you that it's better to protect against as MANY forms of attack as possible rather than one pet approach you consider to be the best? Every layer of defense makes attack, much less successful attack, less likely.
Why didn't terrorists come in via boat and kill a few hundred people in a U.S. (or U.K.) city instead of Mumbai?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
From a fishing boat off the coast in international waters.
The real question is, do they aim the single missile at a single target and obliterate a city or explode it miles above the center of the continental US to wipe out our electrical grid.
I'm thinking a six month power outage would kill a lot more people considering most folks' hunter/gatherer skills consist of fast food and bi-monthly trip to the supermarket/grocery store.
That's a fascinating comment.
It's like you have an evil desire ("nuke them") that can only be inhibited by leaving yourself in grave danger.
Wow.
If you want to do things that way, then an anti-ICBM system doesn't matter. You launch today, aiming for the silos and subs. (if you don't, they could launch first at any moment) Of course, this makes you an evil bastard.
In any case, there would be no single point in time when an anti-ICBM system goes from nothing to perfection. We'd have continuous technical improvement and continuous installation. This greatly discourages the already-unlikely problem of Russia deciding to launch before the shield becomes active. At no point would there be extreme pressure to launch RIGHT NOW.
None of this has anything to do with the nonproliferation structure. I happen to like the nonproliferation structure because it benefits me, but I must admit that it is totally unfair to nations that were late to the party.
MAD is toast as soon as an irrational fanatic gets enough control to cause a launch. Get used to it. Putin can be coldly logical; we are fortunate that he doesn't believe that ridding Earth of infidels would earn him virgins in heaven. When some fanatic gets his possibly-unauthorized finger on a launch button, it'll be too late to deploy any sort of defense system.
The Russians upgraded their missles to "avoid" any antiballastic measures recently.
Figures the US would respond in such a manner. It's somewhat funny that the american media would say this is about Iran or NK when it's really about the US and Russia once again posturing cold war style.
Proxy wars are getting boring huh?
A joke in New Zealand goes like this: How many Australians does it take to change a lightbulb? Answer: twenty one. One to hold the bulb and twenty to drink until the room starts spinning.
You don't invent jokes about people who love you.
If you can find a way to bring forth this solution, your Nobel Prize is waiting for you.
The solution has already been developed. While I would like to take credit for devising the solution, it is really the genius of Bob Newhart. You can contact him for his Nobel prize here.
To "take control of one missile", you merely need to pass the employment screening for a job taking care of the missile.
Plenty of countries have crazy people who would do that. The big old nuclear powers try to reduce the problem by having multiple people required for a launch, but this isn't perfect. France and the UK both have islamists who would be glad to launch something. Then of course there is Pakistan, etc.
At what point do you decide to develop anti-ICBM capability? Maybe when a "test" missile passes over the USA? Maybe only if a live warhead is used?
When you finally decide that Iran can indeed reach the USA, you'll have a big problem. You can't instantly install a good anti-missile system. That takes a decade or two of effort, during which you'll ... beg Iran to wait?
"OK, we believe you now. Please don't launch until we develop and install an anti-ICBM system."
Riiiight...
They already have an anti-ICBM protecting Moscow.
You can argue about "similar" maybe, but "developed" is long past. It's operational.
From best to worst:
* only USA protected
* both Russia and USA protected
* neither protected
* only Russia protected
Right now we're in one of the worst two situations, depending on how you count a system that only protects the area around Russia's primary (by far) city. (imagine NY/LA/DC all together in one city -- that's Moscow)
Moving to a better situation is good. The "both" situation is probably the best we can hope for. Let's go there.
Check out the executives of all the major U.S. TV news channels: they're all Jewish. ABC News, CBS News, Fox News, NBC News, CNN: all their top executives are Jewish.
Now you know why Israeli issues are always on top of the national agenda.
And why the Neocons have such a loud voice.
The real pain of a lesson is that in most cases, expensive high-tech systems can be easily thwarted by simple, cheap, low-tech means. Yes, the defense contractors will make a killing at tax-payer's expense to deliver something that will give the war-mongors a false sense of security.
Hell, all the missle defense techology is useless against a properly-trained suicide bomber, anyway. But then, that only proves my point.
WIN THE PEACE, NOT THE WAR.
Perhaps the poor man's warfare strategy is to get the rich man's efforts to bankrupt himself. Hmmmm...
Ruby Neural Evolution of Augmenting Topologies
As one who worked in the missile defense community for 30 years, let me just say most of you have your heads in the sand when it comes to simple logic or the real world. The threat of retaliation is not worth much against North Korea or Iran. First, they know we wouldn't retaliate with nukes; why would we obliterate millions of innocent peasants when it is the radical leaders of these countries who would have been responsible? Wouldn't it be better to defend against an incoming warhead rather than take the hit, which could kill millions of our citizens and cause many $trillion in damage? Preventing even one nuke from hitting the U.S. saves many times more money than the defensive program could ever cost. And just having a defensive system deters an enemy from launching it because of doubt it would succeed. Second, if smuggling a nuke into the US in a suitcase were so easy, why hasn't it been done already? You can watch the Discovery Channel and see we have extensive ways of checking incoming cargo, despite only a few percent being hand-checked. And there are sure to be classified ways they can't show on the Discovery Channel. And just why would North Korea and Iran be spending so much money on their missile programs if they could just cheaply smuggle a nuke into any location they want? There is a good reason: a missile is the most reliable way to deliver a nuclear or any other kind of payload to its target. But if the US has a missile defense system, then that way becomes much less reliable. That brings up the third point. The reliability of the missile defense system isn't expected to be 10% as some have posted. A single interceptor is expected to be more like 90% effective, and the hit probability has very little to do with the intercept angles as one person suggested. The defended "footprints" of interceptors are typically as large as the entire United States. And if two or more interceptors are launched at the enemy warhead, the reliability goes way up. There are many other arguments against missile defense, such as the one that the enemy who can launch a missile all the way to the United States could also easily develop effective countermeasures. Says who? All CM do is increase the probability of success, but it isn't raised much. Our interceptor technology is designed to be way out front of the ability of anyone (including ourselves) to develop truly effective countermeasures. In fact, the MKV program, about which this whole thread is supposed to be, is one of those counter-counter measures. Namely, if the interceptor can't identify every single target in the threat cloud, that is, can't positively tell which is a decoy and which is a real target, then it directs a mini interceptor at each one it suspects could be the RV (re-entry vehicle). It goes on and on; millions of person-hours have been spent in this pursuit analyzing what might countermeasure missile defenses and what can win over such countermeasures. Actual space experiments have been going on for decades to prove these countermeasures and counter-countermeasures out. I'll stop now. I had a few other comments, but they looked too much like flame bait.
Synchronizing stop lights across the US = one less nuclear power plant
The system will cost a lot of money, and will put a missile and missile-tracking system right up by Russia's borders. Russia aren't happy about this, and don't believe the US are being honest about the motives for the system. Which isn't surprising, because its difficult to find anyone who actually does believe the motives for building the system.
So the system probably won't work as advertised, will probably cost an awful lot of money, and is politically destabilising. It WILL make it easier to attack Russia, but that's not supposed to be something we think about doing these days.
America's seriously in debt, and things are getting worse. Obama's going to be facing some really tough choices when it comes to deciding where to save money, and it'd be surprising if this system survives the budget cuts. When you're on a tight budget, every few billion saved helps.
Eric Baird
On the other hand, if a blood-stained Hannibal Lector sidles up to you, holding the same meat cleaver, and puts on a painfully embarrassed face and says, wincing, "Excuse me, I realise that this is somewhat impudent, but I find myself in pressing need of your chair. I don't suppose ... you'd be so kind ... as to ... [gestures] ?"
Perhaps he absent-mindedly taps a finger against the cleaver with his other hand while he's waiting for your response.
You give him the chair.
He thanks you politely, eversomuch, and gives you a broad smile that conveys to you and to anyone watching his immense gratefulness for your kind and generous deed.
Job done.
Eric Baird
Alt timeline: The economic crisis doesn't hit until a month after the election. News story a week before the election is an Obama staff member caught buying drugs. Moral backlash. News media run the story long and hard. Christians told not to vote for Obama. Fox News portray the Obama campaign team as drug-running ghetto gangsters. McCain gets to make some great speeches about the heartland and family values and responsibility.
McCain wins.
Delayed Economic Crisis hits, out of the blue. The delay makes it even worse. McCain stresses out, is hospitalised. VP sworn in.
Result? President Palin.
Eric Baird