Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
Obama can do Jedi mind tricks?
Better. Even if you are the biggest and baddest, you still treat others with respect. It works miracles.
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!
So since we've got some tiny islands that N Korea could barely reach if it got really lucky, that N Korea could benefit from attacking only by escalating a shooting war with the US, we should... polish the trigger and load the gun?
I think this is an arms race. Right now North Korea can only hit some tiny islands, and our tests only work in well controlled simulations. The hope is, by the time Korea can hit our mainland with nukes, we have a fully functional and completely deployed version of this technology. We can't just sit on our hands and wait for Korea(or Iran, or Pakistan) to obtain the capacity, and will, to hit us before we start the decades long research and development.
If they hit them, we'd suffer minimal loss, and N Korea would finally find itself facing the most global opposition possible. It would be a boon to the US, just as Georgia's attacking Russia finally gave Russia the chance to slap down its Georgia nuisance.
What we are preparing for is the nuclear ICBM equivalent of a suicide bomber. The coldly logical, and successful, strategies of MAD do not hold when confronted with an opponent that doesn't care if they face "the most global opposition possible". Losing a large American city to a nuclear ICBM is not at all equal to Russia's "Georgia nuisance".
... and that's when the C.H.U.D.'s came at me.
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
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.
I don't understand why it's automatically assumed that this defense system will be both stationary and based in the US. The ultimate goal of this project is to create a deployable theater-wide defense system. Remember the Gulf War, and all that crap with the Scud missiles? Those were nuclear-lift capable ballistic missile systems.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
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
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