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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.
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.
Obama can do Jedi mind tricks?
Better. Even if you are the biggest and baddest, you still treat others with respect. It works miracles.
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.
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!
Since it's not so important to get it right I guess by the beard.
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.
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
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.
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.
Belgium, New Zealand, and Sweden still exist because more powerful countries like the USA and Britain fought to keep them safe.
The Allies freed Belgium after it surrendered 4 years prior; the Allies' huge sacrifices in the Philippines kept the Australian mainlands from invasion; and NATO's military presence and political weight in Europe after the war kept many countries from being absorbed by the Soviet Union.
The US may be a big bully, but without it as a counterbalance to the other expansionist forces the world would be in a worse place.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
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
U.S. Shoots Downs Missile in Simulation of Long-Range Attack
I don't care how good the cause is.. Killing mentally challenged missiles for testing purposes is just wrong
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.
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