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Iran Has Put a Satellite Into Orbit
Dekortage writes "'Dear Iranian nation, your children have placed the first indigenous satellite into orbit,' announced Iran's President Ahmadinejad yesterday. The satellite, named Omid ('hope'), was launched to coincide with the 30th anniversary of the Islamic revolution. Video shown on Iranian television shows a Safir-2 rocket rising into the sky, as a follow-up to a test firing last August."
FYI: Canada has nuclear power stations AND has launched satellites. Are you scared now?
Canada is a responsible member of the international community that hasn't made threats to wipe neighbors off the map, allowed criminals within it's own population to overrun foreign embassies and supplied terrorist groups with financial support/weapons.
If Iran wants to be treated like a grown up member of the international community perhaps they could borrow a few lessons from our neighbors to the North? Besides which, ice hockey is way cooler than soccer anyway.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Other attack vectors (smuggling in warheads by sea/land) may be technically easier and more likely, but (being cold about it) the end damage potential is much less. If terrorists set off a bomb or two, there's lots of damage, but the rest of the country is still intact. But if a missile launches, the end result is basically that all the missiles fly. And that ruins everyone's day.
To quote Stuart Slade, defense analyst (emphasis mine):
The problem with missiles is this; once they are fired, they are on their way. Nothing can stop them (in the sense that the launch decision is final; contrary to many people's opinion, ICBMs do not have a destruct system - ones fired on range testing do, but operational ones do not) and nothing can prevent them striking their targets. The other problem is that they are very fast-moving and give the forces on the other side very little chance to decide what is happening and why. If a launch is detected now, the President has less time to make his decision over future action than most people to chose their meal at a restaurant.
Thrown into that is the inevitability of the whole thing; a missile fired means a target hit. Unless the wretched thing malfunctions, of course, but nuclear weapons are not a good place to start relying on luck. So the simple fact that a missile is on its way means that a country is about to have some fairly catastrophic damage inflicted on it. But is that all? Is that first missile the start of a salvo? Is it aimed at the deterrent forces on the ground - so that any response will be ragged? Without going too deeply into the dynamics of the decision (that would take a book rather than an answer to a question on an essay), the odds stack so that if a missile is inbound, it requires immense faith and courage not to return fire. That's step one.
Now we go to step two. The nation that has let one fly either by accident or design. Its government knows that the "other side" has immense pressure on it to return fire, that the odds in the decision-making process stack in favor of opening fire. If they hang around and wait to see what will happen, the rest of their forces get caught on the ground - and destroyed. So they require immense faith and courage not to continue firing.
Step three - the nation that is being fired on knows that the other guys are working on the basis that the odds stack in favor of continuing firing. That ends it; they know the other guys will open fire, so even if they had decided not to, they will reverse that decision. The guys who fired first know that so, even if they had decided not to fire, they reverse that decision.
Everybody fires, everybody dies. More or less. Both sides know it so they don't bother with the question. One flies, they all fly. The only question is the timing.
How does BMD figure into this? It buys time. A single missile inbound can be shot down reasonably easily. So if a single inbound is detected, it can be shot down - stopped from reaching its target. That takes the dreadful time squeeze out - both sides can afford to wait to see what happens. The side that is being shot at can see what develops and also contact the other side and ask. Not a joke - that may be the most important single step. The side that let one fly by accident knows that the other side is going to wait so they can also afford to do so. And the whole situation is a lot cooler.
That's not to say we shouldn't secure ports and borders and all that. We certainly should. But we can't ignore the less-likely but potentially more catastrophic threat, either. The "we can't stop everything, so let's do nothing" approach is stupid, too.
It should also be noted that the US had a working missile defense system in the 70s.
The meek may inherit the earth, but the strong shall take the stars.