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Critics Say US Antimissile Defense Flawed, Dangerous
Hugh Pickens writes "The New York Times reports that President Obama's plans for reducing America's nuclear arsenal and defeating Iran's missiles rely heavily on a new generation of antimissile defenses which last year he called 'proven and effective.' Now a new analysis being published by two antimissile critics at MIT and Cornell casts doubt on the reliability of the SM-3 rocket-powered interceptor. The Pentagon asserts that the SM-3, or Standard Missile 3, had intercepted 84 percent of incoming targets in tests. But a re-examination of results from 10 of those apparently successful tests by Theodore A. Postol and George N. Lewis finds only one or two successful intercepts, for a success rate of 10 to 20 percent. Most of the approaching warheads, they say, would have been knocked off course but not destroyed, and while that might work against a conventionally armed missile, it suggests that a nuclear warhead might still detonate. 'The system is highly fragile and brittle and will intercept warheads only by accident, if ever,' says Dr. Postol, a former Pentagon science adviser who forcefully criticized the performance of the Patriot antimissile system in the 1991 Persian Gulf war. Dr. Postol says the SM-3 interceptor must shatter the warhead directly, and public statements of the Pentagon agency seem to suggest that it agrees. In combat, the scientists added, 'the warhead would have not been destroyed, but would have continued toward the target.'"
Protection Against Threats Real, Imagined or Theoretical.
so much like a rehash of the Patriot missile / SCUD results from the first gulf war? You'd think the military-industrial complex could afford to make up new lies.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Their real point is successful intercept of the entire missile body != intercept of the warhead, not that the intercept missed entirely. Of course, the SM-3 system has actually done an exo-atmospheric intercept (failing satellite over the Pacific).... (speaking as someone who actually used to run a ship capable of doing this.)
The Antimissle Defense system prolly runs on Mac, since Jobs has told the US Govt that the Guidance System uses far too many resources and battery usage they opted out of implementing therefore impeding the system's accuracy...
The antimissile defense might be flawed but that has nothing to do with reducing America's nuclear arsenal. There'll still be enough nuclear weapons available to act as a deterrent. The anti-missile defense system plays a completely different role, that of deflecting attacks, rather than preventing them. You can't deflect attacks with ICBMs, so Obama's plan for reducing the nuclear arsenal doesn't rely on antimissile defense.
"A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"
Thanks for the Offtopic post Rupert.
Don't forget to set a password, in case some UFO loon goes poking around.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
As a race, humanity hasn't changed too drastically from an evolutionary standpoint in the past thousand or so years. Looking at history, and mankind's propensity to wage wars, kill, slaughter, and just be plain vile, well, the future doesn't look any different than the past. With every new technological development, its a game of "Now figure out how to blow each other up with this X new technology".
Of course there exist scientist, humanitarians, artisans, and others of the less warring nature, but the fact remains that those in power want to stay in power, and violence tends to work better for them. As long as greed, power, and control are the driving motivations for the more tenacious world leaders, I don't believe we will seem full nuclear weapon non-proliferation, ever.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
Atari, actually; the targeting system is called "Missile Command" and most of the problems stem from the fact that it can only intercept missiles moving inside a single two-dimensional plane.
Apple's approach was to make the United States so shiny and expensive that nobody in their right mind would fire a missile at them. Also, they would've replaced the American airspace with a robust aluminum shell. This plan was rejected because citizens would have had to go through a boot camp before they could use Windows software. Okay, and some naysayers complained about the unibody shell making air travel impossible and causing massive damage to nature and agriculture by completely shutting out the sun.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
...what we need to fund is BIGGER ATTACK!
a warhead is pretty fragile and a lot of things have to work in unison and perfectly together to produce a nuclear explosion. if you hit it hard enough to damage it and prevent an explosion it's good enough
The threat of what would happen in retaliation should anyone actually launch against the US is enough of a drawback that I'm sure we'll never even see it used.
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
The problems with anti-missile defense are more basic than that:
(1) Basic geometry -- you have to station a slew of defensive missiles every 20 miles along your borders. That's because you are not going to hit anything going Mach 12 across your path-- you need a close to head-on intercept angle.
(2) Cheap and easy countermeasures. Even if you bankrupt your country setting up (1), the bad guys just switch to using sub or boat launched cruise missiles. Or low-trajectory ICBM's. Or put the bomb on a freight or passenger plane. It's mighty foolish to spend a trillion $ and have all that effort counteracted by a visit to UPS and $187.54.
JR Oppenheimer did this math in his head in 1952 as he was testifying to a govt comittee. Nothing has changed since then.
All it has to do is make an attack more difficult.
That makes a missile attack less likely.
I know very little about missiles, don't really read much news about army equipment, etc.... But this summary sounds so familiar. I could swear that I've read about the ineffectiveness of the US antimissile systems even on Slashdot several times, each time seeing the same things "It doesn't block nearly as large amount of them as was claimed", etc., then reference to the gulf war... Then again, I think that there might have been articles about different uses for it. I think that one time here was an article about how the system designed for international warheads was used for smaller (and faster) ones in the battlefield and was naturally inefficient there...
Anitmissle? Damnit, it'll be useless until missles are commonplace. Maybe if Apple started chasing missile producers for using the "i"...
so long as the 'enemy' resides within US. no matter, after the creators' big flash kode is executed, weapons will become unneeded. it's all part of the creators' wwwildly popular planet/population rescue initiative/mandate. it's happening now. you can feel it? see you there?
I do, because I usually don't spell "probably" right :-) (and I only did it this time thanks to spell checker!)
Living With a Nerd
Considering the alternative, I say we keep working on this
That or bring back to 10+ megaton class warheads so that everyone knows we can and will incinerate the fuck out of anyone who attacks us, spreading enough fallout that even nearby countries would be inclined to rat out their neighbors should they find out they are planning something.
Amusingly enough the "Antimissle" typo in the title is also flawed.
Although technically, an anti missile system which can't hit targets is probably pro-miss(le).
Is that it goes out the window when your opponents are crackpots like the Iranian regime or North Korea. These regimes wouldn't hesitate to play Russian Roulette with their populations if they had a good chance of hitting us very hard, and one day they will. What's ironic about this talk is that many of the same individuals who sneer at the hawks for investing in "outdated doctrines and weapons" are themselves guilty of propping up MAD which is an outdated doctrine that has no meaning in a world in which ownership of WMDs is increasingly democratic.
If we can work toward eliminating a means for WMDs to be delivered to US soil, then the cost is worth it. Period. Even if it takes 20 more years to make ICBMs and cruise missiles obsolete.
Obama continues on the path of Bush and his other predecessors, pandering to the big military complex and spending huge amounts of money on products which may or may not work. The military industry wins either way - they get to sell anti-missile products, whether they work or not, OR technology for nukes, whether they are dismantled or not.
China also eventually wins as all the R&D money we spent on this stuff ends up in their hands.
Those who did believe Obama is "different" should watch Ron Paul's What If speech and wake up.
I for one am not really at all afraid of someone launching ballistic missiles at us. The fact that it hasn't happened yet gives me some comfort that chances are, humans aren't quite that suicidal as a whole.
What does scare me is some lone crazy group getting ahold of a nuke and sneaking it into a city. Missile defense systems aren't going to do anything to protect us from that.
ìì!
We build a missile shield.
...
They build better missiles.
We improve the shield.
They improve the missiles.
It's the Reagan-Fucking-80's all over again; deficit spending to bloat up the military-industrial complex and slash social programs.
Joy.
...and I can tell you that our flight tests have demonstrated our ability to not only hit the target, but decide where to hit it. We have advanced FEA simulations that determine exactly what damage we're going to do when we hit it at a given location at a given angle, and our organization supports our current aiming techniques as "lethal." Given that we tend to aim very reliably, it sounds like the argument here simply about aiming location, which is the result of a few parameters in the software. That's a completely different story than saying the entire system is flawed.
" Now a new analysis being published by two antimissile critics at MIT and Cornell casts doubt on the reliability of the SM-3 rocket-powered interceptor."
Pro-immigration groups publish report citing benefits of illegal immigration.
Anti-gun group publishes report on the danger of guns.
Pro-drug group publish a report down playing down the dangers of drugs
Pro-Democrat group publish report on the short comings of Republicans
Pro-Republican group publish report on the short comings of Democrats
Advocate group publishes report that promotes/detracts from whatever the group promotes/detracts from.
Are we seeing a pattern here?
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
u mad?
Dr. Dealgood: Listen all! This is the truth of it. Fighting leads to killing, and killing gets to warring. And that was damn near the death of us all. Look at us now! Busted up, and everyone talking about hard rain! But we've learned, by the dust of them all... Bartertown learned. Now, when men get to fighting, it happens here! And it finishes here! Two men enter; one man leaves.
Dr. Dealgood: Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls... Dyin' time's here.
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Iran's firing missiles at the US now?
Somehow I missed that... or could it be, this talk of a defense against Iranian missiles, effective or not, is simply fear-mongering?
Naaaawwww, Obama wouldn't do that. Neither would the New York Times.
Now that presumes, of course, a credible threat from a rogue nations with a few missiles. However, given the developments in NK and Iran, that seems to be a somewhat realistic threat that should be looked at.
No, there will likely never be an anti-missile system that could deal with, say, the Russian arsenal. You get tons and tons of missiles and it'll overwhelm the ability to intercept them all, or even a significant number. However that doesn't mean a system couldn't provide a reasonable probability of intercepting a few missiles. No certainty, but some chance is better than no chance.
People also need to remember this isn't pure pie-in-the-sky stuff. The Aegis Combat System is quite capable of anti-missile capabilities. It can track and engage anti-ship missiles quite well. Now of course ICBMs are a whole different problem, not in the least of which because of their speed, but it is the same "track and engage" idea and there is working hardware.
The real question is if it is worth the cost and overall, I think it is. Reason being that I do see the idea of a missile launch from a place like NK as a possibility. Now if that happens, and the missile hits an American city, it is going to be large scale nuclear war. The US will launch a counter attack. The most optimistic scenario would be that the only deaths would be those from the initial attack, and then more or less everyone in the country the US launched at, but it very well might not end there. The US launch might trigger other launches from other countries.
However, if the missile is stopped, well then the possibility exists for a more measured response.
I think that makes it worth it. I don't worry much about nuclear war between large powers. Reason is that the power to make a launch doesn't lie in the hands of one person, and the nations are ruled by sane people. Maybe not nice people, but sane people. They know the consequences, they don't want to see that, the weapons are a last resort kind of deterrent only. However there are places like NK, where a single person rules, and where the sanity of that person is a bit suspect. That is a case where a nuclear launch is a possibility if they obtain the weapons, and they seem to be working on it. That I worry a bit more about.
So to me, it seems worth it over all. Also let's please not pretend like defense R&D is a 100% sunk cost or anything, that we pour money in to the projects and get nothing useful in return. Often, we get technologies that can be used in other devices or the like, both defense and non-defense. Sometimes, we get things with direct major civilian applications.
Please remember that GPS was invented because the military wanted to be able to locate all their vehicles and ships accurately anywhere. That was the motivating factor behind it. However it has proved to be the sole most important invention in civilian navigation since, well, since the sextant probably.
Over all, I think it is worth it and I disagree it is dangerous. Do remember that nuclear bombs are complex, precise devices. You don't have to obliterate one to stop it from exploding, only cause damage to any number of systems and they don't work anymore. Ya the missile might still hit its target but so long as it doesn't trigger the nuclear reaction, the damage will be fairly small scale.
I do believe that Ancient_Hacker (751168) was referring to all those "countermeasures" that you and he have mentioned, in comparison to a missile defense shield all around the border.
Now that would cost a pretty penny.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Dr. Postel says be liberal in what you accept and conservative in what you send.
Dr. Postol says this does not apply to nuclear engagements.
They thought Dr Postol might get mad and go postal?
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
In my armchair analyst opinion, intercepting a missile launch is not the most important part: detecting it is. Thanks to global trade, nobody with the economy to build enough nukes to wipe another industrialized trading nation off the map has any real incentive to do it. Anyone else can destroy a major city, but that is going to bring retribution of a biblical scale from the entire rest of the world if the true source of the attack can be determined. So firing off a couple of missiles is essentially an act of suicide anyway. An attacker's only hope is to somehow disguise the origin of the nuke to create plausible deniability. So this means a detection network alone is sufficient to ensure a missile is rendered a poor choice of delivery system.
Congratulations! You just composed a malamanteau
Yeah but in this case they are correct. Anti-missile interceptors don't work. While eliminating nukes between the US and former USSR is a good plan, we still need to keep SOME on hand to discourage other countries from attacking us, for fear we'd wipe them off the map.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Yep, I do see a pattern. People paid to hold an opinion (in this case the pro-shield ones) are quoted as "experts", yet, people that form an opinion on their own, based on aquired knowledge are quoted as "anti" or "pro-cause".
It is like some of the money is flowing to the ones quoting people, but who am I to know, I'm probably some anti-lucrative-press or something like that.
Rethinking email
Nuclear anti-missile missiles work differently than conventional anti-missile missiles. Essentially ABM systems directed against probable nuclear missiles explode a very small nuclear weapon very close to the larger nuclear weapon and very high up in the atmosphere. This eliminates the danger of the nuclear missile and the effects of the small nuclear weapon exploded in the stratosphere are comparatively negligible. Since this was high school science stuff back in the '60s these researchers know this but obviously the average person in the public does not. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were ground zero for nuclear weapons larger in size than a standard ABM weapon. People live in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In spite of the radiation and Godzilla movies mutant monsters have not taken over Japan. The effects of Chernobyl have not destroyed the planet so this is just another bunch of horse crap. A real story would be: How does the US military intend to determine if a missile is conventional or nuclear? That might be interesting.
I don't know about the effectiveness of the antimissile systems. It is a difficult task, to say the least. But we should keep trying. The defense department shouldn't "sex up" the record and the detractors shouldn't consider anything less than perfect to be a failure.
I agree we need the nukes.
America's message to the rest of the world should be that if you come at us, we will come after you and you have no idea with we will be bringing with us.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
published by two antimissile critics at MIT and Cornell casts doubt
O RLY. I iz durrrr surprised that they would come to this conclusion.
The pattern is known as "debate". Do you expect one all-knowing, totally unbiased man to provide all the answers to these questions?
Advocate group publishes report that promotes/detracts from whatever the group promotes/detracts from.
Are we seeing a pattern here?
Yes, the pattern of labeling those who have the audacity to think for themselves and point out the dangers and flaws of something as a radical group along with something profoundly negative such as kooks, fundamentalists and religious freaks. From there, you use those negative labels you just added to them as some sort of basis to downplay and ignore each and every point they make, without ever doing anything to disprove the points they make, in effect preserving the status quo at the expense of personal attacks and mudslinging.
That's a pattern alright. And meanwhile, if those flaws do exist they stay untouched and will never be fixed. I hope you do feel safer by this. Nonetheless, it's a shame that perceived security doesn't imply real, tangible security.
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
Your heuristic works as long as
1) you don't care about their data, analysis or arguments
2) you don't care who chose their labels - "antimissle critics"
Sounds like you're adapting to cable news quite well.
Wah!
It's also worth noting that we're currently writing another arms-reduction treaty with Russia, and some Republicans are signaling that they may not vote to sign the treaty in part because they believe that it would limit our ability to develop a missile defense system. (There's a left-biased view on the matter here, I apologize for not having something more neutral immediately off-hand.)
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
Your post leaves out why they're critics of the anti-missile system. Are they against the very idea of it because of not wanting to irritate the Russians? Or are they against it because the implementation is full of fail?
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Postal is a known lier. and thus anything he says can be ignored automatically. He's known for listening to briefings, turning around and saying the exact opposite, and then demanding that someone prove him wrong. Missile Defense works. It worked in the 1960s, and it works today. Anyone who says otherwise is either a lying bastard (like Postal) or uninformed.
To make loads of money for the “defense industry”.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Correlation != Causation
(Now the head of some guy in another article is going to blow)
Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that it isn't always:
Sometimes its:
Publisher of report that promotes/detracts from something get's tagged as belonging to a group that promotes/detracts from that something.
It is in fact a very common tactic to "paint" your critics of belonging to a group with an agenda as a means of devaluating their comments.
Of course, around here in /. we're all well aware of all the dirty psychological tricks employed in this kind of speach and will not fall for them .... right!????
Closing Velocity has an excellent take on Postol's analysis. Turns out the work that Postol did was not exactly rigorous. From Closing Velocity "In other words, Postol is a deceiving hack with a permanent axe to grind. Indeed, when not purposefully misrepresenting test objectives, Postol simply ignores the tests that do not support his wild-ass claims"
MDA also gives Postol the smack-down.
Are we seeing a pattern here?
Yes.
You love immigrants and drugs, can't decide which political party you're a part of, and don't like guns.
Obviously you're a hippie.
If you are the leader of an up and coming rogue state with nuclear ambitions, you just make lots of missiles. maybe you build 10,000 missiles, with only 5 having nuclear warheads on them. As long as your missiles are reliable, it's a credible threat to the US, as only one has to get through, and MAD rules apply.
In this example, what good was all the time and money spent on a missile shield? It is, at best, a sieve, not a shield. At worst, it's a welfare program for defense contractors.
I'm sorry, did I miss something? I thought we were transitioning from PATRIOT to THAAD. THAAD doesn't use the SM-3 missile, and, in fact, has proven much more accurate than the SM-3. In fact, THAAD launchers were on station in Hawaii during the June 2009 North Korean missile tests.
EVERYONE has an agenda.
EVERYONE manipulates the facts to some degree to support their own position.
Dr. Postol has earned his label of antimissile critic through his testimony and writings. So he (and everyone else) has an agenda. Just keep that in mind when reading the report.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
This is a facile tautology.
It's impossible to criticize anything without becoming a critic of that thing. Surely you aren't suggesting that we disregard every report that comes from someone with an opinion? Particularly when that opinion may be the *result* of the findings, instead of predetermining them?
Obviously the right thing to do is to keep in mind the bias of the author, but evaluate the critical report's claims on their own merits.
Freedom isn't free; its price is the well-being of others.
I'm a member of the Indecisive Party. We can't decide what we support...I think...I'm not sure.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
US anti-missile missiles are not effective at destroying Iran's imaginary intercontinental nuclear missiles.
"Advocate group publishes report that promotes/detracts from whatever the group promotes/detracts from."
Things that do not constitute an "advocacy group": A pair of physics professors at MIT and Cornell. One of whom used to work at the Pentagon as a science adviser.
These guys are doing their job of basic science research, and you're picking up some minor journalistic shorthand and turning into a smear campaign. I'm sure there's a cushy job at Fox news awaiting you shortly.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
"Advocate group publishes report that promotes/detracts from whatever the group promotes/detracts from."
You mean like the weapons manufacturers who say their missiles are "proven and effective"?
They're against it because of their basic, underlying, maybe even subconscious submissive belief that the best way to keep anyone from hurting you is to apppear weak and defenseless. Or, that we (US and/or western society in general) is the root cause of all bad things in the world, that other people only do bad things because we were mean and bad and made them do it, and that if we were just nice to people and made ourselves non-threatening, that rainbow-farting unicorns would fly across the sky and everyone would be happy and nice to each other.
I assure you, the Russians have no compunction about having an ABM system themselves; after all, they already have one , and their long-range SAMS are kinematically capable of acting as a second-layer defense. I don't doubt that this capability is enabled.
The thing is, critics just plain don't like the very idea of a system like this. Somehow they think a limited, purely-defensive system is somehow an aggressive move that will goad Russia or China into attacking us. They're free to make claims about how it's "so hard to do", or how "easily" a simple technology can render the entire system impotent, because those with the data--ie, engineers, technicians, and operators on the program who actually do know what they're talking about--can't release specifics because those are classified.
And like any other discussion regarding a complex technical matter, a single failure in development gets blown into a tale of doom. Missile fails? Obviously the entire program is a failure, intercepting warheads is impossible, and we will never be able to do it. Boeing has to make a design change to their latest airliner because a problem was found? Obviously the program is doomed and the plane will be a flying deathtrap because they don't know what they're doing.
How many rockets did we blow up before getting anything close to a reliable launch vehicle?
How many airplanes crashed before flying became a routine, safe activity?
Nothing works perfectly the first time it's tried. Anyone who has actually worked on a complex program will know that. Part of the problem we're running into is that we deliberately threw away everything we'd learned about intercepting ballistic missiles in the 70s (ie, when we had an operational system), and we're having to relearn the unwritten stuff all over again, just like the moon program. Our government (hell, the country in general) has a nasty habit of developing things just until they start to work, and then discarding them like an ADD 3-year-old who's bored with his toys, especially when it saves a little bit of money now but winds up costing a crap-ton more down the road.
The meek may inherit the earth, but the strong shall take the stars.
That only works if the country fears being wiped off the map and if they think that they would be wiped off the map for launching a nuke.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
OK.
"Advocate publishes report that promotes/detracts from whatever the advocate promotes/detracts from."
Dr. Postol has a history a testifying against antimissile systems. He has an agenda (as does everyone else). Just keep that in mind when reading his report.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
With either the offensive or defensive systems, you don't get to have a "small war" where you "blood the troops" -- the stakes are too high. So it is a huge uncertainty as to whether any of these systems will "work as advertised." How do know that for an offensive strike that when the President "pushes the big red button" that it won't be all a big fizzle? There is no way to perform full-scale operational tests on any of this.
So all of these weapons, offensive and anti-missile defensive are about deterrence, which is ultimately about deception in warfighting in a Sun Tzu sense. So no, we should not engage in self deception regarding the capabilities of these arms, but deception of a potential adversary is the entire capability in these things because forbid that we ever have to use them -- either the offensive or defensive systems. And all of this talk unilaterally removes the veil of deception, so I think those MIT guys need to STFU.
From TFA:
"President Obama’s plans for reducing America’s nuclear arsenal and defeating Iran’s missiles rely heavily on a new generation of antimissile defenses, which last year he called “proven and effective.”"
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
That's a really arrogant thing to say. I'm sure many people who advocate the missile shield are not paid to do so (I doubt Obama is paid to). Not everyone who works in industry is paid to hold their opinions, and you do not have a monopoly on rational, independent thought.
That's all very nice, but for all I know you're putting words into their mouths. Show me where they're against the very idea.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
It seems to me that an intercept at such a high velocity might disable a warhead whether or not the warhead is impacted directly. Also, it seems that even if it doesn't it will knock the missal off course so that it won't hit whatever urban center it was aimed at (most of the US is empty space, after all).
It's a perfectly cromulent word.
"I'm not sure I like the fugnutish tone you used in your post!" -RogL (608926)-
The trouble with chemical and biological weapons is that even though it's easy to imagine some small group will get their hands on them and kill a lot of people, things are more difficult in practice. Since they rely on air to carry them, there's a lot that can go wrong (or right, if you're like me and you don't think killing people is a good thing). And manufacturing them is actually a lot more difficult than people think, due to the dangerous nature of the materials. It reminds me of a kid I knew who insisted he could build a rocket to travel to space by himself (after all, the principles of rocketry are very simple). I was not able to convince him that putting it into practice was actually a lot more complicated, and the he would probably need help and lots of money.
By all accounts, the Patriot was an anti-aircraft missle system that was modified to intercept short/medium range missles. The difference is that the missle travel at much higher speeds and it exposed a software flaw. So the critics would have you scrap the entire Patriot system - the backers would have you fix the software.
In this case the article makes a few mistakes.
1) You must hit the warhead in the missile... How do they know this? If the interceptor hits the incoming missile and breaks into pieces - leaving the warhead intact, what are the expected g-forces on that warhead? Heat loads? Pressure loads? Bottom line these 'experts' are talking out of their @$$. So they really have no idea what the real success criteria is.
2) They do not state that the theory behind the interceptor is flawed. In theory, is the resolution and speed of the radar fast enough? etc. If the theory is sound, then it must be a problem in the execution? What part.
What are they arguing as an alternative? If we have no defense against (insert axis of evil country name here) send missiles our way, and we believe they are going to send missiles our way. Are they suggesting we just take whatever they throw at us or should we take preemptive action?
Or should we just stop the funding and give all the money to one of their causes?
TODO: create/find/steal funny sig.
actually that's a word-for-word copy of a John C. Dvorak article published two days ago. He's such a silly old goat.
"Professor! Professor! There's a nuclear missile coming straight at us! Should we launch some SM-3 interceptors to try and shoot it down?"
"Na, we'd only have a 10 - 20 percent chance of them actually working."
"..."
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
Global Warming Experts say...
Global Warming denialists claim...
So if you take the worst case of 10% success rate and you fire 10 missiles at an incoming warhead, statistically you're going to hit it.
Seems like a pretty good defensive system to me.
Regardless of it's accuracy, if a renegade country launched a single warhead at us would we fire just one defensive missile and hope for the best?
Of course not, you'd launch a timed spread of multiple defensive missiles, reducing the probability of the incoming warhead to do minimal or no damage.
>>> The trouble with Bush Derangement Syndrome is that it makes its victims incoherent.
>>> He was too limp dealing with the rabid ultra anti American elements in our midst...
>>> Those coming decades you speak of are going to be the worst nightmare of the Obamazoids.
Hoooookayyy.... so when do we get to start using the term "Obama Derangement Syndrome?"
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
Got to keep the name of the program trendy even if its been around for decades and decades.
They made little balloons and sent them up into the jetstream current, which whisked them over to the US at high speed, where they'd fall out of the sky. It was going to be the basis of a germ warfare delivery system. Simple, cheap, no engines or navigation required. Paper plus weaponised pathogens. Trouble was, I think most of the test balloons ended up landing somewhere unuseful like Oregon.
Eric Baird
The study results: anti-missile impacted the larger body of the rocket, not directly the warhead, most of the time. Only a direct hit on the warhead with a kinetic kill is sufficient to destroy the warhead.
Other results: the anti-missile system apparently IS able to hit at least the rocket most of the time. That is an important datum.
Conclusion: in an actual war with real suspected incoming nuclear warheads, they will launch small nuclear warheads on the anti-missile systems to ensure that a rocket-body-hit is good enough. This is nearly certainly a capability the agency has explored in secret. It is in secret because explicitly providing this capability is contrary to signed treaty. If there's a real incoming warhead, no registered voters will cavil about the treaty if the interception is successful.
Look who has nukes.
If the US gets into a firefight nuke party with Russia, all the interceptor missiles in the world ain't gonna make a difference. Your all fucked.
Who else can reach the US with an ICBM? China and what, maybe France? I would have to say the least likely scenario would be France launching a nuke at anyone, let alone the USA. China? As much as the US likes to demonize them, they are so economically linked at the hip now, war of either kind between them would destroy them just as much as the few nukes China has (comparitavly speaking of course).
NK?Pakistan? They can barely build a rocket that can get past their own boarders, let alone travel half way across the world in any sort of accurate ballistic way.
India? Dunno, they MIGHT have an ICBM capability because they have a space program, but even still I really doubt it. Also like France they only have a hand full of the suckers.
Israel? Again no range, and even if they did, it would be aimed someplace else.
So the big defence contract question is, who exactly are they creating this weapon system to defend against? The boogyman?
Trouble is, if Small State A and Small State B hate each other's guts, B can then wipe out A without getting involved in a costly and dangerous war themselves, by attacking the US, and making it look like A did it. Then they sit back and watch the emphatic US response destroy A.
Afterwards, even if the truth comes out, it's too late. The US can't then accuse B, because that means admitting that they just blitzed an innocent country, and they can't then also blitz B, because after blitzing A, that'd make it look as if they were indiscriminately killing everyone in the region for no good reason (which would then make the US look like evil murdering psychos and motivate the genuine terrorists who want to attack the US for realm out of righteous outrage).
So not only does B get the US to use the most expensive high-tech weapons available to kill their enemies for them, B also gets the US to participate in the resulting coverup, and make it a matter of US national security that nobody blabs about the real story. They get away with it.
If you strut about a dangerous neighbourhood with a Big Gun and a hair-trigger, smart locals are going to use you to settle their private grudges. They're going to hide in the bushes and wait until someone they don't like is standing behind you, then they'll use a peashooter to hit the back of your head with a pea, and watch and you whirl around and blow their hated neighbour's head off. If their neighbour's family then want revenge, they'll be taking it against you, not against the person with the peashooter. All you can do is bluff it out and pretend that the person you shot really WAS a threat.
The paradox of the escalated hair-trigger response is that although it works in a two-player game (Mutually Assured Destruction), in a multi-player game it actually makes you more likely to be attacked. If you can be counted on to respond immediately and predictably (and irrevocably), it makes you a useful pawn in other people's wargames. Your military is at their disposal, and your population is vulnerable to their enemies' counter-attacks. You become a puppet enmeshed in multiple wars that you don't really understand.
Eric Baird
I see...
So what in that sentence implies I suggested that we should be on a hair trigger?
And how is it relevant to the idea that we should have all options of reprisals open to us...from lecturing the ambassadors, to nuking their country.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
This is a serious question:
Are we really still unable to use lasers to shoot down missiles? I thought we would be there by now
Seems like a far superior option
The only purpose of this Star Wars system was to involve Russian Federation into an exhausting arms race. But they will not step on the same rake again.
The real threat of the 21st century is miniaturization and robotics. Why shoot a heavy expensive traceable missile if it is possible to send an underwater robot through the ocean, right into an estuary.
Not possible for an underwater robot to cross an ocean? It was done already. Not once.
to bad the 2 guys doing the "study" have a known back ground of being full of crap.... look them up research them...
So what's your point? Oh! You're claiming equivalence of both sides! So the missiles both work and don't work? So we should both deploy and not deploy?
No one point out that the "successful" tests were rigged! (The interceptor knew where the target was being launched from, when it was being launched, and the target radioed it's location to the interceptor during flight. WTF?)
Yeah - moron in the white house. Think dude !!!
If you have a gun - and the other guy's got a knife, it is undeniable that he will be trying to get a gun of his own. Obama wants to stop it. NPT is like a crappy piece of paper. Since NPT came into being Israel, Korea, Pakistan and India have weapons. Almost every country is trying to get a nuke and ICBMS - not just iran. All the terrorists have to do is find the nuke with the weakest security and we now have a huge problem.
So the promise is just that. A promise. It can be easily broken. And as long as it is valid - countries' reasoning to get nukes is weakened, and fewer nukes imply less risk of a nuke falling into terrorists hands.
Think deeper my man - deeper.
Is this a program to defend yourself against people who don't want missiles?
Can't believe all the moronic comments i'm reading. Did the smart people all leave slashdot while i was gone?
Garbage in:
Bad data - the report used fuzzy public videos of DoD intercepts to determine whether warheads were impacted. However, the very limited publically available data contains no way to know the actualy impact point or, most crucially, the impact's effect on the warhead.
Bad assumptions - the authors assume that the warhead would continue onto their original targets if not directly impacted. In reality, the hypersonic velocity impact of the interceptor on the missile body has the effect of a very energetic conventional explosion very close to the warhead. Very large impact forces would be transferred to the warhead through the missile body and also via fragments produced in the explosion. There is zero probability that the missile warhead would continue on its original course. There is high probability that the warhead would be disabled or destroyed by these forces, which will be much larger than any forces experience in reentry.
Garbage out:
The authors contend that 9 out of 10 intercept tests could not be considered successful. In fact, in all likelihood they were highly successful and verifiably so via sensor data of the debris field after impact.
In other words, the authors of the study put out garbage masquerading as analysis.
http://www.epointsystem.org/~nagydani/missdef.pdf
Abstract:
In present paper, I present a simple microeconomic model that applies to both strategic (national) and tactial (theater) missile defense. The somewhat surprising conclusion of the paper, namely that spending on missile defense can be economically rational even if the defense system is technically ineffective, is not intended as a justification or a criticism of any policy. It merely offers an explanation to the observation that costy and possibly ineffective missile defense systems are being actively developed in the United States and elsewhere.
moron at 1600 Penn Ave announced that we wouldn't use them in response to one.
Wow. Someone else a "moron" because they've figured out (a) that, as Robert Gates says, "there's no credible scenario where a chemical weapon could have the kind of consequences that would warrant a nuclear response" AND we have a conventional arsenal that's enough of a threat by itself and (b) there's potential in offering even rogue states carrots as well as sticks and (c) if for some reason we're wrong about (a), it's not as if we couldn't reconsider?
Go on. Tell us who you consider "smart."
Also, maybe let us know what you think about:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/09/stewart-rips-fox-news-for_n_531455.html?ref=fb&src=sp
http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2010_05/Kimball-Thielmann
Tweet, tweet.
The Japanese tried the balloon trick alright, but they've loaded them with incendiary bombs, mainly to set off forest fires on US territory; not to deliver biological agents.
Hmmmm ...... "Dvorak" sounds Klingon
Yes, the pattern of labeling those who have the audacity to think for themselves and point out the dangers and flaws of something as a radical group along with something profoundly negative such as kooks, fundamentalists and religious freaks.
Ah yes, of your are 'pointing out the dangers and flaws [as you see them]', you are 'thinking for yourself'. Which of course explains the Tea Partyer's and Climate Change deniers neatly - they, by your definition, must be among the smartest people in the world.
Oh, wait...
Sadly for your dogma, pointing out the dangers and flaws [as they see them] may be the result of someone thinking for themselves - but thinking for yourself and being a kook are decidedly not mutually exclusive. Not even close.
As above, it's because so many of them are kooks - and no matter how often you disprove their points, they just keep coming back. After a while, it isn't worth the effort.
Well, the AC has a good point. Altough lately both parties seem to be paid for specific opinions.
Rethinking email
If you reserve the right to nuke a country, then you'll have protocols saying when you do and don't nuke. Outsiders will know this, because there's no point in having a deterrent if you don't tell people about it. And you then need the protocols to provide an understood framework for use, because otherwise you get President Sarah Palin with her finger on the button nuking some small state because she's having a bad day and a leader laughed at her hair.
As soon as you have the protocols, you have a system that says that you pretty much have to respond in certain ways in certain situations ... if everyone knows that a President //can// act in a certain way in certain emergencies then there's pressure for them to do comply with the expectations.
And that means that if you're a power-gamer, and you want to produce that extreme response, you essentially have a blueprint for how to cause it to come about.
Taking away the legal right to respond in certain ways doesn't mean that you won't respond in those ways under duress, but it removes the element of predictability that allows malicious outsiders (and malicious insiders) to exploit the system. International politics these days is a multi-player game, and being too predictable in how you apply extreme responses means that you risk being a pawn in someone else's strategic gaming.
Eric Baird
I think I have more faith in the abilities and rationality of our command and control structure than you do.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.