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.'"

Comments

Re:Just as Matter Of Principal

[icebrain]

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.