Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
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.)
Protection Against Threats Real, Imagined or Theoretical.
How well does it intercept bombs in standard 40 foot shipping containers? Thats the "delivery vehicle of the future".
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
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
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...
It's mighty foolish to spend a trillion $ and have all that effort counteracted by a visit to UPS and $187.54.
It is, unless you're on the receiving end of that $1 trillion. While I'm sure some folks working at military contracting companies are decent and hardworking folks, it's extremely profitable to get nice big contracts to produce something that (a) doesn't work and/or (b) isn't actually useful.
I am officially gone from
...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.
I think that that's all quite correct; however, the real issue is that no government is at all likely to attempt an attack on the U.S.. Deterrents don't work because there is nobody to retaliate against if you're not attacked by a country but by a group operating out of different countries. The safety of the U.S. doesn't lie in protecting against missiles because the group that would try to attack don't have the resources to launch them. The real strategy for safety is to reduce the arsenals of former Soviet nations that have a habit of misplacing warheads and to keep a close eye on container ships. The trouble with anti-missile systems is that the only threats that they protect against are the former Soviet Union and perhaps China; which simply aren't going to go to war with the U.S..
So if this is the future...where's my jet pack?
Just curious - for how long are you people going to blame Bush for everything? I ask this in seriousness. When Obama is no longer President, will you blame him for everything that happens with the new President, or will you continue to blame Bush until another Republican gets into office?
I ask this in seriousness, I really want to know.
Do you have ESP?
However with nuclear proliferation and 'rogue states' like North Korea and Iran, not tp mention the possibilty of terrorsts getting hold of nukes, deterence isnt going to work so well.
An antimissile defense system won't work against them either. Terrorists won't have ICBMs, their most likely delivery mechanism will be by boat to some harbor city.
Antimissile defense systems are an expensive approach that don't actually solve a real-world problem.
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.
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
Wow so all the problems during Bushes term where caused by Clinton?
Really get over it. Actually I think Obama is supporting this because he learned that it actually works or can. The people posting this study used only unclassified data. People like to use the Patriot as an example of something not working. Truth is that the Patriot used in the first Gulf War was never supposed to intercept a missile. They tweaked the software and it ended up that it could sometimes hit an incoming scud. It was good enough that it gave Israel enough defense imagined or not to not get into the war. The new PAC-3 is a totally different system. The SM-3 is probably going to work pretty well. In nothing else it can act as a deterrent.
But pull you head out of your butt. Stop not blaming Obama for things Obama is doing. In this case I think he is doing the right thing but really this passing the buck is just disgusting. He has been president for over a year! Stop trying to blame Bush.
Every think that just maybe now that Obama is president that maybe just maybe he has learned that the world wasn't what he thought it was?
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
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.
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.
Which is why these missiles are designed for long range intercept, so we don't need one every twenty miles along the borders. But this is just basic geometry and you forgot to mention it.
Well, submarines are neither cheap, nor easy. Nor are cruise missiles launched from them. And if the bad guys do go that route - well, that's what the Navy is for. But historically the bad guys go for missiles.
Low trajectory ICBM's aren't cheap and easy either - they are actually more expensive and difficult than the more normal high loft ones. Why? Because you need the same missile - but a somewhat more sophisticated guidance system and *much* tougher heat shielding on the reentry vehicle. It's a semi hard problem, and nobody has seriously tried it yet despite years of panic and hand waving from the usual suspects and those who copy and paste their nonsense without actually understanding it.
Putting a bomb on a freight or a passenger plane is the act of a terrorist, not a nation state. This system is meant to defend against nation states, not terrorists. Nation states go for ICBM's because of two reasons; a) it keeps the weapons close to home and under the control of trusted individuals until needed, and b) there's not much deterrent value in a bomb on a civilian plane.
Given that nobody had flown an ICBM in 1952, and that nobody knew much about them in 1952, I find that hard to believe. (I.E. citation needed.) Even if he did, I'll point out that the technology of 2010 is a (very) far cry from the technology of 1952. Robert Oppenheimer was a very smart fellow, but his opinions on ABM defense aren't much more relevant than Sir Isaac Newton's.
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.
It would be really hard to sneak a nuke into the US.
This story is anecdotal, but whatever. My uncle got stopped crossing over into the US. All the border people were pretty freaked out and within minutes of him getting out of the truck they were all over it with scanners. Why? because he set off a radiation alarm. Literally HE set off a radiation alarm. A few days prior to crossing the border he had that test done where they put radioactive dye in your bloodstream. The small amount of radiation from that was enough to set off the alarm while crossing the border.
maybe you could encase the nuke in lead or something, but those radiation sensors they keep at the border are pretty sensitive. I'm pretty sure they'd have them at all the ports and on coast guard ships to check incoming boats and ships as well.
Reason being that I do see the idea of a missile launch from a place like NK as a possibility.
You need to understand something.
Future attacks will not come from missile launches where the country responsible for the launch can be annihilated.
Future attacks will most likely come from an unprotected shipping container in an American port. And America won't really care who is behind it. They'll just target whoever happens to be in their current black books, and "retaliate".
"No one has ever smuggled a nuke in to a city yet ever so why worry more about that."
Reason(s) to smuggle a weapon into a city:
prevent advance knowledge of an attack
prevent identification (cause misidentification) of the source of the attack
create a massive clusterfuck related to the previous point.
Any country that launches a nuke via a missile or plane is toast. And they know it. So it would only be done under similar circumstances, if at all. Aka MAD.
But what happens if a city justs goes poof? Who do you blame? What if a group takes responsibility that has no ties to a country but exists in many countries? How do you combat that? You think we went nuts over 9/11...
I'm not terribly worried about Iran or North Korea getting a nuclear weapon. After all, Israel, Pakistan, India and China all have them and have been in wars while in possession of them. I'm much more worried what we will do while trying in vain to stop them.