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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.'"
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.)
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
...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?
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.
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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.