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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"...
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.
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.
Those who did believe Obama is "different" should watch Ron Paul's What If speech and wake up.
Obama may be quite in the wrong here, but listening to the caterwauling of Paulistas is not the answer.
...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.
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
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?
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
Maybe it's because I don't know who Ron Paul is
He's a nutbag who has run for office under three different party affiliations, whose latest efforts have been to appeal to the "don't tax me" crowd.
A sort of Republican-for-the-middle-class, without the obsession with sex.
I shouldn't call him a nutbag; he actually mixes one or two sensible ideas in with all the nonsense.
It's interesting to see your not-previously-exposed European's take on his position.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
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
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.
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.
Probably for a few more decades. I say this in seriousness, I really think he was that bad.
Bush was in power for 8 years, and radically turned America upside down. He turned America into a country that is, as Obama tactfully put it during his Berlin speech, "part of the problem rather than part of the solution" for many Europeans.
Obama has now been in power for not quite the 8 years, and he doesn't have a 9/11 event to push through many changes quickly. (I am not claiming that 9/11 was a setup, but it came in quite convenient for Bush).
Bush gathered a bunch of warmongers around him, and some are still there. He allowed the weapons industry to be stronger (it simply became an even bigger industry with even more lobby powers).
The legacy of Bush will last. He was no good president, but he sure changed a lot.
So, I'll probably be blaming Bush for the next couple of decades for a lot of things... I truly believe he was one of the worst things that ever happened to America.
It's going to take quite a while for the consequences of Bush's decisions to be completely filtered out of the government. There are a lot of appointed positions such as Federal judges that you can't just throw out. There's the trillions of dollars of debt from his tax cuts, Medicare part D, and two wars that are going to shape tax and budget policy for at least the next decade. There's inherent structural things like the impact of No Child Left Behind that aren't fundamentally reshaped by Presidential fiat or congressional committee composition, and as things like the BP oil spill and stuff like the subprime/CDO meltdown (much of which could be traced back to decisions made in the Clinton era like the Commodities Futures Modernization Act) show, unintended consequences of the previous administration's actions can pop up years into even a second term. It isn't necessarily purely partisan to pin stuff on the Bush administration, it's just plain cause and effect. No politician inherits a blank slate, and political/economic forces move at a pace measured in years. Issues like the struggling economy and national debt may be 'Obama's problem' to deal with, but not everything is his fault, and which topics you attribute to either category probably depend on your political agenda.
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.
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.
Just curious - for how long are you people going to blame Bush for everything?
How long until his screw-ups heal themselves?
FWIW, I don't blame Bush for everything. I also blame Obama for continuing some of Bush's bad policies.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
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.
Well, for how long will you people blame Lincoln for successfully leading the US of A through it's civil war? I mean, presidential actions leave a profound mark in a country's (and also world's) history. You don't just get to swipe under the rug something like invading Iraq or your country's deficit just because the one responsible left office a few months ago.
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
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.
Personally I think Obama is fairly effective due to being intelligent and remaining calm. But sometimes I wonder what a more aggressive, Teddy Roosevelt-style leader could do today.
FWIW, Israel has antimissile stuff and is working on more: http://www.israeli-occupation.org/2010-05-06/iaf-official-israels-anti-missile-systems-are-insufficient/
Wonder how their stuff compares to the US stuff.
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
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).
Actually a lot of it is based on US stuff. A US company makes the terminal seeker for it.
The big difference is the Arrow II uses a warhead as well as hit to kill.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
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.
"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."
>>> 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.
Please. Frankly I think this Obama is correct in this case but FREAKING STOP MAKING EXCUSES.
Obama has had the biggest majority in congress of any president in my life time and I am pretty dang old by slashdot standards.
You are making excuse on top of excuse. Heck I don't think Obama is a terrible president I just think a good section of his supporters are mindless zombies.
I think that if you every took a hard look that both Clinton and Bush Jr. made many mistakes. Clinton IMHO was a terrible president that got so lucky that the disasters he caused started in the last month of so of his term in office. But sometimes you get lucky. Obama except for his disaster of a policy on manned space flight isn't doing all that terrible IMHO. However your blaming Bush for Obama's decisions is JUST STUPID AND FRIGHTENING!
If you think this program is stupid an wasteful that BLAME OBAMA because he is supporting it!
He had no trouble trying to kill Ares so this project should be a walk in a park to kill. Even the contracters could just make more SM2s and PAC-3s and be happy.
I think that in this case President Obama is correct in keeping this program going. But bloody hell get your head out of our butt and stop trying ti shift blame.
What is wrong in the contry in part is that people have forgotten how it is supposed to work.
You and I are President Obama's BOSS. He serves us and we can fire him! If he is doing something you don't like SPEAK OUT AND DO NOT MAKE EXCUSES!
In this case I think his doing the right thing so I give him credit for it. When he does things I do not agree with he gets the blame.
Dictators have supporters. Presidents have voters.
So stop being a whinny fanboi and stand up.
You can blame none of Obama decisions on Bush. They are all his decisions.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Got to keep the name of the program trendy even if its been around for decades and decades.
.9^10 is a 35% chance of them all missing, little better than flipping a coin. But, yeah if you fire 30 of them you're getting close to only a 5% chance of them all missing, still a little too close for comfort, when you are talking about a nuclear missile headed for a city.
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
There are a lot of appointed positions such as Federal judges that you can't just throw out.
True, but at least he didn't succeed in appointing his cleaning lady (or whatever she was) to the Supreme Court on the basis that he "knows her heart".
Drill baby drill - on Mars
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.
Other than the judicial appointments, and not even those entirely, most of the other stuff came out of Congress. The president just signs or vetoes.
The president is an easy target because most everyone knows who holds the office. Congress has the real power and most people couldn't tell you who their representative is.
I'm not saying Bush/Obama didn't/doesn't suck or whatever. I'm just saying, the system insulates us fairly well from their sucking if we don't have an equally or greater sucking Congress.
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.
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.
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?)
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.
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.
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.
One working day in three as a holiday for a start. Bush was a playboy prince instead of any sort of President. Even Homeland Security was an expensive farce created because Bush was too weak to talk the head of the CIA into actually doing his job.
At the times when the country needed a leader he ran away and hid.
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.