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Missile Defense's Real Enemy: Math
An anonymous reader writes "Since the 1960s until the present day, missile defense has been a hot topic. Ronald Reagan popularized the concept with his 'Star Wars' multi-billion dollar plan to use lasers and various technologies to destroy incoming Soviet warheads. Today, America has a sizable sea-based system, dubbed AEGIS, that has been deployed to defend against rogue states missiles, both conventional and nuclear. However, there is one thing missile defense can't beat: simple math. 'Think about it — could we someday see a scenario where American forces at sea with a fixed amount of defensive countermeasures face an enemy with large numbers of cruise and ballistic weapons that have the potential to simply overwhelm them? Could a potential adversary fire off older weapons that are not as accurate (PDF), causing a defensive response that exhausts all available missile interceptors so more advanced weapons with better accuracy can deliver the crushing blow? Simply put: does math win?'"
Of course there's an element of "the country with the largest army wins" (for a given definition of win), but the idea that these systems are stupid enough to shoot down missiles that aren't going to hit targets is laughable.
That's not math, that's known as attrition.
Sometimes you don't need the better soldiers, you just need more soldiers.
If you kill the archer before he shoots, his arrow is no longer a threat to you. This has been part of US Navy doctrine for some time.
Here's a video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpkTHyfr0pM
(seriously, watch the series. It's pretty amazing)
I was hoping for some sort of dynamical systems result. Instead it is about having more missiles?
If party A would send (all - 1) their conventional weapons, imagine what happens if the rocket launch would indeed destroy everything foreign because the foreign missile defense is exhausted. Now think of what happens with the forces that are actually on route, how should the country be defended against them? This is an optimization problem is both cases: taking causalities because of potential worse problems, or exhausting everything and no defense.
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Yes....
But don't call it math.
And I expect that a highly numerate society would understand the probabilities well enough not to wage open war against a numerically superior adversary.
Hence the "global economy" that we have today.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
You can whatif yourself into a deep, deep bog. There are unknown variables, and the answer to the question must rely on them.
You can put a big divisor on this, however, with the fact that a nuclear winter trumps most cards, dystopic science fiction scenarios notwithstanding.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Is this what we have degenerated to? When I read the title, I thought, "wow, someone has done the calculations to find the weak spots in the trajectories of the defense missiles or can calculate live the precise way to avoid them."
No. When they say math, they mean, "a lot." Nothing more mathematical than that. Shoot a lot of projectiles at the target, and one of them will get through. We've degenerated mathematically past the level of a two-year-old and down to that of a rat or something. Chickens can even distinguish between 'a lot' and 'a little.'
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Not really. There aren't remotely enough nukes in existence to do that.
Nations monitor other nations to know their capabilities. When during the first attack one observes missile sites not being deployed, then they become the highest value targets for a counter attack. What you are describing is strategy, not math.
In the case of AEGIS and related defenses, the goal is not necessarily to be able to absorb/defend against anything and everything that the enemy throws against you. The goal is to survive long enough to turn the attacking launch site into a glass parking lot (or a steaming hole in the water) before they can destroy your offensive assets. In the mentioned case of Iran, I expect the goal would be to absorb one or two 'provocative' attacks. If there was full out attack, though, I'm pretty sure they would not have the opportunity to launch all the missiles...
Why so many of these stupid questions on /. over the last few days? I feel like I'm reading Digg. And not the good Digg.
#include "standard_disclaimer.h"
Sure, running your opponent out of ammo is a valid strategy. On the other hand, you have to maintain those older weapons on top of maintaining the ones you want to sneak past, not an easy job. Plus you're against ships designed to be able to operate over long periods without replenishing stores anyhow, so it's going to take a lot of weapons to burn through. Plus the US will be sure to begin retaliating as soon as the first birds are shot down, so you'll have to worry about defending the launch sites you're holding in reserve.
This is exactly why we planned massive salvos in the Cold War, saturation beats duration.
The problem with averages is this: Only a small percentage of the population are in jobs that require advanced algebra, trigonometry and calculus. Although I went through differential equations in my undergraduate, and still enjoy math, I do not need it for my IT Management job. Statistics I use infrequently. Algebra I use somewhat (but not advanced). When you are measuring the US population average against other country averages (and in many cases just a subset of those other countries) you are not getting to the crux of the issue -- how does our top 2%(or whatever the appropriate number is) compare against other countries' top 2%. If our universities are producing engineers with much worse scores than our counterparts, then I will worry.
On a side note: When trying to make fun of another group's intelligence, you should write a post that doesn't make you sound like a 9 year old who forgot his ADHD medication.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Enemy plan:
Fire 100 "cheap missiles" to get intercepted
Wait for the US to use up it's anti-missile capabilities shooting those down
Fire more, more better missiles to hit target.
What would really happen
Fire 6 "cheap" missiles
Die in a hail of US missiles you have no defense against
Aegis was state of the art, the best SAM system yet devised, but it had one major weakness: Tico carried only ninety-six SM-2 surface-to-air missiles; there were one hundred forty incoming Kingfish. The computer had not been programmed to think about that.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Russia or China? Have you been under a rock? It doesn't seem likely, but isn't war all about surprise? So rather than live in fear of that, the government builds missile defense systems.
If you can stop a significant fraction of the missiles, that still gives you a massive reduction in total damage, provided of course your enemy doesn't have so many weapons even a few percentage points can wipe out everything. And besides, it still gives an advantage even in that case: if you need to fire all your missiles, and you need to fire some of them later on, that means the defending country has time to retaliate (so you can't rely on first strike-advantage), plus all their missiles will still hit, which may well mean you never get to fire the later missiles after the system is overwhelmed. And the defender would retaliate, and quickly, make no mistake.
Anyways, missile defense was never about a full-scale war. It was always gamesmanship and preventing smaller powers with only a dozen or so missiles from threatening anyone and everyone (countries like North Korea, potentially).
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Ever since the advent of anti-ship missiles, a big part of naval surface warfare tactics has been managing to get enough anti-ship missiles on target at the same time to overwhelm the target ships' defenses, so this is pretty much "Duh!"
Also, AEGIS is a 1970s naval air defense technology for protecting against anti-ship missiles and aircraft. It's only recently had an ABM capability added. It is true, as I understand it from public sources, that the VLS systems most often used with AEGIS are difficult at best to resupply at sea and pretty much is never done.
A nuke that gets shot down can explode by nuclear explosion before being destroyed by the enemy. Think about 50 000 nuclear explosions mid sky. I'm pretty sure that it would be pretty close to killing all life on earth (I know, some extremophiles would not be affected, whatever, humans would have a hard time.)
After the defense systems of a naval vessel get overwhelmed and it goes down in flames, the country that owns that vessel stomps big-time on the attacker.
War isn't a "No loss evan" scenario .. its a question of balancing resources against potential threats. And given that the military spending of the US is around double that of all its "enemies" combined - who the hell is going to try to pull off a stunt as proposed??!?!?!?!
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imagine Nut Korea shoots off 43 Rong Dong missles, 16 Ding Dong noisemakers, and is fuelling six nukes. the Rong Dongs will get halfway to nowhere and hit the water. the Ding Dongs spark and arc and in the end do nothing. the nukes would be the real threat after the radars clear on the Aegis cruisers.
if you get a look at any weapon, it will have definite characteristics that are generally repeated with every shot. it is moderately well known that repeatable data can be programmed for recall, and since the US seems to be around semi-announced tests with snooperships, we should have some target discrimination rules in the missle system on the Aegis.
if something gets close enough to the ship to be thought a threat, it will be taken out. that should leave a hold full of Standard missles for the nuclear missles.
I'm still not digging a bomb shelter.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
This is the Cold War scenario with a couple of string substitutions: s/land/sea/g and s/artillery/missiles/g. The US spent over 40 years developing strategies to counter that scenario. Rest assured, they have a smart answer, or rather several of them. I believe a nuclear first strike is on the short list of possibilities.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
War Games got it right.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Enemy isn't math. Its brute force / overwhelming numbers. Dumb article name is dumb.
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This was the premise of the first naval battle in Clancy's Red Storm Rising. TFA is neither original nor insightful. Even armchair strategists understand the concept of attrition.
I've always thought several thousand simple, relatively stupid, cheap "cruise missiles" could pretty easily defeat a carrier battle group. When I say "cruise missiles" I'm talking about pilot-less drones that are really small air craft (could even be built of wood) with a warhead aboard. You wouldn't even need them to be completely autonomous, though a auto-pilot would probably be a good idea. You'd need a satellite up-link to control them (and to diminish the possibility of someone jamming your control signals) but it seems like it wouldn't be very expensive to build a cheap small aircraft (again, wood would be okay) with a simple air-cooled piston engine and a propeller, a remote control system with a simple auto pilot, and, say, a 500-pound free-fall bomb attached. Build many thousands of these for the same cost of a few modern fighter planes, and then fly them en-mass at a target. Sure, the combination of defensive aircraft and anti-missile systems would knock-down the vast majority of your "cruise missiles", but it would only take a small number getting through and dive-bombing the target with a few well-placed bombs to destroy the target. This seems so much less expensive than building a modern air force/navy/etc. I don't understand why other nations haven't tried it.
As long as there are Pastafarians in the world, his Noodley Goodness shall keep the strainers always full, but never running over.
Math has nothing on His Noodleyness.
#include "standard_disclaimer.h"
Or they launch six each from many small vessels and land based launchers. Launch the expensive ones mixed in with the cheap stuff.
Both have too much to lose. At one point, they appeared reasonable, but it was never reasonable that Russia would have attacked us directly (appearances aside), they played a better-intel/counter-intel game, not a better-military game.
More likely if N. Korea, or possibly Iran get a missile system in place, we might have a group desperate and nuts enough to do this (not so sure about Iran in either category), but for the most part, we currently don't have a serious threat due to lose of a trade partner, or risking a way-too-severe counterattack.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
David L Parnas (yes, that one) wrote a famous piece on the feasibility of Star Wars (pdf ahead): http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/przybils/courses/CBD06/papers/p1326-parnas.pdf I don't think that anything has changed. Computers are faster, technology is better, but the problem is still equally complex.
seriously, folks, dump the game and replay.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
In the recent example of Israel and it's alleged shield, the success depending on the ability to acquire a threat quickly, access the target, and make a judgement to destroy or ignore. Based on information in the media, a enemy who could launch a hundred missile quickly from diverse location could overwhelm the system, take it out if locations were known, and then be free to attack targets. A country like Iran could do this, easily.
Protecting against global threats using ICBM is more complex but possible. It requires the ability to detect and identify launches in real time, then respond and destroy threats during the boost phase. Even so there is a danger of momentum carrying debris to populated areas and causing destruction and fatalities. One way this can be done is with airborne lasers. This could potentially defend the US against a country like Korea with a few old style ICBM.
If we can't destroy a threat during boost phase, then all is probably lost. Once payload is destroyed, there could be a hundred projectiles, one which is live, and no way to distinguish. We would spend all our resources destroying half of then, and the love projectile takes out Denver.
Of course none of this accomplishes the faith based fantasy put forth by US conservatives of protection against the reds. That takes diplomacy of the order shown by JFK.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Given that the US has enough nukes to melt the world twice, any large threat even before arriving will be getting quite the return visit.
I still occasionally wonder if Mecca is on the US doomsday nuke 'em all list...
Some think that wiping out all human life would essentially be the equivalent.
I am certain that the military on both sides have looked into what triggers the defense system and built several types of decoys. Decoys that fire in parallel and others that fire in sequence. Does anybody know how easy is it to determine if an incoming attack actually has a payload, and how much delay that adds?
If a defense system could be built with something like lasers, you could defend against far more missiles than current countermeasures. You could probably exhaust the aggressors supply of missiles. Basically, make the ammo small enough that you can carry an enormous amount of it. In the case of said ammo being electricity, we already have nuclear reactors on ships that run for a very long time while only requiring a comparatively small amount of fuel to be carried.
This kind of crap is why I hardly read slashdot anymore, after 15 years of daily reading and tens of thousands of comments...
Sure! That could happen... if our missile defense systems are designed by morons.
Otherwise, no, that wouldn't happen, because a defensive system will be perfectly capable of distinguishing between threats and dummies. Hell, the hard part of missile defense systems is making sure they don't accidentally take out friendly jets, so they'll already be designed with the kind of intelligence they need to make this distinction.
In addition, it could be a completely non-nonsensical question depending on the defense system used... If we're talking about lasers, anything with a nuclear generator has unlimited ammo. If we're talking about rail-guns, then the ammo is extremely tiny, and a huge amount can be carried aboard-ship.
If we're talking about current CIWS systems, then in the list of all the limitations the system has, the need to CARRY ENOUGH AMMO doesn't even make the top-5 actual concerns.
And let's not forget that the DEPLOYMENT of such systems might just be fairly important... Ships can START MOVING when they're being inundated with incoming missiles. They can CALL FOR HELP and get it. They can LAUNCH AN OFFENSIVE ATTACK against the source of these incoming missiles as soon as the barrage is spotted lifting off, over the horizon.
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Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I think you get to point to 60s-80s movie villains *or* suggest that the other guy has been living under a rock.
The enemy would need to have a massive ICBM missile force. That is not very feasible. How many of our enemies have a budget for that? I don't think even China has that kind of money .. and if they could allocate such a budget .. corrupt politicians would allow only a small percent of it to go into actual weapon acquisition .. they same way they take money off highway contracts. I don't see how any of our credible adversaries could organize a massive missile force coordination while we remain clueless.
And yes, we're already losing a war of attrition. When terrorist attacks that cost hundres of thousands of dollars can spur a trillion dollar response... how long can the US keep that up?
And they're called nukes. Everyone has always known that a single carrier group is vulnerable. The question is not if you can, but what happens if you do. In the end nobody wants the gloves to come off.
During World War 2 the Germans had WAY more superior tanks. They had better armor, better accuracy, better range, delivered a more explosive package, plus the soldiers driving them were very well trained in tactics. They even had better camoflauge.
American tanks sucked by comparison. They were easy to spot, they had very poor armor, their accuracy was crap, range was crap, and the soldiers driving them were dunces by comparrison.
But we still overwhelmed them and won with sheer numbers. Our tanks sucked, but we had a crapload of them.
Depending on the type of nuke, it can be fairly difficult to accidentally set one off by shooting it down. More likely the conventional explosives in the nuke will go off in an uncontrolled manner and spray a relatively small amount of radioactive material on the ground.
I'm also not sure why you would have 50,000 nuclear explosions mid sky when there's only about 17,000 nukes still in existence, with fewer than a quarter of them active. Russia is estimated to have the most with about 8500 warheads of which fewer than 1800 are active.
Making missiles en-mass that can go half way around the world isn't cheap.
love is just extroverted narcissism
Since the 1960s until the present day, missile defense has been a hot topic
TRANSLATION: We've been trying to get it to work for 50 fucking years but we can't seem to get two object moving faster than bullets to collide.
That's the real problem. They can barely even shoot down those first cheap missiles. They can't compensate for evasive action at all. It's been nonsense for the last fifty years and will be for the next fifty years.
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we have the best submarines that will sink any ships equipped with large amounts of cruise missiles
we have our own cruise missiles that can destroy the bases where the cruise missiles are based
This was the USSR's naval attack strategy during the cold war. Puke up a LOT of high speed sea skimmers from backfire bombers and sacrificial destroyers tailing the carrier group along with deceptive jamming, drones, etc. Overwhelm the system. You don't need to hit the carrier 100 times to make it ineffective, just a few will do the trick. And the defense is more expensive than the offense.
In an old 1980's book by Tom Clancy (Red Storm Rising), he covered the scenario where an attacker launched a barrage of missiles against an aircraft carrier and the carrier deployed counter measures against what was essentially a wave of decoys. The aircraft carrier had nothing left to stop the second wave. I'd say this is an old problem and the military has probably already thought about it.
Someone won his first DEFCON game and thinks he is a nuclear tactics expert now.
(I know how it feels, I thought I was one too....)
The real problem is that a missile interceptor is more expensive than the missile (or decoy) it is supposed to intercept. Take for instance Israel's Iron Dome vs. Hamas' rockets. A single Iron Dome interceptor costs $10k+, if not one order of magnitude more, while a single Hamas rocket is less than, say, $100. The same holds true for strategic defense missile systems: it's always a lot more expensive to intercept a ballistic missile than to send one. That's the real issue here. As long as missile defense technology doesn't become a lot less expensive (think e.g. some kind of futuristic force field shield of some kind that doesn't consume a lot of energy when idle), it will always be overwhelmed.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
Just keep in mind they have those things too.
The more realistic description would be, "everyone has subs that can sneak close to shorelines and fire off nukes that noone can't do a damn thing about".And that's why noone wants to start this game: everyone is almost guaranteed to lose. Way too high risks for virtually zero gain, even excluding the economial disaster that would follow. Virtually every industry is heavily reliant on foreign supplies/subsidiaries these days.
Nuclear weapons require a precise detonation of explosives to compress the fission core to attain criticality. If you hit a missile and cause it to explode, you might get a fizzle, or nothing but the conventional explosives going off. It is extremely unlikely you will get a full yield explosion in that case.
There will be radioactive pollution, of course, and I imagine there could even be one freak detonation, but it won't be 50,000 weapons going critical.
So you're saying if you can't build a system > 90% effective, you shouldn't bother?
Sure.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
The word "math" is a poor substitute for "overwhelming numbers".
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002 Nothing new..
If I remember correctly from my youth, wasn' it spelt "Raygun"?
Yea that is what I'm trying to figure out. Last I knew, tests of our vaunted missile defense system succeeded only because the target "incoming" missile was eagerly broadcasting its position.
As far as I know, they have not yet successfully shot down one missile with another, without cheating.
One day I feel I'm ahead of the wheel / the next it's rolling over me / I can get back on / I can get back on
yes, because donkey.
I think Isreal disagrees with you.
I worked air defense command and control software development in the late 1980s. Our load scenario was called "the silver sky" because it assumed everything would be comming at us. We used to joke that we only had to hit one airplane and the rest would go down from mid-air collisions.
Just because some hack put it in a novel doesn't mean ithat it's true.
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
The only winning move is for both sides not to play.
FTFY.
John
Calling this "math" is really stupid. That is a war of attrition. Exhausting your enemy's resources already has a name. Saying they can beat us with math means that most first world countries have already won with their education systems.
While I don't consider that many missiles coming at us to be a particularly realistic scenario, even less realistic would be that many missiles coming at us that aren't going to hit worthwhile targets at all. Other posters mentioned that Israel allows rockets to hit "expendable" areas and so they don't need to intercept every one, but the US doesn't have very many areas that we can really consider expendable. I'm of a mind that if missiles are going to land in the country, they need to be taken out. That said, our nuclear arsenal is a pretty effective deterrent. I don't see any massive attack against the US happening unless they've somehow managed to knock out our defenses, so as long as we can avoid that, we're good. Too many missiles would be a problem, it's just very unlikely to happen.
In Missile Command, you don't get to shoot the thing that is firing all those missiles at you. The point is that after the first wave (and it's easy to defend against that in Missile Command), you fire your remaining missiles at their headquarters, launch sites, communications nodes, etc, so there isn't a second wave.
The more people I meet, the better I like my dog.
Because defense has ALWAYS cost more than the attack - from the first time a guy decided to make a wooden shield to defend against rocks being thrown at him.
Instead, the question is as follows.
Is the defense spending to counter my enemies attack worth more than the cost to replace what the enemy is trying to destroy.
We don't care - we never care - how much the enemy spends to destroy a target. That number is IRRELEVANT.
Lets assume it costs us 200 million to defend a US carrier group, per attack, and it only costs the enemey $1 million per attack.
It is STILL worth it for us to spend that $200 million. Because it defends a $2 trillion US carrier group.
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This is a terrible article whose main question is: does the side with larger numbers have a better chance to win?
I have absolutely no idea why they chose to use "does math win?" since there is absolutely no mathematics mentioned at all in the article, unless you equate "larger army" with "math." The answer is: yes, there is a good chance, even if the larger army consists of considerably weaker units.
The more interesting question is: should we continue to devote resources into smarter systems for defending against missile strikes given that it is possible to never completely "catch up" in this cat and mouse game?
sp - 5
...of pretty much every David Weber "Honour Harrington" book ever written.
DG
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The HEL (high energy laser) coming. And a shipboard system should be operational by 2016 according to the USN.
Passionately Indifferent
Consider that Germany marched against the entirety of Europe... twice.
This is just the overload/decoy argument that was one of the core criticisms of the original SDI plan floated by the Reagan administration in the 1980s. In the total nuclear war scenarios that were being addressed at the time, this was a compelling and realistic criticism. TFA seeks to move this argument into the smaller-scale defensive scenarios that AEGIS is designed to cope with. There are two core problems that weaken this argument with respect to AEGIS:
The point holds, though. Interceptors are highly sophisticated devices - they need to exactly hit a small target in three dimensions, while both interceptor and target are moving at great velocity. Your basic attack missile, on the other hand, can be as simple as a garage-made rocket with a chunk of fertilizer on the end.
But the system finding things to hit can easily simply attack only the items that will ACTUALLY hit anything of value or even come close. If an enemy fire a million missiles but only ten will hit; you only need ten interceptors.
The point makes no sense at all when you think about the system as a whole and not just one tiny component.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Attacks as described in TFS are called saturation attacks. Since the advent of the guided missile, this has always been a big headache for naval designers. Early missile-equipped ships had 2-4 radar directors, each capable of guiding one missile to its target. Navies wanted more, but there are constraints (financial, weight, systems complexity) to the number of directors you can add.
The US Navy was the first to develop a partial solution in the shape of NTU ('New Threat Upgrade'), a system where one director could guide several missiles. This meant that the weakest link was now the missile launchers: even the biggest ships has only two twin-arm mechanical launchers so they were limited to a couple of missile launches per minute.
The whole point of AEGIS was to provide a ship with enough defensive capability to defeat saturation attacks by the biggest threat on the planet: the Russian naval airforce.
This meant using a phased-array radar that could track hundreds of targets, directors derived from NTU that could guide up to 18 missiles at once, and a vertical launch system that can fire more than 30 missiles/minute.
In the end, it becomes a financial problem. A Ticonderoga-class cruiser has 128 missiles on board, that's easily $120M in missile inventory. AEGIS isn't cheap either.
As missiles become cheaper, the calculation changes. The recent Israeli successes with missile defence using missiles that cost $100k instead of $1M shows that Defence departments are well aware of this.
Still, anyone contemplating an attack on US Navy vessels usually has to contend not with one ship, but with a battle group of several of the best-defended ships on the planet, plus potentially an aircraft carrier that carries more firepower than most of the world's air forces.
Actually, no. Most countries do not have subs quiet enough to sneak up on US shores. Most countries don't even have submarines, and most of those that do are diesel based, not nuclear, hence they're quite loud. A really careful captain, with the most current maps of our sonar bouys and ships, could probably manage to sneak close enough to get a short range missile or two launched, but they would not have the kind of volume that we do. This assumes, of course, that we didn't happen to have a Los Angeles-class sub lurking somewhere that picked them up, and wiped them out before they even knew they were being stalked. Seriously, the US Navy so vastly outclasses everyone else in the world that you can't even begin to make the comparison.
How long until missiles are mirror-coated?
It's just pathetic that a Slashdot reader doesn't realize that no mirror made yet would be able to last for more than .00000001 seconds against the kinds of lasers that can melt through a warhead in flight.
No real-life mirror is a perfect reflector of energy at all wavelengths, the smallest degree of loss, or any dust whatsoever means absorbing a tremendous amount of energy from the laser which in turn destroys the mirror instantly.
The warhead sure will look pretty on the ground though.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This is an incredibly important point.
I worked for a few years in missile defense, and one of the big algorithms was determining *where* the inbounds were going to hit. If they were just going to splash, or hit something of no value*, we didn't bother scheduling an interceptor for them.
* "no value" is a subjective term, determined by the higher-ups.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Actually, it was never about getting an impenetrable force field. It was about lessening the probability of a debilitating first strike.
Japan nearly won WWII with pearl harbor had they pushed the US more right after it. They didn't but they severely hampered or ability to seriously retaliate until we moved some resources around and the war machine. Advances in radar and early warning systems from WWII and the cold war that followed made an attack like pearl harbor near impossible unless you start counting ICBMs and missiles in bordering countries. There is very little time between knowing about an attack and receiving damage from it with missiles where an aircraft carrier or whatever else coming within striking range would have magnitudes of more time associated with it.
The entire idea of mounting nukes in subs was based around this. The enemy can first strike all they want but with enough nuclear missile floating in the oceans in movable and secrete locations, you can't remove the threat of a retaliation with a first strike. Now our threats are less capable and missile defense systems give a non nuclear option to negating the impacts of a first strike.
Wouldn't you rather play a nice game of Chess?
http://www.globalthermonuclearwar.net/launch/index.html
- Holy crap, I've got MOD points! Who thought that was a good idea.
No. The Iraqi missiles just didn't work well to begin with. They didn't even need to be shot down, they just fell.
If the point is to bankrupt the Soviets, does that mean we can stop missile defense programs now?
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
About as many as the number of missiles it carries.
Why would you waste missiles on something so stupid and slow it would only take a few bullets per?
You'd probably have to have many thousands and even then I doubt it would work at all as whatever stragglers made it through would easily be wiped out by close range defenses.
I'm not sure why so many people are so eager to show how clueless they are about warfare today.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
A ballistic missile is not cheap. It may sound reasonable to say they can "barrage you with cheap munitions" but there really is no such thing. Sure, you can save some money by not putting a nuclear warhead on it, but the missile is still going to be the most expensive part of it.
As far as I can tell, it's working well in action.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
We've been trying to get it to work for 50 fucking years but we can't seem to get two object moving faster than bullets to collide.
Iron Dome has worked really well. It's pretty obvious that a missile defense system can work in theory, and since it's been proven also now in practice your statement comes off as offensively stupid.
I mean, it's like you had to actually do work to become so ill-informed as to come up with your statement. DId you hire people cut our parts of your brain?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Hypothetically.
Yes, of course it is possible. Here is why it is not likely and a poor argument against missile defense.
(1) Witness Iron Dome in Israel. Combining human intervention with advanced software, Iron Dome does not attempt to take every missile. Instead the system is designed to identify and destroy only those that are a threat to people. It was very effective. Older inaccurate missiles that are not on target will be ignored.
(2) Old missiles fielded by poor countries (see NK) are poorly maintained and are more likely then not to simply not fire.
(3) Poor countries with large number of missiles are going to have awful command and control. They aren't going to be able to launch a coordinated attack.
(4) Older missiles have bad range. Who cares if NK fires a bunch of scuds, what will they hit? They can barely build a handful of long ranged stuff, and that doesn't appear to be changing.
(5) Richer countries like China aren't looking for a strategy that wipes the enemy out via surprise. They want a credible deterrent, which is best achieved by a limited number of advanced, hidden, city busters.
to piggyback onto that, its only in the last 6 years or so that China has built its first nuclear subs, and they are missle boats. 5 in service, 1 still udner construction. Theya re not yet armed, Chian hasnt compelted developement of their SLBM yet. Btu the ships are in service, and we do shadow them already, much as we already shadowed some of their oldfashioned deisel/battery subs just to get a feel for what china can do. Our guys are kinda already pro at this game thanks to the last several decades.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
If you've ever played the modern naval battle simulator "Harpoon" this is old news. I haven't played in years, but when I first started the documentation spoke of large numbers of missiles in a coordinated attack as being the technological equivalent of human wave attacks, the statement in the documentation was, "and it works". It worked when I tried it. Why is this news? When demand exceeds capacity, your capacity is overloaded. End of story.
What is more intriguing from a Math P.O.V. is that interception may require solving a routing problem first. Which, without more information, only yields to brute force computing.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
The math may win, but the spelling sure doesn't. Reagen??
Just taking a queue from the next VP, Dan "Potatoe" Quayle.
(Here's wondering how *he* spelled Ronnie's name.)
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Plenty of people have already pointed out the idiocy in the details of TFA's argument, so I won't go into that. The core assumption underlying the whole thing is wrong too: wars are not fought with missiles any more. The nations that can afford enough missiles to pose any kind of threat at all to each other are the wealthy, highly populated ones. All the wealthy, populous nations are economically interdependent now, and always will be. Economically interdependent nations don't wage war on each other. All wars for the foreseeable future will be started by second- or third-world rogue states using terrorism and guerrilla tactics, and ended by first-world superpowers using espionage, tactical bombing, and drone strikes.
Nobody capable of launching ICBM's at us could conceivably ever want to. There is nobody we'll ever need to launch ICBM's at ourselves.
The original Howling Frog is a fictional character and has no UID.
If I remember correctly from my youth, wasn' it spelt "Raygun"?
Which actually brings us back on topic.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Consider that Germany marched against the entirety of Europe... twice.
The second time was because of a bad case of the stupids.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Truth be told, this is a very simplistic way of looking at the classic missile vs. missile-interceptor game.
Oh, right. Thanks.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Ah, an other person who has drunk the US NAVY's cool aid.
US carriers are notoriously vulnerable to diesel submarines who run on batteries. On nuclear subs, the engine never gets shut, they are inherently noisier than diesel submarines. More than once US Carrier fleets got a nasty surprise when a submarine surfaced quite near to them. (shame, link for Daily Scarymail http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-492804/The-uninvited-guest-Chinese-sub-pops-middle-U-S-Navy-exercise-leaving-military-chiefs-red-faced.html#axzz2JgOdt8mi)
... What it all comes down to then is, how far is the US willing to push China, and risk a carrier battle group? The missile raises the stakes of pushing China; doesn't mean we wouldn't win in the long run, but the cost is now a lot higher and therefore changes are diplomatic calculus towards China.
...
But you are missing the real value of the defense system. The chances of China really committing an act of war against the U.S. (firing on an aircraft carrier) is very, very slim. Their missile capability is a rhetorical or psychological threat, to gain the upper hand in diplomatic or geopolitical situations. U.S. defensive weapons neutralize that leverage. The U.S. simply asserts that the Chinese attack would fail and the only way China can prove that it would succeed and is not a "paper tiger" is to begin a shooting war.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
Because it defends a $2 trillion US carrier group.
$20 billion. The maths are important.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
Am I pedant, or just a bully, for wishing harm upon anyone who uses the word "math" to mean relatively large numbers?
If player A scores 4 points and player B scores 6 points, I say player B won because he has a higher score. But this fuckwit says player B wins because of math. And that makes me want to kick him in the face. Is it just me?
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I think the real problem with missile defense is that the enemy could split the missile into numerous parts, only a few of which would contain actual nuclear warheads. I think this would be a viable strategy as decoys are likely to be far less expensive than nuclear bombs. Thus, in order to preserve existing nuclear warheads, the enemy could flood the sky with relatively cheap decoys, overwelming the defense network.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
The Navy has known they've had this vulnerability for 30 years. They've known they're sitting-ducks, and they have KNOWN it's just a matter of time before the enemy ups the sophistication of their game to where they can sneak something through the defensive posture of a typical battle group. Iran caught us unawares with a cruise missile. (this won't happen again - because we learned a lesson). Al-Q caught us unawares with a speedboat. (honestly, I don't know how you prevent this from happening all the freaking time). Back in the Revolutionary War - 1776 the US planned a primitive submarine to go under British ships, drill into the hull, and/or plant explosives. Had this actually been technically feasible at the time . . . well, THINK about the implications!: https://lh3.ggpht.com/_j_Bcf_6uMS4/RrlFv_jQYdI/AAAAAAAABRk/MX0ia2MCkb8/s400/alg_turtle.jpg ) - there was no defense against this thing, and it was aimed straight at the heart of the British Superpower's Navy.
This is why the Navy is investing in learning ways of changing tactics, changing to different types of vessels, and exploring completely different concepts in how to prosecute naval warfare. They've been thinking about this since the invention of the airplane.
That said; I have had some interesting conversations with an elderly gentleman (retired) who used to work for *a big defense contractor who shall remain unnamed* who, in the 1980's, worked on solutions for tracking incoming ballistic missiles (from an outgoing response vehicle; designed to relay targeting information to interceptors). And he certainly acknowledged that it was obvious to all, (except maybe the politicians), that it was always a numbers-game, and it would always be in favor of the attackers. Smart interceptors (like Iron Dome, today) are always going to be way more expensive (like $90k) than the incoming warhead (Palestinian Shahab, like $300). Try to solve that with Directed Energy weapons, and you have many other problems (not just economic) to solve. (how to get enough power, deal with line-of-sight, weather, atmosphere and haze, recycle time, etc).
It's a problem worth addressing, because it's better than sitting there helpless while the enemy pounds away with ballistic missiles. But in my view - we are still looking at problems that we were looking at in the 1980's. We've come a long way, but some of this stuff is just really hard.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Another thing is;
Absolutely nobody has ever once even TESTED a missile that does evasive action.
The US and Russia have tested (but not fielded) warheads that can maneuver on reentry - it is questionable whether they retain any accuracy.
The earlier in the flight-path a missile tries anything dodgy, the more difficult it will be to retain any sort of accuracy.
There ARE folks who have fielded hack-jobs on ballistic missiles to try to alter trajectory. The result, is a vehicle that delivers it's payload way off target. Saddam did it in 92 with some poorly modified SCUDS. And the Palestinians are apparently trying to do it with their junkyard-wars rockets. You ever wonder why they never hit anything?
The biggest actual problem for Ballistic Missile Defense is decoys.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Improve the electronics all you want, it's not going to make the fuel any lighter or more energetic.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Imperfect system not perfect. That doesn't make it worthless.
Won't be a problem as long as America outspends the rest of the world 4 to 1 on military budget.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
IIRC, WW I saw Europe pretty evenly divided and for most of the war it was basically a draw. The invention of the tank and reinforcements from America tipped the balance at the end.
WW II started with Greater Germany, Italy and the USSR on one side. Luckily Hitler was stupid, started the war almost a decade early (they had plans to build up till the late '40's then start the war) and turned against the USSR early.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Russia is building subs like crazy, building more nukes and various other weapon buildups. Look at some of the articles here, http://barentsobserver.com/en
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
What the article calls math, I refer to as "Zerg Rush"
I didn't try to imply most would. But as far as this discussion thread goes, only a very few select countries are relevant ;)
At any rate, you don't need to land a lot of missiles. You just need to land one nuke on a (few) major population center, you don't need complete annihilation. That risk is already sufficient to deter most decision-makers, which is the whole point of keeping those things anyway. And as rainbow-tinted your glasses are, I'm not buying that the US Navy is patrolling both coastlines in their entirety 24/7, especially in a depth that'd render any SRBM launch impossible. Was that the case, everyone else would just stick to building diesel carrier-group-hunting subs and invest into land-based MIRV missiles only, but I'm not really seeing that (not that I have a great insight into this matter mind you).
My simplistic idea about the West European front of the WW2 is that the Germans had better weapons (rockets, submarines, jet planes, radar,...) but the American kept shipping "liberty ships" or other cheap equipment. Some of them would sink on their own but enough of them managed to attack the Germans that they were overwhelmed.
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/futureoftech/boeings-new-missile-takes-down-electronics-without-touching-them-1C6663618
I'm under the impression the above technology could reset electronics in flight. What good is a nuclear warhead that doesn't know when to go off or is no longer armed?
If you turn that around though, what good is a ship that can't see because all their electronics are shut off. While it's certainly interesting to consider this conversation, I believe there are other technologies unknown to the public that both aid in defence and offence that seriously make any number consideration pointless.
They have been able shoot down plenty of missiles, despite your nice bold text statement. The US has had many tens of successful intercepts over the years. The DoD deserves credit for these amazing feats of science.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aegis_Ballistic_Missile_Defense_System#Flight_tests_to_date
Evasive action can potentially make this more difficult, but most of the time evasive action is difficult in terminal phase ballistics.
That's not at all true. AEGIS has been proven to be very effective against the threat posed by commercial passenger jets.
"It all comes down to one question: Do you have faith in science and technology or not?"
http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html
"There is a fundamental mismatch between 21st century reality and 20th century security thinking. Those "security" agencies are using those tools of abundance, cooperation, and sharing mainly from a mindset of scarcity, competition, and secrecy. Given the power of 21st century technology as an amplifier (including as weapons of mass destruction), a scarcity-based approach to using such technology ultimately is just making us all insecure. Such powerful technologies of abundance, designed, organized, and used from a mindset of scarcity could well ironically doom us all whether through military robots, nukes, plagues, propaganda, or whatever else... Or alternatively, as Bucky Fuller and others have suggested, we could use such technologies to build a world that is abundant and secure for all. "
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
A ballistic missile is going to cost a ton of resources to launch, and if the counter measure are relatively cheap I don't think numbers will win. Kind of like saying you can beat guns by throwing wave after of wave of people at them until the enemy runs out of bullets.
It costs money to keep the old stuff up and working, and then you're going to develop new, more accurate stuff and put that on line and keep the whole thing up and working with Perl and duct tape? And of course you have your super-accurate counter-measures system going too. What do you think put the Soviet Union out of business. Unworkable and stupid. I can think of a dozen better ways to wreak havoc for less money.
Quantity has a quality all its own. But as no one REALLY wants to use these things, being able to spend one's competitors into the poor house is almost as good as winning an exchange of weapons, and far more environmentally sound...
the whole article is stupid to the bone.
1. todays active defense systems are already capable of only engaging objects on a dangerous course and ignoring all others.
2. spamming thousands of missiles over days wouldn't go unnoticed by the target of the attack. in other words, the attacker will get taken out before he has done any relevant damage.
3. there is no nation on earth able to spam thousands of missiles for extended periods.
Now lets discuss how many cute kittens one must throw against an AEGIS cruiser to overwhelm its defences.
"Life is short and in most cases it ends with death." Sir Sinclair
Even after taking into account that not every incoming missile will be intercepted
It requires a more advance more sophisticated more expensive weapon to shoot down a cheap missile.
a Vulcan Phallanx is more expensive than a mortar unit and you need many of them to protect even a smallish area.
An Iron Dome interceptor is more complicated and expensive than a Kasam or Grad rocket.
An Arrow missile is likewise more advanced and more expensive then a Scud or even a Shihab/Sagil missile.
This is why such defense makes sense for Israel vs Terror organizations
but make little sense for USA vs USSR.
Israel has a budget much larger than Hamas and can afford expensive solutions.
Some argue the cost for the enemy is irrelevant, it is only cost for the protective side vs potential damage from the threat
And when you add to the potential damage not only the direct damages of a missile attack but the ability of the population to continue living
a normal productive life during a time of conflict, you quickly see the cost of expensive Iron Dome interceptors is well worth it.
The trade-off becomes less favorable for the larger missiles, unless you fear unconventional weapons or are protecting strategic sites.
The capability to outspend the Soviets appears to be what worked, but was that actually the plan from the beginning? It seems unlikely to me. Any reliable reference?
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Defense does not always cost more than offense. In the case of land forces, the offense has the problem of long supply lines. It's easier to build a tank trap than a tank.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
First of all, the US has had missile defense via missiles since the 1960s with Nike-Zeus/Spartan and Sprint
"AEGIS" is the combat system, the US Navy's missile defense is - Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System, a subset of Aegis and on some ships
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aegis_Ballistic_Missile_Defense_System
Overwhelming the system with missiles isn't going to happen, the primary threat nation (the Russian Federation) has nuclear capable cruise missiles, ICBMs and SLBMs limited through treaties, when China has enough to be a threat there will be a treaty with them too.
Yeah, any missile defense system can be overwhelmed. But, its not for that. Its for pissant little countries with a handful of rockets that think they can influence the world with their pop-gun style weaponry. Any massive attack would have to come from major players, who will not do such a thing because they know that they will personally get fried in a nuclear counter-attack. MAD lives.
Did some political science major come up with this or something? This is nothing new.
It's been a well known weakness of any defence system. The moment you run out of bullets/interceptor missiles/... you're done for. Another tactic is simply overloading it with targets. You can only fire interceptors at a certain rate. If you exceed that rate for long enough you'll get through. Again not a very complicated tactic that's fairly easy to execute given sufficient time to build a large quantity of dumb missiles.
Israel has to "deal" with gunpowder rockets that even the IDF admits are a psychological, not military weapon. You're more likely to die in an accident with a passenger bus in Israel than die from a quassam rocket.
Hahahaha Sardaukar86 has to "eat his words" -> http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3417867&cid=42756893
You are the most feeble 'opponent' I think I've ever had; nobody else would walk themselves into world-class hypocrisy for all to see: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3427061&cid=42771179
Keep up the good work APK!
..Mullah or Pope, Preacher or Poet, who was it wrote: "Give any one species too much rope and they'll fuck it up"?
- Surely this is an argument based on Economics, not on Maths? The side that can implement : "the best kill-ratio per dollar" will surely "win". Frex, if one side implements Laser Missile Killer Guns, with low cost per gun, per "shot", per man-hour $, then it can just keep on shooting down whatever appears in the skies, oceans, wherever. One doesn't need a very big "bullet", or "mortar", to bring down a giant missile. And they don't have to be very accurate "bullets" or "mortars". One can launch a veritable "wall of metal" at any air missile (like the Phalanx Gun does) see: http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/a-laser-phalanx-03783/ Similarly underwater. What do others think ?
1. Lies on your part help my case, not yours.
2. They are some of our fellow Slashdotters. The rest clearly think you are a tedious, childish bore, judging by many of the replies you receive.
..Mullah or Pope, Preacher or Poet, who was it wrote: "Give any one species too much rope and they'll fuck it up"?
Seems I've heard this kind of story before: Automated weapons systems versus automated weapons systems.
See:
THE FEELING OF POWER
by Isaac Asimov
Worlds of Science Fiction, February 1958
Copyright 1957 by Quinn Publishing Co., Inc.
http://www.themathlab.com/writings/short%20stories/feeling.htm
Tracy Johnson
Old fashioned text games hosted below:
http://empire.openmpe.com/
BT
http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2005-03-16
Did you mount a military-grade, variable-focus MASER on an unlicensed artificial intelligence?
This is one reason why you don't stop them voting. Rather, you let them vote but tell them who/what to vote for.
The other (perhaps more subtle) reason is that while you don't want the oiks voting against your interests, getting them to vote in your favour is even better than them not voting at all; you can swarm the few informed dissenters with electoral cannon fodder.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
You don't. You fire his missiles from his territory at the superpower. There are various methods - bribery, infiltration, blackmail, perhaps even hacking - that could be employed.
You'd have to take out Ben Affleck first, though.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Math doesn't lie. You had to eat your words Sardaukar86 http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3406867&cid=42701491 and you're vastly outnumbered by your fellow slashdotters opinions opposed to yours, that of a known troll here, with nothing to show to disprove that list on your part.
You have no understanding of even basic math or you wouldn't post your list as evidence. As it stands the list is only good for evidence of your incompetence.
Prove I'm outnumbered - show me how the list of upmods you have is greater than the downmods you get.
That's right, you can't, so all you'll do is post your stupid list again and show the world what a failure you really are. Keep it up you stupid old fuck, you're proving my argument for me every time you open your yap.
..Mullah or Pope, Preacher or Poet, who was it wrote: "Give any one species too much rope and they'll fuck it up"?
that of a known troll here
Only a troll to losers like you, cunt.
with nothing to show to disprove that list on your part.
You've had it explained to you plenty of times, fuckwit.
If you were diagnosed as mentally ill by a professional you wouldn't accept their diagnosis because you simply know better than anybody. Hence, no evidence will get you to see how pathetic your arguments are.
You're just too arrogant.
..Mullah or Pope, Preacher or Poet, who was it wrote: "Give any one species too much rope and they'll fuck it up"?
I presume you're referring to Isandlwana, 22 January 1879.
Rorke's Drift, 22-23 January 1879. Martini-Henry rifles (and bayonets). Prepared (albeit improvised) defensive position, but no machine guns.
Are you getting confused with Omdurman? An easy mistake, the bally darkies all look the same, what?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
It could be relatively easy to detect countermeasure being employed against the weapons and trigger them to explose mid-air before being destroyed.