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US Interceptor Missile Successfully Intercepts Test ICBM, Says Pentagon (go.com)
An anonymous reader writes: The Pentagon has confirmed that the U.S. interceptor missile it launched has successfully intercepted the test ICBM fired from the Marshall Islands. From an ABC News report detailing the intercept test: "The ground-based interceptor launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California shortly after 3:30 p.m. EST Tuesday. The U.S. will launch an ICBM-class target from the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site on Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, 4,200 miles away. If successful, the kill vehicle, or intercept, will collide with the ICBM test target midcourse over the Pacific Ocean later today. The ground-based interceptor system is mainly designed to counter a North Korean missile threat, but a U.S. official said Tuesday's test has been planned for years and is coincidental to North Korea's increased missile testing this year. This will be the 18th test of the ground-based interceptor. The last one, in June 2014, was the first success since 2008. The system is nine for 17 since 1999 with other types of target missiles. An ICBM target has never been tested before."
Shots fired. Success!
"The last one, in June 2014, was the first success since 2008. The system is nine for 17 since 1999 with other types of target missiles"
That really isn't that reassuring...
If I told my boss that the system I designed to stop us from going belly-up has ~50% success rate, I'm pretty sure he would fire me, or at the very least, order more tests until the success rate is just a bit more acceptable...
MAGA, bitches!
lots of ocean to choose from. my Great Circle Skills suck.
Gee, I wonder if they test the way I test a new program I wrote. I use data I know will ensure a successful and quick test :)
Putting aside national pride for a moment, this is the same government that denied "domestic surveillance" and seems determined to live up to the "shoot the messenger" tactic against the heroes who exposed the lies.
How can anything they say be considered trustworthy?
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
The real test would be to set the system up near NK and shoot their test missiles down.
Whenever the media pompously mention "capable of reaching the U.S.", what they mean is the Guam base.
ORLY?
I recall news items a year or more ago. As I recall their ICBMs were estimated at being able to hit the western 2/3s of the continental US, but hitting the east coast or Florida was a stretch. If they've improved the range (loaded with a nuke), or lightened the nuke, even moderately, look out DC.
From what I see now they're working (successfully) on reliability and accuracy.
Further: since they've gotten (at least) two payloads into low Earth orbit, they've go the whole globe underfoot.
And that's more of a worry for me (AND for the DOD). LEO is ideal for an enhanced EMP attack, using a small bomb optimized for gamma output (to smack the electrons in the upper atmosphere down a bunch, converting the bulk of the earthward-directed energy of the bomb into low frequency radio energy).
An EMP attack, with the current state of the power grid, could depower the east coast for a year or more. With the cities just a week or so from starvation without constant food shipments that could lead to a substantially more-than-half casualty rate.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Russia, China, North Korea, Iran et al. Hitting a missile with a missile... USA USA USA USA
Can somebody please confirm whether it is OK for countries to test fire missiles or is it not?
... NORAD?
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
If Obama had attacked North Korea during his second term, the USA would have more favorable odds. North Korea would have tested nukes multiple times to show the world it was serious, but not far along for many of the ICBM parts to work. I guess it could be called bad project management. Will the current project manager make a similar mistake?
1) this is rocket science. Remember the saying!
2) they put a beacon in the targets in the past... I wonder if they did this time or because of the fall out from the last time perhaps it's top-secret and we will have to ask the Russians about it.
3) Billions every year since Reagan's failed Star Wars and it continues to fail...(under other names.) That money is better off going to everything they are trying to cut. The $50 billion of cuts in just about everything is about the same amount we put into anti-missile systems that do not work. The wise thing would be to do actual research for a tiny fraction of the cost instead of installing endless new systems that do not work; do not deploy expensive high tech systems until they actually work. I wonder how high the total is today after 30 years of graft... and nothing still to show other than increased corruption and a pile of old junk.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
The guy is crazy, but hopefully he's not stupid.
If he did fire at anything useful, and succeeded, after the return fire, he and his country would cease to exist.
Aside from justifying more funds to SDI, all the test today showed was that there is yet another reason for him not to do a preemptive strike.
The usefulness of his capabilities are limited to making others think twice before invading and dragging him out of a hole.
If he continues on his current path, these capabilities won't matter.
At some point his big neighbor to will say enough and he'll have to clean up his act.
So, instead of an SDI demo that won't help anybody except the SDI folks, why not use the same money for a carpet bombing campaign in the North with leaflets showing the shopping, dining, and entertainment opportunities in the South?
If there is a cell network, I'm pretty Rachael from cardholder services to help as well.
Why not put a high powered shrapnel explosive or a tiny nuclear bomb in the interceptor? Get it as close as possible then detonate it?
It seems we are making this more difficult than it needs to be.
That "50%" figure only makes sense, if the successes/failures are random and independent.
If, on the other hand, lessons are learned after failures and subsequent attempts offer more and more successes, then there are reasons to celebrate improvements. And, indeed, the previous such test was in 2014 and was also successful...
Now, something about Slashdot... Someone spinning New Zealand's failure to launch a payload into orbit as "not a success" is at +5, whereas my mocking their spin and pointing out that "not a success" means simply "failure" is at -1. Yet in this discussion the roles are reversed: the actual success is mocked as "only 50%" and the mocking gets moderators' approval...
Why is Slashdot so defensive about and encouraging towards the Kiwis' space-launches and dismissive and ridiculing towards the Yanks'?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Do not need to change name of missile.
North Korea strikes first = winner not NK
Mechanical means of warhead elimination will fall short.
Anti-missile missiles were originally built in the 1980s as part of the 'Star wars' program by President Reagan. After 30 years, they've got only a 50% kill rate: That means it'll require 7 anti-missiles to 'ensure' that 1 missile is destroyed. (99% confidence)
When one considers the cost of developing this technology, the cost of testing it on a real $100 million missile, the cost of building thousands of anti-missile batteries for US beaches and borders; it would be cheaper to buy sand in a trade deal and be their ally.
As many Tv shows are now noting, emerging military blocs will develop biological and cyber weapons, not nuclear. The US is still fighting its old enemies.
The video didn't have any explanatory track. I saw a missle going up. I'm guessing this was the target ICBM, then a puff of smoke. For all I know the ICBM could have been told to self-destruct.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
The test runs are bloody expensive and there are LOTS of conditions to test for. In peacetime, there is no way Congress will pay for a truly sufficient number of test flights. As a result the tests are all designed to test responses to multiple conditions, the exact numbers likely being confidential. This tends to lead to a final "success" result in around half the cases, while actually successfully testing against a list of conditions until the one that makes or breaks the test. It might be better to test all 100+/- conditions in a series of well-instrumented failing tests until you get them all right, but if you don't have some "successes" along the way the grumbling starts at the upper levels and the funding gets called into question.
These arguments do not necessarily apply if a maniacal despot is running the show.
To hit something you have to be at the right place at the right time (within a kill radius)
First level of errors is in just picking up the actual current position/speed of the incoming
Then you have to do you calculation quick (few milliseconds) and tell your interceptor to "move there" (mechanics/aerodynamics)
If an incoming has no steering whatsoever, then it is kind of feasible.
But if the incoming has even very little steering ten the control loop time (including mechanics) is so short that it becomes quickly impossible to have it stable.
It is standard control theory, nothing fancy.
You end up hitting the target just by luck
Yes, and no...
If you have a missile chasing a missile, the persuer ought to take a shorter course. This is not the case if it overshoots, so the last part of the interception should be from behind rather than from the side. The interceptor will probalby explode and destroy the target with shrapnel, as closing the last bit is hard. Another, trickier but possible option is trying to hit the target from the side or head on. You can make your rocket lighter and more agile if you omit the explosives and shrapnel, and try to impact the target, using your relative kinetic energy to do the job.
ICBS are different again. They have several phases. You have the boost phase when it is ascending. Hit it with a laser and there is a lot of propellant and stuff that will destroy it for you. But the boost phase may be only minutes long. Then there is the ballistic phase: the warhead is moving largely under its own momentum. It is hard to destroy. You can make it pretty laser-resistant with a shiny foil and an ablative layer. If it has multiple warheads, you want to get it before it divides, or before they have separated much. Finally, there is the re-entry phase. Any decoy warheads will be lighter and not survive re-entry. You know the real ones, but you have left it pretty late.
I think it makes a lot of sense to dig out your last cold war experiments, and find out whether they still work.
...is smirking at Jed Bartlett.
<bored_soccermom_sarcasm>
...Those poor ships at sea that have hot metal crap raining down on them! This solution is unacceptable!
</bored_soccermom_sarcasm>
To my fellow MDA peeps--well done.
Ferret
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
Well it is 1 for 1 or 100% for ICBM's.... Though that is a ridiculous test sample... though at the same time it isn't like ICBM and their launches are just laying around either.
But no, not all that reassuring I'd say still. Also I'd argue that intercepting an ICBM is likely harder than "other type of target missiles", so I wonder if they have improved it by that much, or if they just got lucky. Also depends on how they run the test. Kinda cheating if you know exactly when and where the missile is coming from I'd say...
I also wonder what type of communication exists if any between "multiple interceptors". Presumably they are smart enough not to shoot each other down. Also given say a swarm of MIRV's and say a swarm of interceptors, what prevents all the interceptors going for the one warhead, rather than trying to sort out which one goes where. Would be an interesting piece of code should it actually exist...
Put a $100 million bounty on all shot down North Korea test missiles. Lets see how many nations show up to shoot them down. That would probably save us a lot of money test firing our own.
Nathan
The thing is once you've gotten into the ballistic phase, the flight path and speed is pretty set. You just put some gravel in the flight path, that's the only way from point A to the target and the reentry vehicle's 17,000 MPH of momentum destroys it.
A Minuteman III silo has a 50/50 chance of surviving a 50KT detonation at or beyond 100m. This means the detonation has to occur a little less than 4 millionths of a second before impact! My understanding is a uranium device is incapable of detonating with that degree of timing. A plutonium device is capable of that timing, but they are hard to make and it several orders harder to make light enough to be lofted by an ICBM and several orders more to achieve the accuracy required to neutralize a counter-strike.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds