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The US Is Testing a Microwave Weapon To Stop North Korea's Missiles (vox.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Vox: According to an NBC News report, the weapon -- which is still under development -- could be put on a cruise missile and shot at an enemy country from a B-52 bomber. It's designed to use microwaves to target enemy military facilities and destroy electronic systems, like computers, that control their missiles. The weapon itself wouldn't damage the buildings or cause casualties. Air Force developers have been working with Boeing on the system since 2009. They're hoping to receive up to $200 million for more prototyping and testing in the latest defense bill. There's just one problem. It's not clear that the weapon is entirely ready for use -- and it's not clear that it would be any more effective than the powerful weapons the U.S. already possesses. The weapon, which has the gloriously military-style name of Counter-electronics High Power Microwave Advanced Missile Project, or CHAMP, isn't quite ready for action, but it could be soon. Two unnamed Air Force officials told NBC that the weapon could be ready for use in just a few days.
Finally, a reason to spend billions more on missile defense. The arms industry will be very happy indeed.
Designing the system to cook people would be more effective, as the weapons would be shielded.
This system would require a lot of lead time to load the B-52, takeoff, fly to NK airspace, launch the cruise missile, and wait for its subsonic engines to propel it to the target.
The NK missile launch last week occurred with NO warning. They were able to fuel and prepare the missile for launch without detection.
This microwave system would be worthless at countering a NK missile launch. It would only be useful as a first strike weapon. Fear of an American preemptive strike is exactly what motivated NK to develop their nukes in the first place.
Maybe someday America will learn that you don't convince your adversary to stop being paranoid by threatening to attack them.
Don't mistake no public warning with no warning. You are acting like there isn't a new mover of spy satellites watching North Korea at any given moment.
The spy satellites that have the resolution to see the launch preparations are in LEO, and have a viewing window of less than a minute during each orbit.
The spy satellites that can dwell and "zoom-in" are only in the movies.
Also, the missile was prepped and launched in the middle of the night, and this time of year Korea has plenty of clouds.
You really need to create a score of -2, to differentiate that which is merely offensive garbage that does not contribute meaningfully to a conversation and ... posts like this.
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
Diplomacy, open trade, and international organizations. It's not as sexy as nukes and special forces, but the current stability of the world (and it is in an unprecedented state of stability) is almost certainly due to those things.
Yeah sure. Please point to any time since the Korean war where that's worked with North Korea. Oops, you can't.
Just another day in Paradise
Diplomacy, open trade, and international organizations. It's not as sexy as nukes and special forces, but the current stability of the world (and it is in an unprecedented state of stability) is almost certainly due to those things.
What do diplomacy, open trade, and international organizations have to do with North Korea?
Only everything. There are no good military solutions to the conflict with North Korea. They all involve hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths. If you think that's acceptable, we should probably reconsider who the murderous psychopath is in this situation.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
North Korea's ire against the U.S. isn't based on paranoia. It's based on propaganda. Any repressive system generates extreme discontent within its population, which eventually leads to uprising and revolution. Unless you can present the people with an external bogeyman that they can fear and hate instead of their oppressive overload. North Korea has chosen the U.S. to be that bogeyman. They teach their grade schoolers to want to attack Americans for crying out loud. Please, educate yourself on what actually goes on in North Korea before you believe their claims of victimhood.
The ironic thing to me is that this describes the United States as well. Just reverse the names, and the paragraph still works. We don't demonize North Korea in our text books, but the rest is pretty accurate.
We've known for decades that North Korea was a cancer in the socio-political fabric of the world. If it had been excised early on, we wouldn't be having this problem today. But instead we did nothing, taking the pacifist approach and hoping the problem would go away by itself. Well, it hasn't, and now it has nukes.
You think McArthur should have been allowed to go all the way to the Chinese border? You think the US would have prevailed in a war with China? I think you need to read up on the history if you think the US has taken a pacifist approach to North Korea. We killed 600,000 civilians there. "Hoping the problem would go away by itself" does not at all describe the US actions since. We have been active on the peninsula since the armistice, and would probably be in a better position if we had honored our own commitments after the 1994 framework was established.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)