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The Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle
Hapster writes " Raytheon has developed the most expensive weapon ever. This ICBM killer hones in on an oncoming missile and, like a bullet hitting another bullet, hopes to smash into it before it smashes into us. " On a sheer technology level, devices like this are some of the most intrinsicly interesting around, although I'm still not quite sure who's the enemy.
Discore dun said:
Who'd bomb abortion clinics, or bomb gay clubs, or bomb churches, or blow the bejeesus out of civilians? Who the hell would set up crematoria and extensive transport networks and accounting systems and even new forms of poisons specifically so they could kill mass numbers of people in the shortest amount of time with minimum fuss? Who'd pay out upwards of three hundred thousand dollars to become mentally ill, then to find all their problems are supposedly the result of an evil alien having thrown them in a Hawaiian volcano some time before dinosaurs went extinct? ;)
No, I'm not stating that to be facetious. I am stating that...well...there are a lot of Very Crazy People out there, and a fair number of them have in essence given up their minds and free will to authoritarian leaders who pretty much keep them in a state of fear, loathing, and self-guilt.
Go read up sometime on coercive tactics and tactics of mind control for starters. A good start would be reading on the mind-control stuff Scientology uses against members, and read how exactly Hitler rose to power in Germany.
Another good source--and this is REALLY relevant for you in the US, and in the Middle East, and possibly other places--is reading up on fundamentalist movements in general. (As an aside, an awful, AWFUL lot of fundy movements do use coercive tactics. In essence, a fundy who bombs a building does not see what he's doing as wrong; he sees himself as a member of the Chosen People, frequently sees the world outside of his cluster as deluded at best and outright Satanic and worthy only of extinction at worst, and thus terrestrial law is not to be obeyed as it is preempted by "God's law"; many think they will either become martyrs or will be Raptured or receive reward in the afterlife; many are taught not to question their leaders as "thou shalt not judge a man of God" and are told to avoid all media outside the group.)
A real good example of the kind of person who just MIGHT be nuts enough to set off a smallpox bomb would be Eric Rudolph, or some of the folks who work for the godhatesfags.com people...I expect they would think NOTHING of setting off such a device in Las Vegas or in a gay nightclub, because they'd think they were "delivering God's vengeance". Hell, you see this in MAINSTREAM fundy churches in the US; I've heard preachers make excuses for people who killed abortion providers ("It's wrong to kill, but they were baby-killers and had it coming to them so we can't shed too many tears...") and damn near erupted all over themselves during both the Gulf War and the crises during the Cold War because they were convinced a nuclear war would take place, that it'd be over Israel, and it would mean they would be raptured and be able to sit in heaven as all the sinners perished in nuclear hellfire [yes, they literally believed this, and they didn't care that all life might be destroyed because they were going to get a "new heaven and new earth"].
Most of those are, for some reason or another (either because they are nuts, malignant, or are being led by the nose by people who are nuts or malignant), are not in their right minds to begin with. They don't CARE about this world because they think it's evil anyways...so they would probably drop a smallpox bomb without a thought. They might even see it like God is using them to unleash a plague, like the plagues mentioned in the story of Passover. They've stopped seeing everyone outside of their group as human, and see them as The Enemy.
Then again, at least speaking for the United States...these people would not use ICBMs. They'd likely use suitcase bombs or something similar, and odds are the US would not even suspect it was an act of domestic terrorism till weeks afterwards, if ever. (Both the OKC bombing and the Olympic bombing were thought to be the work of foreign terrorists at first; turned out in both cases it was domestic terrorism, in at least one case linked to a particularly hateful offshoot of fundamentalism known as Christian Identity. [I've also heard this about the other case, but it's also likely he's a regular foamin' fundy and not the race-baiter flavour. "Christian militias" that are as dangerous as the hate-group linked kind, but have nothing to do with "Christian Identity", do exist; most see themselves as "Entime preparation" groups. I'm rather worried about what a few of these groups might pull if Y2K doesn't mean Armageddon, especially since a fair number of them are the ones pushing "Y2K Survival Communities" and Y2K shelters and Y2K food barns and survival camps and whatnot.]
The two most likely countries to use ICBMs with biological weapons, methinks, would be Pakistan and India; they've been in a shooting war since 1948, are both nuclear, both have received assistance from Russia in past, are dancing every bit as close to a nuclear war as the US and USSR were over those Cuban missiles in the 60's, and are the two countries most expected to eventually have a nuclear war. They pretty much see each other as the Enemy at this point, both countries have raving fundies as their leaders [the BJP in India is essentially a fundamentalist Hindu party; Pakistan is run pretty much by fundy Muslums--Pakistan is pretty much the ONLY country right now on good terms with the Taliban in Afghanistan, and provide training for the Taliban], they damn near see getting Kashmir as the Holy Grail...it wouldn't shock me if the idea of anthrax-bombing or smallpox-bombing one or the other comes in their heads eventually, if it hasn't already. [This would be a Really Bad Thing, too--pretty much at least a billion people would die (Pakistan and India's combined population, roughly) and if it spread to China kiss another billion goodbye...not to mention it'd REALLY destabilise the area and increase the risk China and the US could go to a shooting war.]
Another possibility is South and North Korea, but I'm not so sure on this seeing as North Korea would likely want the food reserves uncontaminated; they've been through a rather severe famine where anywhere from 200,000 to 2 million people have died (depending on who's statistics you believe)
-Windigo The Feral (NYAR!)
Any small nation that develops ICBM nukes is only
going to use it against the US as a bargaining
chip.
"see, we now have ICBM nukes. You must admit
us into the nuclear club, and you can't just
police us like you police other nations."
In other words, they would use it to get the
respect that China and Russia have, but that
Kosovo, Haiti, Somalia, Sudan, and Indonesia
do not. (W can run roughshod all over these
countries and there's nothing they can do.
We can not do the same to China, Russian provinces, or in the future, Pakistan.)
However, they know that any launch would surely
result in their assured destruction (they can't
destroy the US), so it's a pure terror weapon.
However, they know they can still gain some
negotiating room with the US and other countries
as long as they have the threat. The presence
of ICBMs in North Korea alone would vastly boost
their position in foreign policy at the
negotiating table. You can see it today as
North Korea uses the threat of missiles or
building a weapons reactor to simply get
food.
Having a credible missile defense allows the US
to say "fuck your ICBMs, you must comply with
your agreements, we can shoot down the few paultry
ICBMs you have."
Now, whether or not the US can actually do this
100% is irrelevent. As long as the US has the credibility of doing it.
So why not simply announce a new defense system, announce 100% accurate tests, show phony demo tapes, stage phony sales to Israel, Taiwan, Japan, and other allies, and no country could
falsify the reality of the situation without
actually launching a weapon, which they would
never attempt.
The US policy should be "launch a missile, if it gets shot down, you still die."
The only thing that truly matters in this world is perception. As long as Kruchev really believed the US was prepared to go all the way at Cuba, there was a chance for removal. If he felt the US was bluffing, the situation might have been worse.
If we just let them starve, the problem would go away. Thank you for enlightening me. This philosophy solves just about any problem in the world anyway: -If your child, mother, or girlfriend is ill, let them die. The problem will go away. -Ecological problems? Nonexistent. If we destroy the planet too much we will die. No ecological problems any more. Problem solved.
and now for something completely different
Hi All!
Of all the likely nuclear scenarios, I think the two most likely are these:
North Korea nukes Japan
Sound crazy? Understand this--the history of Korea can essentially be defined by alternating periods of subjugation by the Chinese and the Japanese. The centuries of Chinese rule were generally benign--the decades or centuries of Japanese rule (including 1914-1945) were characterized by incredible brutality interspersed by periodic episodes of unbelievable brutality. It may sound nuts to Westerners--but North Korea would be viewed sympathetically by many South Koreans if they could plausibly launch a nuke at the Japanese.
China flips a nuke at the U.S. over Taiwan
The Chinese have already threatened to do this. In 1996 a Chinese military official--in an astonishly blunt statement--pointed out that the PRC had the capability to deliver nuclear warheads on Los Angeles. (Digression: in Asia you only speak this directly to inferiors or to people you have absolute command over. The statement is regarded by many who are knowledgeable about Asian affairs as strong evidence that the Chinese have compromising information on the Clinton Administration, and speak in this tone to remind everybody of the fact.) The PRC goes nuts any time anybody even talks to the Taiwanese--they continually object to U.S. airlines flying to Taipei, and they harass travelers entering the PRC if they also have a lot of Taiwanese visa stamps. (A lot of Asian travelers "lose" their passports and get replacements, so they have one passport for the PRC and Hong Kong, and a different passport for Taiwan.) How nuts are they? The "diplomatic incident in 1996" that the NY Times refers to in the article was the attempt by President Lee of Taiwan to attend an alumni reunion at Cornell. Yup--Lee was permitted entry into the U.S. only by a resolution of Congress, and the Chinese baldly hinted at nuclear war.
Why would either the NKs or the Chinese do this? Both countries have leaders that are contemptuous of American politics and American public opinion. They believe (and they may be correct) that they could "accidently" flip a nuke and start apologizing up one side and down the other. And they believe that the U.S. does not have the political resolve to respond with nukes. It's all well and good to talk about "anybody launching an ICBM would quickly be glowing in the dark"--but I doubt that it is true. I don't think the U.S. military has what used to be called "independent launch authority" any more--nobody can launch without permission from "National Command Authority." And the "National Command Authority," in case anybody has forgotten, is a sex-crazed dipstick who is regarded as spineless by the leaders of every other nation in the world.
An Exercise:
Taiwan declares independence. China attempts to launch an invasion flotilla. Taiwanese subs and torpedo boats ravage the armada--but suspicions rise that some of those submarines are actually U.S. Navy boats, or perhaps E-3 Sentry aircraft provide tactical information to the Taiwanese. China "accidentally" launches a nuke at Los Angeles--and fortunately, it turns out to be a dud. It destroys a block of downtown L.A., but that's the extent of it. They apologize profusely, and they mention in passing that accidents can happen--just as the U.S. discovered in the "accidental" bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade.
Pretend you're "National Command Authority." Do you nuke back? Or do you quietly get the hint, pull the U.S. assets out of the theater, and let the Chinese take Taiwan--with nukes, if need be?
The amazing thing about nukes is that they are one of the only weapons systems in history that have practically never been used. The more countries that have them, the greater the likelihood that somebody, somewhere, will decide it is worth the risk to push the button. I'm all in favor of humanitarian aid and economic development. But to ignore the very real likelihood of ICBMs being used in the future is unrealistic in a SlashDot reader. In a U.S. politician it is simply criminal.
"His location is 55 degrees 10 minutes 3 seconds lat, 75 degrees 21 minutes 9 seconds long"
ZAP!
"Where'd Saddam go?"
--
you must amputate to email me
i read all replies to my comments
You mad a comment that you're not sure who the enemy is. Let me come up with a short list for you:
Mainland China, which fields one of the largest, if not the largest, standing armies in the world. They may not be the best, but their sheer numbers will make you stop and pause. They're still a threat to their own people, imprisoning desenters, and they have stated they will use force against Taiwan (and think how expensive your cheap computers would get, and how less successful the Internet revolution they drive would become).
North Korea, which despite being closed and near total starvation, has managed to launch two new ICBM missles, the second of which has the range to reach the West Coast. Everyone seems to think that Cuba is the only Stalinist regime left, but Korea makes Cuba look like a workers paradise.
Pakistan and India have been at it for a long time. Both have tested regional ICBMs capable of carrying nukes. They may not be a direct threat to us, but they can upset their region, which is bad enough.
Iraq still ain't our buds. And with holes in the embargo and no UN inspectors, it won't be long before we get a rude awakening from that part of the world.
What's left of the USSR is very unhealthy right now. A war with southern Muslums in Chechnia has heated up, with Muslums blowing up Russian apartment buildings full of people. We went through hell when we lost the Edward R. Murrow building in Kansas City, but they've lost the equivalent of four over the past few months. This type of terror and the economic and political instability are just the ingrediants needed for demagogues and dictators. Think of Berlin and Gernany before the Nazis and WWII.
We've had the Bomb since 1945, and ICBMS with Russia since the '50s. That technology has had a half century to percolate around the world, both as hardware and knowhow. Internationally, the world is as politically dangerous now as it ever was. And we need whatever it takes to protect our borders, and our way or life, including slashdot.
Technical Debate over Patriot Performance in the Gulf War
The Patriot Missile. Performance in the Gulf War Reviewed
It looks like some people still didn't realize one fundamental thing -- everything that works, can fail, at least in some cases. And I am not talking about anti-ICBM missiles.
Once a manager asked me, why my program has abort() in it. The program had to be reliable, however I knew that if some, completely insane condition will happen, it will be more dangerous to keep it running than to kill it, let external script restart it, do whatever data recovery can be done and continue working while leaving core dump to get any idea, how such an "impossible" thing happened. Yet program was long, more than one person worked on it making not always well thought out changes, and in some case that abort() actually was called -- and it was good that it was abort() and not horrible corruption of data that would follow if it tried to continue instead. I could make it a goal of my life to make this program unable to fail, but it would take years of constant work and huge amount of checking of libraries that the program used for possible failure conditions such as buffer overflows. I could make the program hide definitely detected inconsistencies and risk all the data that it will process after such a failure. Instead I have chosen a point where nothing can be done within the program, and it should admit that it screwed up, restart everything and recover whatever is recoverable, minimizing the damage.
Things of the same kind happen in all areas. People at some point die, and no efforts of doctors can keep them alive. Banks can be robbed. Students can be killed at school by two seriously disturbed gunmen in trench coats or any other kind of clothes. Group of terrorists can nuke major cities of US, or any other countries. Some country despite all efforts for the opposite including massive military campaign by US, can refuse to release American prisoners that it holds. You can be hit by meteorite, or Earth can be evaporated in few seconds by some very fast moving large rock that happened not to be orbiting Sun and therefore never seen by astronomers. Combination of radioactive decay events in memory chips can produce exact pattern necessary to launch a nuke at Washington, DC. We may find out that Borg or something very close to it exist, and time travel doesn't.
All those situation, however wildly differs their probability, have one in common -- they can't be prevented, and not much can be done about them. If large part of resources of, say, this country, will be spent on development of immortality, the goal could be achieved -- after all, sufficiently modified organism (centuries of constant, heavily funded uninterrupted research!) can develop some form of at least physical regeneration, and something can be done to enhance brain to make it capable of dealing with changes in the culture over the year of life of such an immortal individual. But the fact that merely none of 6 billions-something people on Earth is happy to die, yet all of them at some point will, does not justify making lifes of those people much more miserable to achieve this goal in foreseeable future.
Banks security can be increased, yet it can reach the point when cost won't justify the benefit, and customers won't use such a bank because security measures will make it hard to use.
The same applies to schools plus since school should be suitable for learning, and disturbed gunmen are less concerned about their lives than robbers, the whole exercise can become pointless much sooner.
The only sure way to prevent terrorists from nuking a modern city is to nuke it before them.
American diplomacy and military power can fail, be abused, sabotaged or place US in the situation when every other country will be against it, and local citizens will be very unhappy, too.
A system capable of defending the Earth from small meteorits better than atmosphere already does, will be probably as big as atmosphere and its development will kill more people than ever was killed by meteorits in the whole history.
Large fast-flying rocks never seen by astronomers theoretically may exist, and no other solution than spreading humans across multiple star systems can make sure that mankind will survive an encounter with such a thing.
Increasing the reliability of military computers is definitely a good thing, however if "what-if"-based development won't stop at some point, such computer will cover all available surface without reaching the goal of being absolutely reliable and absolutely invulnerable, not to mention that life in the country completely covered by military computer's guts will be much worse than after a nuclear war.
And I will rather face the theoretical possibility of being assimilated by a race of baddies with cool spaceships than devote all my and all people of the Earth time to the development of the suitable defense against it, and have no life outside of that.
Why am I giving such a ridiculous examples? After-WWII history of arms race shown that US relied on its possible military superiority reach its political goals, yet consistently the most likely enemies managed to restore balance, including efforts made in pretty hard situation immediately after the war in Russia and despite Russian government not being the most efficient (or democratic, or whatever) thing possible. I see no reason why it won't happen again, except that in this case US not only tries to outdo possible opponents for some time, but tries to prevent thing that can't be prevented by any reasonable or unreasonable effort -- even if it will work, it means switching from missiles to planes, trucks, submarines or even horses and, who knows, even pigeons. Tried to prevent a threat that can't prevented, pissed half of the world off, broken treaties and lost credibility, spent huge amount of resources that desperately are needed locally (ex: education), and accomplished another lap in the race with no change in the score.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Pros for missile defense:
Cons for missile defense:
Other points:
- India was believed to have nuclear weapons since at least the 70s, but sat on them until recently. Part of their motivation was to get the primary nuclear powers to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which all of them except the United States are perfectly willing to do. I might add that missile defense systems are also a violation of various treaties, and are sure to only further destabilize nuclear relations.
- Re Stonehand's "leading by example" comment: read up on your game theory before coming back to the table, kid. The only way we are ever going to make progress here is if nations do lead by example. Someone has to show a level of trust or no progress is possible. (By the way, Leejay, you make an amazing number of moronic points. I'm impressed.)
- Technical correction: the US & UK are indeed the world's biggest arms exporters. They are followed by Russia, China, and France. Astute readers will note that these five nations just happen to be the five permanent members of the UN security council, the body responsible for maintaining world peace and stability. I'm sure this is just a coincidence though.
- Substrate seems surprised by what s/he calls Cold War Two. This shouldn't be a surprise. The end of the first Cold War threatened many people's jobs, hurt alot of people's wallets, and in fact threatened to undercut the engine that lies underneath America's economic (and incidentally military) superiority today. War is big business, and many people stand to benefit from it -- including every one of you that is using a computer with Cold War derived technologies (e.g. DARPAnet...). Finding a new way to have a great big bloodless war ("Blood & gore go over so badly on CNN...") could be the impetus for US success in the next century and beyond.
- "God_Almighty" (hahaha) makes many good points, and while s/he ignores the benefits we get from military research (many we rely on daily), s/he is spot on and I add my <AOL>me too!</AOL> to his/her point.
- "Newly freed Eastern Europe"? Oh you mean those satellites we redistributed to Germany for good behavior? Oh yeah I remember them. "Free". Heh. Cute way to put it.
- Re: complaints that the defense budget is "too low" as a portion of GDP: when your military is more powerful than that of several continents worth of other countries' militaries combined, and when your nations GDP accounts for something like 25% - 50% of global GDP (those numbers are old -- it peaked at 50% after WW2 and has been falling off. 25% seems reasonable but needs to be verified), and when you have companies that can't even make any money that are worth more than frickin' Norway...
...after all these kinds of things, you may realize after stepping back that maybe, just maybe, you can afford to have an ever so slightly smaller military than you would otherwise, and maybe GDP isn't the best yardstick to work with here. - Delicon writes "at an impact
... of 10 km/s, vaporization is the usual result." Seems reasonable, but can you back that up, cite some studies of things that we've managed to even hit at 10 km/s, nevermind damaged? Seems like your point is built on a flimsy assumption...
Ahh yes, another patented Slashdot flamewar. Too bad I'm jumping in on this one so late...DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
...but I wish we could just protect humanity in general.
Ah, yes. I also wish that we all lived lived to at least a thousand years, had a nifty nanoreplicator each, could fly, and take vacations on Sirius. Strange, I am wishing all these things and nothing happened yet...
If only the US can afford these things it will be unjust that others should die.
First, you probably mean "equality", not "justice". I don't see what justice has to do with having an equivalent number of people die in each country. Second, are you saying that I cannot have anything that everybody else doesn't have as well? Enforce a lowest common denominator on everybody? When out of "justice" you reduce your lifestyle to that of Indian beggars, I'll listen.
Or do you advocate that every time a Chinese guy dies because there were no, say, coronary bypass operations available near his village, we kill off a patient in a US hospital just to keep things even?
I imagine the Indians and Pakistanis will be the ones most in need of these kind of defense systems,
No. They need defence against theatre-range systems (medium-range missiles, fighter-bombers, etc), not against ICBMs which, as it was pointed out, stand for InterContinental Ballistic Missiles.
but somehow I doubt they'll be able to afford them,
Didn't stop before, I don't see why it should stop them now...
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
The facts in this matter are very simple. In economical terms, it is called "The Law of Diminishing Returns." When you use a 10 million dollar bullet to shoot down a 1 million dollar missile, the opposition only has to build and launch more missiles to overwhelm and defeat your system.
The latter fact makes SDI very destabilizing. The advantage to the opponent is to just build more weapons and adopt more agressive targetting profiles. This forces the SDI builder to devote more and more resources to counter the threats either by building more missiles themselves or by deploying more defense. Obviously, with the expense of the latter, it isn't long before the SDI deployer is bankrupted (not the opponent). For these reasons the story that the U.S. SDI program bankrupted the Soviet Union causing its fall is ridiculous. This argument is a great example of post hoc, ergo propter hoc.
SDI will have no effect on the most likely nuclear attack, a terrorist weapon smuggled into the country via ship and triggered at a static ground location or in a tall building.
SDI is a waste of money. Always has been, always will be.
Boom goes London.
Boom Paree.
There's more room for you.
There's more room for me.
They all hate us any how
So let's drop the big one now. Randy Newman, Political Science
I can see it now, the next US weapons project will be arming existing missles with anti-anti-missle missles, so that the missles can shoot down the anti-missles with their anti-anti-missle missles and arrive at their target, causing as much confusion as tactical damage.
For sake of scalability, the anti-anti-missle missles will have to be the size of a common pencil. They'll then be picked up by the NRA as the next great super-weapon for hunting deer.
-- TrevorB, who thinks there should be a "Silly" moderation attribute.
I'd hate to rain on anyone's parade but wouldn't this military wet dream be superfluous? Let's suppose I'm one of these countries with tac-nukes. Why would I bother announcing the launch site and invite retaliation by using balistic missiles? Better still, just to ship it into a anonymous cargo hauler and detonate it within some strategic harbor or even Panama canal. That way the source (assuming you can disguise the origin of the manufactured weapon) can be anonymous. Given the gung-ho way the US been acting around the world in the last few decades, I'm sure there's no shortage of splinter or fanatic groups to spread the net of suspicion. If people are interested in the military mindset, take a look at their parameters magazine, in particular the article by Peters on "Our New Old Enemies". Very interesting.
... I believe US and Britain are still the largest exporters of arms) but does little to create long-term goodwill. Exporting organised violence seems to be a self-fufilling prophency as it propagates a climate of fear. Afterall, if you think someone is an enemy. then what are the chances that every action you perceive is hostile? Psychopaths are not the only people with a warped mind-view, a entire culture can be infected in rather subtle but destructive ways (Andy Grove "Only the Paranoid Surive", Bill Gates "Technogy is great, but 90% market share is better"). Very successful but at what cost?
People don't go to war for no good reason. If you create a threat, then people will respond in kind. Defining enemies through an arms race might be good for the military-industrial complex (correct me if I'm wrong
This century has seen 2 world wars, numerous regional conflicts and ongoing bushfires. I would hope the next century has a better record.
LL
Almost as soon as they cry "The Russian menace is dead, the cold war is over!" the government and military find a new threat in small countries that they couldn't bother worrying about before. Some of it might be real and I for one wouldn't argue that the defense budget should be cut to zero (or even to the level of NASA's budget) but I can't help think that much of the indicated threat is made up. I expected to see much of the piece wrapped in subliminal fnords to help generate a low grade panic in the populace.
India has the bomb, their most likely target would be Pakistan. The same goes for most of the other countries they listed. When you're at war with near neighbours other potential conflicts take the back seat. Well, except that we're pointing things at them and saying "they're benign if you don't bother us", which ensures that they're going to point something at us.
The biggest threat is probably terrorist attack. Why bother with biological tipped warheads when you can deploy the biological agents on US soil? That would strike much more fear and paranoia into the general public than a missile attack. Missiles are tangible. Warnings about seeing 'suspicious persons' at public events isn't. You could generate a lot of terror among certain segments of the population just by waiting for the next especially dangerous flu and claiming responsibility for it.
1) Contrary to popular belief, The Patriot is a Theater Based Anti-Aircraft missle defense system and not an Anti-Missle Defense System (it was designed to shoot down planes, not missles). It was retrofitted to engage missles in the gulf war - which explains its interesting performance in the gulf war. It was not designed, or originally intented as a anti-missle defense system. The retrofitting of the Patriot was a lucky break, given that military planners had totally missed the boat on that type of expected threat. Although, in fairness, the SCUD missle was never a tactical threat at any point during the war, and never posed any military threat of any significance to forces in theater. It was a political tool used by Iraq to scare the world, and little more. So it's understandable that the original military response to the SCUD attacks was "So what?" Nevertheless, we had no real anti-missle defense system to speak of at the time. (And we still don't.)
2) The Patriot is a Theater defense system (effective only within a single geographic region). ICBMs are strategic weapons systems (effective globally). What this means, in a few words or less, is that in the best case: You have patriots installed in every single theather of operation you expect a nuclear attack to come from, the Patriot will not engage the ICBM (shoot it down) until its too late. The Patriots maximum effective range makes it only useful for engaging targets within a single theater of operation, or basically only as high as you would expect a typical military aircraft to fly and only as far away as the planners expected an inbound to pose a threat (say a hundred miles or so). In short, the patriots range is too short to be effective against weapons that, when detonated, would encompass the Patriots entire range. So you have the problem of needing thousands of patriot batteries to cover a country like the US, and even then it would be too late for them to be of any use in most cases.
What does this all mean? We do not possess a real ballastic missle defense system. We can not, today, stop any inbound ICBM from reaching any target, unless we destroy it on the ground.
--
Python
Python
Well, I happen to work for Raytheon (not Defense Systems, though), so maybe I'm biased... but...
There are a lot of things that we have done in the past that you could've said were "a waste of our tax money"... hey, why explore space and send probes to get land/survey (or get lost) on mars? Boy, what a waste of money, right?
Why did we bother to send a man to the moon, or even enter the space race... just a big waste of money right?
Why does the government provide "IR&D" funding through agencies such as DARPA? Research??? Just a waste of money right? I mean, you've got your Car, TV, Microwave, Stereo... who needs research?
Oh... except that your microwave oven and CD player probably are by-products of DARPA research and a lot of technology used by NASA has since tumbled back into commercial/personal use.
The technology we develop today will seem to be childsplay 50 years from now. Perhaps the guidance software algorithms used by the anti-missles will wind up in your car... as your car drives itself to Boston with you as a passenger. Perhaps it *will* at some point be used to deflect/destroy one of those "pesky Earth orbit-crossing comets".
At any rate, it keeps a lot of people employed, from the engineering people to a lot of small job-shops that stuff gets parted out to... And it develops a technology that we *should* have in this day and age, with nuclear weapons getting to more and more countries hands every year.
Trust me, if a nuclear missle was headed toward me and you had a defense that was 25% effective, I'd feel a lot better about my chances than I would with *no* possible defense.
Oh, and if you see it in the paper... its certainly *not* anything really secret/sensitive, or you'd never even see it. There's a lot of "black" jobs out there that ended 20 years ago and *still* have not appeared in the news because of the sensitivity of the technology. Imagine what you don't know about today...
Boeing's is called the Airborne Laser. They won the contract a few months ago, and already progress looks amazing.
Now if only you could get one hooked up to your 737 business jet...
-- toolie
\begin{economics professor}
The increase in revenue in Reagan's tenure (yes, it went up, not down, following his tax *rate* cuts [1]) was much more than would have been necessary to cover the increase n defense spending. But in order to get these approved, the price in Congress was signing onto the huge increases in social spending--the largest increases in social spending in U.S. History (later eclipsed during the Bush administration).
[1] There was a single year in which revenue failed to grow at prior rates--the period between the announcment of the cuts and their effective date. Also, the portion of taxes paid by the "rich" went up.
\end{}
At an impact speed of 10+ km/sec. Vaporization is the usual result. Should kill biologicals. Flying missile debris or flying missile... difficult choice..
Robert Wright
You remember that peace dividend we were supposed to get after the cold war? Remember when Reagan was pumping most of our annual budget into the military to outspend the Commies? We were supposed to be able to cut back that spending dramaticly after the Cold War was over. After WWII the US military budget dropped by 90%. Most of that $ went to the Marshall plan to rebuild Japan and Western Europe. It also went to the GI Bill which produced the most romanticized and idyllic time in most American's memories.
But didn't we cut back on military spending after the Cold War and close all those bases? Yeah, about 15% of our top Cold War spending levels. During 1998 we spent over $321 Billion on National Defense. We currently have over 8,600 combat aricraft, 10,000 tanks, 18 aircraft carriers, 120+ subs, 3600+ Ballistic Missiles and over 725000 other missiles. Source
Now compare that to the 50 Billion we spent on education and training, the 23 Billion NASA got and the fact that China, only spent 40-60 Billion on their National Defense. As a percentage of our GDP we spend 6 times what countries in Western Europe (England, France) who have also been participating in our policing operations around the world.
We need to take a chunk of that money and invest in the public infrastructure (education, health care, public utilities, small business resources) in our country and many 'pontential rogue nations' in the former Soviet Union, Africa, Asia and South America. Once our people and other people are able to trade with one another, make a living for their families and provide a future for their children, I garuntee that the liklihood of war is 0.000000000000000000001.
History has shown that we have created many of the dictators we have had to overthow (Noriega, Suharto, Sadam) and we have managed to help countries get on their feet (W. Europe, Japan). We are at that crossroads again and must decide how to spend our money. Investing in Peace is always a better idea than investing in War.
Arrogance is Confidence which lacks integrity. -- me
The only true security from nuclear weapons is their absence from the world.
Countermeasures: The Achilles Heel of Missile Defenses
All ballistic missile defenses are vulnerable to countermeasures. Despite decades of research, dealing with countermeasures remains the key unsolved--and likely unsolvable--problem facing missile defenses. It is far easier for the attacker to deploy effective countermeasures against defenses than it is for the defense to respond to such countermeasures.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to build countermeasures. Effective countermeasures can be cheap and use simple technology--much simpler than the technology required to build long-range missiles. Among other possibilities, the attacker can overwhelm the defense; make the warhead hard to detect, leaving the defense without enough time to intercept it; or prevent the defense from identifying the true warhead. If the United States deploys a national missile defense, it must expect that any developing country that would build or buy long-range missiles to deliver an attack would also make sure these missiles had countermeasures to penetrate the defense.
Accidental or unauthorized attacks from Russia or China would include countermeasures. Russia and China almost certainly have already deployed countermeasures or could readily deploy them if the United States builds a national missile defense. These countermeasures would be equally as effective for an accidental or unauthorized launch as for an intentional attack.
The job of the defense is inherently difficult even without countermeasures. Building an effective defense against long-range missiles is intrinsically difficult even in the absence of countermeasures. First, the ground-based radar or satellite-based sensor must detect and track the attacking warhead early enough for the interceptor to reach the warhead. Second, the defense must accurately calculate the projected intercept point and launch an interceptor toward it. Third, the infrared sensor on the interceptor must detect the warhead far enough away to give the interceptor time to maneuver. Finally, the interceptor must maneuver accurately enough to hit the warhead--a small object--at a closing speed of greater than 10 kilometers per second (22,000 miles per hour). The difficulty of this task is revealed by US tests of high-altitude hit-to-kill interceptors (the type that would be used for national missile defenses) against cooperative targets: as of mid-1997, only 2 of 14 intercept attempts have been successful.
Effective use of countermeasures would make a difficult job essentially impossible. The attacker does not need to do much to make intercepts all but impossible. To defeat a defense, the attacker needs for only one countermeasure to work. But for a defense to be reliably effective it must work against all countermeasures the attacker might use, and must work the first time it encounters them. Many countermeasure techniques, each working to defeat the defense in a different way, are available and the attacker can use a combination of these. Some examples are
The attacker can overwhelm the defense. Chemical and biological warheads can be divided into many small parts--called submunitions--that can be released early in flight, just after the booster stops thrusting. This creates so many reentering targets that it overwhelms the defense and would therefore defeat any midcourse or terminal defense. Moreover, dividing the warhead into submunitions is also beneficial to the attacker because it distributes the chemical or biological agent more efficiently over the target area. US intelligence officials have stated that they believe North Korea will be able to deploy submunitions, and that this technology could be available on the world market by 2000.
The attacker can make the warhead hard to detect, leaving the defense without enough time to intercept. The infrared sensor on the interceptor, which guides it to the final intercept, detects the heat emitted by the warhead. Cooling the surface of the warhead thus makes it more difficult to detect. A small amount of liquid nitrogen in a thin shroud surrounding the warhead could cool the surface enough to reduce the distance at which the infrared sensor could detect the warhead by 10,000 times--from the hundreds of kilometers needed down to only tens of meters. The interceptor would have only a few thousandths of a second to react, in which time it could not maneuver enough to have any chance of intercepting a warhead traveling at 7,000 meters per second.
Such cooling would also make the warhead much less visible to the infrared detectors on satellite-based sensors such as the planned Space and Missile Tracking System, giving the defense less time to work. Similarly, the warhead can be made more difficult to detect by radar by reducing its radar cross-section using simple techniques such as adding a sharp nose, curving its back end, and covering it with radar-absorbing material.
The attacker can prevent the defense from identifying the true warhead. Above the atmosphere, where long-range missiles would be intercepted, objects of different weights and shapes travel at the same speed and follow the same path. This allows a missile to carry a large number of lightweight decoys to confuse the defense. Moreover, these decoys do not need to be aerodynamic and need not even look like the warhead since the warhead could also be disguised. Such decoys would force the defense either to launch interceptors at all the false targets or to wait until the atmosphere strips away the lightweight objects, by which time it could be too late to launch interceptors against the warhead.
A simple and effective countermeasure is to place the warhead in a metalized mylar balloon (similar to those sold in florist shops) and release it within a large cloud of empty balloons. Each of these targets would move at the same speed and could not be distinguished by the missile defense radar. Moreover, adding a small heater to each balloon to heat each one by a different amount would prevent infrared sensors from detecting the real warhead. And, if desired, the attacker could also add a small vibrator to the balloons to mask any small motions the warhead might cause. The lightweight balloons would be stripped away by the atmosphere late in flight, but by that time they would already have done their job.
So the government has spent $50 billion on an ICBM defense that isn't hitting its targets yet in tests. I'm going to go way out on a limb here and grant that they may actually get it working someday.
There is a funny thing about ICBM attacks, you can trace them back to the country of origin, and several satellites should notice any launch anyway. Please name a country that could fire an ICBM at an American city without developing a serious glow in the dark problem. MAD is still our ultimate insurance no one is that stupid, except if they only fire a few ICBM's it won't be mutual. The sad truth is that a world where everyone believes in anti-missle defenses is one where nuclear war will actually happen. This is destabilizing.
Any self-respecting terrorist or pissed off country is *not* going to be so stupid as to telegraph their intent and location by lobbing an ICBM at us! Please! It will arrive here quietly in the cargo of a ship, in a car crossing the border, or carried in a briefcase. Anti-missle defenses are not too useful for these very credible threats.
And of course, within a year of completion of this program, everyone will have counter-technology to make it useless again, and will have stolen the design for their own use. Don't worry just spend a bunch more billions to fix it. Then again, and again, until some fool actually thinks a launch is possible and tries it. You really want to go down this road any further?
I'm not opposed to military spending, just spending money stupidly. This money could have gone to space. Even if it were for orbiting nuclear monitoring and interdiction platforms (rather more difficult to shoot down) it would be a huge improvement over this boondoggle, and would at least be beneficial, even if hopelessly paranoid.
Please specify East or West with you longitude, and North or South with latitude. Failure do do so in these circumstances could spoil your whole day.
Feed he hungry. Save the whales. Free the mallocs.
Collisions at these speeds are not like normal every day car wreaks. Things explode or vaporize at these speeds. Very little of the pit would be in one piece after the collision. Plus, the collision happens very high up, so you also have reentry to deal with. A plutonium core isn't going to make a very good heat shield.
It's a non-problem anyway. The amount of plutonium is so small, and it will be scattered over such a wide area that it wouldn't even be detectable.
As a matter of fact, this is probably a pretty good way of getting rid of unwanted nuclear material. Scatter it evenly over the whole planet, it wouldn't even register above the background levels.
People are so damned scared of anything with the word "nuclear" in it these days. The whole US public seems to think they all know with certainty that anything nuclear related is evil. And yet they're far too stupid to actually go out and READ something about the subject. Most don't even know that every smoke detector in the country has a radioactive substance in it. You can be sure there would be a huge uproar if the media ever noticed......