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Exoatmospheric Kill Vechicle Test Successful
angio wrote to us with the
report about the test of an interceptor missle, in the Marshall Islands, was a success. The system shot down a modified Minuteman missle - for more coverage, check out the original article on the Exoatmospheric Kill Vechicle.
there's no indication that the missile killer would be as successful in wartime conditions. The people operating the missile killer knew when and where the missile would be - hardly realisti. I'd like to se this thing tested with only a few minutes' warning. Then we'll see how good it _really_ is.
the only problem i see is if someone shot a nuke, blowing it up here or wherever is not a good idea, unless we could knock it off before it got about 10 miles away!
ive heard about the satellites, ive heard about the ones mounted on 747's, its all good. when will they be able to have the offensive ones...
icq:=22921393;
wow. well at least we dont have to worry about ICBM attacks anymore
Could happen...
Aaron "PooF" Matthews
E-mail: aaron@fish.pathcom.com
To mail me remove "fish."
ICQ: 11391152
Quote: "Success is the greatest revenge"
the russians have a point in this article:
Mutual Assured Destruction has kept the world safe for the past 50 years. with anti-missile technology, one side COULD win. since we have it, i desperately hope no one is stupid enough on our side to destroy the world...
the really useful part of this is the fact that attacks from these smaller states like India, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq could be well detered. this assures that only the big guys: Russia, China, U.S (uk, france, north korea, etc.) could destroy the world. hmmm
"If I had only known, I would have been a locksmith."
-- Albert Einstein
sigh, he was right...
-- adraken
This is cool, but what does it really mean for US missile deterrence? One missile took down another, which is a far better kill ratio than we had originally been thinking about, but does it mean we'd now be able to take out a volley of nukes, or would it still be too difficult to take out large numbers? If much of the calculations are done by the rocket itself, that's good, obviously, but is it still too difficult to intercept massive numbers? And wouldn't we be able to see missiles coming at us (we have a rather good radar system, I believe)?
Inazuma
"McBane to base: Under attack by Commie Nazis!" -the Simpsons
It's great to have a way to protect ourselves, but is this going to cause us to do stupid things, secure in the knowledge that we are invulnerable?
God does not play dice - Einstein
Not only does God play dice, he sometimes throws them where they
I dont see how a device that deactives a weapon of mass destruction could be called a weapon. Given that it doesnt even have any explosives in it. I think we should mass produce this device and sell it to every country in the world.
--
I can't believe that this is the only use for this technology. Can this hit planes, too? Why not? And if not, why can't missles just get similar technology as planes (chaff, evasive maneuvers (sp?), etc) to avoid them?
I gotta say this is pretty cool technology, but I'm not sure that it is really going to be that effective. Remember it only takes one nuclear weapon to ruin your whole day, so if 30 are coming your way, they better be pretty effective.
-- Moondog
Since so few people read the original article, note also that North Korea has missle technology that can hit Chicago (as well as the entire West Coast).
Also note that this successful test was against a fairly sophisticated Minuteman II ICBM with several decoys around it. The combined velocity at impact was 15,000 mph, or about 6 or 7 kilometers per second.
For a transcript of a military briefing on friday that covered this click here.
When I'm singing a ballad and a pair of underwear lands on my head, I hate that. It really kills the mood.
-Tom Jones
With the Clinton Administration giving away our nuclear secrets wholesale, this is a bit of badly needed good news. If you don't think so, think about some looney-tune in North Korea or Iran someday holding the US hostage. I know someone will say that they can do it already with a "suitcase bomb", but that is misleading at best. Long-range ballistic missiles are much better at giving some tyrant somewhere the power to hold an entire nation hostage, because he can sit in the comfort of his own bunker and call the shots, literally. Think about it. He could even reprogram the target with the push of a button. Wake up to reality, folks.
As for the ABM treaty, that has to be the ultimate joke, and it is absolutely amazing that it is still considered an issue. First of all, it was signed nearly 30 years ago with a totalitarian government that no longer exists! Secondly, the Soviets blatantly violated the treaty before the ink was even dry with their phased-array radar and their high-altitude surface to ground missile tests. Finally, the ABM treaty had a provision that allowed us to unconditionally withdraw with a 6-month notice. The notion that we should let the ABM treaty stop us from defending ourselves is beyond foolish.
Russ
Cool! I knew all those Atari Missile Command game roms would come in handy!
System is halted
If I wanted to take out America now, I would first have soldiers infiltrate the US mainland and take out as many US radar installations as possible just about a half minute after launch. The US, thinking that it can simply blast the threat out of the sky, might not immediately launch retaliatory missiles. When their radar is knocked out, it will be too late to launch. Whee.
Finally, the worst thing about the damn interceptor is that we will keep wasting money on worthless military toys instead of something useful like laying new fiber to increase internet bandwidth.
Guess the jerks who hate Americans will make a stealth missle now. Better yet, walk right into our labs and take it from us like the Chinese already did.
--
I was at a party yesterday night and the test appeared to be visible in the northern sky right at sunset.
A long fat contrail (do minutemen use H2-02?) streaked through the sky brilliantly illuminated by the then setting sun. After about two minutes or so (I wasn't timing...) the contrail spread as if the second stage had separated and the first state was slowing down. (At least so I though at the time.)
After about another minute or so the contrail stoped and the projectile (missle/mirv/ufo) which was very slightly visible winked out of the twilight sky.
Sidenote: At first I thought it was a plane, but I have never seen a plane contrail that large. Then when the contrail fattened out, it looked as if the missle/projectile had turned and was aimed at me/party.
Request: If anyone happened to take any good pictures of that, it might be interesting to see them. I didn't have a camera with me so I can only post my observations...(sorry)
Don Armstrong -".naidnE elttiL etah I"
http://www.donarmstrong.com
Hiroshima was a joke, about 1kg of matter and people are still suffering. Whoever thinks this all makes sense is mad as a hatter but there is too much money involved and it means jobs too. Good for getting votes.
Minor note, WWII never happened as politicans said so before. After WWI another one became unthinkable so there never was a WWII and WWIII never will be.
I was surprised to see so many posts about how we should not proceed with missile defense, because then we will do stupid things because we will feel invulnerable.
This makes no sense. I'll just make a few brief arguments:
1) Mutually assured destruction is a doctrine that only applies in a situation where
(sub-point a) there are a small number of superpowers with nuclear weapons
and (sub-point b) the two superpowers are rational enough not to want MAD
Now, this no longer applies. There are too many "superpowers" (if you insist on counting places like Russia). Worse, there are superpowers that are simply not rational. Take China for instance. Mao was once quoted as saying that he was not afraid of nuclear war. Why? Because China had so many people, nuclear war would only destroy the capitalist superstructure and ensure the victory of the proletariat. Not good.
2) The real threat is not from other "superpowers" but from rogue states and terrorists.
Think about it. Some fundamentalist jihad warrior out there decides that he wants to destroy NYC. Sure, we could threaten to retaliate against his home country or something like that, but in many cases terrorists are increasingly alienated from their westernizing homes. So, this nut case wants to take down NYC, and we are basically powerless to stop him. Think about what the destruction of NYC would mean to the US. Now, since there is simply no way to deterr this kind of behaviour, wouldn't you like at least some way to defend ourselves?
Last point, 3) you don't leave your house unlocked just because you have an alarm system. Further (call it 3a if you want), you don't go around antagonizing gang members just because you have police in your community.
Can your IM do this?
Cnn.com also has covered this story. Nice picture of a vapour cloud! If that had been a nuke, wouldn't that include weapons-grade uranium, plutonium and whatever they use for h-bombs (deuterium and tritium perhaps?). These are highly toxic... would they burn in the atmosphere? I don't think I want to find out.
Obviously this test was canned, with the Pentagon even preparing for failure. It had one decoy balloon - what about all the other types of defenses, including simple chaff? Defense mechanisms are easy and cheap, and will quickly proliferate to cancel the effectiveness of this weapon.
Need we remember Patriot missiles? These things cost an incredible amount of money to develop, and have yet to be proven. No, they did not shoot down any Scud missiles in 1991. Those missiles broke up anyway - Isreal was saved more by the incompetents of Iraq.
Each Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle costs $120 million. Factor in development costs. Factor in how successful it will be. Factor in how quickly it will be out of date (as defensive mechanisms are developed to counter it). I recommend taking the money and spending it on diplomacy and education to counter such threats. Stop the missiles evening being deployed!
Orginially designed to shoot down airplanes. Later, retrofitted for missles. Never intended for rented trucks ...
where they built that "laser" satelite system to shoot down nukes. Wouldn't that be more effective/easier to build? Will the "laser" be effected by the atmospherE? What was the name of that movie anyway? It had like dan akroid and that hot russian chick and some other people.
Ok, so they can't launch missiles. So what? That option isn't garruanteed anyway: a state like N. Korea can't produce reliable enough missiles.
Other solution... smuggle a nuclear/chemical/biological weapons in to the US in suitcases and hand pick the target. Better still, bribe people and build weapons in the US - that wouldn't be anymore difficult. More reliable, cheaper and easy to carry out than a missile strike.
It carries a computer that enables it to determine its location by the position of certain stars and then select the target and attack it.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but this sounds very hard to do. Astronavigation requires at least two astronomical bodies (OK, they've got that), reasonably accurate timing (that's easy) and a horizon.
I just think that determining the location of the horizon from this vehicle would be very hard to do. Oh, you've got to know your altitude pretty accurately, too.
I'm not saying they didn't target it using astronav. It's just that GPS would be far easier, cheaper, and more accurate.
What's more likely is that it has star charts on board and looks for 'stars' that shouldn't be there. Then it attacks them. That could be a neat strategy.
It's going to have to be a lor more accurate than Patriot if it's going to be any use, anyway. Cool toy though.
Spies Like Us? Do I win a prize?
As far as cold war nuclear theories such as NUT (nuclear utilization theory) and MAD (mutually assured destruction), they are no longer operable in today's climate of nuclear capable Rogue nations (e.g. Iran and North Korea). Hard to use reason with fundamentalist regimes...
From an economic standpoint a useful byproduct of a working national missile defense system would be the alleviation of our need to pay extortion to new and old nuclear powers. Specifically, the billions of dollars we send to Russia each year, and nuclear reactors & food to North Korea... Extorting money from the U.S. has become quite a cottage industry these days, all it takes is a breeder reactor and cheap North Korean Nodong missile parts.
"Give someone a Hendrix tape and a joint and stick him in the corner and he's happy" - Gov. Ventura
The greatest nuclear threat isn't from other countries launching ICBMs, but something from within our borders. Between domestic and foreign terrorists, some of them : 1. Have nuclear material (stolen from somewhere, like Russia) 2. Have means to produce a bomb. 3. Don't have a way to make a bomb, so they will just disperse the material over a city, making it uninhabitable.
This is exactly why this technology should not be implemented by any nation!! It just ups the ante and drives countries to develop even more lethal, disgusting, deadly weaponry. Why use puny nuclear weapons when a biological weapon will do 10x the damage? Of course, this is great news for the defense industry, who, ironically, is the biggest backer of this project.
We need to return democracy to the US and get rid of the corrupt fat cats!
the article says that it is only good for intercepting one incoming rocket, and that is only used normally by rogue governments or terrorists. Yeah, the terrorists often do more damage than forgeign governments, but *I* am more scared of say China launching multiple rockets at us and us not being able to block em.
not a counter-argument.
After all, we might get hit by a huge tidal wave generated by godzilla playing in the ocean.
While it is true that it may be easier to smuggle chemical weapons into the US than to launch a missile, that is no excuse for having no defense against a missile attack.
Can your IM do this?
But this particular article really caught my eye. Why? Because anything with the name Exoatmospheric Kill Vechicle must kick ass!
Taking out an ICBM under controlled circumstances, doesn't mean that we're unconditionally safe by any means.
In order to get around such a system more sophisticated decoys could be used.
Can an anti-missile missile be defeated by an anti-anti-missile missle? This doesn't impress me. What will impress me is rail gun technology. Ground mounted or in space rail guns are the ticket.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
I remember hearing about plans of such intercept missiles in the 80's. So they finally did it.
However the problems are still the same. The launched rocket needs only a few minutes to its target (from Russia that would be 8 minutes I think), so the launch has to be detected early enough. The anti-missile also takes its time to reach the incoming rocket. And for each incoming nuke you need an anti-missile.
The real problems are multi warhead missiles which launch into space and then release up to 10 nukes with individual targets. You would have to hit the missile before it releases its nukes otherwise you would have to destroy ten targets, and as said above it may be hard to reach the missile before it separates its nukes.
So this is not very feasible against big nuclear weapon powers like Russia, it only might prove effective against attacks from the smaller nations which only have few, single warhead missiles.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe there are treaties that explicitly prohibit the use of outer space and the moon for any military operations. Also, it is interesting that the US views Russia as a potential source of nuclear attack, and Russia does not want the US developing missile defense systems because of the treaty.
It makes me want to cry when I read about a government spending such an astronomical amount of money on what is only a one-time tryout of a military toy of dubious need. And if the government does go ahead and build an entire defense system based on this technology, how many orders of magnitude will be the total cost?
All this in a country where hundreds of thousands of homeless people are living in the street and more than 20% of children are growing up in poverty. What benefit is this spending to them? The extremely low probability that some unknown enemy nation may launch a suicidal (and it would be since they clearly realize that the US would of course likely retaliate in kind) nuclear attack means little when you may not even survive the coming winter due to lack of food and shelter.
The cost / benefit ratio of this project is all out of whack. The people of the US do not need this technology to be protected from foreign missles.
The real benefit of such a system is not purely defensive, but stategic, since it would allow the US to launch a first strike nuclear attack against another nuclear country and not have to worry about retaliation from the target country. As a nation, is this the kind of benefit that Americans find it worthwile to spend their tax dollars on? And ultimately, what value is this kind of international power when the country may ultimately succumb to its own internal deterioration?
Ideology is for ideots.
Just a simple question, why? The United Nations is a powerless political body. They can pass 'resolutions' and anything else they want. But they can't enforce anything. The members of the UN enforce these 'resolutions' and 'policies'. The US being the major member of the UN (military wise) dose the brunt of the enforcing.
Not to mention, giving this to the UN would give it to China, Russia, and several other countries that you really don't want to have the technology!
Why would you want to do that?!
- AMW
--
True.
But it is a case of the blind leading the blind. Who is it that is knowledgeable of threat and proposing these anti-missile systems? The military. Not exactly a source of intelligence and innovation. They always use the most direct/obvious approach (sledgehammer to crack a nut?). I would propose that our tax-payers dollars are better and more productively spent on alternative means for stopping missiles, such as diplomacy.
Why would anybody want to launch a nuclear attack against the US, who could in turn obliterate them? Spending money on investigating and solving this issue would seem wiser to me.
So it would have been ok if the nuclear weapons had only been used against men? You are a sexist moron.
The Germans toasted women and children in death factories. The US turned entire Japanese cities into death camps. Two with atomic bombs and others with basically HUGE Molotov coctails.
I can just imagine the song "I'm Afraid of Americans" recharting all over the world in the next few days.
------
If a tree falls on an anonymous coward yelling 'first post' in the forest, does anybody hear?
Hmmph! A new technology to sell to China. Clinton you go girl!
Who? Somebody who didn't care. Given that suicide bombers exist, obviously there are those that don't. The big question is how they get ahold of an ICBM.
Either a rail car or a missile boat would do; both are mobile, and the rail cars *might* be vulnerable to ambush.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
The scary part is that nuke tech isn't in the hands of a few high up gov't researchers in the stable nations. Anyone can build a nuke. The hardest part is just acquiring the nuclear material. Eventually, someone will put one together and detonate it in some random city. Against this, there can be no defense.
All of the Anti-Missile projects I have seen actually are designed to hit the target extremely high in the atmosphere, over the ocean, or over the launching country. Part of the theory is that a country won't launch a nuke if we can shoot it down over their country and drop their own radiation back at them.
I thought it was Dr. Evil's "Laser" on a moon base I like to call a "Death Star."
Kevin Fox
I'm sure that all those sailors at Pearl Harbor deserved to die at the hands of the Imperial Japanese Navy. Or what about all the Chinese at Nanking?
The atomic bombing of Japan saved many lives on both sides. Do you know how many cities the Allies were ready to bomb with Chemical weapons before the Novemeber Invasion of Japan? IIRC estimated Allied causualties in the invasion of the Home Islands were around 1,000,000 and say five times that to the Japanese people.
Its completely naive to think this anti-missile system buys you any defense. An incredible waste of billions. THe US will reap what it sows.
This is probably off-topic, but:
secure in the knowledge that we are invulnerable?
We may think that we're invulnerable, but we're not. We're no more invulnerable than the next country. We have no real way of knowing what another country is doing, so long as they can keep a secret. I'm willing to think, therefore, that there are a lot of countries out there not half as loud-mouth and braggy as the United States, and thus I would think we have more to worry about than the rest of the free world.
However, in the lesser grand schema of U.S. political theories, I think this is a good thing, and I'm glad they can feel secure in their successful test. I, OTOH, think that this test doesn't say much. As I've heard it mentioned, and as I thought myself, they planned this thing, unarmed the missile, and knew where everything was supposed to go. Does real war play out like this? I'd like to think not. Nice job guys, but you've got work yet.
Insert mind here.
The U.S. military has, of late, shown consistent kill - to - casualty ratios of more than 1000:1. If allowed to go all-out, that ratio would probably increase.
Yes, China has numbers, and nukes. But they're quite overmatched against the U.S. -- which is one reason they're so interested in exporting military technology: the U.S. can be kept busy better this way than China could manage alone.
Really, though, it's a much better idea to not get into a military situation with them in the first place. We could do without another Cold War. And if it came down to it, they COULD inflict considerable damage to us, even though we'd "win".
Kythe
(Remove "x"'s from
Kythe
1. What good does an anti-missile system do if the most likely way for a terrorist to deliver a bomb is a boat? Missiles are expensive and unreliable, and hard to test without alerting the satelites. Boats are cheap, extremely reliable, and are let into harbors with a minimum of inspection.
2. A working anti-missile defense system is an offensive weapon. I.e. that which is used as a way to defeat an enemy. Without giving out this technology to everyone, whoever has it is instantly a target for foreign governments because they know that they will lose a full-scale nucelar war. It's actually worse than that. Since we're developing this technology out in the open, the foreign governments know that they only have a few years until we cannot be beaten (if the system works). They therefore can assume that we intend to use the system as part of a first strike and preemptively retaliate.
So, let's assume that the USA is not suicidal. The only thing we can do at this stage is declare that we are going to protect the entire world from anyone shooting balisitc missiles at anyone else. Any other course of action will result in some foreign paranoid government nuking us first while they still have a chance to hit us.
A while back someone was talking about developing a stealth cruise missile. The idea was hopefully scrapped. The last thing we need in a paranoid world is for any random explosion to be blamed on the USA because of our unique ability to blow things up without being able to trace who did it. Anytime anything blew up, we'd get blamed.
This anti-missile system is exactly the same thing, a way for the whole world to justifiably get mad at the USA. I wish our president wasn't chasing skirts and would pull his head out of his arse. Maybe he would see the suicidal futility of such a project.
Back in the 50's general LeMay (sp?) was advocating a nuclear first strike against the USSR (haven't typed that in a while..) because of the results of the single game prisoner's dilemma research. Basically, if you expect to play only once, you should cheat. We expect to keep playing the politics game for a long time, over and over. We therefore have to mutually cooperate, that is the best possible solution. Building an anti-missile system is cheating. Saying that you are going to build such a system should prompt the other nations to cheat first.
My $0.02.
The need for this is so obvious, don't understand all the negativity. All you oldsters grew up loving the bomb, wanting to die.
Well some of us want to live, want that choice to be ours not some foreign interest......
hmm, so much for MAD
i think i'll go sell iodine tablets
6 billion potential customers and increasing
pentagon pays for PR, how hard can it be?
I saw it too. I live about 50miles east of LA, near San Bernardino. I just got out of the movie theatre (saw American Beauty - excellent), and saw the people near us pointing in the sky. I actually saw the rocket going up. I'd never seen an actual launch before, but have seen the contrails left over.
t .ap/
o ntrail_schematic.html o ntrail_23_june_1997.html o ntrail_picture.html
The big wispy luminescent cloud at the top was probably where the missile reached true space, about 50 miles up. The exhaust gases will behave differently there versus lower down in the atmosphere, so much so that they were actually diffracting the sunlight, giving it that rainbow effect. To see what it looked like, check out this article on CNN:
http://www.cnn.com/US/9910/02/missile.defense.tes
I have to say the contrail was one of the most amazing things I've ever scene in the sky, seconded only by good aurora borealis shows. (I'm from Canada, so have seen quite a few). Got me to thinking about how ironic it would be if there ever were a full-scale ICBM launch. Quite a specatacular sight to see tens or hundreds of these contrails going up. At least it would be until your eyes were burned out by the flash of the first retaliatory burst...
Anyways, if you want to see an excellent analysis of the contrail, look here:
http://www.znet.com/~schester/fallbrook/views/c
and:
http://www.znet.com/~schester/fallbrook/views/c
and:
http://www.znet.com/~schester/fallbrook/views/c
talljuan
I'm glad the cold war is still alive and well. As long as Americans are afraid of foreign enemies (which we are usually responsible for provoking), it will be easy for the government to exploit the citizens. A la 1984. THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED.
Not true. Until this past May, it was believed by professional rocket scientists that a rocket has too much acceleration to re-acquire GPS satellites while in flight. At least that's what they were saying in public.
It was amateur rocket experimenters (from JP Aerospace of Sacramento, California) who proved that GPS in-flight re-acquisition could be done, during a high-altitude test launch at the Black Rock Desert in northern Nevada on May 23, 1999. They were attempting to get the first amateur rocket to an altitude considered space, 50 miles or 264,000 feet. Though that wasn't achieved, they did make these accomplishments:
I was there to help with the launch and recovery operation. I'm not officially a member of the JPA organization but was there representing another amateur rocketry organization. We usually encourage each other to push the envelope.
See also CNN's coverage of the JPA launch, though they didn't mention the GPS accomplishment because it's probably too obscure a fact for their audience.
I was driving up to the local coffee shop when I saw it. I have to say, it was an oddly beautiful site as the trail blossomed and then faded, and as the sun light refracted through the smoke to create a range of colors.
Of course, I had no idea what it was -- we thought it was just another rocket blowing up due probably to some metric to english conversion error...
Not worth $100 million.
-- Senior Software Engineer, Attorney appearance services, locallawyerapp.com.
Ok, so they can't launch missiles. So what? That option isn't garruanteed anyway: a state like N. Korea can't produce reliable enough missiles.
Not true. It is know they already have missles capable of reaching Alaska, and of course, when your a totalitarian state who could care less about feeding the people, getting the cash to improve them is easy.
-Tom O'Rear -- tomed@radiks.net
GPS (even the military Y-Code) doesn't quite have the resolution needed to pinpoint your location much below a meter. And if you're moving at 16,000mph - i doubt you'll get that precision.
My guess is that it may use GPS (or something like it) to get a rough acquisition - then use some sort of active pinging to determine the rocket's course corrections.
This is REALLY impresive folks.
the US still has suitcase sized nukes planted in strategic locations all over Russia. Even with anti-missile tech, we could put them in a world of hurt.
I have been wondering why the ABM approach these days is to ram the incoming target with an interceptor, destroying that target by the high kinetic energy of a multiple km/sec collision.
It would seem that this would make aiming harder than the older method used by the Patriot and other anti-aircraft/anti-missile systems. Those systems use an explosive, detonated at closest approach, to throw a spray of high velocity projectiles at the incoming target. This "shotgun" approach would seem to me to have a higher kill probability. In the past, we had thousands of nuclear armed interceptors, so the same issue applies to that technology. For example, fleet defense doctrine against massed aircraft attack was to use nuclear missiles to destroy the aircraft... and almost every US combatant, in the past, carried these missiles!
So, does anyone know why they now use kinetic kill with a single maneuverable projectile?
The only good weather is bad weather.
I wondered what it was... never seen anything like
:> Neato-Keen :P
that in person before...
I was standing at the Overton Beach Marina (Lake Mead
about 80 miles from Las Vegas, NV) and saw a
VERY bright missle take off.... Pretty dang cool.
I'd read the origional article.. but never expected to
see the actual missle launch.
Friends don't let friends buy Compaq's. (Dell/Gateway... same same) You want a good computer? Build it yourself.
I was attending a volleyball game and as we were going in we saw it! i didn't know what it was till i saw it on the news. it was so bright, it lit up the night sky. very cool!
JediLuke
JediLuke
-Do or Do Not, There is no Try
If we can afford to lay that out for a test firing, I guess it puts that NASA Mars orbiter loss into perspective.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
This is all so great, ICBM kills and stuff, but
direct bombarrdment of economic infrastructure
in a global war is history. It won't be used,
because there are more 'elegant' ways.
As I perceive, ABM defence systems will
be installed so as to defend particular
land areas, namely cities and like.
Well, that won't help you a bit if a country with
substantial nuclear arsenal decides
to wipe the 'advanced' countries off the Earth's face.
All they will need is to drop enough nuclear warheads on _any_ coastal area n the world.
This will cause massive release of (radioactive and not) dust and water vapour into the atmosphere, which
in its turn will alter global climate enough to render
intensive agriculture of the mentioned 'advanced'
countries unable to supply their population.
Voila. They die of starvation.
One of the benefit of such method is that
even relatively weak nuclear bombing of major cities will result in 'fire tornadoes', virtually
unstoppable fires that will extinguish the city totally,
and what is more dangerous, release overwhelming amounts of smoke and dust, which will cause
unpredictable changes in the environment.
(note: release of dust/smoke/vapour in case of bombing non-urbanized coastal areas
may be calculated, and , therefore, its result
can be predicted and limited.)
Ok, so if they shoot a slug at a reentry vehicle containing a warhead and atomize it in space, has there been any discussion about using this device to ward off a stray comet, meteor, or asteroid that could cause significant damage to the Earth?
:)
It seems that this system may serve a dual purpose, at least over North America.
That is if the spacebound oil drillers don't blow up the asteroid first.
1) When a missile is launched, the errors in the initialization of the inertial navigation system are quantifiable in a statistical sense.
2) The onboard computer can propagate the error covariance of the navigation states to the point in space where the star fixes are taken.
3) At this point, an error between the expected line of sight to a star (each measurement is composed of two angles perpendicular to the centerline of the sensor taking the measurement) has strong statistical correlation to the attitude errors.
4) The attitude errors at that time can be VERY strongly correlated to position error. The azimuth error (error in the estimate of which way north is) is commonly one of the larger contributions to position error.
5) In this way, measurement of the attitude errors of a missile can effectively be converted into correction of the navigation estimate of position.
6) As an aside, there is a reason you care which way north is. The reason is this: missiles normally use measureable characteristics of the earth to initialize their navigation. Measured gravity tells it which way down is. Earth rotation tells it which way north is. In a relative sense, accelerometers (in a given price range) are more accurate in locating the direction of down than gyroscopes are at locating north (the axis of earth rotation). It's irrelevant what frame of reference you choose to navigate in; you are still stuck with your initialization errors about north and down. Given two non parallel directions, you can build a 3-axis coordinate system using vector cross products and orthonormalization techniques.
Hope this helps. I have been working on these sorts of systems for about 16 years now, so I have a good idea how things are done.
Years ago, Thomas Watson at IBM wrote an article about missle defense for Scientific American. His basic point was that as long as it is more expensive to shoot down a missile than it is to make and launch one, missile defense won't be practical. The aggressor need only keep building and launching more missiles until the defense system is overwhelmed. Veterans of "Missile Command" will find this old news.
This system--such as it is--reminds me of when the U.S. decided to MIRV the warheads on it's ICBMs back in the early '70's. In a very few years the Soviets responded by MIRVing their ICBMs, negating whatever transitory advantage the U.S. enjoyed during the intervening years. Mutually Assured Destruction continued, although at a much more dangerous level.
I find the timing of the test, along with the CIA's report about their inability to 100% guarantee Russian compliance with the provisions of the Nuclear Test Ban treaty curious. If I were a cynical person, I'd say it was part of a campaign by the National Security types to torpedo the treaty in congress.
The appeal of SDI is straightforward: develop the technology to allow us to return to the kind of security we enjoyed back when we were the only country with the bomb. We want to be so well protected we don't have to bother with treaties and diplomacy. Unfortunately, those days are gone forever.
These technologies are whizzy and cool, but fundementally change nothing. It only takes one nuke to get through our "shield" to inflict unacceptable damage to our country.
Unfortunately, yes you're wrong. US allies on the Pacific Rim would gain zero benefit from an "Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle". Well, maybe epsilon benefit.
At close range (under a hundred miles) ballistic missiles are unnessary. China or North Korea could easily use more standard missiles (including ship/aircraft based) or even large artillery shells. Star Wars defenses won't help against that.
If any of you guys are interested, this is a pretty cool picture I scanned in from the Santa Maria Times of the minuteman rocket that was the target.
http://www.stuffguys.com/~pyr/rocket.jpg
If you are old enough to remember the Desert Shield, Patriot missiles should ring the bell.
...
If not, let me remind you. There was much ado
about those missiles, and how they destroy the
Iraque's Scuds. After the war, however, we've
finally were able to read the true story: there
was not a single instance where Patrior missile
actually homed on Scud and killed it. It was mostly a propaganda, pure and simple.
There were several instances of fake or 'well controlled' tests with other anti-missile missiles.
I am for strong defense, and that's why I'm concerned with sometime too cozy relationships between the military and companies like Ratheon et al. This is what is called a 'military-industrial complex'. Lots of moneys are getting wasted, thanks to this complex. I hope this won't undermined our defense capabilities too much. Oh well
Grunt. Oink, oink.
It went up about 10 minutes after sunset, so the flare of the engine was easily visible as it cleared the hills, and as it climbed, the smoke trail went from a dark purple to orange, to yellow to white. As the rocket gained altitude, there were some very beautiful shimmering effects against the deep blue sky, and when it was way up there, the ice crystals in the upper atmosphere made a scintillating ring, with radiating white lines. Again, I've got several size 11 footprints in my ass for forgetting to bring the camcorder.
Ironic that this goes down as one of the most incredibly beautiful sights I've ever seen in my life - and not only was it not natural, it was probably one of the most evil devices ever constructed by mankind.
I hope that I never someday see dozens of these things climbing from the low hills into the sky, headed towards the Evil Despot (TM) of the day. I may have to gouge my eyes out after witnessing that beauty.
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
crazy, i saw a rocket get shot down above Santa Barbara on saturday evening. I think this one came from Vandenberg AFB. the rocket was barely a spec in the sky when it dissapeared. afterwards there was a long streak of white clouds, nothing too cool. -B
By reading his post, you read slashdot. You are a complete moron. If anyone needs a clue, it is you.