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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.
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
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.
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I can't believe that this is the only use for this technology
Depends on what you mean by "this technology".
This whole project basically takes current atmospheric anit-aircraft missile technology and adapts it to exoatmospheric anti-missile use. So the basic technology already is being used for offensive purposes, and the new tech being added has no anti-aircraft use. Compare the Patriot -- an anti-aircraft missile hastily adapted to try to kill ballistic missiles.
The system itself might theoretically be used against aircraft, except that it would be more effective and efficient to use explosive warhead SAMs designed to kill airplanes instead of kinetic-kill devices engineered to kill warheads.
In short, what this is doing is similar to engineering a rifle variant to shoot tranquilizer darts. While you can still use a tranquilizer gun to kill people, you'd be better off using one of the unconverted rifles (SAMs) you already have.
BTW -- if we still want MAD, we *want* the system to be only somewhat effective and fairly easy to saturate. That way we can be immune to "rouge" strikes of a handful of missiles, but we can't risk massive strikes.
It doesn't really matter if it works under wartime conditions. Nukes are primarily political (or if you prefer, terror) weapons, not military weapons. The whole point of such a system is to reduce the utility of a marginal nuclear ICBM capability as a negotiation tactic. North Korea has periodically extorted a fair amount of aid from the US by threatening to develop various aspects of their nuclear capability. Remember the huge underground "nuclear" facility they were building? The US agreed to provide aid in order to get a peek, but found only empty tunnels. Recently they test launched an ICBM over Japan, no doubt with the intent of further extortion. With the exoatmospheric kill vehicle, the US has decided it would rather provide aid to its own weapon designers than North Korea.
If North Korea really wanted to use a nuke, they wouldn't bother with expensive missles. They'd slap four wheels on it and a label which translates to "Maximum Leader Revolutionary Utility Vehicle" or some such and hide in the next ship full of Hyundais destined for the Bay Area.
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
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?
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.
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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.
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
Well it was definately part of the plot of one of Spider Robinson's novels. It's true - missiles are a showy and relatively crappy delivery system. With all the crap that gets smuggled into this country, how hard could it be to sneak in ~50 kilos of unassuming metal? AFAIK, customs doesn't have dogs with geiger counters.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.