A more cost effective way to defend your children against your self destructive form of genocide is to teach them to talk to other children that have M.A.D. parents. $400,000,000.oo can buy every person in Russia a diabolically designed C.I.A. Internet ready cellphone!

Beast Witches
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You're a Ho Ho Ho!

Posted by: Don Foster at June 21, 2009 05:35 AM

Where does this idea that Iran and NK can't/won't be deterred by MAD come from?

If they were that crazy, they'd already have acted. If they were that crazy, Kimmie would be shelling Seoul and Iran would be openly marching its army into Iraq and taking potshots at our ships.

Because if they were that crazy--that is, unconcerned with their own death--then those sort of options would look real attractive to them. I note they haven't done anything of the sort, however.

Posted by: The other other other Max at May 1, 2007 03:09 AM

Good Morning Folks,

One point seems to be over looked here, the Missile Defense Interceptors being developed here are by design not ment to be used agains an orbital weapons system, ie. Russia and China.

As for the other bad guy North Korea who is trying to deveolpe a IRBM alonf the the techology of the 50's U.S. Jupiter, liquid fueled system, well ther fireworks works display of the last 4th. of July show how far they have to go. Iran, well they are buy there ballistic missile technology from North Korea, nuff said.

The fact is that even if this system worked and it doesn't there is no enemy to defend against unless of course Mexico or Canada become threats.

The Russians, well it very unlikely that the Russians have a working ICBM system, the SSN-27 and the topol M, same system were spectular failures in 05 when Putin wanted to do a GW military dress up and show the world what he had, which was five failures, 2SSN-27's and 3 Topol-M's in a row. As for the great Soviet/Russian nuclear weapons arsnal well it been managed and protedted by U.S. paid contractors for about ten years now and any old Soviet nuclear scientists have been fully employed in the U.S. for years.

With two wars going on the spending of precious resourses on this Missile Defense Program is a waste of funds beyond belief who oly justification is corporate welfare for Wall Street who is not contente with just low double digit profits in the Defense Indsutry and of "Mo Pork" for Alaska.

ALLONS,
Byron Skinner

Posted by: Byron Skinner at April 30, 2007 01:12 PM

Russia can overload any missile defense we can construct. Our best defense against Russia is in our B2s, nuclear subs, and our own nuclear silos. 50 years of Cold War history show that Russia doesn't want to get destroyed either.

China? It's debatable whether China can even hit us currently. An ABM shield has a much better chance of defending against China than it does Russia. China also, however, seems unlikely to start a nuclear war.

So who are we planning on using it against? North Korea and Iran. Our best defense against NK is that they seem to have hired that Corky kid from Life Goes On to design their missiles (it's good to see that he's still working -- Hollywood can be a brutal place for child stars), but Iran's missiles, though short-ranged, are relatively accurate. Against these two threats, an ABM shield makes sense, as they don't have the economy to "flood" the system. We can afford to build more interceptors than they can missiles. Neither nation, however, seems likely to be deterred by the MAD principle.

The ship container thing? That's another matter.

Posted by: Brian at April 30, 2007 10:43 AM

Navy intercept would be the best means of countering "rogue states". Park outside of the "maritime special interests zone" and nail the missiles as they leave their siloes.

Intercept siloes are specially chosen for optimal approach and attack vectors, and if the enemy of the month changes those intercept siloes are no longer optimal. While they have the advantage of being in position 24/7, it may not be the best position...that and intercept silos close to home are attacking after a MIRV has split into multiple decoys and whatnot (if the enemy has MIRVs). If no MIRV, it's also "too close to home" as opposed to a cruiser near the enemy nailing the target, and if it fails, a followup shot or a twenty minute warning before it hits.

A question is if intercept is easier during launch phase, when evasive maneuvers will be "wasting fuel", especially when the nuke is trying to break escape velocity, it won't be as fast as when it starts coming down in terminal attack.

Posted by: Charles at April 29, 2007 05:29 PM

"Yes, I know that ABM technology is expensive. What would a successful nuclear attack somewhere in the U.S. cost us? I've got a feeling that ABM technology is a pittance in comparison."

We *already have* a fully functioning ABM shield. It's made up of strategic bombers, ICBM silos, and boomers.

Posted by: The other other other Max at April 29, 2007 04:50 AM

TABM's might become relevant air attack means with conventional warheads for nations that expect enemy air superiority.
Despite experiences like the Arrow interceptor missile which costs ten times as much as its adversary Scud but still requires two shots for a near-certain kill, it might actually be useful to develop ABM technologies against TBM's.

IRBM's and ICBM's are a completely different affair. They would never have conventional warheads due to cost/effect considerations and their use is therefore much less likely. That's because nuking someone means today getting nuked to hell. With certainty.
ABM technologies for longer range missiles are also much more complex because of the velocities involved and while TABM; might be included in standard area air defense assets, strategic ABM is much more elaborate.

Are strategic ABM worth the effort?
Let's assume the optimum case; 100% reliability and the adversary does even expect 100% reliability.

What would happpen? If he really, really wants to nuke you, he sends his nuke by containr, using air or sea freight.
You cannot check all containers that are about to enter your country before they do (in fact, almost none are checked at all, even after getting unloaded in harbours) and CIA/NSA and such have their limits.

YOU CANNOT ESTABLISH A RELIABLE SECURITY AGAINST NUKES. The best security againt nukes is the threat of massive retaliation and decapitation of the enemy's leadership.

It's astonishing how people - even after getting told about the container issue - keep entangled in the illusion of SDI.
After all, the whole ABM thing is no more than PsyOps.

Posted by: Sven Ortmann at April 28, 2007 11:45 PM

The point of ABM is not to down a full level attck from Russia or even China. What ABM does is raise the retaliatory threshhold. We no longer have to nuke half of Asia if only one or two missiles are launched are launched from North Korea.

Yes, I know that ABM technology is expensive. What would a successful nuclear attack somewhere in the U.S. cost us? I've got a feeling that ABM technology is a pittance in comparison.

Posted by: Jerry in Detroit at April 28, 2007 01:24 PM

The US still spent hundreds of billions on a project that has only very limited strategic value.
China and Russia can make it worthless by just building more ICBMs and decoys (vastly cheaper than the interceptors)

Emas, meet bleh. bleh, meet Emas. Gee, you guys really look alike! You're sure you've never met?

Seriously, though, where comes this idea that ICBM's - especially fancy ones with multiple warheads, decoys, etc. - are cheaper than interceptors? ICBM's, such as China's DF-41, are a lot more expensive than interceptors like the Standard Missile series (the SM-3 is a bit bigger than the SM-2). The land-based THAAD interceptor, which would be the item more likely to engage a DF-41, is a bit bigger and more expensive, to be sure, but it's no ICBM-sized item either.

But the real comparison is not in terms of dollar "cost" - Chinese and Russian wage levels being what they are - but how much of China's or Russia's weapons engineering manpower, production capacity and strategic materials are required to produce such units. In these terms, modern ICBM's are anything but "cheap." The Russians couldn't sustain an economic "pissing contest" of this kind with the U.S. even back when Russia was the Soviet Union. With a shrinking population less than half its Soviet-era size and a comparatively trivial GNP, even with recent oil revenue, that isn't going to change soon. Russia can engineer fancy missiles, but they can't mass-produce and deploy them. Much of their Soviet legacy missile force is in questionable condition or known to be inoperable or decommissioned.

China is in better shape, but only relatively. They have a lot of military stuff on their shopping lists and there is no reason to suppose ICBM's have a particularly high priority compared to say, aircraft, shorter-range missiles, submarines and amphibious warfare gear. There are certainly Chinese military types who want to go up against the U.S. - someday. There are a great many more who want to grab back Taiwan and think they can keep us out of things while they're doing it. ICBM's are not a major factor in these calculations.

If this test is the same as past tests the target had a homming device to guide in the inceptor, I'm Scuds launched in anger would have this feature turned off.

Byron, there seem to be a lot of poorly informed people out there - many of them technologically illiterate journalists - who have promulgated and repeated this bit of nitwittery. The left-wing anti-U.S. military activist hack "community" have been happy to pile on for ideological reasons even when they almost certainly know better.

No missile defense tests have ever been run with "homing devices" in the targets. A "homing device" is something the interceptor could see directly to guide it to the target. What the THAAAD tests - not the SM-3 tests discussed here - have used are target vehicles with GPS transponders that report continuous position data as a stand-in for the honkin-big X-band radar that finds targets for the interceptors actually based in alert silos in Alaska. There is no comparably powerful radar at the Pacific Test Range so the target transponders are used simply to compensate for the lack of a real radar on the test range powerful enough to provide initial position data at realistic ranges from intercept. All the radar does, in any event, is provide rough guidance to get the interceptor into the right general area. The actual homing is done using an entirely self-contained infrared seeker in the warhead that finds the target and kills it on its own. There is nothing on the warhead that can directly "hear" the GPS transponder or use it for guidance. Given the error envelope of GPS data from a fast-moving source, the seekers in the warhead are a lot more accurate than any "cheat" coordinates that might be gotten from the transponder anyway.

Finally, to reiterate a key point, the SM-3 missile is designed to work in conjunction with the Aegis radar as installed on Ticonderoga-class cruisers and Arleigh Burke-class destroyers. These radars are what would be used for initial guidance in a real engagement and so require no compensatory lash-up like the GPS target transponders used for THAAD tests for reasons explained above. As with THAAD, though, the radar guidance for the SM-3 is only useful for getting into rough intercept position. Just like THAAD, the SM-3 uses a self-contained infra-red seeker in the warhead to actually home on and kill the target. Radar simply isn't accurate enough to do this job if it is located elswhere than on the warhead. It can't be located on the warhead because it is impossible to build a radar set with sufficient power and range that is light enough to do the job. Thus, all exo-atmospheric missile interceptors use infra-red seekers.

There have been past intercept failures in both the THAAD and SM-3 programs, but all the recent tests of both have been successful.

Whether deployment of effective missile defense is advisable is a strategic and political question. Whether is is possible, however, is a physics and engineering question and the answer is pretty clearly 'Yes.'

Posted by: Dick Eagleson at April 27, 2007 09:00 PM

Like Barnett said, no one's going to whack a flattop, because to do so would be national suicide.

Even more, no one's going to whack a flattop with a frickin' nuke.

No one's going to nuke America proper with a missile--that would most definitely be national suicide.

If we ever get nuked, it'll be delivered by land. Unless one wants to pretend MAD doesn't apply--especially when the destruction wouldn't be mutual.

Sure, Iran or NorK might (will?) get the ability to fire a few nukes at our mainland. We already have the ability to turn the entirety of those countries into a glass parking lot.

Posted by: The other other other Max at April 27, 2007 04:38 PM

The US still spent hundreds of billions on a project that has only very limited strategic value.
China and Russia can make it worthless by just building more ICBMs and decoys (vastly cheaper than the interceptors),

I absolutely agree with this- BUT- its really not meant for Russia or even China. Its meant for the Korea's, Iran's etc. By the time we get the bugs out they probably will have medium ranged missiles capable of hitting US west coast or Europe, Middle East, etc. These tinpot dictatorships could never threaten a US carrier group- but in 5-10 years time they could drop a nuke on a flattop if we didn't have this capability. That's just one example. A Desert Storm buildup would also be a lot harder if our enemy nuked the main port.

Sure - we can't be complacent or spend half our budget on them- but goes without saying and has happened with other weapon systems (nukes over conventional forces, missile firing intercepters over fighters)

Posted by: Emas at April 27, 2007 03:54 PM

Good Morning Folks,

I'm not sure what this test proves. The Ages can track a SRMB ie Scud, and the Standard 3 Missile can shoot it down. If this test is the same as past tests the target had a homming device to guide in the inceptor, I'm Scuds launched in anger would have this feature turned off.

All aside what does this have to do with protecting the U.S. from the TopolM or the SSN-27 SLBM, a TopolM in wraps if you like, ICBM that Russia might get to working sometime in the future.

ALLONS,
Byron Skinner

Posted by: Byron Skinner at April 27, 2007 01:35 PM

I don't question their motives, I question whether their motives are based on a realistic threat assessment.

Missile defense reminds me of the Maginot line. Not its effect on French attitudes and morale, but its effect on France's budget.
Erecting a fortified line along a part of your border to a dangerous neighbor seems like a good idea. It frees up troops for other parts of the front and is generally cost effective (in fact, Germany's fortifications on their side of the Rhine did just that).
But when you completely overengineer those defenses and they suck up more and more of your nations resources, they become less and less useful (first rule of warfare: If your enemy has an impregnable fortress, make sure he stays there).

So let's say those interceptors actually work, and the lasers, and the bomb carrying pigeons.
The US still spent hundreds of billions on a project that has only very limited strategic value.
China and Russia can make it worthless by just building more ICBMs and decoys (vastly cheaper than the interceptors), and the idea of thousands of attempted intercepts where each failure will cost millions of lives should discourage even the most ruthless warmonger. And both countries have shown in the past that they're unlikely to start WWIII, too.
And terrorists and terrorist States would just smuggle the bomb into the country. Thousands of miles of hardly patrolled coastline and borders as well as millions of unchecked containers make that easy. All the while the much more scarce funding of securing the US against those threats is used to shore up the defenses of Pork City, TX and American Samoa.

Posted by: bleh at April 27, 2007 01:00 PM