US Tests New Missile Defense 278
pumpkinpuss writes "The US military yesterday shot down a missile in a test simulating a long-range ballistic missile attack by a potential adversary such as North Korea or Iran. The target missile was launched from Kodiak Island, Alaska, at 3:04 PM Eastern time, tracked simultaneously by several ground and ship-based radars, and intercepted by a 'kill vehicle' 3,000 kilometers away over the Pacific 25 minutes later, according to the Missile Defense Agency. Lt. Gen. Patrick O'Reilly said, 'The kill vehicle was sent to a very accurate spot in space giving us great confidence.'"
Reader gilgsn points out the testing of a different "multiple kill vehicle" by Lockheed Martin, which was able to hover over the ground and track a target. Video of the test (WMV) is also available.
Iran? Uh huh ... yeah (Score:2, Insightful)
Maybe using it to stop a missile from reaching Israel.......
They call this a success? (Score:4, Insightful)
By all accounts, these tests are completely rigged, and the system can be fooled by the simplest of tactics. The only way to really test it, is to set up a game, where you allow a completely independent team to try to fool the system and another team to try to shoot it down. It is really dangerous to kick off another cold war in order to deploy a system which is a complete fraud. This is yet another way to funnel money to defense contractors...
From TFA: (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess it still qualifies as a valid test against a virtual enemy using archaic or not well maintained ICBMs.
It's sad (Score:2, Insightful)
I submit that it is sad because in my opinion, the next threat to US security will not come from countries like N. Korea. It will come from home grown terror.
After all, one can simply walk into the US from Mexico and Canada. If the terrorist is well facilitated, they we could be in big trouble.
I wonder whether we as a nation, are borrowing from China to finance this already absolete technology...if the Russians are to be believed.
Better (Score:5, Insightful)
Obama can do Jedi mind tricks?
Better. Even if you are the biggest and baddest, you still treat others with respect. It works miracles.
Re:Better (Score:5, Insightful)
Your first comment was modded funny, so apparently others thought they saw sarcasm. OTOH this comment makes the first one kind of scary.
Re:They call this a success? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know why you're assuming that the goal of the test was to show the system worked perfectly and could not be fooled. Doesn't it make sense to test the components -- you know, like a multi-sensor, multi-location tracking system, and the launch and guidance system of a kill vehicle -- even if the entire system is not yet functional?
I'm not saying this program is necessarily a good idea, but it seems unreasonable to assume that tests are only done on a final product, or that a failure to meet acceptance criteria means the test was a waste of money -- if it passed every test criteria on the first try wouldn't it just be a waste of money to test in the first place?
Re:I am a pacifist but i love military tech. (Score:3, Insightful)
"I am a pacifist but i love military tech. Is that sick?"
No. Look at entertainment, if you judged people by the entertainment they watched the prisons would be full. We like the idea of destroying stuff and violence, but does liking violent movies like SAW 3 - make everyone who watches it sick?
The truth is humans (generally) are infinitely curious they want to explore every nook and cranny of existence, I would imagine most people would try / watch or do anything once within that individuals limits, if no one could find out about it, not because humans are 'bad' or 'evil', but because they want to know what the experience is like.
http://www.amazon.com/Saw-III-Unrated-Full-Screen/dp/B000LC3IDI/ [amazon.com]
Re:Iran? Uh huh ... yeah (Score:3, Insightful)
I can understand N. Korea since they can actually reach the Aleutians... but Iran? I'd like to see some propaganda that actually is realistic and Iran coming up with a missile that can reach the US is something of a fairy tale. Maybe using it to stop a missile from reaching Israel.......
You answered your own question. Iran is a missile threat versus countries such as Israel, Turkey, and Europe, which are allies. Keep in mind that a good bit of the missile defense system will be located in Israel and Eastern Europe.
How come we haven't nuked ourselves yet? (Score:5, Insightful)
I am a pacifist but i love military tech. Is that sick?
There are those who would argue, that military tech guarantees peace.
Of course, if your game has wackos instead of rational players, all bets are off.
Even when the Cold War started to heat up, the US and the USSR were wise enough to keep their fingers off the buttons.
I am not so sure if the Next Generation Nuclear Players will have this same wisdom.
Re:Iran? Uh huh ... yeah (Score:5, Insightful)
So since we've got some tiny islands that N Korea could barely reach if it got really lucky, that N Korea could benefit from attacking only by escalating a shooting war with the US, we should... polish the trigger and load the gun?
I think this is an arms race. Right now North Korea can only hit some tiny islands, and our tests only work in well controlled simulations. The hope is, by the time Korea can hit our mainland with nukes, we have a fully functional and completely deployed version of this technology. We can't just sit on our hands and wait for Korea(or Iran, or Pakistan) to obtain the capacity, and will, to hit us before we start the decades long research and development.
If they hit them, we'd suffer minimal loss, and N Korea would finally find itself facing the most global opposition possible. It would be a boon to the US, just as Georgia's attacking Russia finally gave Russia the chance to slap down its Georgia nuisance.
What we are preparing for is the nuclear ICBM equivalent of a suicide bomber. The coldly logical, and successful, strategies of MAD do not hold when confronted with an opponent that doesn't care if they face "the most global opposition possible". Losing a large American city to a nuclear ICBM is not at all equal to Russia's "Georgia nuisance".
missile defense (Score:3, Insightful)
True! The so-called "missile defense" system is in fact aggressive rather than defensive in posture. It is the shield you need to have in one hand while you club somebody with a weapon held in the other hand. It's useless to ward off attack from a strong enemy (unless you have launched a devastating surprise attack against them already), and it's useless against an sneak attack even from a weak enemy. Frankly the idea that Iran, DPRK, Venezuela, etc, would attack the US with ICBMs is simply ludicrous.
Re:It will be cut. (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, the real issue is which probability is higher: somebody lobbing one ICBM at us and the system successfully working, vs. the system causing increased tensions with Russia which gives a freer hand to China, Iran, etc.
Re:Iran? Uh huh ... yeah (Score:2, Insightful)
I think Iran and North Korea are simply the easiest threats to scare the public with right now.
There, fixed that for you.
Maybe it is just me... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not a warmonger or anything like that, but if the system has a 1 in 10 chance of stopping a nuclear missile or other rogue missile launched at a U.S. city (say mine), i'd rather have that chance than zero chance if we don't have the system.
You say Obama will just fix all the countries hating us with his new world diplomacy, but there will always be people who don't like us (this isn't Star Trek Utopia), so the likelihood of there being at some point in the future some sort of threat similar to this to us or one of our allies, is highly likely.
They've had many successes with the system so far and already have it deployed on some ships and land-based areas. Also, who says if a real missile were launched at us we wouldn't launch multiple kill vehicles. If we have 50 interceptors sitting at one base and a missile coming in, nothing says you can't launch more than one to try to take it down and/or deal with the counter measures.
Re:Iran? Uh huh ... yeah (Score:5, Insightful)
I can understand N. Korea since they can actually reach the Aleutians... but Iran? I'd like to see some propaganda that actually is realistic and Iran coming up with a missile that can reach the US is something of a fairy tale.
I don't understand why it's automatically assumed that this defense system will be both stationary and based in the US. The ultimate goal of this project is to create a deployable theater-wide defense system. Remember the Gulf War, and all that crap with the Scud missiles? Those were nuclear-lift capable ballistic missile systems.
Re:Iran? Uh huh ... yeah (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm far more concerned about North Korea hitting Tokyo than Honolulu or LA. The sad truth is that tensions between Korea and Japan haven't died down that much since WWII.
Re:Its... (Score:1, Insightful)
I admittedly did not read the article, but how is this system supposed to track a nuke in a backpack?
It doesn't, but it makes people sit at home and feel safe so they don't see it coming. It's like taking sleeping pills before an earthquake, just relax and everything is fine.
Re:hate up ... not necessarily (Score:2, Insightful)
Belgium, New Zealand, and Sweden still exist because more powerful countries like the USA and Britain fought to keep them safe.
The Allies freed Belgium after it surrendered 4 years prior; the Allies' huge sacrifices in the Philippines kept the Australian mainlands from invasion; and NATO's military presence and political weight in Europe after the war kept many countries from being absorbed by the Soviet Union.
The US may be a big bully, but without it as a counterbalance to the other expansionist forces the world would be in a worse place.
Nobody's going to launch a missile. (Score:5, Insightful)
We already have a way to prevent anyone from launching an ICBM at the US, or a NATO ally, or Israel. A method that has a proven track record, and doesn't require gimmicks and rigged tests to seem worth something. It's called "enough nukes to turn the country launching a missile into a glass parking lot". MAD works, and unless it's Russia (maybe China) then it wouldn't even be "Mutually".
Say whatever you want about suicide bombers and martyrs. The leaders of Iran, North Korea, Russia, and whatever other possible nuclear threat you want to name, are not suicidal, not idiots, and not about to sacrifice all the power they've acquired and their entire country in order to destroy a city or two before being completely wiped out.
Obama's not going to make all our enemies stop hating us. Much more likely, he's just going to start mending relations with our allies. He's also not going to go and preemptively invade North Korea, or try to liberate a few more Muslim countries. So he doesn't have to make our enemies like us, he only has to not attack them and force them to retaliate in order to make it nearly inconceivable that a nuclear ICBM would be launched at us.
No, what we have to worry about are shipping container nukes, suitcase nukes, whatsit we can hide in the bottom of a fishing boat nukes. Nobody who wants to launch a preemptive strike is going to give us a hemisphere-sized parabolic fucking ARROW pointed at them, much less a chance to shoot their device down. They're going to smuggle a nuke in so we never see it coming. Which makes a missile shield kinda worthless for defense against a first strike. It'll just be sitting there doing nothing when the bomb goes off.
This, by the way, is why some theorize that the true purpose of the shield is to allow us to launch a first strike, and counter any missile-based retaliation. Russia says so, anyway. I don't really buy it, though I'm sure it's a bullet point feature in the minds of some. I just don't see it being politically acceptable or necessary any time soon, especially not based on assuming the defense shield can reduce the cost to us to an acceptable level. Russia, at least, has nothing to worry about. Their stockpile has deteriorated, but it's still enough to put the M in MAD. A 75% effective defense field wouldn't cut it, much less 10%. If they can even hack that, when Russia also has the tech to play the measure/counter-measure game and use the built-in advantage of being the attacker.
It may not be useless to have around, just in case, I suppose. I haven't been very impressed with their "successes", it seems like more of a boondoggle than anything and I don't think it shouldn't be a priority. Our priority should be the biggest threats, and well, ICBMs just aren't it.
that kind of thinking will kill us (Score:3, Insightful)
You don't leave your door unlocked just because somebody could climb in through a broken window.
Proper defense is multi-layer and it covers as much as possible. If you insist on absolute protection, you'll give up and you'll get nothing. This isn't a time or place for perfectionism.
A proper defense includes:
* border fences
* subsurface ocean monitoring
* nuclear non-proliferation treaty
* direct diplomatic discussions
* hacking into launch control systems
* return fire hitting the launch sites
* return fire in general, as a threat
* sabotage
* boost-phase anti-ICBM
* cruise-phase anti-ICBM
* terminal-phase anti-ICBM
* redundant infrastructure
* bomb shelters
* well-prepared emergency responders
* evacuation plans
* air-superiority
* probably 50 other things
With everything at risk, it would be incredibly irresponsible and evil to skip on a multi-layered defense.
Re:Iran? Uh huh ... yeah (Score:1, Insightful)
I can understand N. Korea since they can actually reach the Aleutians... but Iran?
I think Iran and North Korea are simply the easiest threats to identify right now. What this system is designed to do is counter any country that is not deterred by the threat of massive retaliation. Whether it be Iran, North Korea, a destabilized Russia, or a fundamentalist lead Pakistan, this system should give pause to any suicidal leader who is willing to trade the annihilation of his country for the chance to wipe out at least one American city.
That being said, by the time Iran acquires the ability to launch ICBMs at the US, this program may actually work as advertised.
Are you kidding me? The US already has the power to wipe out any country that attacks it. The missle defense shield simply allows the US to perform acts of aggression without worry of consequence. Peace is a by-product of a balance of power, and this offensive weapon creates a massive imbalance.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:that kind of thinking will kill us (Score:3, Insightful)
I listed "border fences" and "subsurface ocean monitoring" first. We need that.
By the time North Korea and Iran can reliably nuke mainland USA, it'll be too late to build an ICBM defence. We can't just wake up one day, realize that we need an ICBM defense, and go pick one up at Walmart. If we keep up the effort, we probably have just barely enough time to get this deployed.
Border protection is great too. BTW, it's being blocked by people who actually like having Mexicans streaming over the border. For some this is a source of employees who won't complain about unsafe work conditions and other abuses. For others, including many voters who don't actually have a right to vote, it's a way to get friends and family over. The combination of terrorism and the drug war may eventually get us a wimpy fence. I certainly hope so.
Miracle Man (Score:4, Insightful)
Tell you what, we'll let you loose in a prison ward for a few hours and see how far respect gets you.
Respect only works with people that care what you think, or indeed hold rational views. How much respect is Obama really going to garner from people that already consider him a "House Boy"? A demure posture of "respect" would only reinforce beliefs and a distinct lack of respect they already hold.
Obama realizes this as well, which is why he picked the people he did for Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense and so on. In that sense he seems far wiser tahn many of his supporters.