US Economy grows at fastest rate since 1984!!

[Vympel]

Vympel, the plane is armed with a laser capable of blowing mach 15 missiles out of the sky at 200 miles; it could simply shoot down an incoming SAM.

An incoming SAM volley (SA-2/SA-3/SA-5 doctrine is multiple missile launches for acceptable Pk) is a lot different from a theatre ballistic missile in the boost phase expending it's several 1,000kg worth of propellant- smaller, not as large a signature to lock on to- also, you'll be hardpressed to find any missile in its boost phase that's flying at 15 times the speed of sound.

And we don't need a B-2 with a laser, we need equally powerful solid state laser on a stolen AN-225 which also carry's a nuclear reactor and has electrically powered turbines.

Sounds good to me.

[Sea Skimmer]

An incoming SAM volley (SA-2/SA-3/SA-5 doctrine is multiple missile launches for acceptable Pk) is a lot different from a theatre ballistic missile in the boost phase expending it's several 1,000kg worth of propellant- smaller, not as large a signature to lock on to- also, you'll be hardpressed to find any missile in its boost phase that's flying at 15 times the speed of sound.

Well mabey not 15, but multi mach none the less. The SAM looks smaller, but its also coming much closer. But anyway, the SA-5 is a very large system which has basically no mobility. The sities would be quickly blown away. I doubt the North Korean version will work real well if its having the shit jammed out of it and the 747 has a towed decoy out anyway. Beyond North Korea, Iran might have one site, Libya has a couple, and I believe that's it except for former Soviet states.

Sounds good to me.

[Vympel]

Well mabey not 15, but multi mach none the less. The SAM looks smaller, but its also coming much closer. But anyway, the SA-5 is a very large system which has basically no mobility. The sities would be quickly blown away. I doubt the North Korean version will work real well if its having the shit jammed out of it and the 747 has a towed decoy out anyway. Beyond North Korea, Iran might have one site, Libya has a couple, and I believe that's it except for former Soviet states.

True- in North Korea's case, you could quickly clear the skies and give the aircraft freedom to roam- knowing the exact range of the ABL would be nice, from discussion documents available it would appear to be 200km, but that's just supposition (talking about the challenges/technical hurdles etc).

A more important issue is that the ABL is designed to puncture the very thin skin of theatre ballistic missiles like the SCUD, near the fuel tank area- so the missile just falls back to Earth above the launch area (thus eliminating the collateral damage problem caused by SCUDs falling on Israel)- in the case of SCUD, it's a mere 2mm thick. It's effectivness against ICBMs, if it's within range to hit them, will be determined by whether it can burn through to their fuel tanks.

[Sea Skimmer]

True- in North Korea's case, you could quickly clear the skies and give the aircraft freedom to roam- knowing the exact range of the ABL would be nice, from discussion documents available it would appear to be 200km, but that's just supposition (talking about the challenges/technical hurdles etc).

I've found 200 miles to be far more common

A more important issue is that the ABL is designed to puncture the very thin skin of theatre ballistic missiles like the SCUD, near the fuel tank area- so the missile just falls back to Earth above the launch area (thus eliminating the collateral damage problem caused by SCUDs falling on Israel)- in the case of SCUD, it's a mere 2mm thick. It's effectivness against ICBMs, if it's within range to hit them, will be determined by whether it can burn through to their fuel tanks.

Once you've knocked a hole in the side atmospheric friction is going to tear the side apart and send the missile off course if not tumbling it end over end until it blows up. Your not going to get a tiny pinhole or anything, it's going to be a large jagged area of the side that will be damaged.

[Patrick Degan]

Deegan, I tire of your bullshit.

Actually, it seems the problem is you never tire of your own bullshit.

I went and proved that the GBI was cheeper than a comparable ICBM by a factor of 14, and yet you keep going onto tangents trying to ignore that inconvient fact, trying to factor in the cost of building new radars to support/replace old cold-war ballistic missile tracking radars; stop fucking around and put solid concrete numbers that prove that you can build enough ICBMs to swamp a comparable GBI system that is 14 times cheeper to build a missle for.

http://www.csbaonline.org/4Publications ... Deployment_
Dec/B.20000609.NMD_Deployment_Dec.htm

excerpt:


Defense Plans-Funding Mismatch
Because of the greater priority placed on paying down the national debt, protecting Social Security and other entitlements, and cutting taxes, neither the Clinton Administration nor the Republican-controlled Congress appears willing to provide the level of funding that would be needed over the coming decade to pay for the current defense plan. The administration’s latest budget request includes $305 billion for defense in FY 2001, and just over $300 billion (FY 2001 dollars) a year over the FY 2002-05 period. The congressional budget resolution (CBR) passed in April would provide $4.6 billion more in FY 2001 and $1 billion more over the FY 2002-05 period. These essentially flat budget levels are clearly insufficient to cover the cost of DoD’s existing modernization, force structure and readiness plans. The cost of those plans is likely to exceed projected funding by at least several tens of billions of dollars over the next five years, and by as much as $25-50 billion a year over the longer term. In this budget environment, finding the $34-57 billion that may be needed to acquire and operate the proposed NMD system over the coming 15 years will prove very difficult.


Long and short of it, you can take your GBI rocket pricetag Red Herring and shove it up your ass.

[Patrick Degan]

Ever changing the goalposts, aren't you?

Look, you said that originally we'd have 500-odd warheads crashing down on American infrastructure. I had misinterpreted that to read as "500 hits on cities," for which I apologize if that's not what you intended. But if we add in all those other targets that we now have to hit - your 500-hit strike won't do as much damage. I'm not changing the goalpost, I'm keeping them as where you put it. Either we're hitting all the cities with high airbursts to rather negative effects and allowing the bombers to do multiple sorties, or we're hitting many of the B-52/B-2 capable airfields as well to stop that - and reduce the general devestation on the cities.

You are indeed changing the goalposts. You attempted to argue that 50% effective defence would constitute a "victory". I picked an arbitrary number as an example of an all-out nuclear exchange which might be conservative as an estimate if a large ABM-driven arms race ensues and demonstrated that the resulting infrastructure damage would effectively wreck this country —which would not require "flattening every city" as you phrased it. And you've responded with fantasies about suffering hits clustered only in one area and now the ludicrous notion of a severely damaged United States carrying on a strategic bombing campaign after a full missile exchange, which would accomplish very little in the way of inflicting more destruction upon an enemy which has already been showered with an ICBM barrage. It almost goes without saying that such a scenario would be ludicrous, and pointless. It also ignores the probable decision to keep the remaining deterrent force in reserve as a defence.

The tenor of your statement, for a start. You seriously imagine a depression is comparable to a nuclear strike?!

No, a nuclear strike would be far worse than the Great Depression. I had meant to say that such a strike would throw the US into a very severe depression - in the broadest negative-GDP sense.

That is a gross understatement.

Well, for many defense projects they have failed, or were cancelled, or weren't even real, but in this case, doesn't the laser program past history (ALL) actually support the real, workable system (ABL), even if they were experimental?

Not if THEL is anything to go by. It's initial deployment date has already been delayed twice and the Israeli Army still aren't sold on its potential effectiveness.

And even if THEL and THAAD ever do work as advertised, they are only theatre defence weapons of limited range and not at all suitable for ABM.

What, that Clinton was seriously considering deployment? With all that testing going on, how could Russia come to the conclusion that "no, there won't be a system deployed." That's a big assumption to make on their part, even after the non-result that was the 1980s SDI.

Not seeing any actual move toward deployment was probably one clue.

No, how they increased from the advent of MIRV to the onset of START.

But strategic warhead levels had been increasing anyways, MIRV or no MIRV, especially in the USSR.

With MIRV, those increases jumped dramatically.

That was not the FUCKING POINT —the point was that the one reason why strategic force levels did not increase at a far greater pace was because of foregoing an ABM race alongside the arms race.

Or it was simply because both sides decided to curb the insanity a bit and implement SALT. Isn't that just as reasonable an explanation?

"Curbing the insanity" was foregoing ABM and negotiating SALT.

Your argument is that the ABM Treaty slowed growth from a possible geometric explosion; my argument is that it was more SALT (of which ABM was a component) was what slowed it down.

If ABM had been implemented, Nixon would not have been able to convince the Soviets that SALT was feasible.

[MKSheppard]

Actually, it seems the problem is you never tire of your own bullshit.

You're the one with an immutable wall of ignorance here, not
me. You and Axis Kast are made for each other it seems.

http://www.csbaonline.org/4Publications ... Deployment_
Dec/B.20000609.NMD_Deployment_Dec.htm

Someone, fix that link, it's formatted improperly.

Long and short of it, you can take your GBI rocket pricetag Red Herring and shove it up your ass.

Ah, the trick of taking every thing assorted with a program down to
the toilet paper used by the engineers and using that as a total cost, used
to great effect by the anti B-2 advocates who kept cutting the program,
and paradoxically increasing the costs.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/space/systems/nmd.htm

You know, it's kind of expensive to build X-Band radars
on a frozen Alaskan site that's iced in half the year, meaning
you have to ship everything in. That's why it's costing $900m.

Existing Defense Support Program satellites provide the U.S. early-warning satellite capability. The satellites are comparatively simple, inertially fixed, geosynchronous earth orbit satellites with an unalterable scan pattern. Space Based Infrared System would replace the Defense Support Program satellites sometime in the next decade.

So we're upgrading our launch detection as part of NMD, and we'd have
to do it eventually, as satellites can't stay in orbit forever, that program costs
about $4 billion, but that would have to happen anyway as the existing
early warning satellites reach the end of their service lives.

We're upgrading the three PAVE PAWS sites at Clear AFS, Beale AFB,
and Cape Cod AFS for support of the NMD program. Costs of that are
minimal, mostly software changes as a lot of expandability was designed
into the original PAVE PAWS design.

Now, for your ICBM being cheeper fallacy, lets lump in the total costs
of having to build all those silos to hold those missiles that even when you
do fly away costs, are 14 times more expensive:

You have to build individual hardened silos for each missile, now
building silos that can withstand 2,000 psi overpressure. And of course,
most modern missiles feature cold launch, making it more expensive,
as versus simple non-reloadable silos.

That's really expensive. Then throw in the command and control, plus
the manning needs for each set of silos......You can't just throw 1st
Lieutenant Buckethead into these launch centers, as opposed to GBI,
where you can, since GBI is non-nuclear.

By contrast, the most expensive part of the GBI is the C4I, the silos
themselves can be unhardened holes in the ground protecting against
weather. GBI just looks expensive because we're building a lot of
the infrastructure from scratch instead of reusing our existing
missile warning radars.

As for total costs:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peacekeeper_missile

The project has cost around $20 billion (up to 1998) and produced 114 missiles, at $400 m for each operational missile. The "flyaway" cost of each missile is estimated at only $20-70 million.

So the cost of building more missiles to counter GBI is really fucking expensive, not cheeep.

In fact, the baseline GBI system with most of the C4I architecture and radar sites in place
is just $13~ billion, while the Tomahawk Land Attack Missile Program cost $11 billion in
total, to give an example. It won't break the budget any more than a new weapons system
entering service would.

And once we've got the entire system in place, we can simply mass produce GBIs
since they do not carry nuclear warheads and are cheeeep. Case in point, we've
gotten the TLAM down from $1.9 million down to $500,000 due to mass production
of the missile.

Concession accepted, Fucktard, if all you have to do is shout "it's expensive
expensive! We can magically build ICBMs much faster and cheeper than GBIs
despite evidence to the contrary!"

[MKSheppard]

Found some very interesting facts:

$ 212.0 billion JSF Navy-Air Force-Marine Joint Strike Fighter - 3,000 planes
$ 63.8 billion F-22 Air Force advanced tactical fighter - 341 planes
$ 63.7 billion NSSN Navy New Attack Submarine - 30 submarines
$ 53.9 billion DDG-51 Navy AEGIS destroyer - 57 ships
$ 48.0 billion RAH-66 Army Comanche helicopter - 1,292 helicopters
$ 46.1 billion F/A-18 E/F Navy Super Hornet - 548 planes
$ 44.4 billion B-2 Air Force bomber - 21 planes
$ 41.2 billion C-17 Air Force airlift aircraft - 120 planes
$ 37.3 billion V-22 Navy Osprey - 458 planes
$ 27.4 billion D-5 Navy Trident II missile - 462 missiles
$ 13.2 billion Seawolf submarine - 3 submarines
$ 10.0 billion LPD-17 Navy transport dock ship - 12 ships
$ 4.7 billion CVN-77 nuclear aircraft carrier - 1 ship

So why should I care about NMD again? It's about the going price of one
major big ticket weapons program, not a break-the-budget thing.

[MKSheppard]

$ 63.8 billion F-22 Air Force advanced tactical fighter - 341 planes

Course, that's the price of what they want to buy, if you threw in total
program costs, the F-22 would be about $110 billion.

[MKSheppard]

Course, that's the price of what they want to buy, if you threw in total
program costs, the F-22 would be about $110 billion.

Oh yeah, Urlys:

http://www.commondreams.org/pressreleas ... 20199a.htm
for that price list.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

And you've responded with fantasies about suffering hits clustered only in one area and now the ludicrous notion of a severely damaged United States carrying on a strategic bombing campaign after a full missile exchange, which would accomplish very little in the way of inflicting more destruction upon an enemy which has already been showered with an ICBM barrage. It almost goes without saying that such a scenario would be ludicrous, and pointless. It also ignores the probable decision to keep the remaining deterrent force in reserve as a defence.

Do you realize what a hole you're digging for yourself? You're completely ignoring the historical evidence from the operations in the second world war against the very heavily industrialized German cities, which despite repeated mass strikes on a staggering scale--fully equal to the application of multiple atomic devices--did not have a significant negative impact on German industrial production. Germany is not much more significant in extant than several midwestern states, which could also match it in industrial output. To destroy merely the entire United States' industrial production, let alone to collapse society, you would need massed bombing over the whole of the country, and of an extended duration. The atomic bomb makes this more efficient, but not to the degree you postulate--much of the energy of atomic bombs is wasted in their very concentration of such efficiency into a single device, when industry and urban areas in general are rather spread-out.

Even then, you're essentially asking for hundreds of devices--each, perhaps, the equivlant of a whole raid of WWII fame, but no more--to do the work that hundreds of those raids could not do on a far smaller country, and that makes precious little sense. You are doing nothing more, in fact, than basing your argument on the same inflated assumptions of atomic destruction that have long driven leftists into opposition of nuclear-related programmes, merely slightly more sophisticated.

You are intelligent. The formula for the power of a nuclear device and the energy it would produce at a particular distance from the point of detonation is available. I suggest you use it, and calculate for yourself the requirement in the number of devices to level the various industrial centres, the various vital works, of the United States of America--considering that our nation is hardly made up of a few great cities, but is rather vastly more diffuse. Nuclear war is a terrible thing, but foolhardy opposition to a programme which could lessen its effects, utterly divorced from actual technical merits, does nothing but extend the threat.

[Patrick Degan]

Actually, it seems the problem is you never tire of your own bullshit.

You're the one with an immutable wall of ignorance here, not me. You and Axis Kast are made for each other it seems.

Oh really? That's rich coming from somebody who can't bother to research a subject in depth before blowing his fool mouth off about it.

Long and short of it, you can take your GBI rocket pricetag Red Herring and shove it up your ass.

Ah, the trick of taking every thing assorted with a program down to the toilet paper used by the engineers and using that as a total cost, used to great effect by the anti B-2 advocates who kept cutting the program, and paradoxically increasing the costs.

That's right. Keep pretending that that the system costs don't matter.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/space/systems/nmd.htm

You know, it's kind of expensive to build X-Band radars on a frozen Alaskan site that's iced in half the year, meaning you have to ship everything in. That's why it's costing $900m.

As if that meant fuck-all about the issue at hand.

Existing Defense Support Program satellites provide the U.S. early-warning satellite capability. The satellites are comparatively simple, inertially fixed, geosynchronous earth orbit satellites with an unalterable scan pattern. Space Based Infrared System would replace the Defense Support Program satellites sometime in the next decade.

So we're upgrading our launch detection as part of NMD, and we'd have to do it eventually, as satellites can't stay in orbit forever, that program costs about $4 billion, but that would have to happen anyway as the existing early warning satellites reach the end of their service lives.

Except that's not the source of the cost for NMD.

Now, for your ICBM being cheeper fallacy,

Reality, actually, but do go on.

lets lump in the total costs of having to build all those silos to hold those missiles that even when you do fly away costs, are 14 times more expensive:

You have to build individual hardened silos for each missile, now building silos that can withstand 2,000 psi overpressure. And of course, most modern missiles feature cold launch, making it more expensive, as versus simple non-reloadable silos.

That's really expensive. Then throw in the command and control, plus the manning needs for each set of silos......You can't just throw 1st Lieutenant Buckethead into these launch centers...

The Russians don't have quite this problem, as they have decommisioned silos that can be reactivated. And as for the Chinese, they can opt for mobile ICBMs on trucks —like the SS-18.

By contrast, the most expensive part of the GBI is the C4I, the silos themselves can be unhardened holes in the ground protecting against weather. GBI just looks expensive because we're building a lot of the infrastructure from scratch instead of reusing our existing missile warning radars.

GBI pricetag is a red herring, no matter how much you wish you could ignore the issue of system and infrastructure costs, plus maintenance.

As for total costs:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peacekeeper_missile


The project has cost around $20 billion (up to 1998) and produced 114 missiles, at $400 m for each operational missile. The "flyaway" cost of each missile is estimated at only $20-70 million.

So the cost of building more missiles to counter GBI is really fucking expensive, not cheeep.

How you cling to that smelly red herring of yours.

http://64.177.207.201/pages/16_207.html

Potential Cost of Deploying A Layered National Missile Defense(1)
Cost: Program:
$48.8 billion Current Clinton plans for ground-based NMD(2)
$35 billion Program design, procurement and construction
$13.9 billion Program operations and maintenance
$10.6 billion Costs of Space-Based Infrared Systems (SBIRS-low)(3)
$14.5 - $17.5 billion Sea-based National Missile Defense(4)
$14-17 billion Program acquisition
$500 million Program operations and maintenance
$18.25 billion Upper layer defense with 500 space-based Interceptors
$17 billion Program acquisition(5)
$1.25 billion Program operations and maintenance(6)
$27.5 billion 20 space-based lasers
$25 billion Program acquisition(7)
$2.5 billion Program operations and maintenance(8 )
$119.7 - 122.7 billion: Grand total for a layered defense with ground, sea and space-based components


From the FY2000 Congressional Budget Office report.

And:

http://www.rand.org/natsec_area/product ... fense.html

excerpt

Today, the original 3+3 system has become the first and second phase of the NMD system that the administration is readying for deployment. In the process, the schedule has slipped and the price has risen. According to the current schedule, the system will take at least nine years to deploy and cost at least $20 billion to build, or 2.5 times the price that was originally advertised for the 3+3 system to get the same capability just four years earlier. Much of this huge price rise can be traced to overly optimistic assumptions about technology and costs—an optimism that was created by the crash program mentality combined with a desire to do the job as cheaply as possible. Together, those forces led to an acquisition program that had little of the usual funding for such essential activities as systems engineering, reducing technical risks, and testing. As the Welch panel has pointed out, this was an even more significant omission for such a high-risk and complex program.

From a Rand Corp. study.

And:

http://www.aip.org/enews/fyi/2000/fyi00.053.htm

excerpt
According to CBO, the Administration's plan lays out three possible phases: Expanded Capability 1 would ultimately comprise 100 interceptors at one launch site in Alaska, intended to defend against missiles with simple countermeasures. Capability 2 would be able to handle more sophisticated countermeasures, and Capability 3 would add more interceptors and a second launch site, most likely in North Dakota. The Administration has only given a cost estimate for Expanded Capability 1, of $25.6 billion through the year 2015. CBO estimates that this first phase would cost $29.5 billion over the same period, and explains that its estimate includes more replacements and spares, more additional testing in the system's early years, and an assumption of 20 percent cost growth (comparable to similar programs), rather than the Administration's assumption of 5 percent growth. The paper also predicts greater operating costs than the Administration. CBO projects that moving from Expanded Capability 1 to Capability 2 would cost an additional $6.1 billion, for a total system cost of $35.6 billion, and proceeding to Capability 3 would cost $13.3 billion, bringing the total cost to $48.8 billion. CBO notes that the Administration gives no cost estimates for the follow-on phases, and that the current defense plan for future years does not at this time include enough funding for those later phases.

An American Institute of Physics study.

And:

http://www.csbaonline.org/4Publications/Archive/
B.19960501.Accelerated_Nation/B.19960501.Accelerated_Nation.htm

excerpt

Cost Implications of the “Defend America Act”
According to BMDO director General Malcolm O’Neill, it would cost the United States about $5 billion to acquire a very limited, single-site NMD system, consisting of a radar and perhaps 20 ground-based missile interceptors.3 It is unclear, however, whether such a system would meet the bill’s requirement that the initially deployed NMD system be capable of providing a "highly effective defense" against a limited attack. General O’Neill has indicated that this system would only be capable of intercepting up to five “rudimentary” warheads, while Secretary of Defense William Perry has testified that “as I see the technical features of the system now, it would defend only the 48 contiguous states.”4

A more ambitious, but still relatively limited, NMD system that would be consistent with the proposed bill5 might consist of 100 ground-based interceptor missiles deployed at a single site, along with a radar, a command and control center, and several dozen space-based (Space and Missile Tracking System, SMTS) sensors.6 In March 1995, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that such a system would cost roughly $29 billion (FY 1996 dollars) to develop and deploy.7 The administration's current plan appears to envision spending roughly $600 million a year over the next five years on the development of NMD technologies, NMD follow-on and technology support programs, and the SMTS program.8 This suggests that the additional cost of deploying this more elaborate, and presumably more effective, NMD system would be about $25 billion.9

In addition to the deployment by 2003 of an initial "highly effective" NMD defense against limited attacks, the proposed “Defend America Act” calls for NMD defenses to be "augmented over time to provide a layered defense against larger and more sophisticated ballistic missile threats as they develop." This requirement might be satisfied by adding five additional NMD sites over the FY 2005-FY 2013 period (one every other year). According to CBO's March 1995 estimate, a NMD system comprising six ground-based interceptor missile sites, associated radars, command and control centers, and space-based sensors, would cost a total of about $48 billion (FY 1996 dollars) to acquire. If a constellation of space-based kinetic energy interceptors were also added over this period, another $6 billion (FY 1996 dollars) or more would likely be required, bringing total acquisition costs to perhaps $54 billion.10 This would be about $44 billion more than is projected to be provided for NMD-related programs based on a simple extrapolation of current funding levels.11

The above estimates represent only rough projections of the potential acquisition costs of a range of NMD systems that might be consistent with the proposed “Defend America Act.” It is possible that they may in some instances overstate those costs. For example, figures provided by BMDO indicate that it might be possible to deploy a single-site NMD system consisting of 100 ground-based interceptor missiles as well as space-based sensors for as little as an additional $13 billion, rather than $25 billion (as CBO's March 1995 estimate would seem to suggest).12 Overall, however, it is far more likely these estimates understate rather than overstate likely costs. There are two principal reasons to believe this is the case. First, new weapon systems typically end up costing 20-40 percent more to acquire than originally estimated. Second, none of these estimates include the costs of operating and supporting a NMD system after it has been acquired (i.e., developed and procured). Yet, over the lifetime of a weapon system, operations and support (O&S) cost generally equal or exceed the system’s acquisition costs.


And:

http://www.armscontrolcenter.org/nmd/fullcost.html

excerpt

Washington DC - The Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation and Economists Allied for Arms Reduction will release a report titled "The Full Costs of Ballistic Missile Defense" Friday, January 3, at the annual conference of the American Economic Association at the D.C. Convention Center. The report finds that the likely cumulative cost of a "layered" missile defense system - including boost-phase, mid-course, and terminal defenses as called for by the administration - could be between $800 billion and $1.2 trillion.

According to the report, current cost-estimates for the proposed "layered" missile defense system emphasize development and acquisition costs, neglecting long-term operations and maintenance costs. Although the Missile Defense Agency and Congressional Budget Office have released past cost-estimate reports, no publicly available study accounts for the full life-cycle costs of missile defense systems.

The report notes that "If a goal of full deployment of ground, sea and air-based systems by 2015 is to be met, half the costs - about $500 billion - could be incurred in the next 13 years. . . . Under this demanding schedule, spending must increase very rapidly. . . reaching perhaps. . . $50 billion by 2007." If the military budget were not increased to cover spending on BMD, "then BMD would displace nearly 6% of other defense spending by 2005 and more than 12% from 2007 through 2011," according to the report.

Economist and Nobel Laureate Kenneth Arrow explains in the Preface to the report, "When a program requires many years of development, production, installation, and operations, the costs incurred at the beginning will be misleadingly low as to the ultimate cost of the system. The projected future costs of missile defense systems are rarely examined and poorly understood by key decision makers. . . ."


A Centre for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation report.

And:

http://www.afa.org/magazine/july2000/0700cbo.asp



excerpt

The first phase, known as Expanded Capability 1, would cost nearly $30 billion, CBO estimates. That figure includes one-time costs and operating costs through Fiscal Year 2015. ... Continuing on to the second stage, Capability 2, would cost an additional $6 billion, for a total of nearly $36 billion, CBO estimates. Achieving Capability 3, the most extensive and sophisticated stage of NMD deployment, would add more than $13 billion to the costs of Capability 2.

Thus, costs for the entire system would total nearly $49 billion through 2015, in CBO's view. ... Those CBO estimates do not include the costs of space-based sensors for NMD because the sensors would be used for other missions as well, and their costs are included in separate Air Force programs. CBO's estimates attempt to strike a balance between overestimating and underestimating potential NMD costs.

The Administration's current plan for National Missile Defense shows Expanded Capability 1 possibly being deployed at the end of Fiscal Year 2007, Capability 2 at the end of 2010, and Capability 3 at the end of 2011. However, the Administration's current Future Years Defense Program, which runs through 2005, does not include significant funds for those later phases. To begin funding the Capability 2 system after 2005 and still meet the target deployment date of late 2010, CBO estimates, would require annual spending that would surpass $3 billion in 2006 and 2007 (see Fig. 1). Moreover, that estimate assumes that the Administration decides not to proceed with Capability 3. If it also attempted to acquire Capability 3 by late 2011--as well as Capability 2 along the way--annual spending would have to exceed $6 billion in 2007 and 2008. ...

An Air Force Association article.

And:

http://www.foreignpolicy2000.org/librar ... fense.html

excerpt

Development and deployment of the proposed NMD system would cost roughly $13 billion. Estimated costs over the system's 20-year life cycle could run as high as $50 billion or more. Before it is deployed, however, the system must be proven effective against realistic targets, such as warheads with "countermeasures" designed to evade the defense. The first two tests, conducted in October 1999 and January 2000, were less than perfect; the second was a complete failure. And the NMD system would not protect U.S. territory from all weapons threats; the 1998 Rumsfeld Commission report pointed out that short-range cruise or ballistic missiles launched from ships can pose an earlier threat to U.S. cities.

A Council on Foreign Relations monograph by Richard Garwin.

Your Wall of Ignorance, I do believe...

And once we've got the entire system in place, we can simply mass produce GBIs since they do not carry nuclear warheads and are cheeeep. Case in point, we've gotten the TLAM down from $1.9 million down to $500,000 due to mass production of the missile.

Concession accepted, Fucktard, if all you have to do is shout "it's expensive expensive! We can magically build ICBMs much faster and cheeper than GBIs despite evidence to the contrary!"

Put down the opium pipe, Shep. The maximum number of interceptor rockets planned for the full C3 NMD configuration is 250 —and those are only a small portion of the cost for the entire system.

And you can take that "concession accepted" pronouncement of yours and cram that up your ass as well —that is, when you finish talking out of it.

[Patrick Degan]

And you've responded with fantasies about suffering hits clustered only in one area and now the ludicrous notion of a severely damaged United States carrying on a strategic bombing campaign after a full missile exchange, which would accomplish very little in the way of inflicting more destruction upon an enemy which has already been showered with an ICBM barrage. It almost goes without saying that such a scenario would be ludicrous, and pointless. It also ignores the probable decision to keep the remaining deterrent force in reserve as a defence.

Do you realize what a hole you're digging for yourself? You're completely ignoring the historical evidence from the operations in the second world war against the very heavily industrialized German cities, which despite repeated mass strikes on a staggering scale--fully equal to the application of multiple atomic devices--did not have a significant negative impact on German industrial production. Germany is not much more significant in extant than several midwestern states, which could also match it in industrial output. To destroy merely the entire United States' industrial production, let alone to collapse society, you would need massed bombing over the whole of the country, and of an extended duration. The atomic bomb makes this more efficient, but not to the degree you postulate--much of the energy of atomic bombs is wasted in their very concentration of such efficiency into a single device, when industry and urban areas in general are rather spread-out.

HUUUUGE False Analogy fallacy. The example of the bombing of Germany in World War II is totally inapplicable to comparisons with a nuclear attack. The Germans did not receive the total destructive power of the Allied bombing forces in one shot; the destruction was spread out through a four year period and at varying levels of effectiveness per mission. The Germans had plenty of time, comparatively speaking, between campaigns to repair industrial facilities and infrastructure to keep industrial production going throughout most of the war. And finally, German society of the 1940s is nowhere near comparable in any way, shape, or form to the highly interdependent, technologically sophisticated —and fragile— world of today.

Finally, the total bomb tonnage dropped on Germany by the USAAF amounted to 916kt —3/5ths of a single multiwarhead ICBM in terms of destructive power and that was spread out over four years. By contrast, every target that gets hit in a full-scale nuclear strike will be receiving a World War II in one shot.

You are intelligent. The formula for the power of a nuclear device and the energy it would produce at a particular distance from the point of detonation is available. I suggest you use it, and calculate for yourself the requirement in the number of devices to level the various industrial centres, the various vital works, of the United States of America--considering that our nation is hardly made up of a few great cities, but is rather vastly more diffuse. Nuclear war is a terrible thing, but foolhardy opposition to a programme which could lessen its effects, utterly divorced from actual technical merits, does nothing but extend the threat.

The total number of interceptor rockets planned for the full-scale NMD system is 250. This would hardly make a dent in a 1000-2000 warhead attack, particularly if the succeful kill-rate is only 66% or poorer, going by present test results even under highly "idealised" conditions..

[Vympel]

Just a minor correction- the SS-18 SATAN (Voivode) is firmly silo-based due to it's gargantuan size- the SS-25 SICKLE (Topol) force (350 missiles) is road/ limited cross-country mobile. The new SS-27 (Topol-M) regiments being commissioned at the rate of one per year (since 1998) are currently being housed in pre-existing silos (i.e. no new silo infrastructure required). Mobile missiles will presumably start to enter service as the SS-25 force starts expiring, test firings from mobile TELs having been conducted- the SS-27 mobile TELs have significantly more off-road, cross-country mobility than their predecessors.

The Chinese, for their part, already have a road mobile ICBM in the form of the Dong Feng-31, though it has little, if any, cross country capability, and very specific road conditions are also required. It's range (8,000km) is wanting but that will change. A rail-mobile variant like the Russian SS-24 SCALPEL may be in the offing. The status of the more advanced Dong Feng-41 is unknown at this point- some reports say it's been cancelled.

[Patrick Degan]

Just a minor correction- the SS-18 SATAN (Voivode) is firmly silo-based due to it's gargantuan size- the SS-25 SICKLE (Topol) force (350 missiles) is road/ limited cross-country mobile. The new SS-27 (Topol-M) regiments being commissioned at the rate of one per year (since 1998) are currently being housed in pre-existing silos (i.e. no new silo infrastructure required). Mobile missiles will presumably start to enter service as the SS-25 force starts expiring, test firings from mobile TELs having been conducted- the SS-27 mobile TELs have significantly more off-road, cross-country mobility than their predecessors.

The Chinese, for their part, already have a road mobile ICBM in the form of the Dong Feng-31, though it has little, if any, cross country capability, and very specific road conditions are also required. It's range (8,000km) is wanting but that will change. A rail-mobile variant like the Russian SS-24 SCALPEL may be in the offing. The status of the more advanced Dong Feng-41 is unknown at this point- some reports say it's been cancelled.

Correction noted.

[Patrick Degan]

Found some very interesting facts:

$ 212.0 billion JSF Navy-Air Force-Marine Joint Strike Fighter - 3,000 planes
$ 63.8 billion F-22 Air Force advanced tactical fighter - 341 planes
$ 63.7 billion NSSN Navy New Attack Submarine - 30 submarines
$ 53.9 billion DDG-51 Navy AEGIS destroyer - 57 ships
$ 48.0 billion RAH-66 Army Comanche helicopter - 1,292 helicopters
$ 46.1 billion F/A-18 E/F Navy Super Hornet - 548 planes
$ 44.4 billion B-2 Air Force bomber - 21 planes
$ 41.2 billion C-17 Air Force airlift aircraft - 120 planes
$ 37.3 billion V-22 Navy Osprey - 458 planes
$ 27.4 billion D-5 Navy Trident II missile - 462 missiles
$ 13.2 billion Seawolf submarine - 3 submarines
$ 10.0 billion LPD-17 Navy transport dock ship - 12 ships
$ 4.7 billion CVN-77 nuclear aircraft carrier - 1 ship

http://www.commondreams.org/pressreleas ... 20199a.htm

So why should I care about NMD again? It's about the going price of one major big ticket weapons program, not a break-the-budget thing.

Yes, I'm sure you do think they're the same thing Nevermind the fact that most of those allocations are to continue or finish programmes already under procurement for years, or that all but a very few of them are proven systems of demonstrable utility and a positive cost/benefit ratio. Trying to lump in conventional weapon programmes in with a comparison with NMD is especially risible.

[MKSheppard]

Oh really? That's rich coming from somebody who can't bother to research a subject in depth before blowing his fool mouth off about it.

The same could be said about you, Deegan, what with your comments
such as:

Except the plane-mounted laser is nowhere close to becoming reality either.

We've covered that before with ABL being tested next year.

and

You mean THEL? Better check back on that one. THEL is having serious development problems, so much so that the Israelis have twice delayed deployment schedules for the system. And a "mobile" version which presently requires three semitrailers to haul around the chemical fuel for the thing is hardly a practical battlefield weapon. And even if they do get this thing working as advertised, a weapon with an effective range of less than 500 metres will be useless as an anti-ICBM defence.

http://www.defense-update.com/directory/THEL.htm

http://a.tribalfusion.com/f.ad?site=Spa ... 1846453886
http://www.jinsa.org/articles/articles. ... 6,152,1020

THEL was successful, the problem was it was fixed in a single location and used expensive
gasses to shoot down said rockets. The Military decided to defer further development in
favor of solid state lasers, where you just put electricity in one end and get zap power
out the other end.

As for MTHEL, it's successfully shot down multiple rockets in flight. And who cares about
it taking up three semi trailers, Deegan? Go take a look at the amount of equipment
needed to set up a Patriot battery (which is considered a battlefield weapon), and
then get back to me.

Sorry, but Edward Teller's Brilliant Pebbles pipedream went down the sinkhole even faster than his X-ray laser did, more than a decade ago.

For political reasons, not technical. The system worked, and was feasible with our current
technology, and was low cost ($1.4m per interceptor). However, there was political flak
from putting about 4,600+ weapons in orbit.

You can however see the obvious Brilliant Pebbles lineage in today's GBI Exoatmospheric
Kill Vehicle, as they look almost identical.

That's right. Keep pretending that that the system costs don't matter.

System costs are irrevelant, really. All that matters are the number of weapons
procured. You can make a program insanely expensive by reducing the number
produced; witness the skyrocketing cost caused by slashing the B-2 production
number from 132 aircraft to just 20.

As if that meant fuck-all about the issue at hand.

Except follow-on radars will not be as expensive as that first X-Band radar, due to the
need of not having to ship everything to the site, and a limited construction season.

Except that's not the source of the cost for NMD.

Idiot.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/space/systems/nmd.htm

The NMD system would be a fixed, land-based, non-nuclear missile defense system with a space-based detection system, consisting of five elements:

Ground Based Interceptors (GBIs)
Battle Management, Command, Control, and Communications (BMC3), which includes:
Battle Management, Command, and Control (BMC2), and
In-Flight Interceptor Communications System (IFICS)
X-Band Radars (XBRs)
Upgraded Early Warning Radar (UEWR)
Defense Support Program satellites/Space-Based Infrared System (SBIRS)

(Bolded to help you see it)

The Russians don't have quite this problem, as they have decommisioned silos that can be reactivated. And as for the Chinese, they can opt for mobile ICBMs on trucks —like the SS-18.

Except 176 of them were in Ukraine and have been blown up under START I. And on 8
November 2001, the Russians began to trash the mobile launchers for teh SS-24 SCALPEL.

And of course, the production line for the SS-24 SCALPEL and SS-18 SATAN were
all in Ukraine, requiring the russians to have to start all over from scratch and build
a totally new line for the TOPOL-M, which is not cheep, and they can only produce
10 to 15 TOPOL-Ms a YEAR.

Lets not forget that mobile ICBMs bring in the problem of political control, a very
touchy issue in a totalitarian/authoritarian state.

GBI pricetag is a red herring, no matter how much you wish you could ignore the issue of system and infrastructure costs, plus maintenance.

While you ignore totally the entire nuclear infrastructure and maintenance cost required
to build, refurbish, and operate nuclear missile silos, much less build new ones. Here's
a hint, nuclear warheads have to have their tritium replaced every few years, that requires
reactors to be run to generate said tritium, which is expensive.

How you cling to that smelly red herring of yours.

Same could be said for you, you've thrown virtually every anti-ABM fallacy there
is out, sometimes all in the same post.

Washington, D.C. . . In a new analysis of costs of national missile defense based on a report issued today by the Congressional Budget Office, Council for a Livable World and the Coalition to Reduce Nuclear Dangers estimate that the cost of the preferred Republican option of a layered defense would total at least $120 billion through 2015.

What a bunch of reputable analysts.

$48.8 billion Current Clinton plans for ground-based NMD(2)
$35 billion Program design, procurement and construction
$13.9 billion Program operations and maintenance
$10.6 billion Costs of Space-Based Infrared Systems (SBIRS-low)(3)
$14.5 - $17.5 billion Sea-based National Missile Defense(4)
$14-17 billion Program acquisition
$500 million Program operations and maintenance
$18.25 billion Upper layer defense with 500 space-based Interceptors
$17 billion Program acquisition(5)
$1.25 billion Program operations and maintenance(6)
$27.5 billion 20 space-based lasers
$25 billion Program acquisition(7)
$2.5 billion Program operations and maintenance(8 )
$119.7 - 122.7 billion: Grand total for a layered defense with ground, sea and space-based components

Nice, go for the total shebang with all the options added in, as opposed to what's
actually going to be built, in an attempt to inflate costs to make NMD look bad.
Sooo many strawmen thrown together in that analysis.

Today, the original 3+3 system has become the first and second phase of the NMD system that the administration is readying for deployment. In the process, the schedule has slipped and the price has risen. According to the current schedule, the system will take at least nine years to deploy and cost at least $20 billion to build

http://www.globalsecurity.org/space/systems/nmd.htm

Except all 100~ interceptors will be deployed by 2007, in just four years, rather than nine.

Course, that's assuming Bush is re-elected in 2004, ensuing continuing funding.

Either way, by late 2004, early 2005, we'll have 5 GBIs on site in Alaska providing limited
capability against North Korean ICBM shots.

Your Wall of Ignorance, I do believe...

Was there anything to be proved by posting all those articles which essentially agree
that the current plan of 100~ interceptors will cost about $40 billion give or take a few?
That still comes out to the cost of one mere big-ticket item procurement by the DoD.

Put down the opium pipe, Shep. The maximum number of interceptor rockets planned for the full C3 NMD configuration is 250 —and those are only a small portion of the cost for the entire system.

And if we wanted to, we could easily expand it to a couple hundred more interceptors,
because at that point, all the architecture would be built, and we'd be increasing the
number of missiles we can then shoot down by increasing the number of available interceptors.

And you can take that "concession accepted" pronouncement of yours and cram that up your ass as well —that is, when you finish talking out of it.

Blow me, and stop posting so many fallacies about ABM programs in a single post, and then
we'll talk.

[MKSheppard]

Yes, I'm sure you do think they're the same thing Nevermind the fact that most of those allocations are to continue or finish programmes already under procurement for years

Funny you say that, since we've spent $60+ billion or more on
NMD programs since the 1980s alone to present day.

Trying to lump in conventional weapon programmes in with a comparison with NMD is especially risible.

Except the technology has matured to a point where we can now intercept
missiles with non-nuclear interceptors.

[MKSheppard]

ROFLMACO

Not ball bearings or shot but jello.

Really

Blast a load of jello out the front of an interceptor so that it has higher velocity than the interceptor itself. The first thing that happens is that all the water evaporates so we are left with a cloud of fine but very hard particles ina shotgun blast. That'll act as a sorting mechanism. Balloons etc will get shredded by the blast, relatively solid RVs wont be affected. So the interceptor following can see what is solid and what isn't. Thats one of the technologies used. Jello is good because it disperses evenly while something thats solid to start with (sand for example) clumps.

Jellos is also real good against satellites but we would use it a different way. The interceptor squirts the jello out to form a blob that coats the satellite. Flash evaporation then causes the jello to solidify and form a very hard opaque crust over the satellite. that blocks the optics and wrecks the solar power cells. The Boeing guy talking about this was asked what flavor jello worked best - his answer was lemon-lime. I think he was joking

[The Duchess of Zeon]

HUUUUGE False Analogy fallacy. The example of the bombing of Germany in World War II is totally inapplicable to comparisons with a nuclear attack. The Germans did not receive the total destructive power of the Allied bombing forces in one shot; the destruction was spread out through a four year period and at varying levels of effectiveness per mission. The Germans had plenty of time, comparatively speaking, between campaigns to repair industrial facilities and infrastructure to keep industrial production going throughout most of the war. And finally, German society of the 1940s is nowhere near comparable in any way, shape, or form to the highly interdependent, technologically sophisticated —and fragile— world of today.

This claim of your's is particularly silly. The modern world is far less vulnerable than that of Germany's era, not relying so much on heavy industry for many of the vital military functions but a far more dispersed light industrial complex which like the Japanese "cottage industry" would be far more difficult to kill or completely disable. This also is the support for much of what we rely on in society, for that matter--while at the same time, though heavy industry may have declined, the proliferation of smaller machine shops throughout the country remains roughly the same, those capable of engaging in repair and reconstruction work as long as there is a central authority to muster such resources. Which we clearly see can remain intact through a lot.

Operational tempo does matter quite a lot in terms of managing rebuilding, but one must remember that we also have far better and more redundant communications than anything that existed during the last era of strategic bombing. Our C4I systems allow for a much better control over the internal situation, that is to say, and a more efficient response--one that can be sustained in far more extreme conditions.

Finally, the total bomb tonnage dropped on Germany by the USAAF amounted to 916kt —3/5ths of a single multiwarhead ICBM in terms of destructive power and that was spread out over four years. By contrast, every target that gets hit in a full-scale nuclear strike will be receiving a World War II in one shot.

And there is the height of ridiculousness in your argument. You are ignoring the nature of atomic weaponry and resorting to the old fallacy that the increase in damage from an atomic device is directly equivlant to its kilotonage. This is simply not so. Why don't you go over to Mike's Nuclear Weapon Damage Calculator and punch in a 100kT device, and then a 1 MT device. The later won't do ten times as much damage, you know (though it appears you may have forgotten this).

Multiwarhead ICBMs are spread out in firepower, yes--but they have, at most, twelve devices. We're talking about hundreds of thousands of conventional bombs. Their effectiveness is also going to be increased by their quantity; they are not wasting the explosive power that they do produce nearly as much as nuclear devices. Nuclear devices produce a tremendous amount of energy, and they also waste a tremendous amount of energy--it quite doesn't get delivered to the target. For all the hugely impressive megatonage of the modern arsenals, they are not as destructive in real terms as one would imagine.

P.S. I would also like you to explain:

A simulated nuclear attack on no less than eighty separate urban targets in the United States with 1 megaton bombs produced fatality estimates of only 5 million.

It appears that the reference is from ("The Effects of Nuclear War", OTA 1979)

Considering that eighty one-megaton devices produce only five million casualties when attacking urban targets, would you like to explain how you are going to achieve the destruction of the nation with five hundred devices when the population and infrastructure becomes progressively more dispersed?

The total number of interceptor rockets planned for the full-scale NMD system is 250. This would hardly make a dent in a 1000-2000 warhead attack, particularly if the succeful kill-rate is only 66% or poorer, going by present test results even under highly "idealised" conditions..

Well, it's the beginning. It also speaks nothing of possible Nike-XE and Spartan type systems; or later increases in the number of available interceptors. I just happen to think that having an effective defence against certain nuclear devastation is far preferable than not; once you make it very hard to deliver nuclear bombs, and the only ways remaining limit you to a small number, you at least eliminate the possibility of the destruction of civilization by the devices.

Certainly the advantage of the beginning system is that it removes the possibility of accidental launches starting a war (see the Russians and the incident with the Norweigan sounding rocket), and it also guards against small states' arsenals.

[Patrick Degan]

Oh really? That's rich coming from somebody who can't bother to research a subject in depth before blowing his fool mouth off about it.

The same could be said about you, Deegan, what with your comments such as:


Except the plane-mounted laser is nowhere close to becoming reality either.

We've covered that before with ABL being tested next year.

Yes, and evidently you still can't tell the difference between a testing programme and an operational weapon.

THEL is having serious development problems, so much so that the Israelis have twice delayed THEL was successful, the problem was it was fixed in a single location and used expensive gasses to shoot down said rockets. The Military decided to defer further development in favor of solid state lasers, where you just put electricity in one end and get zap power out the other end.

Then THEL failed as a practical weapon.

As for MTHEL, it's successfully shot down multiple rockets in flight. And who cares about it taking up three semi trailers, Deegan? Go take a look at the amount of equipment needed to set up a Patriot battery (which is considered a battlefield weapon), and then get back to me.

Um, ahem:

http://www.army-technology.com/projects/patriot/

http://www.raytheon.com/products/patriot/

Patriot doesn't require three fucking semitrailers to haul its launcher around, and one Launch Control truck can control up to sixteen launchers. Whereas MTHEL makes for a big, fat, slow-moving target.

Sorry, but Edward Teller's Brilliant Pebbles pipedream went down the sinkhole even faster than his X-ray laser did, more than a decade ago.

For political reasons, not technical. The system worked, and was feasible with our current technology, and was low cost ($1.4m per interceptor). However, there was political flak from putting about 4,600+ weapons in orbit.

Wrong again:

http://www.space.com/businesstechnology ... 30711.html

excerpt

The space-based interceptors were under consideration by the MDA as a complement to ground based-modes of killing enemy missiles in flight. In theory, the mini satellites would home in and destroy enemy missiles in space by force of impact. But technical problems with miniaturization and weight proved severely limiting, Little said.

http://www.fas.org/news/usa/1998/03/980317-ucs.htm

excerpt

The technology still isn't ready:
Despite the considerable time and money invested, the basic technology for a national missile defense-"hit-to-kill" interceptors that would destroy their targets by ramming into them-is not ready for deployment. The test record for hit-to-kill interceptors has been very poor, even against cooperative test targets. According to a recent General Accounting Office (GAO) report, "Of the 20 intercept attempts since the early 1980s, only 6, or about 30 percent, have been successful." Even more relevant to national missile defenses are the 14 of these intercept tests that were conducted at high altitudes, of which only 2 were hits, for a 14 percent success rate. And the test record is not getting better with time: the most recent successful high-altitude test occurred in January 1991 and the last 9 such intercept tests have been failures.

The testing program is inadequate:
The planned test program is so meager that the Pentagon won't know how well the system works by 2000, when they may decide to build it. The Pentagon is completely ignoring the "fly before you buy" maxim. As the GAO report notes, only one integrated system test is planned prior to the deployment decision, and even that test will not include all system elements. Moreover, according to the system engineering contractor, the test program will not adequately test the ability of the system to discriminate warheads from decoys and debris, even though this task would be essential to the successful defense of the United States.

The fundamental problem of countermeasures remains unsolved: A more fundamental problem is that defenses will not face cooperative targets. All defenses that seek to intercept warheads outside of the atmosphere can be defeated by technically straight-forward countermeasures, and this problem remains unsolved despite decades of work. Indeed, this is precisely why the current program objectives call only for defending against "simple" warheads-those without effective countermeasures. However, any country that could build or acquire a long-range missile could also build or acquire effective countermeasures that would require less sophisticated technology than long-range missiles.

In the real world, defending against 5-20 warheads may be no more realistic than Reagan's dream of building an impenetrable shield.

http://www.environment-hawaii.org/393gao.htm

excerpt

Last March, the GAO submitted to Conyers the results of its investigation into the claims being made by SDIO concerning the effectiveness of the so-called "Brilliant Pebbles" defense system -- the proposal to enshroud the Earth with a web of orbiting weapons that would be capable of detecting and destroying long-range missiles.

The GAO found that SDIO had used computer simulations as the basis for claiming that the Brilliant Pebbles system could work. "Congress should be aware, however, of the simulations' limitations," the GAO warned. "The simulations are still immature and use many unproven assumptions. They do not demonstrate that Brilliant Pebbles can be built and will work."

http://www.environment-hawaii.org/393gao.htm

excerpt

The past two decades of efforts to invent a viable national missile defense have been characterized by exaggerated claims of success and promises of performance that later proved false. It is difficult to recall a missile defense proponent who understated the actual performance of a system. The problems began with the false claims of proponents of the X-ray laser that helped launch the SDI program1 and continue through claims today that Aegis destroyers and cruisers can quickly and inexpensively provide a highly-effective defense against both intermediate- and intercontinental-range ballistic missiles.

In 1992, the Chairman of the Government Operations Committee requested that the General Accounting Office review the accuracy of the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization's claims about the results of all flight tests of kinetic kill interceptors. This remains the only independent review of missile defense test claims. The GAO found that SDIO officials claimed five of the seven flight tests were successes and the other two were failures (one interceptor blew up on launch and one "Brilliant Pebbles" space-based interceptor shut down seconds after launch). However, GAO found a pattern of misleading claims, forcing them to conclude that SDIO officials had inaccurately portrayed four of the five tests as successes, when they were not.

Most importantly for the Subcommittee's purposes, these inaccurate reports included claims that a "Brilliant Pebbles" test was "a "90-percent success," and was ready to proceed to more advanced testing. GAO found that the "90-percent success" claim was based on a substantially downward revision of the original goals for the test to correspond with what the interceptor was able to achieve, not what was originally planned. Of the original four goals, none was fully met, including its complete inability to detect, acquire and track a target. Since the program's "accomplishments were significantly less than planned," GAO concluded, the first phase of the program's testing "was completed only in the sense that SDIO had decided to proceed into Phase II."2


Failure and fraud.

You can however see the obvious Brilliant Pebbles lineage in today's GBI Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle, as they look almost identical.

If EKI's performance is identical, it will be worse than useless.

System costs are irrevelant, really. All that matters are the number of weapons procured. You can make a program insanely expensive by reducing the number produced; witness the skyrocketing cost caused by slashing the B-2 production number from 132 aircraft to just 20.

False Analogy fallacy. The difference between the B2 and NMD is that the latter is not cost-effective against cheaper countermeasures or a swarm attack. And there will be only one opportunity for the system to work as promised.

As if that meant fuck-all about the issue at hand.

Except follow-on radars will not be as expensive as that first X-Band radar, due to the need of not having to ship everything to the site, and a limited construction season.

Which still does not answer the question regarding the system's overall cost and cost-effectiveness.

Except that's not the source of the cost for NMD.

Idiot.

Yes, you certainly are.

The Russians don't have quite this problem, as they have decommisioned silos that can be reactivated. And as for the Chinese, they can opt for mobile ICBMs on trucks —like the SS-18.

Except 176 of them were in Ukraine and have been blown up under START I.

The Ukraine is no longer part of Russia, and its government has committed to a nonnuclear policy.

And on 8 November 2001, the Russians began to trash the mobile launchers for the SS-24 SCALPEL.

Because of the shift to the SS-27 Topol.

And of course, the production line for the SS-24 SCALPEL and SS-18 SATAN were all in Ukraine, requiring the russians to have to start all over from scratch and build a totally new line for the TOPOL-M, which is not cheep, and they can only produce 10 to 15 TOPOL-Ms a YEAR.

SS-27 prices out at a unit cost of US$52 million, cheaper than Peacemaker was. Furthermore, it can be MIRVed to carry up to six warheads. And as yet, the Russians have no strategic need to procure more than 10-15 per year. Yet.

Lets not forget that mobile ICBMs bring in the problem of political control, a very touchy issue in a totalitarian/authoritarian state.

Non-sequitor, since the old Soviet Union fielded several regiments of mobile ICBMs as well as SSBNs.

GBI pricetag is a red herring, no matter how much you wish you could ignore the issue of system and infrastructure costs, plus maintenance.

While you ignore totally the entire nuclear infrastructure and maintenance cost required to build, refurbish, and operate nuclear missile silos, much less build new ones. Here's a hint, nuclear warheads have to have their tritium replaced every few years, that requires reactors to be run to generate said tritium, which is expensive.

Except Russia already has this nuclear infrastructure in place, as does China, and has done for 45+ years. Furthermore, mobile missiles eliminates the expense of refurbishing old silos or constructing new ones.

How you cling to that smelly red herring of yours.

Same could be said for you, you've thrown virtually every anti-ABM fallacy there is out, sometimes all in the same post.

Denial of an argument does not refute it.

Washington, D.C. . . In a new analysis of costs of national missile defense based on a report issued today by the Congressional Budget Office, Council for a Livable World and the Coalition to Reduce Nuclear Dangers estimate that the cost of the preferred Republican option of a layered defense would total at least $120 billion through 2015.

What a bunch of reputable analysts.

Attacking the Messenger fallacy.

$48.8 billion Current Clinton plans for ground-based NMD(2)
$35 billion Program design, procurement and construction
$13.9 billion Program operations and maintenance
$10.6 billion Costs of Space-Based Infrared Systems (SBIRS-low)(3)
$14.5 - $17.5 billion Sea-based National Missile Defense(4)
$14-17 billion Program acquisition
$500 million Program operations and maintenance
$18.25 billion Upper layer defense with 500 space-based Interceptors
$17 billion Program acquisition(5)
$1.25 billion Program operations and maintenance(6)
$27.5 billion 20 space-based lasers
$25 billion Program acquisition(7)
$2.5 billion Program operations and maintenance(8 )
$119.7 - 122.7 billion: Grand total for a layered defense with ground, sea and space-based components

Nice, go for the total shebang with all the options added in, as opposed to what's actually going to be built, in an attempt to inflate costs to make NMD look bad. Sooo many strawmen thrown together in that analysis.

The only Strawman here is your own. And again, denial of an argument does not refute it. Only the final figure represents a grand total for a full-scale EC3 NMD system. An itemised list is data for comparison —particularly when evaluating questions such as how many mobile ICBMs can be bought for each NMD item or the total programme cost.

Today, the original 3+3 system has become the first and second phase of the NMD system that the administration is readying for deployment. In the process, the schedule has slipped and the price has risen. According to the current schedule, the system will take at least nine years to deploy and cost at least $20 billion to build

http://www.globalsecurity.org/space/systems/nmd.htm

Except all 100~ interceptors will be deployed by 2007, in just four years, rather than nine.

At a savings of maybe $6 billion and providing no greater degree of protection. And with still unproven weaponry.

Either way, by late 2004, early 2005, we'll have 5 GBIs on site in Alaska providing limited capability against North Korean ICBM shots.

http://www.stanford.edu/class/e297c/war_peace/
death_and_taxes_war_finances/schandamuri.html

excerpt

During the Cold War, when missile defense research began, the ABM system was geared toward protecting us against Russia and China, both countries with significant nuclear capabilities. Now, however, justification for NMD are aimed at defending against Third-World countries like North Korea, Iran, Iraq (so called rogue nations). These countries would have no hope of defeating the U.S. and its allies in a nuclear war or conventional war for that matter. Any missile attack would invite a devastating American response. What national leader, rational or not, would readily invite the total destruction of his or her country?

Would any President feel completely secure with such an imperfect system? “Hit to kill” technology had been compared to a “bullet hitting a bullet.” The Pentagon hopes to achieve a 95% likelihood of destroying each warhead by firing multiple interceptors at each incoming warhead. There is a statistic then that if the likelihood of destroying each incoming warhead is 95%, then the likely hood of destroying every incoming warhead in an 8 warhead attack is only 66%. Being generous, if one afforded the NMD system a 98% probability of destroying each incoming warhead, the aggressor would need only fire 21 warhead at us in order to gain a 33% chance of getting one or more warheads by our defense system. Let us not forget that the adversary would likely launch decoys as well as active warheads, and due to the NMD systems inability to distinguish between real and decoy missiles, the end result looks rather grim.

Your Wall of Ignorance, I do believe...

Was there anything to be proved by posting all those articles which essentially agree that the current plan of 100~ interceptors will cost about $40 billion give or take a few? That still comes out to the cost of one mere big-ticket item procurement by the DoD.

Golden Mean fallacy.

Put down the opium pipe, Shep. The maximum number of interceptor rockets planned for the full C3 NMD configuration is 250 —and those are only a small portion of the cost for the entire system.

And if we wanted to, we could easily expand it to a couple hundred more interceptors, because at that point, blah blah blah blahblahblahblah...

And a potential enemy responds by ramping up production of missiles, warheads, and decoys. No buildup is one-way.

And you can take that "concession accepted" pronouncement of yours and cram that up your ass as well —that is, when you finish talking out of it.

Blow me, and stop posting so many fallacies about ABM programs in a single post, and then we'll talk.

Much to learn you still have. To label an arguement a fallacy, you must first actually disprove it.

[phongn]

Oi. I've spent a bit too much time on this, I think, and only ended up aggrivating Patrick's headache or something like that. Anyways, consider this a concession here, Patrick, I don't feel like butting heads with ya at the moment anymore

[Patrick Degan]

HUUUUGE False Analogy fallacy. The example of the bombing of Germany in World War II is totally inapplicable to comparisons with a nuclear attack. The Germans did not receive the total destructive power of the Allied bombing forces in one shot; the destruction was spread out through a four year period and at varying levels of effectiveness per mission. The Germans had plenty of time, comparatively speaking, between campaigns to repair industrial facilities and infrastructure to keep industrial production going throughout most of the war. And finally, German society of the 1940s is nowhere near comparable in any way, shape, or form to the highly interdependent, technologically sophisticated —and fragile— world of today.

This claim of your's is particularly silly. The modern world is far less vulnerable than that of Germany's era, not relying so much on heavy industry for many of the vital military functions but a far more dispersed light industrial complex which like the Japanese "cottage industry" would be far more difficult to kill or completely disable. This also is the support for much of what we rely on in society, for that matter--while at the same time, though heavy industry may have declined, the proliferation of smaller machine shops throughout the country remains roughly the same, those capable of engaging in repair and reconstruction work as long as there is a central authority to muster such resources. Which we clearly see can remain intact through a lot.

No, it's your attempt at a rebuttal which is silly. Modern industury and commerce has become totally dependent upon the microcircuit, the digital relay, modern synthetic and composite materials, and internet and satellite communication. In addition, miniaturisation has replaced so many of the "rugged" systems of past eras that no manufacturing setup of any scale is tooled up to backtrack its way to those earlier technologies. And many of those "cottage industry" jobs have been outsourced to low-wage countries over the last ten years. And again, despite the bombing campaign carried out in Europe, the Germans never experienced the wholesale devestation of an entire city, its manufacturing infrastructure, and a significant percentage of its population in a single attack.

Operational tempo does matter quite a lot in terms of managing rebuilding, but one must remember that we also have far better and more redundant communications than anything that existed during the last era of strategic bombing. Our C4I systems allow for a much better control over the internal situation, that is to say, and a more efficient response--one that can be sustained in far more extreme conditions.

The survival of our C41 system will not factor one jot in terms of the actual physical loss of infrastructure and industrial assets.

Finally, the total bomb tonnage dropped on Germany by the USAAF amounted to 916kt —3/5ths of a single multiwarhead ICBM in terms of destructive power and that was spread out over four years. By contrast, every target that gets hit in a full-scale nuclear strike will be receiving a World War II in one shot.

And there is the height of ridiculousness in your argument. You are ignoring the nature of atomic weaponry and resorting to the old fallacy that the increase in damage from an atomic device is directly equivlant to its kilotonage. This is simply not so. Why don't you go over to Mike's Nuclear Weapon Damage Calculator and punch in a 100kT device, and then a 1 MT device. The later won't do ten times as much damage, you know (though it appears you may have forgotten this).

It is your argument which is ridiculous. And you evidently missed the point. We're not talking about simplistic upscaling but concentration of destructive power. No World War II attack is equivalent in any way to an ICBM attack in terms of destructive potential per warhead, or efficency in targeting and damage infliction.

Multiwarhead ICBMs are spread out in firepower, yes--but they have, at most, twelve devices. We're talking about hundreds of thousands of conventional bombs. Their effectiveness is also going to be increased by their quantity; they are not wasting the explosive power that they do produce nearly as much as nuclear devices. Nuclear devices produce a tremendous amount of energy, and they also waste a tremendous amount of energy--it quite doesn't get delivered to the target. For all the hugely impressive megatonage of the modern arsenals, they are not as destructive in real terms as one would imagine.

Do you have any idea how utterly idiotic that sounds? Nuclear weapons may "waste a tremendous amount of energy", but the energy that actually is delivered to the target represents the most efficent concentration of destructive power devised for any single weapon. This is the primary reason why the invention of nuclear weaponry represents a qualitative change in the nature of warfare.

P.S. I would also like you to explain:

A simulated nuclear attack on no less than eighty separate urban targets in the United States with 1 megaton bombs produced fatality estimates of only 5 million.

It appears that the reference is from ("The Effects of Nuclear War", OTA 1979)

Considering that eighty one-megaton devices produce only five million casualties when attacking urban targets, would you like to explain how you are going to achieve the destruction of the nation with five hundred devices when the population and infrastructure becomes progressively more dispersed?

Try actually reading what I say and you might spare yourself the embarassment of erecting such a patently obvious and flimsy strawman. As I said in my exchanges with Phongn, to destroy a nation as technologically and economically interdependent as the United States has become does not require "flattening every city" or exterminating the entire national population —merely the elimination of enough key assets to make the entire structure collapse. "Flattening every city" and exterminating the inhabitants thereof is not the objective of modern strategic nuclear planning, nor is the use of megaton-class warheads laid down or necessary given the present-day accuracy of ICBM warhead targeting.

The total number of interceptor rockets planned for the full-scale NMD system is 250. This would hardly make a dent in a 1000-2000 warhead attack, particularly if the succeful kill-rate is only 66% or poorer, going by present test results even under highly "idealised" conditions..

Well, it's the beginning. It also speaks nothing of possible Nike-XE and Spartan type systems; or later increases in the number of available interceptors. I just happen to think that having an effective defence against certain nuclear devastation is far preferable than not; once you make it very hard to deliver nuclear bombs, and the only ways remaining limit you to a small number, you at least eliminate the possibility of the destruction of civilization by the devices.

Assuming the system actually works as advertised.

Certainly the advantage of the beginning system is that it removes the possibility of accidental launches starting a war (see the Russians and the incident with the Norweigan sounding rocket), and it also guards against small states' arsenals.

An accidental launch scenario is unlikely to involve only a handful of missiles, if it happens at all, which is unlikely. And small rogue states are far more likely to employ methods of attack for which NMD will be useless to defend against.

[MKSheppard]

And again, despite the bombing campaign carried out in Europe, the Germans never experienced the wholesale devestation of an entire city, its manufacturing infrastructure, and a significant percentage of its population in a single attack.

Go look up Dresden and for the Japanese, Tokyo. Those cities
were effectively destroyed as much as Hiroshima and Nagasaki
were.

[Patrick Degan]

And again, despite the bombing campaign carried out in Europe, the Germans never experienced the wholesale devestation of an entire city, its manufacturing infrastructure, and a significant percentage of its population in a single attack.

Go look up Dresden and for the Japanese, Tokyo. Those cities were effectively destroyed as much as Hiroshima and Nagasaki were.

Yes, and it took bombloads numbering in the hundreds delivered by multiple squadrons of aircraft and timeframes of hours to accomplish those levels of destruction. Do you not comprehend the meaning of the phrase concentration of destructive power?