NMD test goes balls-up

[Patrick Degan]

It makes a considerable difference, because jammers directly affect the ability of the system to target objects in the flight path

Actually, I would love to see you fit a jammer into a re-entry vehicle, competiting
with all that limited space for:

A Nuclear Device
Heat Shielding
Batteries
Radar Altimeter
et cetera.

If putting a jammer onto your re-entry vehicle forces you to go from 100 kt to 50 kt, the Defense has shot down 50% of your warheads even before the war has started.

The jammer would be in the warhead bus, numbskull, not in the actual warhead vehicle, and it would not require much of a space or weight penalty. The warheads themselves would have and be accompanied by their own pen-aids.

while decoys complicate the problem of hitting actual warheads by several orders of magnitude.

Actually, they don't.

Stuart Slade, Defense Industry Analyst:
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 in a 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.

Actually, they do:

This point may serve as a worst-case scenario, but as more and more countries obtain nuclear power, serious consideration must be taken in this matter. However, using the current infrared sensors as detection of warheads has been a failure thus far. In the recent interception test that took place in July, the mock warhead that was launched contained inexpensive mylar balloons that can fool the infrared sensors. In order to be effective in stopping the kill vehicle, these balloons must be as bright as or just brighter than the light released by the warhead. A warhead would generally be hiding with up to hundreds of decoy balloons making the warhead difficult to stop. However, the test that was performed did not prove anything. The only decoy balloon that was launched with the warhead had a brightness level much different from the warhead meaning that it would have been difficult for the infrared sensors to be confused by it. Secondly, the balloon did not inflate during the test, making the test a complete failure. Ted Postol, MIT physics professor, says that the infrared sensors on its kill vehicle could not discriminate between warheads and other countermeasures. (Deflated Missile Defense, 2000).

And:

Nuclear warheads with antisimulation balloon decoys. A nuclear warhead could be hidden within an aluminum-coated mylar balloon and released together with a large number of empty balloons, as illustrated in figure 4. Such "antisimulation"--making a warhead look like a decoy--could be easier and more effective than making decoys look like warheads. The technique is particularly useful against the exoatmospheric interceptors planned for the NMD system: Because light and heavy objects travel on the same trajectories above the atmosphere, large numbers of effective decoys could be added to a missile without a prohibitive weight penalty. Simple techniques can be used to deny the defense system sensors any distinguishing physical signal that would show which balloon contains a warhead. For example, balloons could be given slightly different temperatures, either passively, by using surface coatings with different emissivities (figure 5), or actively, by using small battery-powered heaters.


Reducing target visibility
Nuclear warheads with cooled shrouds. An attacker could enclose a nuclear warhead within a double-walled cone containing liquid nitrogen to hide it from the EKV's infrared sensors (see figure 6). Cooling the outer cone to 77 K would reduce the infrared radiation emitted by the shrouded warhead by a factor of at least a million. While the shrouded warhead would still be seen by the NMD system's X-band radars, the kill vehicle would be unable to detect the warhead in time to maneuver to hit it.

We covered this topic before. I guess we're again dealing with your evident learning difficulty here.

And a boomer does not have to travel all the way to the enemy's coast to launch its weapons in sufficent range to reduce response time.

Actually, it does. As the distance to target increases, the higher your ballistic trajectory is with wingless missiles.There's a damn good reason the Soviets kept sending SSBNs into the middle of the North Atlantic ocean even after they had acquired the capability to strike all US targets with a Typhoon or Delta III sitting at pierside in Polarnyy.

It was so they could reduce time to impact to just oh, 15 minutes for me in the vinicity of Washington DC.

Which refutes the argument on this point... how, exactly?

They even had a land-attack mode for their nuclear-tipped SUBROCskis that would have allowed a warning time of only 5 minutes, but would have required them to get within ~45 km of the coast.

Red Herring Fallacy. Yet another one for your record.

SBIRS does not erase this problem, no matter how much you dearly wish to believe it does. The fact that it remains an important problem in the planning of NMD demonstrates this.

Do you have any idea how much of a heat sink a ballistic missile is? That massive launch plume will show up on virtually any infrared sensor worthy of it's designation, and even after the engine has burned out, there will remain a massive amount of heat on the missile itself which cannot be radiated away fast enough.

Oh really:

Medium- to Long-Wave Infrared and Long-Wave Infrared Sensors

Sensor Resolution. According to the laws of physics, the diffraction-limited angular resolution of a sensor is given by λ/δ, where λ is the wavelength of the radiation the sensor detects and δ is the diameter of the sensor aperture. For a medium-wave infrared sensor with an aperture diameter of 0.5 meters, the diffraction-limited angular resolution would therefore be roughly 4μm/0.5m=8μrad. At a target range of 1000 km, its resolution would be about 8 meters. For a long-wave infrared sensor with the same aperture diameter, the diffraction-limited angular resultuion would instead be roughly 10μm/0.5m=20μrad. At a target range of 1000km, its resolution would be about 20 meters.

Thus the spatial resolution of the medium- to long-wave and long-wave infrared sensors will be too poor to allow any imaging of a warhead-sized object (with dimensions of roughly 2 meters); instead these sensors will see all midcourse objects as point-emitters. The sensors will also be unable to resolve closely spaced objects and will therefore not be able to observe the deployment of countermeasures (such as balloons) in any detail.

From Appendix B to the UCS/MIT report Countermeasures: A Technical Evaluation of the Operational Effectiveness of the Planned US National Missile Defense System, accessed through the .pdf link at the site linked above. And unless you're going to try to make the ludicrous statement that the warhead bus would be dragging its carrier missile along with it after its discarded its stages in flight, the issue of the heat from the booster is a non-starter.

It is no such indication at all. And it's already been pointed out that Nike-Zeus intercepted a missile which had a velocity one-fifth that of an ICBM warhead in transit.

With a system that was not designed for skin to skin-hits, using the technological equivalent of a giant ESTES model rocket.

Aimed at an object travelling far slower than an ICBM warhead and therefore irrelevant to this or any discussion on the subject before the bar. Which was part of a system ultimately cancelled as technically useless to the mission of stopping a mass-warhead attack on CONUS. You have no argument.

And I've looked at PAC-3 and nowhere has anybody made the farsical claim that it's mission is analogous to an ICBM intercept. Either you are ignorant of this or you are dishonestly conflating the two concepts to support an increasingly threadbare argument.

Actually...

Link

A missile enters the terminal phase when the warhead falls back into the atmosphere. This phase generally lasts from 30 seconds to one minute.

The primary elements in the Terminal Defense Segment are:

* Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD)
* PATRIOT Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3)
* Arrow, a joint effort between the U.S. and Israel
* Medium Extended Air Defense System (MEADS), a co-developmental program with Germany and Italy.

Uh huh:

Home :: Missile Defense Systems
Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3)

Country: USA
Basing: Land
Status: Deployed

Details

Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) is a surface-to-air guided missile defense system that builds upon the existing Patriot air defense infrastructure (used most notably during the Persian Gulf War in 1991). The new fully operational PAC-3 provides advanced capability against enemy cruise missiles, aircraft, and unlike previous systems, tactical ballistic missiles.

I suppose you are simply too stupid to understand the fundamental difference between strategic ICBM warheads and short-range tactical ballistic missiles.

Riiiight —as if a potential enemy would never consider dedicating a 1MT warhead for the purpose of radar-blinding. Are you really this obtuse?

It was considered by defense analysts and discarded...in the 1960s.

Not by the people at Bell Labs:



Take particular note of the quote at the top of page four of the memorandum: "They (Bell Labs engineers) said the Minuteman defense could be overwhelmed or defeated by blacking out the radars". And that was in 1974.

Page 211 of SoF

A rococo elaboration was the "ladder-down" attack. The offense would explode a warhead just inside the atmosphere to blind the defender's radar; then a second warhead would drop through the blob of the first and be fired; then subsequent warheads would repeat the sequence, climbing down to the target, which would be nailed by the final blast. Well, no attacker would believe that warheads could be located and exploded with such split-second precision at intercontinental range. Even if he could, high virtual attrition had been imposed on him. And defensive tactics were easy: Early-warning radars would identify the attack, and exoatmospheric interceptors would break it up in space. A ladder-down attack in the atmosphere would be foiled by firing an interceptor with proximity fuse through a blob to kill the successor warhead. Although taken seriously by some consultant scientists circa 1960, ladder-down tactics were merely a curiosity of the paper wars.

And as I said the last time you threw this up, the quote a) deals with assumptions pre-MIRV and as is pointed out in the very passage b) based on assumptions which were purely speculative on paper. And just to remind you:



Take particular note of the quote at the top of page four of the memorandum: "They (Bell Labs engineers) said the Minuteman defense could be overwhelmed or defeated by blacking out the radars". And that was in 1974.

For the fifth or sixth time in the course of this thread —the problem is not whether the hardware is protected from EMP but rather the phenomenon of EMP-induced atmopheric ionisation which scatters or blocks radar signals. This was one of the factors which killed Sentinel and Safeguard back in the 70s.

Page 211 of SoF
And defensive tactics were easy: Early-warning radars would identify the attack,
and exoatmospheric interceptors would break it up in space. A ladder-down attack in the atmosphere would be foiled by firing an interceptor with proximity fuse through a blob to kill the successor warhead. Although taken seriously by some consultant scientists circa 1960, ladder-down tactics were merely a curiosity of the paper wars.

Take particular note of the quote at the top of page four of the memorandum: "They (Bell Labs engineers) said the Minuteman defense could be overwhelmed or defeated by blacking out the radars". And that was in 1974.

It's sad to see you spouting crap that was rejected fourty years ago by people
more learned than you.

Nowhere near as sad as the spectacle of you making a rank fool of yourself by denying the fact that people far more learned than you had not rejected this "crap" about nuclear-blinding at all. Namely, the engineers at Bell Labs, the primary contractor for Safeguard.

[Patrick Degan]

Not very bizzare at all. After all, both systems are designed to intercept a target. Yes, most SAMs aren't designed for Ballistic Missile interception. Yet, there have been confirmed reports of skin to skin kills with a SAM. Again, decoys and jammers are something both systems must deal with, so claiming that they somehow make the ABM problem intristically more difficult than a SAM solution is a non starter. To give a modern example, the Patriot Advanced Capability 3 (PAC-3) is not only designed to knock down ballistic missiles, but is in fact the currently designated terminal phase interceptor.

PAC-3 is designed to knock down SRBMs —theatre weapons like Scuds. SAMs would be totally unsuited to challenge ICBM warheads. Furthermore, ICBM warheads don't carry active systems on board, so the notion that they could be challenged by decoys and jamming is laughable in the extreme. It is your comical argument which is the non-starter.

http://www.acq.osd.mil/mda/mdalink/html/terminal.html
Oh, look. It's a terminal phase interceptor.
http://www.acq.osd.mil/mda/mdalink/pdf/bmdsbook.pdf
And it's listed is being the terminal phase interceptor for the initial capability, on page 7. Ergo, it can do terminal phase defense.

—of THEATRE ballistic missiles, you moron. Objects travelling at no more than maybe 3km/sec.

As to your "Furthermore," are you high? do you have some sort of learning disability making you incapable of reading? or are you just trying to act stupid?

A laughable comment coming from somebody who very obviously is in way over his head in this little contest. Do kindly provide us with a link demonstrating that ICBM warheads are equipped with active systems which are subject to jamming or spoofing. Or shut the fuck up.

SLBMs are implying the initial system capability is targeted at stopping a Russian attack. Since less GBIs are being procured than the Russians have ICBMs, that doesn't matter. The only other countries I'm aware of that have SLBMs are England (not likely in any foreseeable confrontation), the US(need not explain), France ( see England), and China (launching boat(yes, only one boat for at least 5 years) gets one shot before a 688 sinks it). So nice red herring.

Yes —yours. Nobody is talking about facing an attack from France or England. And a boomer does not have to travel all the way to the enemy's coast to launch its weapons in sufficent range to reduce response time. Oh, and a Chinese SLBM's "one shot" would involve its firing all its missiles before that 688 boat could sink it in your scenario. And the reason for discussing the possibility of a Russian attack is because they are the most logical nuclear threat with a force sufficent to overcome a missile defence.

Again, Russia is not who the initial capability is aimed against protecting against. The have more ICBMs than we have interceptors. China's 1 SSBN will take a significant amount of time to launch it's missiles. While it's trying to do so, the 688 that's tracking it because tensions are high, is launching a Mk48 at it. Since a SSBN has to maintain a specific attitude and depth, their evasive actions will severly screw up any subsequent launch.

Assuming the 688 finds it in the first place, assuming the Chinese haven't had a boat in attack position for months, assuming a whole plethora of things which makes this mere wanking on your part. And as for the Russians, they certainly are not going to sit by and allow their strategic rocket force to be rendered impotent by us, no more than we would if the situations were reversed. And as they are the only serious nuclear threat to the United States, a minimal defence is worse than useless.

As for the rationale that we need this system to defend us from the Chinese (which was the argument for Sentinel back in 1965), this doesn't bear close examination any more today than it did back then. The Chinese certainly have no motive to launch an attack and their nuclear policy has reflected a purely defensive/retaliatory posture since they first acquired nuclear capability in 1964. They certainly know they are outgunned 20:1 and would never survive a U.S. retaliation. They are not likley to launch a nuclear attack on the United States, so arguing for the Chinese threat requires ignoring reality to do so.

As to the ICBMs with modified boosters to allow a depressed trajectory... the SBIRS system allows detection of the launch fairly quickly. Actual capabilities being classified, I wouldn't know how precisely they can give a trajectory.

SBIRS does not erase this problem, no matter how much you dearly wish to believe it does. The fact that it remains an important problem in the
planning of NMD demonstrates

Not erase, of course, mitigate it to some degree? Yes. As to what degree, I couldn't tell you if I knew.

Actually, not even by a minimal degree. We already have infrared sensors to monitor rocket launches and have for nearly forty years. SBIRS is a fancier version of this basic capability, but various countermeasures to mask warhead IR signatures or put out false warhead IR signatures from decoys are technologically feasible. SBIRS has more value in monitoring the battlefield where tactical missiles would be employed, but there is little to no guarantee that it will provide any better capability to aid a defence against ICBMs than the present-design IR monitoring systems.

Indication of how much more complex a SAM intercept is than a ABM intercept is. As for no SAM system capable of coping, Nike Zeus accomplished it 40 years ago. And again, see the PAC-3

It is no such indication at all. And it's already been pointed out that Nike-Zeus intercepted a missile which had a velocity one-fifth that of an ICBM warhead in transit. And I've looked at PAC-3 and nowhere has anybody made the farsical claim that it's mission is analogous to an ICBM intercept. Either you are ignorant of this or you are dishonestly conflating the two concepts to support an increasingly threadbare argument.

ABM must intercept a ballistic target. SAMs must intercept something actively trying to evade. Which is more complex? As to speed, all that's required is making sure that the interceptor and the warhead are in the same location at the same time.

How extraordinarily simpleminded an argument. The speed disparity makes a considerable difference in the problem and it really should not be necessary to point this out.

1.4 MT huh... I suppose the fact that the average ICBM warhead is 350 kT or so, doesn't really make a difference then, eh?

Riiiight —as if a potential enemy would never consider dedicating a 1MT warhead for the purpose of radar-blinding. Are you really this obtuse?

Then A, since 1MT nukes are heavier, it's more than 1 warhead equivalent, and B, it's not going towards an actual target, we come out ahead, because ICBMs are not cheap, and the C3I infrastructure for them is even less so.

That is not the way it works, numbskull. One MT nukes are not "heavier" to any significant degree than 330KT warheads; they essentially are the same design. And a warhead bus is easily capable of mounting a mix of munitions. And that C31 infrastructure is rendered useless once the radars it depends upon are blinded. And since MIRVed ICBMs carry far more warheads per rocket than single-warhead ICBMs, the cost disparity is in favour of the MIRV, not the ABM system. This consideration killed Sentinel and Safeguard.

Fort Greely, one of the GBI stations, is approximately 5000 km from Vandenberg AFB, one of the other GBI stations. Let's not get into the fact that a surprisingly large number of systems are hardened against EMP, and of course the radar sites are going to be especially hardened.

For the fifth or sixth time in the course of this thread —the problem is not whether the hardware is protected from EMP but rather the phenomenon of EMP-induced atmopheric ionisation which scatters or blocks radar signals. This was one of the factors which killed Sentinel and Safeguard back in the 70s.

Again, for the fifth or sixth time this thread, there's a reason for having multiple radar sites, the warhead is required to be within rangem without getting hit in the first place, and if the follow-on wave is already in the air, we already know the positions and velocities, allowing basic physics to be able to figure out the approximate location of the warheads.

Are you really this stupid, or merely pretending at it? With a range-effect radius of hundreds of kilometres, more than one radar will be blacked out. This graphic illustrates the nature of the problem:



And firing blind at "approximated" positions for warheads will achieve exactly zero results.

Of course, if you're detonating a warhead over Fort Greely, it's been within the interception envelope for quite some time.

The EMP effect extends over a radius of hundreds of kilometres. The nuke would not have to be detonated right over Ft. Greely.

Still within the interception envelope, numbnuts. And you still have to blind multiple radars.

Sigh:

[Beowulf]

Learn how to fucking snip, dimwit.

http://www.acq.osd.mil/mda/mdalink/html/terminal.html
Oh, look. It's a terminal phase interceptor.
http://www.acq.osd.mil/mda/mdalink/pdf/bmdsbook.pdf
And it's listed is being the terminal phase interceptor for the initial capability, on page 7. Ergo, it can do terminal phase defense.

—of THEATRE ballistic missiles, you moron. Objects travelling at no more than maybe 3km/sec.

Again, page 7, which refers entirely to the multilayered missile shield. So if the PAC-3 deployed in the US are only going to be defeating tactical missiles, where are they getting launched from? Panama?

As to your "Furthermore," are you high? do you have some sort of learning disability making you incapable of reading? or are you just trying to act stupid?

A laughable comment coming from somebody who very obviously is in way over his head in this little contest. Do kindly provide us with a link demonstrating that ICBM warheads are equipped with active systems which are subject to jamming or spoofing. Or shut the fuck up.

Considering I didn't claim that, but you can't read, and are apparently delibrately trying to strawman me, concession accepted.

Again, Russia is not who the initial capability is aimed against protecting against. The have more ICBMs than we have interceptors. China's 1 SSBN will take a significant amount of time to launch it's missiles. While it's trying to do so, the 688 that's tracking it because tensions are high, is launching a Mk48 at it. Since a SSBN has to maintain a specific attitude and depth, their evasive actions will severly screw up any subsequent launch.

Assuming the 688 finds it in the first place, assuming the Chinese haven't had a boat in attack position for months, assuming a whole plethora of things which makes this mere wanking on your part. And as for the Russians, they certainly are not going to sit by and allow their strategic rocket force to be rendered impotent by us, no more than we would if the situations were reversed. And as they are the only serious nuclear threat to the United States, a minimal defence is worse than useless.

The Russians have economy problems. Since the missile defense system isn't capable of stopping a Russian attack, they have no need to be worried. Especially considering that they have an ABM system of their own, which is currently operational. And I see that you're making assumptions about the current disposition of stuff you couldn't possibly have knowledge of.

Not erase, of course, mitigate it to some degree? Yes. As to what degree, I couldn't tell you if I knew.

Actually, not even by a minimal degree. We already have infrared sensors to monitor rocket launches and have for nearly forty years. SBIRS is a fancier version of this basic capability, but various countermeasures to mask warhead IR signatures or put out false warhead IR signatures from decoys are technologically feasible. SBIRS has more value in monitoring the battlefield where tactical missiles would be employed, but there is little to no guarantee that it will provide any better capability to aid a defence against ICBMs than the present-design IR monitoring systems.

So you know the exact capabilities of the SBIRS high and low systems. Considering that's classified... So you don't know. Considering it doesn't take much physics to figure out the speed of rocket when you know which points it occupies during the burn, and when the observations were, it isn't that hard to figure out the rough trajectory. That will give you the trajectory of the warhead bus, letting you figure out where those warheads are going.

ABM must intercept a ballistic target. SAMs must intercept something actively trying to evade. Which is more complex? As to speed, all that's required is making sure that the interceptor and the warhead are in the same location at the same time.

How extraordinarily simpleminded an argument. The speed disparity makes a considerable difference in the problem and it really should not be necessary to point this out.

It makes less of a difference than you think.

Then A, since 1MT nukes are heavier, it's more than 1 warhead equivalent, and B, it's not going towards an actual target, we come out ahead, because ICBMs are not cheap, and the C3I infrastructure for them is even less so.

That is not the way it works, numbskull. One MT nukes are not "heavier" to any significant degree than 330KT warheads; they essentially are the same design. And a warhead bus is easily capable of mounting a mix of munitions. And that C31 infrastructure is rendered useless once the radars it depends upon are blinded. And since MIRVed ICBMs carry far more warheads per rocket than single-warhead ICBMs, the cost disparity is in favour of the MIRV, not the ABM system. This consideration killed Sentinel and Safeguard.

Then you wouldn't mind explaining why the MIRVed SS-N-18 missile has warheads half the size of an un-MIRVed one, would you? I mean, the MIRV version has 3 warheads, instead of one. And if the warhead bus is "easily capable of mounting a mix of munitions", then why don't any ICBMs mount different size warheads? And interceptors cost much less than a ICBM. Enough so that the trade off is actually in favor of the interceptors, even though you must have more of them. A Minuteman III costs 2 million in 1970's dollars, which is about 10 million today. The GBI costs 1.1 million each. And then of course, you also have to deal with the various arms limitations treaties, which restrict the number of ICBMs.

Again, for the fifth or sixth time this thread, there's a reason for having multiple radar sites, the warhead is required to be within rangem without getting hit in the first place, and if the follow-on wave is already in the air, we already know the positions and velocities, allowing basic physics to be able to figure out the approximate location of the warheads.

Are you really this stupid, or merely pretending at it? With a range-effect radius of hundreds of kilometres, more than one radar will be blacked out. This graphic illustrates the nature of the problem:

http://www.heritage.org/Research/Missil ... 72map1.gif

And firing blind at "approximated" positions for warheads will achieve exactly zero results.

Nice image... But again, the radars are seperated by thousands of kilometers. Additionally, you have yet to show that the region of atmospheric ionization is hundreds of kilometers across, rather than the EMP effects.

EKVs are IR guided. Firing at approximate position will achieve non-zero, but possibly degraded results, due to the fact that the EKV uses data from off board sensors as well.

The EMP effect extends over a radius of hundreds of kilometres. The nuke would not have to be detonated right over Ft. Greely.

Still within the interception envelope, numbnuts. And you still have to blind multiple radars.

Sigh:

http://www.heritage.org/Research/Missil ... 72map1.gif

Again, nice image, but, see above.

[Patrick Degan]

Learn how to fucking snip, dimwit.

So you can merrily quote things out of context? I don't think so.

http://www.acq.osd.mil/mda/mdalink/html/terminal.html
Oh, look. It's a terminal phase interceptor.
http://www.acq.osd.mil/mda/mdalink/pdf/bmdsbook.pdf
And it's listed is being the terminal phase interceptor for the initial capability, on page 7. Ergo, it can do terminal phase defense.

—of THEATRE ballistic missiles, you moron. Objects travelling at no more than maybe 3km/sec.

Again, page 7, which refers entirely to the multilayered missile shield. So if the PAC-3 deployed in the US are only going to be defeating tactical missiles, where are they getting launched from? Panama?

PAC-3's mission in the US deals with possible missile launches from ships close to the coast directly threatening the Ft. Greely site. PAC-3 is always a tactical battlefield weapon.

As to your "Furthermore," are you high? do you have some sort of learning disability making you incapable of reading? or are you just trying to act stupid?

A laughable comment coming from somebody who very obviously is in way over his head in this little contest. Do kindly provide us with a link demonstrating that ICBM warheads are equipped with active systems which are subject to jamming or spoofing. Or shut the fuck up.

Considering I didn't claim that, but you can't read, and are apparently delibrately trying to strawman me, concession accepted.

Oh really? DID YOU OR DID YOU NOT SAY THIS:

Again, decoys and jammers are something both systems must deal with, so claiming that they somehow make the ABM problem intristically more difficult than a SAM solution is a non starter.

How are ICBM warheads going to be jammed? How can they be spoofed by decoys? You are saying in that statement that this would be a problem both systems would have to cope with. The opposing system is by necessity the ICBM warheads —which carry no active systems on board and therefore nothing to be jammed or spoofed. Not a strawman, fuckwit, and therefore you can take that "concession accepted" statement and cram it up your ass.

Again, Russia is not who the initial capability is aimed against protecting against. The have more ICBMs than we have interceptors. China's 1 SSBN will take a significant amount of time to launch it's missiles. While it's trying to do so, the 688 that's tracking it because tensions are high, is launching a Mk48 at it. Since a SSBN has to maintain a specific attitude and depth, their evasive actions will severly screw up any subsequent launch.

Assuming the 688 finds it in the first place, assuming the Chinese haven't had a boat in attack position for months, assuming a whole plethora of things which makes this mere wanking on your part. And as for the Russians, they certainly are not going to sit by and allow their strategic rocket force to be rendered impotent by us, no more than we would if the situations were reversed. And as they are the only serious nuclear threat to the United States, a minimal defence is worse than useless.

The Russians have economy problems. Since the missile defense system isn't capable of stopping a Russian attack, they have no need to be worried. Especially considering that they have an ABM system of their own, which is currently operational. And I see that you're making assumptions about the current disposition of stuff you couldn't possibly have knowledge of.

You should be far more concerned with your own lack-of-knowledge, boy. It's spread out all over this thread. And Russian GDP is now at US$1.3 trillion and growing at a consistent rate of 5.8% annually. As for the Russian ABM system, all they're doing is upgrading it to minimum standard; they've not expanded it beyond a defence of Moscow since it was built and in the meantime they're putting far more of their defence rubles toward Topol-M and the army than toward the ABM.

Not erase, of course, mitigate it to some degree? Yes. As to what degree, I couldn't tell you if I knew.

Actually, not even by a minimal degree. We already have infrared sensors to monitor rocket launches and have for nearly forty years. SBIRS is a fancier version of this basic capability, but various countermeasures to mask warhead IR signatures or put out false warhead IR signatures from decoys are technologically feasible. SBIRS has more value in monitoring the battlefield where tactical missiles would be employed, but there is little to no guarantee that it will provide any better capability to aid a defence against ICBMs than the present-design IR monitoring systems.

So you know the exact capabilities of the SBIRS high and low systems. Considering that's classified... So you don't know. Considering it doesn't take much physics to figure out the speed of rocket when you know which points it occupies during the burn, and when the observations were, it isn't that hard to figure out the rough trajectory. That will give you the trajectory of the warhead bus, letting you figure out where those warheads are going.

It also doesn't take much physics to figure out how SBIRS will function or is equipped, as this report demonstrates:

Link

Medium- to Long-Wave Infrared and Long-Wave Infrared Sensors

Sensor Resolution. According to the laws of physics, the diffraction-limited angular resolution of a sensor is given by λ/δ, where λ is the wavelength of the radiation the sensor detects and δ is the diameter of the sensor aperture. For a medium-wave infrared sensor with an aperture diameter of 0.5 meters, the diffraction-limited angular resolution would therefore be roughly 4μm/0.5m=8μrad. At a target range of 1000 km, its resolution would be about 8 meters. For a long-wave infrared sensor with the same aperture diameter, the diffraction-limited angular resultuion would instead be roughly 10μm/0.5m=20μrad. At a target range of 1000km, its resolution would be about 20 meters.

Thus the spatial resolution of the medium- to long-wave and long-wave infrared sensors will be too poor to allow any imaging of a warhead-sized object (with dimensions of roughly 2 meters); instead these sensors will see all midcourse objects as point-emitters. The sensors will also be unable to resolve closely spaced objects and will therefore not be able to observe the deployment of countermeasures (such as balloons) in any detail.

From Appendix B to the UCS/MIT report Countermeasures: A Technical Evaluation of the Operational Effectiveness of the Planned US National Missile Defense System, accessed through the .pdf link at the site linked above.

ABM must intercept a ballistic target. SAMs must intercept something actively trying to evade. Which is more complex? As to speed, all that's required is making sure that the interceptor and the warhead are in the same location at the same time.

How extraordinarily simpleminded an argument. The speed disparity makes a considerable difference in the problem and it really should not be necessary to point this out.

It makes less of a difference than you think.

And this is based on... your wishful thinking that it doesn't? You'll have to pardon me for laughing. And as to that issue, well:

really:

Radar Blackout was a serious problem for Safeguard, particularly for its PAR radars, whose UHF frequencies were strongly absorbed by ambient ionization, fireballs from intercepts or salvage fusing, and remote regions. Ionization due to auroral effects is strong enough to cause radar degradation in certain seasons. Fireballs are generally ionization regions centered on the explosion. Remote regions involve beta rays (electrons) and fission fragments from explosions at higher altitudes that deposit at 50–60 km, where they produce enough ionization and absorption to affect radar and communication systems. Although they can deposit at lower altitudes than the explosions that produce them, they have similar system impacts, so Appendix D treats them together. Low-altitude nuclear bursts in the Sprint engagement altitude and yield region produce fireballs a few kilometers in diameter that quickly achieve pressure balance, radiate to temperatures of a fraction of an electron volt. Their initial absorption at radar wavelengths is very strong and is maintained for several minutes. They are essentially black to UHF and lower frequency radars throughout structured attacks lasting a few minutes. However, such fireballs need not completely block radar operation. The fireball from a MT burst at sea level is about 1 km across, as is that from a Sprint-sized KT range explosion at 45 km, which would exclude a solid angle of about (1 km/45 km)^2 = 0.001 sr. Unless there were dozens of bursts in the radar’s field of regard, performance should not be severely degraded. However, a MT explosion at that altitude would produce a fireball initially about 10 km across, which would block about (10/45)^2 = 0.05 sr. A dozen large explosions could block the radars for endoatmospheric intercepts and reduce the flexibility of those for exoatmospheric intercepts. The uncertain coupling of energy into the low density ambient air at high altitudes by exoatmospheric explosions produces 10- to 100-fold uncertainties in predictions of the size of the regions affected by blackout and refraction from high-altitude explosions. Reducing these uncertainties would be difficult because of the lack of data. The U.S. detonated seven devices in the 10 to 250 km altitude region to be used for Safeguard defenses, but only two exoatmospheric nuclear tests relevant to Spartan. Neither tested the key coupling issues in those altitudes or the multi-burst phenomenology that would cause the greatest degradation and uncertainty in expected scenarios. Measurements were made of radar and communication degradations at various frequencies and ranges from the burst, but not of fireball interior ionization and absorption.

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22
The tests were recorded photographically with films only sensitive in the visible; thus, there is little basis for IR background predictions. Megaton explosions at altitudes of 150–250 km create hot, ionized fireballs 100s of kilometers across. Most ambient air molecules are stripped of some or most of their electrons, producing initial electron densities of about 10^9 to 10^12/cc. At early times, the fireball would form a reflective region of a solid angle of about (300 km/600 km) 2 = 0.3 sr. Placed in front of a PAR, an excluded angle that large would mask the trajectories of subsequent RVs the PARs would need to detect and track in 10s of sec onds. Such obscurations would be unacceptable against attackers spaced at short intervals. As affordable basing allowed little overlap in coverage between adjacent PARs, these obscurations could not be overcome by internetting PAR measurements. After a few 10s of seconds, the fireballs’ temperature should cool by radiation to temperatures of a few thousand degrees. As the fireball cools, the electron density falls. After that, the principal mechanism for the removal of ionization is radiative recombination, which is quadratic in electron density with rate coefficient C R= 10^12cc/s.

Recombination causes the electron density n e to fall as 1/CRt. After a time of about 300 s, the electron density drops below the critical density n c of about 3 x 10^9/cc that would cause complete reflection at PAR’s UHF frequency. Even later, when the fireball is no longer reflecting, absorption losses could still be unacceptable. When electron-ion interactions are the dominant source of collisions, the absorption coefficient α(db/km) is approximately 0.1(n e/f)^2.

Figure D.1 shows absorption as a function of time after a high-altitude explosion for frequencies of 0.5, 2, and 10 GHz. At the PAR frequency of 0.5 GHZ, absorption is over 1,000 db at short times. By 200 s, it drops to about 10 db/km, which would produce losses in propagating through a 100 km thick fireball of about 100 km x 10 db/km or 1,000 db, which is quite opaque. The losses drop to about 0.4 db/km by 1,000 s, but even that would give a one-way loss of 40 db, or 10^4, which is unacceptable. Thus, PAR would not recover during an attack executed over 10 minutes.

The situation was more favorable at the roughly threefold higher frequency of MSR, which would stop reflecting in 30 s and drop to 1 db/km after about 100 s. However, MSR was sized to take tracks from PAR rather than search for itself, so it lacked the sensitivity and range to take advantage of its reduced absorption. X-band radars developed subsequently have critical frequencies 20-fold higher than UHF. Their critical electron densities of 1.2 x 10^12/cc would only be reached only near explosions at 150 km, so x-band radars probably would not be reflected, and their absorption losses would drop below 1 db/km after about 20 s, 0.1 db after 100 s, and 0.01 after 400 s. However, x-band radars were not available during Sentinel and Safeguard, and even those available today are better suited to tracking than to searching large volumes. Potential nuclear environments were complicated by the range of options open to the attacker, who could use precursor bursts to straddle and reduce the PARs’ effective viewing angle, and thereby reduce the value of its tracks to downstream radars and interceptors.
25

22. Bethe, “Countermeasures to ABM Systems,” pp. 130–143.
23. C. Blank, A Pocket Manual of the Physical and Chemical Characteristics of the Earth’s Atmosphere (Washington D.C.: Defense Nuclear Agency, 1974), p. 147.
24. Ibid., p. 247.
25. Bethe, “Countermeasures to ABM Systems.”

From Missile Defense For The 21st Century by Gregory H. Canavan, published by the Heritage Foundation.

Technology has not erased this fundamental problem in the intervening years since Safeguard. And considering that NMD systems are built for dependence upon radar guidance to their expected targets, firing blind into the sky would be worse than useless.

Then A, since 1MT nukes are heavier, it's more than 1 warhead equivalent, and B, it's not going towards an actual target, we come out ahead, because ICBMs are not cheap, and the C3I infrastructure for them is even less so.

That is not the way it works, numbskull. One MT nukes are not "heavier" to any significant degree than 330KT warheads; they essentially are the same design. And a warhead bus is easily capable of mounting a mix of munitions. And that C31 infrastructure is rendered useless once the radars it depends upon are blinded. And since MIRVed ICBMs carry far more warheads per rocket than single-warhead ICBMs, the cost disparity is in favour of the MIRV, not the ABM system. This consideration killed Sentinel and Safeguard.

Then you wouldn't mind explaining why the MIRVed SS-N-18 missile has warheads half the size of an un-MIRVed one, would you? I mean, the MIRV version has 3 warheads, instead of one. And if the warhead bus is "easily capable of mounting a mix of munitions", then why don't any ICBMs mount different size warheads? And interceptors cost much less than a ICBM. Enough so that the trade off is actually in favor of the interceptors, even though you must have more of them. A Minuteman III costs 2 million in 1970's dollars, which is about 10 million today. The GBI costs 1.1 million each. And then of course, you also have to deal with the various arms limitations treaties, which restrict the number of ICBMs.

According to the data at this site, the single 1.2MT W-56 warhead carried aboard Minuteman II massed at 680kg. Peacekeeper's ten W-87 warheads (300kt) massed at 395kg each. Polaris A3 carried three 253kg W-58 200KT warheads. Whereas Migetman carried a single 90kg. warhead which had a blast-yield of 500KT. Warhead size and blast-yield are not dependent co-factors but are configured for the requirements sought by the designers. And the reason for switching to smaller-yield warheads has far less to do with saving payload weight and far more to do with greater tactical effectiveness. And an ICBM which can carry 3-10 warheads per single missile yields far more cost-effectiveness than the total brace of missiles available for an ABM system plus its command-and-control systems and radars combined. To put this in terms even you might be able to grasp: a 3-warhead ICBM is worth 3 single-warhead ICBMs, a 10-warhead ICBM is worth ten missiles. This basic equation was one of the primary factors in killing Sentinel and Safeguard back in the 1960s and 70s.

And as the United States has set the precedent for scrapping arms-limitation treaties by tossing the ABM accord out the window, another country confronted by the prospect of its nuclear force being rendered ineffective will find it quite easy to follow suit. A treaty lasts only as long as the two parties continue to agree to adhere to the pact.

Again, for the fifth or sixth time this thread, there's a reason for having multiple radar sites, the warhead is required to be within rangem without getting hit in the first place, and if the follow-on wave is already in the air, we already know the positions and velocities, allowing basic physics to be able to figure out the approximate location of the warheads.

Are you really this stupid, or merely pretending at it? With a range-effect radius of hundreds of kilometres, more than one radar will be blacked out. This graphic illustrates the nature of the problem:

http://www.heritage.org/Research/Missil ... 72map1.gif

And firing blind at "approximated" positions for warheads will achieve exactly zero results.

Nice image... But again, the radars are seperated by thousands of kilometers. Additionally, you have yet to show that the region of atmospheric ionization is hundreds of kilometers across, rather than the EMP effects.

Moving the Goalposts. Not surprising. The detonation of STARFISH-PRIME in 1962 has already made that argument for me, whether it suits you or not. As you will note:

2.60 Additional important effects that result from high-altitude bursts are the widespread ionization and other disturbances of the portion of the upper atmosphere known as the ionosphere. These disturbances affect the propagation of radio and radar waves, sometimes over extended areas (see Chapter X). Following the TEAK event, propagation of high-frequency (HF) radio communications (Table 10.91) was degraded over a region of several thousand miles in diameter for a period lasting from shortly after midnight until sunrise. Some very-high-frequency (VHF) communications circuits in the Pacific area were unable to function for about 30 seconds after the STARFISH PRIME event.

Eat it.

EKVs are IR guided. Firing at approximate position will achieve non-zero, but possibly degraded results, due to the fact that the EKV uses data from off board sensors as well.

But the carrier satellites for EKVs depend upon radar and ground communication for guidance. And there are several possible countermeasures for IR-guided EKVs to considerably complicate the problem of distinguishing decoys from real warheads.

[Patrick Degan]

It (nuclear blackout of radar) was considered by defense analysts and discarded...in the 1960s. It's sad to see you spouting crap that was rejected fourty years ago by people more learned than you.

So... I guess when Dr. Herbert F. York, former director of ARPA and a scientific adviser to LBJ from 1964-68, wrote this, he was spewing crap:

Link

By 1960, indications that the Russians were taking the ABM prospect seriously, in addition to progress in our own Nike-Zeus program, stimulated the designers of our offensive missiles into seriously studying the problem of how to penetrate missile defenses. [Very quickly a host of "penetration-aid" concepts came to light: light and heavy decoys, including balloons, tank fragments and objects resembling children's jacks; electronic countermeasures, including radar-reflecting clouds of the small wires called chaff; radar blackout by means of high-altitude nuclear explosions; tactics such as barrage, local exhaustion and "rollback" of the defense; and MRV (Multiple Reentry Vehicles). These last were good only against large-area targets (cities), but MRV soon developed into MIRV (Multiple Independent Reentry Vehicles), which eventually will be useful against smaller, harder targets such as missile silos, radars and command centers.

This avalanche of concepts forced the ABM designers to go back to the drawing board, and as a result the Nike-X concept was born in 1962. The Nike- X designers attempted to make use of the more sophisticated and up-to- date technology developed under the Defender program in the design of a system that they hoped might be able to cope with a large, sophisticated attack. All through the mid-1960s a vigorous battle of defensive concepts and designs versus offensive concepts and designs took place. This battle was waged partly on the Atlantic and Pacific missile ranges but mostly on paper and in committee meetings. It took place generally in secret, although parts of it were discussed in the open literature and before Congressional committees.

This intellectual battle culminated in a meeting that took place in the White House in January, 1967. In addition to President Johnson, Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, there were present all past and current Special Assistants to the President for Science and Technology (James R. Killian, Jr., George B. Kistiakowsky, Jerome B. Wiesner and Donald F. Hornig) and all past and current Directors of Defense Research and Engineering (Harold Brown, John S. Foster, Jr., and myself). We were asked that simple kind of question which must be answered after all the complicated ifs, ends and buts have been discussed: "Will it work and should it be deployed?" The answer in relation to defending our people against a Soviet missile attack was No, and there was no dissent from that answer. The context, of course, was the Russian threat as it was then interpreted and forecast, and the current and projected state of our ABM technology. There was also some discussion of this same question in relation to a hypothetical Red Chinese missile threat. In this latter case, there was some divergence of views, although the majority view (and my own) was still No.

Later that year, Secretary McNamara gave his famous San Francisco speech in which he reiterated his belief that we could not build an ABM system capable of protecting us from destruction in the event of a Russian attack. He did state, however, that the decision had been made (I presume by the President) to build an ABM system able to cope with a hypothetical Chinese missile attack, which by definition would be "light" and uncomplicated. In announcing that we would go ahead with a program to build what came to be known as the Sentinel system, he said, "There are marginal grounds for concluding that a light deployment of U. S. ABMs against this probability is prudent.,' A few sentences later, however, he warned, "The danger in deploying this relatively light and reliable Chinese-oriented ABM system is going to be that pressures will develop to expand it into a heavy Soviet-oriented ABM system." The record makes it clear that he was quite right in this prediction.

What was that Dr. York said? They were considering the problem of radar blackout in 1960? The problem you insist the experts and analysts rejected?

And of course, I suppose the Heritage Foundation is spewing crap on this subject as well:

Link

Radar Blackout was a serious problem for Safeguard, particularly for its PAR radars, whose UHF frequencies were strongly absorbed by ambient ionization, fireballs from intercepts or salvage fusing, and remote regions. Ionization due to auroral effects is strong enough to cause radar degradation in certain seasons. Fireballs are generally ionization regions centered on the explosion. Remote regions involve beta rays (electrons) and fission fragments from explosions at higher altitudes that deposit at 50–60 km, where they produce enough ionization and absorption to affect radar and communication systems. Although they can deposit at lower altitudes than the explosions that produce them, they have similar system impacts, so Appendix D treats them together. Low-altitude nuclear bursts in the Sprint engagement altitude and yield region produce fireballs a few kilometers in diameter that quickly achieve pressure balance, radiate to temperatures of a fraction of an electron volt. Their initial absorption at radar wavelengths is very strong and is maintained for several minutes. They are essentially black to UHF and lower frequency radars throughout structured attacks lasting a few minutes. However, such fireballs need not completely block radar operation. The fireball from a MT burst at sea level is about 1 km across, as is that from a Sprint-sized KT range explosion at 45 km, which would exclude a solid angle of about (1 km/45 km)^2 = 0.001 sr. Unless there were dozens of bursts in the radar’s field of regard, performance should not be severely degraded. However, a MT explosion at that altitude would produce a fireball initially about 10 km across, which would block about (10/45)^2 = 0.05 sr. A dozen large explosions could block the radars for endoatmospheric intercepts and reduce the flexibility of those for exoatmospheric intercepts. The uncertain coupling of energy into the low density ambient air at high altitudes by exoatmospheric explosions produces 10- to 100-fold uncertainties in predictions of the size of the regions affected by blackout and refraction from high-altitude explosions. Reducing these uncertainties would be difficult because of the lack of data. The U.S. detonated seven devices in the 10 to 250 km altitude region to be used for Safeguard defenses, but only two exoatmospheric nuclear tests relevant to Spartan. Neither tested the key coupling issues in those altitudes or the multi-burst phenomenology that would cause the greatest degradation and uncertainty in expected scenarios. Measurements were made of radar and communication degradations at various frequencies and ranges from the burst, but not of fireball interior ionization and absorption.

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The tests were recorded photographically with films only sensitive in the visible; thus, there is little basis for IR background predictions. [/color=yellow]Megaton explosions at altitudes of 150–250 km create hot, ionized fireballs 100s of kilometers across. Most ambient air molecules are stripped of some or most of their electrons, producing initial electron densities of about 10^9 to 10^12/cc. At early times, the fireball would form a reflective region of a solid angle of about (300 km/600 km) 2 = 0.3 sr. Placed in front of a PAR, an excluded angle that large would mask the trajectories of subsequent RVs the PARs would need to detect and track in 10s of sec onds. Such obscurations would be unacceptable against attackers spaced at short intervals. As affordable basing allowed little overlap in coverage between adjacent PARs, these obscurations could not be overcome by internetting PAR measurements.[/color] After a few 10s of seconds, the fireballs’ temperature should cool by radiation to temperatures of a few thousand degrees. As the fireball cools, the electron density falls. After that, the principal mechanism for the removal of ionization is radiative recombination, which is quadratic in electron density with rate coefficient C/R= 10^12cc/s.

Recombination causes the electron density n e to fall as 1/CRt. After a time of about 300 s, the electron density drops below the critical density of about 3 x 10^9/cc that would cause complete reflection at PAR’s UHF frequency. Even later, when the fireball is no longer reflecting, absorption losses could still be unacceptable. When electron-ion interactions are the dominant source of collisions, the absorption coefficient α(db/km) is approximately 0.1(n e/f)^2.

Figure D.1 shows absorption as a function of time after a high-altitude explosion for frequencies of 0.5, 2, and 10 GHz. At the PAR frequency of 0.5 GHZ, absorption is over 1,000 db at short times. By 200 s, it drops to about 10 db/km, which would produce losses in propagating through a 100 km thick fireball of about 100 km x 10 db/km or 1,000 db, which is quite opaque. The losses drop to about 0.4 db/km by 1,000 s, but even that would give a one-way loss of 40 db, or 10^4, which is unacceptable. Thus, PAR would not recover during an attack executed over 10 minutes.

The situation was more favorable at the roughly threefold higher frequency of MSR, which would stop reflecting in 30 s and drop to 1 db/km after about 100 s. However, MSR was sized to take tracks from PAR rather than search for itself, so it lacked the sensitivity and range to take advantage of its reduced absorption. X-band radars developed subsequently have critical frequencies 20-fold higher than UHF. Their critical electron densities of 1.2 x 10^12/cc would only be reached only near explosions at 150 km, so x-band radars probably would not be reflected, and their absorption losses would drop below 1 db/km after about 20 s, 0.1 db after 100 s, and 0.01 after 400 s. [/color=yellow]However, x-band radars were not available during Sentinel and Safeguard, and even those available today are better suited to tracking than to searching large volumes. Potential nuclear environments were complicated by the range of options open to the attacker, who could use precursor bursts to straddle and reduce the PARs’ effective viewing angle, and thereby reduce the value of its tracks to downstream radars and interceptors.[/color]
25

22. Bethe, “Countermeasures to ABM Systems,” pp. 130–143.
23. C. Blank, A Pocket Manual of the Physical and Chemical Characteristics of the Earth’s Atmosphere (Washington D.C.: Defense Nuclear Agency, 1974), p. 147.
24. Ibid., p. 247.
25. Bethe, “Countermeasures to ABM Systems.”

From Missile Defense For The 21st Century by Gregory H. Canavan, published by the Heritage Foundation. You may wish to note that the work of Hans Bethe is listed in the footnotes in regards to the information on the radar blackout problem, which was being confronted by the engineers during the development programme for Safeguard.

Seems Congress and the Department of Defense were swayed by this "crap" you insist had been dismissed by the experts in 1960:

Link

On October 2, 1975 -- one day after the site became operational -- the House voted to inactivate Safeguard. The House decision was based on the argument that the restriction to a single ABM site combined with the recent Soviet development of MIRVs meant the system could not handle the threat. Soviet missiles with multiple warheads would overwhelm the system. This was not the only problem, however. The radars that tracked incoming missiles were extremely vulnerable: they would black out when a nuclear warhead -- including one on a US interceptor missile -- detonated. Once the radars were destroyed, the system would be electronically blind and therefore useless. Safeguard's ability to achieve even its main objective of protecting the North Dakota ICBM site was also limited by the fact that its 100 interceptor missiles were not enough to counter a determined attack.

In fact, the DOD had already reached the same conclusion and had decided in 1974 to shut down the Grand Forks site on July 1, 1976. Although the Senate initially rejected the House position, and approved Safeguard funding, once the DOD's decision was brought to their attention, they agreed to terminate the program. The bill the Senate passed in November 1975 allowed operation and testing of the site's perimeter acquisition radar but closed down the remainder of Safeguard.

But then, that might have been in part due to the fact that the engineers at Bell Labs, the primary contractor for Safeguard, seemed not to have gotten the word that the nuclear-blackout problem was crap that had been dismissed by the experts in 1960:

Link

Kissinger and Nixon received more bad news about the ABM in April. These memoranda, prepared by NSC staffer Laurence Lynn, show his surprise when top officials from AT&T's Bell Laboratories, the ABM's chief contractor, revealed their deep misgivings about the ABM program. Lynn knew that Bell was uncomfortable with public criticisms of its role in defense contracting, but he did not expect that its scientists believed that ABM was technically unworkable. Lynn claimed that the specific criticisms were unremarkable but the very fact that Bell Labs was making them had "potential for disaster." Significantly, one of Bell's criticisms paralleled one that is made of today's NMD program and which the Verification Panel had also noted: that it would not be able to differentiate RVs from balloon decoys and other devices designed to confuse the defense.

Take particular note of the quote at the top of page four of the memorandum: "They (Bell Labs engineers) said the Minuteman defense could be overwhelmed or defeated by blacking out the radars". And that was in 1974.


Now what was that you said? Oh yes:

It's sad to see you spouting crap that was rejected fourty years ago by people more learned than you.

Nowhere near as sad as the spectacle of you making a rank fool of yourself by denying the fact that people far more learned than you had not rejected this "crap" about nuclear-blinding at all. Namely, the engineers at Bell Labs, the primary contractor on Safeguard, among others.