NMD test goes balls-up

[MKSheppard]

The problem is that, so far, NMD and its white-elephant predecessors haven't shown the ability to work even 50% of the time.

Safeguard/Sentinel had a 75% success rate, according to SoF.

[Patrick Degan]

When the first orbital rocket boosters were made, neither did they show the ability to work even 50% of the time. Early ICBM history is littered with examples of rockets blowing up on the pad, going off course, failures to ignite, insufficient amounts of thrust being produced to go up, etc.

Yet another Red Herring. ICBM development never took quite as long to produce an operationally-reliable weapon system as the NMD/BMD/Star Wars efforts have, and to reiterate: involves a relatively simple operation compared to the constellation of operations involved in attempting to stop a full-scale ICBM attack.

That is partly due to the fact that ICBM development was always a priority. ABM has been on the backburner for sometime. Let's compare the complexity of a ABM system to say, a SAM system. The ABM system's targets are coming in on fixed trajectories, fairly well defined trajectories. A SAM system's targets are coming in fron almost any direction, on a continously varying path (given that most pilots try to avoid getting shot down, and so don't fly a easily mathematically computed path. I don't buy the argument that's it's too complex to be doable.

So your bonafides for the viability of the ABM concept is your belief that it will work. Nice but irrelevant. And manoeuverable MIRVs have been through development for some time now as well as decoys and other pen-aids. It really doesn't matter what argument you personally are prepared to "buy". The engineers who've worked these problems through at least three times in the history of ABM and its successors still haven't found viable solutions to the challenge of reliably knocking down nuclear warheads.

[Beowulf]

So your bonafides for the viability of the ABM concept is your belief that it will work. Nice but irrelevant. And manoeuverable MIRVs have been through development for some time now as well as decoys and other pen-aids. It really doesn't matter what argument you personally are prepared to "buy". The engineers who've worked these problems through at least three times in the history of ABM and its successors still haven't found viable solutions to the challenge of reliably knocking down nuclear warheads.

And MARVs can't move very far off of their trajectory, and still will always be coming from the same direction. Still simpler problem than a SAM intercept.

Tell me this: what exactly makes a ballistic intercept intristically harder than a airplane intercept? Jammers, decoys, etc aren't allowable, because each has to deal with them.

[Patrick Degan]

Yet another Red Herring. ICBM development never took quite as long to produce an operationally-reliable weapon system as the NMD/BMD/Star Wars efforts have, and to reiterate: involves a relatively simple operation compared to the constellation of operations involved in attempting to stop a full-scale ICBM attack.

Bald Faced Lie.

Yes —yours.

Nike-Zeus was operational in the late 1950s. It had completed it's testing and was proven. It only remained to be deployed nation wide. Despite it's limitations, Nike-Zeus was effective. Being able to engage only a single target per battery is not much of a problem when the USSR has
ICBM counts in the single digitis.

Demonstrating its ability to intercept missiles under ideal conditions where you've already got the launch and flight information and demonstrating its ability to perform these actions in combat in a nuclear environment are two entirely different things —a point you continue to ignore. And as for Nike-Zeus' so-called effectiveness, well:

ZEUS was severely limited by several factors that made its operational deployment impractical. Decoys, chaff, balloons and other means of confusing such an elementary system were conceived or developed. It was limited by its low traffic handling capability. Exoatmospheric discrimination of the incoming objects was impossible and atmospheric discrimination resulted in commitment altitudes that were too low for practical use. These dis-advantages were so serious that in January 1961 the Nike Zeus program was canceled and a new development, NIKE X, begun.

So much for Nike-X.

Eisenhower deferred construction of Nike Zeus to the next president, and both Kennedy and McNamara did not like it, and ordered even more development, which led to Nike-X, and even more development.

Probably because of the aforementioned limitations of the system.

When Nike-X was finished, they changed the goalposts yet again, requiring that it only need to defend against a Chinese threat, instead of a Soviet threat, respindling it into Sentinel.

The reason for that was because not only was the Soviet ICBM force expanding but also because they were actively researching countermeasures to defeat it, as well as holding out the prospect of simply building enough ICBMs and warheads to overwhelm an ABM system. As Dr. Herbert F. York points out in his book Race To Oblivion:

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.

The Chinese ICBM threat was being argued over on about the same terms the North Korean ICBM threat is argued today.

When Nixon came along, he respindled and folded Sentinel yet again into Safeguard, which was shut down after only a single day of fully
operational service, thus scattering the experience that we had gathered over the years in ABM systems.

The U.S. Army had already reduced the the Safeguard base to below operational status even before the Nixon administration shut down the programme, and Bell Labs had come to the conclusion that ABM defence was technically unfeasible and were seeking to get out of their contract.

Reagan then came along with a totally different concept, such as orbiting battlestations, and such.

Which, frankly, was loony —and as a whole new generation of engineers discovered, relatively easy to counter with simple devices, while Teller's X-ray laser never came anywhere near becoming a practical weapon.

Clinton finally restarted the ground-based interceptor concept about 20 years after it was cancelled utterly.

After being pressured into it by a Republican congress determined to revive Reagan's white-elephant no matter how impractical it was.

Two decades is a long time for institutional memory to be lost.

But test data wasn't lost. Institutional memory has little to nothing to do with the issue.

A pattern emerges. Whenever a system gets to a deployable state, it gets cancelled, or the design is changed massively, the strategy of interception changing, and/or the deployment strategies are changed totally.

Because offensive development is not static, no matter how much you wish to believe otherwise. Other conditions change as well: namely geopolitical concerns as to who does and does not constitute a threat justifying any weapons programme, nevermind one with a dubious guarantee of reliability.

Imagine trying to develop an ICBM if your boss in charge kept telling you that it had to be able to hit the Soviet Union....and then telling you to scrap your finished design four years later for a much smaller ICBM capable of only hitting say, China.

You truly do not know how stupid that argument sounds, do you?

You might want to look at the MX program. It's what happened to ABM programs transferred over to the ICBM program. They dicked around
forever with all kinds of different deployment strategies and designs.

The only dicking around involved was whether or not to have MX as a mobile or fixed-silo system and if mobile to utilise trucks or rail. As it was, since the United States already had a 1000-missile ICBM force, a 256-missile SLBM force, and retained the B-52 strategic bomber force, MX's development was not imperative unlike its predecessors. The attempt at a comparison is ludicrous in any case, since the range of options for the MX's mission was far fewer than would ever be required even for the most basic of ABM systems.

Safeguard/Sentinel had a 75% success rate, according to SoF.

Under ideal test conditions —which did not take into account the aforementioned radar-blinding problem pointed out by the Bell Labs engineers among others.

And I must say I find it highly amusing that you continue to invoke The Shield Of Faith in defence of your position while remaining totally oblivious to the implication of its title.

[Patrick Degan]

So your bonafides for the viability of the ABM concept is your belief that it will work. Nice but irrelevant. And manoeuverable MIRVs have been through development for some time now as well as decoys and other pen-aids. It really doesn't matter what argument you personally are prepared to "buy". The engineers who've worked these problems through at least three times in the history of ABM and its successors still haven't found viable solutions to the challenge of reliably knocking down nuclear warheads.

And MARVs can't move very far off of their trajectory, and still will always be coming from the same direction. Still simpler problem than a SAM intercept.

Tell me this: what exactly makes a ballistic intercept intristically harder than a airplane intercept? Jammers, decoys, etc aren't allowable, because each has to deal with them.

No, the offensive side does not have to deal with jammers and decoys in a defence system its slinging warheads against, and an attacker faced with overcoming an ABM defence isn't going to play by nice rules about what's "allowable". As for the difficulty involved, warheads in a suborbital arc are moving at far greater velocities than any SAM will have to ever deal with in knocking down aircraft, which is where the difficulty begins, not ends.

[Beowulf]

Tell me this: what exactly makes a ballistic intercept intristically harder than a airplane intercept? Jammers, decoys, etc aren't allowable, because each has to deal with them.

No, the offensive side does not have to deal with jammers and decoys in a defence system its slinging warheads against, and an attacker faced with overcoming an ABM defence isn't going to play by nice rules about what's "allowable". As for the difficulty involved, warheads in a suborbital arc are moving at far greater velocities than any SAM will have to ever deal with in knocking down aircraft, which is where the difficulty begins, not ends.

You fail to understand. Not surprising. Bringing up jammers and decoys makes no difference, because both a ABM and a SAM system will have to deal with them.

As far a velocity goes, it's not a difficult problem. We have somewhere around 15 minutes to shoot down a warhead. The warhead has a limited capability of changing it's trajectory, if it has any at all. It's got a fairly fixed range of velocities and trajectories. After that it's just physics.

Aircraft can come in towards a SAM site in almost any direction, at a wide range of velocities. The target can radically change trajectory as well.

As far a radar blinding goes, you have to garuntee that the first wave would manage to blind the radars, and that you managed to blind all of them. Given that there are 3 widely seperated locations for the intercept phase radars, you need to launch a rather large number of missiles just to have a chance of stopping the system.

[Shinova]

Wasn't there an air-based laser system that worked in a test against a dummy missile, recently?

[Ma Deuce]

Wasn't there an air-based laser system that worked in a test against a dummy missile, recently?

Yeah, but that isn't a part of NMD: The airborne laser is a seperate system designed to shoot down theatre ballistic missiles like Scuds, not ICBMs.

[weemadando]

Here's an idea - how about the US just sink ALL of the money that its currently spending on missile defense into getting private pacific islands and busty wenches for the various crack-pots who are "threats" (I use that term VERY VERY cautiously).

Surely for an offer of 110 million dollars and all the blondes he can fit on his 2.5km square patch of paradise half the dictators in the world would voluntarily up and leave. Then you can spend more money putting in place an American puppet regime...

[MKSheppard]

As far a radar blinding goes, you have to garuntee that the first wave would manage to blind the radars, and that you managed to blind all of them. Given that there are 3 widely seperated locations for the intercept phase radars, you need to launch a rather large number of missiles just to have a chance of stopping the system.

The First wave (The Radar Blinding Wave) has to be launched about 5-10
minutes before the ICBM wave. It can't be launched 30~ minutes before,
because the US will take that as the beginnings of a full scale attack and
launch everything we have, and catch enough of the second wave
on the ground to totally discombulate the enemy's attack plan, and
destroy a lot of warheads incidentally.

So essentially, you cannot wait for the blackout to take effect and THEN
launch your massive strike.

So, the majority of the ICBMs in an attack would have been detected and
tracked by NORAD, and their trajectories calculated by the time radar
blackout becomes an issue.

[MKSheppard]

As for the difficulty involved, warheads in a suborbital arc are moving at far greater velocities than any SAM will have to ever deal with in knocking down aircraft, which is where the difficulty begins, not ends.

Yet we managed to do it.

Repeatedly.

Forty Years Ago.

With technology no more advanced than a radio-controlled Estes Rocket
(which is what Nike was)

Stuart Slade, Defense Analyst:
57 of the 64 Zeus shots resulted in direct hits which was startling because the missile wasn't designed to do that (the fact that it could was kept secret for a long time). A lot of the tests were Zeus-Herc because Herc came in so fast it made a difficult target.

[Patrick Degan]

Tell me this: what exactly makes a ballistic intercept intristically harder than a airplane intercept? Jammers, decoys, etc aren't allowable, because each has to deal with them.

No, the offensive side does not have to deal with jammers and decoys in a defence system its slinging warheads against, and an attacker faced with overcoming an ABM defence isn't going to play by nice rules about what's "allowable". As for the difficulty involved, warheads in a suborbital arc are moving at far greater velocities than any SAM will have to ever deal with in knocking down aircraft, which is where the difficulty begins, not ends.

You fail to understand. Not surprising.

Your problem, actually. Not surprising.

Bringing up jammers and decoys makes no difference, because both a ABM and a SAM system will have to deal with them.

It makes a considerable difference, because jammers directly affect the ability of the system to target objects in the flight path, while decoys complicate the problem of hitting actual warheads by several orders of magnitude. Furthermore, a SAM system is not designed to cope with any target moving at velocities of 8 km/sec or greater, so your constantly invoking SAMs in this discussion is bizarre to say the least.

As far a velocity goes, it's not a difficult problem. We have somewhere around 15 minutes to shoot down a warhead. The warhead has a limited capability of changing it's trajectory, if it has any at all. It's got a fairly fixed range of velocities and trajectories. After that it's just physics.

Wrong —firing missiles at depressed trajectories considerably narrows the window available for effective targeting. SLBMs can already be fired in this manner and ICBMs adapted with quick-burn boosters (a development being discussed in regards to the Russian Topol-M) can accomplish the same feat.

Aircraft can come in towards a SAM site in almost any direction, at a wide range of velocities. The target can radically change trajectory as well.

Since this is a discussion of weapons which no SAM system is capable of coping with, and since no aircraft can attain velocities of kilometres-per-second, this constitutes nothing more than a Red Herring on your part and it's getting old rather quickly.

As far a radar blinding goes, you have to garuntee that the first wave would manage to blind the radars, and that you managed to blind all of them. Given that there are 3 widely seperated locations for the intercept phase radars, you need to launch a rather large number of missiles just to have a chance of stopping the system.

Wrong —a powerful enough nuke can blind radar over a very large radius. The EMP generated by the first Operation Fishbowl test shot in 1962 affected satellites in orbit, power systems, and communications over a radius of several thousand kilometres from the actual detonation point 400 km. over Johnson Island in the Pacific —and the most powerful weapon in that series, STARFISH PRIME, had a yield of only 1.4 MT.

[Patrick Degan]

As for the difficulty involved, warheads in a suborbital arc are moving at far greater velocities than any SAM will have to ever deal with in knocking down aircraft, which is where the difficulty begins, not ends.

Yet we managed to do it.

Repeatedly.

Forty Years Ago.

With technology no more advanced than a radio-controlled Estes Rocket
(which is what Nike was)

Stuart Slade, Defense Analyst:
57 of the 64 Zeus shots resulted in direct hits which was startling because the missile wasn't designed to do that (the fact that it could was kept secret for a long time). A lot of the tests were Zeus-Herc because Herc came in so fast it made a difficult target.

Cute. Since the velocity of a Nike-Hercules missile clocked at about 1.2 km/sec (Mach 3.65), that really says fuck-all about the problem of intercepting targets moving at five times that velocity at minimum. Nice Red Herring —another one for the pile.

[Beowulf]

Bringing up jammers and decoys makes no difference, because both a ABM and a SAM system will have to deal with them.

It makes a considerable difference, because jammers directly affect the ability of the system to target objects in the flight path, while decoys complicate the problem of hitting actual warheads by several orders of magnitude. Furthermore, a SAM system is not designed to cope with any target moving at velocities of 8 km/sec or greater, so your constantly invoking SAMs in this discussion is bizarre to say the least.

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.

As far a velocity goes, it's not a difficult problem. We have somewhere around 15 minutes to shoot down a warhead. The warhead has a limited capability of changing it's trajectory, if it has any at all. It's got a fairly fixed range of velocities and trajectories. After that it's just physics.

Wrong —firing missiles at depressed trajectories considerably narrows the window available for effective targeting. SLBMs can already be fired in this manner and ICBMs adapted with quick-burn boosters (a development being discussed in regards to the Russian Topol-M) can accomplish the same feat.

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. 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.

Aircraft can come in towards a SAM site in almost any direction, at a wide range of velocities. The target can radically change trajectory as well.

Since this is a discussion of weapons which no SAM system is capable of coping with, and since no aircraft can attain velocities of kilometres-per-second, this constitutes nothing more than a Red Herring on your part and it's getting old rather quickly.

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

As far a radar blinding goes, you have to garuntee that the first wave would manage to blind the radars, and that you managed to blind all of them. Given that there are 3 widely seperated locations for the intercept phase radars, you need to launch a rather large number of missiles just to have a chance of stopping the system.

Wrong —a powerful enough nuke can blind radar over a very large radius. The EMP generated by the first Operation Fishbowl test shot in 1962 affected satellites in orbit, power systems, and communications over a radius of several thousand kilometres from the actual detonation point 400 km. over Johnson Island in the Pacific —and the most powerful weapon in that series, STARFISH PRIME, had a yield of only 1.4 MT.

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?

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.

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

[Vympel]

Wrong ?firing missiles at depressed trajectories considerably narrows the window available for effective targeting. SLBMs can already be fired in this manner and ICBMs adapted with quick-burn boosters (a development being discussed in regards to the Russian Topol-M) can accomplish the same feat.

Just thought I'd add this- possible maneuvering warhead capability for Topol-M:

The large throw-weight could also be explained by greater warhead weight, precision-guidance capability, or defense penetration aids. The missile's design is believed to incorporate many features improving its ABM defense penetration ability, and to possess built-in potential for further upgrades in this area.[44] According to some estimates, it carries more decoys and penetration aids than the 10-warhead Peacekeeper (MX) missile and is equipped with a hardened warhead invulnerable to all but direct hits by ABM interceptors. The warhead may also have independent maneuvering and precision-guidance capability. The seventh Topol-M test launch, conducted on 3 June 1999, featured a "lateral antimissile maneuver", with the warhead reportedly being guided to its destination by a Glonass-based "Terminator" satellite navigation system.[31] Finally, thanks to its powerful first-stage boosters, the Topol-M has a short-duration boost phase (shorter by a factor of 4.5 than boost phases of older ICBMs such as the SS-18, which has a five-minute boost phase), which reduces its vulnerability to boost-phase intercept weapons. The missile's greater acceleration also allows it to assume a flatter trajectory, further reducing vulnerability to space-based weapons

[Patrick Degan]

Bringing up jammers and decoys makes no difference, because both a ABM and a SAM system will have to deal with them.

It makes a considerable difference, because jammers directly affect the ability of the system to target objects in the flight path, while decoys complicate the problem of hitting actual warheads by several orders of magnitude. Furthermore, a SAM system is not designed to cope with any target moving at velocities of 8 km/sec or greater, so your constantly invoking SAMs in this discussion is bizarre to say the least.

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.

As far a velocity goes, it's not a difficult problem. We have somewhere around 15 minutes to shoot down a warhead. The warhead has a limited capability of changing it's trajectory, if it has any at all. It's got a fairly fixed range of velocities and trajectories. After that it's just physics.

Wrong —firing missiles at depressed trajectories considerably narrows the window available for effective targeting. SLBMs can already be fired in this manner and ICBMs adapted with quick-burn boosters (a development being discussed in regards to the Russian Topol-M) can accomplish the same feat.

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.

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 this.

Aircraft can come in towards a SAM site in almost any direction, at a wide range of velocities. The target can radically change trajectory as well.

Since this is a discussion of weapons which no SAM system is capable of coping with, and since no aircraft can attain velocities of kilometres-per-second, this constitutes nothing more than a Red Herring on your part and it's getting old rather quickly.

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.

As far a radar blinding goes, you have to garuntee that the first wave would manage to blind the radars, and that you managed to blind all of them. Given that there are 3 widely seperated locations for the intercept phase radars, you need to launch a rather large number of missiles just to have a chance of stopping the system.

Wrong —a powerful enough nuke can blind radar over a very large radius. The EMP generated by the first Operation Fishbowl test shot in 1962 affected satellites in orbit, power systems, and communications over a radius of several thousand kilometres from the actual detonation point 400 km. over Johnson Island in the Pacific —and the most powerful weapon in that series, STARFISH PRIME, had a yield of only 1.4 MT.

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?

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.

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.

[Beowulf]

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.

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?

Wrong —firing missiles at depressed trajectories considerably narrows the window available for effective targeting. SLBMs can already be fired in this manner and ICBMs adapted with quick-burn boosters (a development being discussed in regards to the Russian Topol-M) can accomplish the same feat.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 basci physics to be able to figure out the approximate location of the warheads.

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.

[MKSheppard]

PAC-3 is designed to knock down SRBMs —theatre weapons like Scuds. SAMs would be totally unsuited to challenge ICBM warheads.

Actually. Incorrect. Patriot PAC-3 can IIRC engage SRBMs and IRBMs
in mid-course intercept, and it can engage ICBM re-entry vehicles
in the final phases of intercept, when atmospheric friction generated by
the re-entry of the RVs has lowered their speed dramatically, and
incinerated or weeded out all the other decoys.

Problem is, with Terminal-Phase defense you need to have a Patriot PAC-3
very near the final target of the RV for it to be effective.

[MKSheppard]

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

And it would probably burn out the 92-point initation systems of your warheads on the way to Ft. Greely as well. Your incoming warheads
would be rendered inert blocks of plutonium and high explosive, a
messy cleanup when they impact, but containable with a topnotch
HAZMAT team.

[MKSheppard]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

[MKSheppard]

The Ballistic Missile Defense Organization and the U.S. Army successfully conducted a test of the Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) missile at White Sands Missile Range, N.M. on October 14, 2000. The PAC-3 missile intercepted and destroyed the ballistic missile target.










*************

The Ballistic Missile Defense Organization and the U.S. Army conducted a test of the Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) missile at White Sands Missile Range, N.M., February 5, 2000. Preliminary test data indicate the test was successful.





Sooooooooo...........Hitting a bullet with a bullet is....impossible?

[MKSheppard]

Lets do some math... based on the same forumla the military
uses to calculate probability of kills.

P(k) to hit target * P(k) to kill target = Final Probability of a Kill

(P(k) to kill target is 100% since anything that meets something else at mach 30 combined closing speed is dead)

P(k) to hit target 0.5
P(k) to kill target 1

1 Round P(k) 0.5
2 Rounds P(k) 1
4 Rounds P(k) 2

************

P(k) to hit target 0.65
P(k) to kill target 1

1 Round P(k) 0.65
2 Rounds P(k) 1.3
4 Rounds P(k) 2.6

************

P(k) to hit target 0.75
P(k) to kill target 1

1 Round P(k) 0.75
2 Rounds P(k) 1.5
4 Rounds P(k) 3

************

P(k) to hit target 0.88
P(k) to kill target 1

1 Round P(k) 0.88
2 Rounds P(k) 1.76
4 Rounds P(k) 3.52

*****************

So firing multiple rounds at an incoming target to score a kill is
not faith as you deride it, but simple mathematics

[Sebastin]

P(k) to hit target 0.5
P(k) to kill target 1

1 Round P(k) 0.5
2 Rounds P(k) 1
4 Rounds P(k) 2

************

While I have no intention of joining this debate, this just jumped at me while I was skimming over it. Your math here is wrong. It should be :

1 round P(k) 0.5
2 rounds P(k) 0.75
3 Rounds P(k) 0.875

etc.

P(k) approaches 1 but never reaches it. Easy mistake to make.

[Beowulf]

P(k) to hit target 0.5
P(k) to kill target 1

1 Round P(k) 0.5
2 Rounds P(k) 1
4 Rounds P(k) 2

************

While I have no intention of joining this debate, this just jumped at me while I was skimming over it. Your math here is wrong. It should be :

1 round P(k) 0.5
2 rounds P(k) 0.75
3 Rounds P(k) 0.875

etc.

P(k) approaches 1 but never reaches it. Easy mistake to make.

I would have mentioned this, but they let us off work early... probabilities must be multiplied, not added.

The actual probabilities are:

Code: Select all

S \ Probability
h   .25  .5   .65  .75  .88
o 1 .25  .5   .65  .75  .88
t 2 .438 .75  .878 .938 .986
s 4 .684 .875 .985 .996 1

All values are rounded to the nearest thousandth, which is why .88 with four shots ends up 1

[Patrick Degan]

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

And it would probably burn out the 92-point initation systems of your warheads on the way to Ft. Greely as well. Your incoming warheads
would be rendered inert blocks of plutonium and high explosive, a
messy cleanup when they impact, but containable with a topnotch
HAZMAT team.

Funny considering that warheads are already hardened to begin with, but by all means continue to indulge your idiocies.