Space Weaponization

[Ritterin Sophia]

As long as we're making fiat statements, I'll say ABM increases the danger of nuclear escalation because it gives some jackass the idea that he might avoid retaliation. (So there. ) If you can argue otherwise, please explain.

Oh shut the fuck up, this argument was retarded when Stas made it and it's retarded now.

[Admiral Valdemar]

There are also treaties against chemical and biological warfare, the use of exploding shells under 37mm (or under 400 grams depending on which treaty we take) and against triangular bayonets (Stu looks at the SKS in his gun safe and grins). None of them are of any weight any more; the passage of time has made them irrelevent. Back in the (IIRC) 12th century the Pope (whose authority then was much greater than it is now) banned crossbows as being "a weapon hateful to God" and declared all crossbowmen excommunicated. Didn't work. Later, another Pope banned any bullets other than round ones (except for use against "Turks") which lead to the development of the Puckle Gun that fired round bullets for use against Christians and square bullets for use against "Turks" (for "Turks" read Moslems).

Arms control is a chimera I fear. It's nice and cozy in the abstract but in the real world, its a nonsense.

I guess that could be levelled with a lot of systems we've been trying over the years, such as the NB-36 and the M-50 equivalent. You're simply not going to stop a good idea from taking off elsewhere, as with natural biological evolution (or in the examples here, a good sounding idea that isn't too easy in practical terms).

I also think this applies to Iran. They're not really going the nuclear route to get an ace-in-the-hole to thumb at the West. They need to go the nuclear route because of their energy situation, which will be far from rosy in a few years. They want to be energy independent from dwindling fossil fuel supplies before it's too late, and letting another nation dictate what they can and cannot use for nuclear power isn't going to cut it.

There are also treaties against chemical and biological warfare, the use of exploding shells under 37mm (or under 400 grams depending on which treaty we take) and against triangular bayonets (Stu looks at the SKS in his gun safe and grins). None of them are of any weight any more; the passage of time has made them irrelevent. Back in the (IIRC) 12th century the Pope (whose authority then was much greater than it is now) banned crossbows as being "a weapon hateful to God" and declared all crossbowmen excommunicated. Didn't work. Later, another Pope banned any bullets other than round ones (except for use against "Turks") which lead to the development of the Puckle Gun that fired round bullets for use against Christians and square bullets for use against "Turks" (for "Turks" read Moslems).

Arms control is a chimera I fear. It's nice and cozy in the abstract but in the real world, its a nonsense.

Yeah, I never got the idea behind arms control either. You're not going to tell someone they can't use a highly advantageous weapon in war because it might be seen as cruel or unfair. When you're fighting to the death, you take every capability you can muster and use it to the fullest, else it's game over. May as well talk to big cats on the benefits of co-operation with gazelle, rather than predation.

[Turin]

As long as we're making fiat statements, I'll say ABM increases the danger of nuclear escalation because it gives some jackass the idea that he might avoid retaliation. (So there. ) If you can argue otherwise, please explain.

Oh shut the fuck up, this argument was retarded when Stas made it and it's retarded now.

You know what, make an argument or piss the fuck off. Stas hasn't made any such argument in this thread as far as I know. If you expect me to know the details of every discussion some weiner like you has had on this board.

[Turin]

Grr, insulting someone works better when you complete the thought... make that:

You know what, make an argument or piss the fuck off. Stas hasn't made any such argument in this thread as far as I know. If you expect me to know the details of every discussion some weiner like you has had on this board you've got an undeservedly high opinion of yourself.

[Stuart]

What about the good old fashioned ASM-135 ASAT missile tested on the F-15 in the 80s?

Now that was a good system. Still would be, we could kludge one up pretty quickly. One of the beauties of that system was that it was very deployable, in effect wherever and F-15 went (which in today's world means pretty much anywhere it wants to) there went the ASAT system. Also, it was a bounce system, it meant we could knock down satellites with very little warning. Finally, it was a hard interceptor to track because the time from launch to impact is so small.

An important thing to note, we're talking about ASAT systems as if all satellites are the same and they're not. The existing generation of ASATs only really affect targets in LEO (low earth orbit). HEO (High Earth Orbit) and Geosynchronous satellites are pretty much immune from attack at this time. MEOs are right on the borderline of the engagement envelope. On the other hand, knocking about the LEOs would deprive the US of most of its target designation and rapid-response communication capability. From that point of view, a likely opponent of the US will find the advantages of a LEO attack capability too good to pass up. By the way, if Iran develops and tests a nuclear device, they also will have a powerful capability against satellites - the simplest ASAT system is to loft a nuclear warhead LEO and initiate it. A reasonable-yield device would take out every satellite for a 1,000 kilometer radius. The effects would be pretty long lasting - like months. The reason is a phenomena called Van Allen Pumping which essentially boosts the degradation caused by the Van Allen belts (by several orders of magnitude) and thus slashes the operational life of satellites.

LEO ASAT is that easy. All one needs is an IRBM and a nuclear warhead.

That's also why we switched from nuclear warheads for ABM to hit-to-kill.

Derivative of the anti-balloon decoy jello sprayer you've mentioned in the past; where the jello is squirted out, and it crystallizes in space; and then goes forth and shreds any inflatible RV decoys?

Parallel development, same basic idea, different application. I've got a picture of the Jello-ASAT vehicle somewhere (yes, we have built it). I'll try and dig it out

Does it still use grape

Indeed, although its the purple color that makes it work best, not the flavor. I understand lemon-lime is much less effective.

[Ritterin Sophia]

As long as we're making fiat statements, I'll say ABM increases the danger of nuclear escalation because it gives some jackass the idea that he might avoid retaliation. (So there. ) If you can argue otherwise, please explain.

Oh shut the fuck up, this argument was retarded when Stas made it and it's retarded now.

You know what, make an argument or piss the fuck off. Stas hasn't made any such argument in this thread as far as I know. If you expect me to know the details of every discussion some weiner like you has had on this board.

You're fucking discussing the merit of treaties made decades ago, forgive me for not realizing you were too stupid to see if the topic has ever been spoken of before. Link

[Beowulf]

If you don't understand why the action-reaction theory is false, A implies B is not equivalent to not A implies not B, in formal logic. B can happen regardless of whether A happens.

I think I've addressed this above, but just so I'm clear. I understand why it is logically the case that B can happen without A, but it is also logically the case that If A Then B. The goal of the logic is to reduce the number of options that lead to B.

If it's advantageous to do B, then it will happen regardless of whether A has happened. You haven't reduced the options that lead to B. The only thing that would reduce the options that lead to B is to make is disadvantageous to do or have B. Not so random example: Chemical weapons weren't used to WWII because it would be disadvantageous to the user of that weapon. Chemical weapons weren't used in the Gulf War because they wouldn't have provided an advantage to Saddam Hussein (namely, we'd turn Iraq into a solid sheet of glass).

[Stuart]

My argument is not that "we can stop them by not doing A", but that "there is at least a possibility that by not doing A we can convince them to do so as well." Or rather "if we do A, they will definitely do B."

The point is that that relationship does not exist. The Chinese are doing their thing for their own reasons (which I outlined). They have nothing to do with US ABM/ASAT development so they are not affected by any US decisions on ABM/ASAT. If we did cancel the entire US ABM/ASAT effort, the Chinese programs will carry on because they address an entirely different requirement - the need to confront the US in a conventional war where the existing Chinese military structure is horribly vulnerable to US precision guided weapons. So the possibility to which you refer does not exist.

Your assertion that nations operate solely on their own strategic interests and nothing to do with the actions of others is belied by the argument that "well the Chinese are deploying this system, so we have to do so as well."

That's right, nations operate entirely in their own strategic interests. The "well the Chinese are deploying this system, so we have to do so as well." argument is one I - very pointedly - did not make. Straw man fallacy. My point is that we are developing our system for our reasons and they are developing their systems for their reasons. Because the two sets of rationales are not related, the go/no go decisions are not related either.

It's belied by the statement that the Chinese see the American reliance on GPS to be an Achilles heel. What is that if not making decisions based on the actions of others?

The point is that the Chinese have their own perception of threats and national requirements. Just as we do, just as the Russians do etc etc. I'd refer you to a discussion I had with Grazhdanin Stas on this very issue where we compared national philosophies. The Chinese are not building an ABM system or an ASAT system because we are, they are building one because theior national strategic environment requires it. It would still require it even if we were NOT building ASAT and ABM systems.

I'm not sure if you've read War in Heaven (Caldicott/Eisendrath), but there was a discussion of just this factor with respect to Chinese missile deployment. I'll try to dig up the relevant section, but the gist of it was that the Chinese were saying "well, there's 20 missiles pointed at the West Coast now, so if ABM is deployed we'll just have to point 100 that way."

And doing so would break their economy. We can build interceptors far faster than they call build missiles and, once we have the systerm established, we can add interceptors at relatively low cost. Adding ICBMs is very, very expensive. So if they want to play that game, Andale, Lets Dance.

And if some massive space weather event occurs, knocking out multiple satellites simultaneously? I realize you're saying this could happen today, but today we don't have widespread ASAT capability (as far as I understand everyone is still "in development"). If something unlucky happens today, we would be jumping the gun to assume a launch, wouldn't we?

No. We've never lost signal from a large group of satellites. If we did, it would a very strong pointer that we were under attack and we'd go to highest readiness alert (bombers taking off, silos counting down, SSBNs coming to launch depth). Give you an example, when there was an attempt to assassinate Ronaldus Magnus, there was also a oss of signal from one satellite and by pure coincidence there was a major Soviet exercise starting. The three things put together were so alarming that we went to highest alert status and stayed there for several hours. By the way, your presumption on ASAT capability is wrong. I refer you to my comment about IRBMs and nuclear warheads.

As long as we're making fiat statements

Not a fiat statement, I told you the factors behind it. There has already been a long discussion of precisely this issue in another thread and I simply didn't want to bore everybody by going over the same ground again. In a nutshell, ABM buys time. In the scenario above (sudden loss of signal from large numbers of satellites) we have no means of knowing what happens. There might be an attack coming in, there might not. With ballistic missiles, launch is final, ballistic missiles cannot be aborted in flight, turned around or retargeted. In the absence of an ABM systems, once they're gone, they're gone and their target is toast. That means we only have the time taken for any inbounds to reach us to make a decision otherwise our own forces will be caught on the ground and hammered. So the pressure is to launch. With ABM, if there is an inbound wave, we can shoot it down and that buys time to find out what is happening and why.

Simple example, back in (IIRC) 1994, the Norwegians launched a Black Brandt sounding rocket. Due to a collection of screwups on the Russian side, it was identified as a Trident heading for Moscow. The Russians held off launching (although they were close) because they knew their ABM system could handle that attack so they had the flexibility to wait and see what else was happening. The crisis faded away. If the Russians hadn't had an ABM system around their capital, they would have to have made their decisions before the assumed missile landed and it is likely that they would have launched.

I'll say ABM increases the danger of nuclear escalation because it gives some jackass the idea that he might avoid retaliation. If you can argue otherwise, please explain.

That's why we call it the jackass argument. It doesn't hold water because it presumes that any defensive shield would be 100 percent effective and that owning party would be absolutely confident of that level of performance. Now, in reality, we can get pretty close to 100 percent although a few leakers would get through. Doesn't matter though, the damage inflicted by those leakers would be greater than any possible benefit from launching the strike. What the jackass argument actually proposes is that somebody out there is enough of a raving psychopath that hurting the enemy is worth any amount of death and destruction received. Russia and the US (and China) don't think that way and the suggestion that there are nutcases like that out there (there are, hint one country's name begins with P) emphasizes the need for an ABM system, We can't shoot down every Russian missile but we can get all the Pakitsani ones.

It's impossible because you say so?

No, because that's what history has demonstrated,

Am I vastly overestimating the effect of the various disarmament treaties that have reduced the number of nuclear weapons.

Yes

Disarmament vs "armed to the teeth" isn't a black-and-white situation. You can reduce arms gradually as long as verification schemes are in place. I'm conceding it's difficult as all hell (and certainly not possible under the current US maladministration), you seem to be saying it's not possible in principle.

That's right, technology leaves the agreements behind - just as technology has left the ABM Treaty behind (it was a terrible treaty anyway and should never have been signed). The only reason why the current arms reduction treaties were possible was that Russia's economic condition meant that it couldn't maintain its nuclear arsenal at its existing size and once their arsenal started to fall, we didn't need as many weapons of that type and could invest the money elsewhere. So all the treaty did was put a public relations gloss on what was happening anyway. That goes of all disarmament treaties. They either put a public relations gloss on what was happening anyway or they are unworkable and are ignored.

And large-scale international cooperation is undesirable why?

Because international politics is a zero-sum game. If an agreement benefits one side, it harms the other. Even if it appears to favor both, there's an unseen third party who gets hurt. That's the big difference between economic agreements and political ones. Political agreements are always zero-sum, economic ones rarely are. That's why the US prefers economic agreements to political ones. As the world hegemon, any political agreement is likely to hurt us. And international agreements limit the US freedom to manoeuver, they're not called "foreign entanglements" for nothing.

I'm assuming (and correct me if I'm wrong) then that the final conclusion of your argument would be that the "third way" is for everyone to arm up and somehow this can allow for some sort of stable peace.

That's right, Its called deterrence. It kept the peace for 50 years. The problem is that we fought teh Cold War against an enemy who was rational and intelligent and as a result we both ran it rather well. Unfortunately, the enemy we face now is neither rational nor intelligent and believes its worth dying if they can take some of us with them. We have no guarantee that they can be deterred. Hence, we need an ABM system to make sure that we can shoot down their attack even if they elected to launch one knowing that it will mean their own elimination.

[Ritterin Sophia]

FYI Stuart, the thread where you had your convo with Stas explaining why ABM's are a good idea is the Link in my last post.

[Stuart]

FYI Stuart, the thread where you had your convo with Stas explaining why ABM's are a good idea is the Link in my last post.

Thank's General. That's very kind of you. Effort much appreciated.

[Turin]

You're fucking discussing the merit of treaties made decades ago, forgive me for not realizing you were too stupid to see if the topic has ever been spoken of before.

Excuse the fuck out of me. I saw that thread when it first popped up and lost interest before it turned into a similar discussion related to ABM/space weaponization. I've had a chance to read through it (somewhat quickly) now. Thanks for the link, rather just a vague reference to "LOLZ Stas was st00piz when he said dat!!11"

The "well the Chinese are deploying this system, so we have to do so as well." argument is one I - very pointedly - did not make. Straw man fallacy.

Fine, so let's assume the Chinese want ASAT only to defeat US (or other) conventional forces. What's your argument for US deployment of ABM, then? It sounds from looking over the previously mentioned thread that it was necessary to maintain stability, which makes it a response to the Chinese deployment of ABM whether or not it is explicitly so. The only other threat you have is the "rogue state" argument, which I'll deal with below. I'm cutting away a lot of the discussion because in light of that argument most of the rest of this becomes fluff.

I'm not sure if you've read War in Heaven (Caldicott/Eisendrath), but there was a discussion of just this factor with respect to Chinese missile deployment. I'll try to dig up the relevant section, but the gist of it was that the Chinese were saying "well, there's 20 missiles pointed at the West Coast now, so if ABM is deployed we'll just have to point 100 that way."

And doing so would break their economy. We can build interceptors far faster than they call build missiles and, once we have the systerm established, we can add interceptors at relatively low cost. Adding ICBMs is very, very expensive. So if they want to play that game, Andale, Lets Dance.

Okay, and it breaks their economy. Whether or not it would be a good response doesn't eliminate the argument that it is in fact a response to our ABM deployment.

You keep saying "they have their own strategic interests and we have ours," but then your arguments always come back to responses to the US.

No. We've never lost signal from a large group of satellites. If we did, it would a very strong pointer that we were under attack and we'd go to highest readiness alert (bombers taking off, silos counting down, SSBNs coming to launch depth).

I must not be making myself clear on this point, because you're reinforcing my argument. Right now, a lost signal from a satellite means we get ready for trouble. Tomorrow (or whatever), with widespread ASAT in play, a lost signal is significantly more likely to be the result of deliberate attack and prelude to launch -- thus, more risk of the "retaliatory" launch decision being made hastily. Right now a lost signal from multiple satellites will scare the fuck out of everyone and push us to the brink, even if it's just some freak space weather phenomena. Tomorrow, with widepread ASAT in play, a lost signal from multiple satellites isn't going to mean people waiting around with their thumb up their ass to see what happens.

I'll say ABM increases the danger of nuclear escalation because it gives some jackass the idea that he might avoid retaliation. If you can argue otherwise, please explain.

That's why we call it the jackass argument. It doesn't hold water because it presumes that any defensive shield would be 100 percent effective and that owning party would be absolutely confident of that level of performance.

No, it just presumes that the jackass "is neither rational nor intelligent and believes its worth dying if they can take some of us with them", to use your own argument about the threats we supposedly face. You are putting some kind of privileged position on rationality to the US (and maybe Russia / China I suppose), that is only justified by the fact that we managed not to nuke each other to death so far.

I'm beginning to see the hidden logic of your argument here, which is basically coming down to "we really have to worry about brown people, because they don't mind getting nuked," which is the stupidest fucking thing I've heard this week.

[Stuart]

Fine, so let's assume the Chinese want ASAT only to defeat US (or other) conventional forces. What's your argument for US deployment of ABM, then?

The US deployment of ABM/ASAT is a logical development of our very long-standing strategic priority, that is to protect the US homeland. This is a strategic priority that goes back to the foundation of the United States. Back in the days of the Cold War, there was an argument about whether that could be better achieved by deterrence or by establish a viable defense. The answer settled on then was to rely on deterrence (whether that was a correct decision or not is another matter). That choice was made possible by the fact that we knew we were dealing with a rational and logical opponent. That is no longer an option; the perception of threat now is that we do not have the luxury of being sure our opponent is logical or rational. The Chinese do; they know we are a logical and rational opponent and they can plan accordingly.

Okay, and it breaks their economy. Whether or not it would be a good response doesn't eliminate the argument that it is in fact a response to our ABM deployment.

No, it is a hypothetical response assuming the Chinese were dumb enough to play that game. You provided a hypothetical situtaion and I provided a hypothetical response to that claim. It has no relationship to what is actually happening in the world.

You keep saying "they have their own strategic interests and we have ours," but then your arguments always come back to responses to the US.

Not so.

I must not be making myself clear on this point, because you're reinforcing my argument. Right now, a lost signal from a satellite means we get ready for trouble. Tomorrow (or whatever), with widespread ASAT in play, a lost signal is significantly more likely to be the result of deliberate attack and prelude to launch -- thus, more risk of the "retaliatory" launch decision being made hastily. Right now a lost signal from multiple satellites will scare the fuck out of everyone and push us to the brink, even if it's just some freak space weather phenomena. Tomorrow, with widepread ASAT in play, a lost signal from multiple satellites isn't going to mean people waiting around with their thumb up their ass to see what happens.

Oh, you're making yourself quite clear. Let's try again. ASAT and ABM are intimately linked, developing one pretty much means developing the other. Therefore the two are different sides of the same coin. An ABM interceptor makes a pretty good ASAT missile - we used Zeus missiles out of Kwaj as an ASAT force back in the 1960s. Also Thors out of Johnson, once again, ASAT isn't new. Now the key point you're missing is that today, if we lose large numbers of signals from satellites, we assume that an attack is underway. It's never happened but that's the working presumption. It doesn't matter whether ASAT is overtly around or not, multiple loss of signal means an attack. In the absence of ABM/ASAT, we assume that an attack is under way and we have only the time taken for the missiles that we assume are coming to arrive to start our response. Due to decision making cycle times, that time is a few minutes at best. Now, in the presence of an ASAT/ABM system we have a much longer time because we can wait for an attack to show up on the screens and start to shoot the missiles down. That buys a priceless few minutes extra to make the decisions.

The presumption that loss of multiple satellite signals means an attack is not affected by the presence or absence of an ASAT/ABM system, the time available to make decisions is greatly benefitted by the presence of such a system.

No, it just presumes that the jackass "is neither rational nor intelligent and believes its worth dying if they can take some of us with them", to use your own argument about the threats we supposedly face. You are putting some kind of privileged position on rationality to the US (and maybe Russia / China I suppose), that is only justified by the fact that we managed not to nuke each other to death so far.

Not at all, we go by evidence of behavior to date. We had the experience of the 1950s through to the 1980s to go by with regard to our previous opponents - thirty years of solid practical observations. We know our opponents then behaved rationally because they did. We know them very well (we're all quite good friends on a personal level). We know from practical observation and experience that India and the present government of Pakistan are rational and logical entities - we know because during the Kargil conflict of 1999 they very carefully set up a potential incident (a training missile launch) to assure the rest of the world that they had their nukes under strict control. However, when we look at North Korea, Iran and a possible different government in Pakistan, we are not so certain. We have good cause from practical observation to note that they do not behave rationally or logically. Therefroe we have no reason to believe that deterrence will ork against them

I'm beginning to see the hidden logic of your argument here, which is basically coming down to "we really have to worry about brown people, because they don't mind getting nuked," which is the stupidest fucking thing I've heard this week.

That might be your opinion, I could not possibly comment. I have no idea what else you've heard this week.

[Turin]

That choice was made possible by the fact that we knew we were dealing with a rational and logical opponent. That is no longer an option; the perception of threat now is that we do not have the luxury of being sure our opponent is logical or rational. The Chinese do; they know we are a logical and rational opponent and they can plan accordingly.

Christ on a crutch. This particular part of the thread comes from your previous argument that nations' actions don't depend on what other nations do. With the exception of, say, resource grabs, what is the Valendamned difference between "strategic interests" and "what other nations are doing"?

Oh, you're making yourself quite clear. Let's try again. ASAT and ABM are intimately linked, developing one pretty much means developing the other. Therefore the two are different sides of the same coin.

Okay...

Now the key point you're missing is that today, if we lose large numbers of signals from satellites, we assume that an attack is underway. It's never happened but that's the working presumption. It doesn't matter whether ASAT is overtly around or not, multiple loss of signal means an attack.
In the absence of ABM/ASAT, we assume that an attack is under way and we have only the time taken for the missiles that we assume are coming to arrive to start our response. Due to decision making cycle times, that time is a few minutes at best. Now, in the presence of an ASAT/ABM system we have a much longer time because we can wait for an attack to show up on the screens and start to shoot the missiles down. That buys a priceless few minutes extra to make the decisions.

Okay, I guess my only problem with that argument is that it assumes an awfully high effectiveness of your ABM shield. If not, you can't actually afford to wait until the attack shows up on your screen, just in case it turns out to be a full-scale launch that will saturate your ABM. If your missiles are still sitting in silos when they're hit because too many weapons got through your screen, they aren't doing you any good. And short of some "hot nuke-on-nuke action" (which you can't run tests on for obvious reasons), ABM hasn't been proven to that level of effectiveness, particularly with respect to decoys.

You are putting some kind of privileged position on rationality to the US (and maybe Russia / China I suppose), that is only justified by the fact that we managed not to nuke each other to death so far.

Not at all, we go by evidence of behavior to date. <snip> However, when we look at North Korea, Iran and a possible different government in Pakistan, we are not so certain. We have good cause from practical observation to note that they do not behave rationally or logically. Therefroe we have no reason to believe that deterrence will ork against them

Iran doesn't seem to be acting irrationally whatsoever. "We don't like it" |= "irrational." They're doing exactly what I'd be doing in their case... they know the US can't afford to risk another war right now and they can improve their regional standing in the current brouhaha.

The case is a little weaker for North Korea but their actions make sense if you try to put yourself in their shoes -- they just have a higher tolerance for risk right now because of their tenuous strategic situation. (And I'm not interested in speculating on hypothetical governments in Pakistan.)

The games theory answer to working with these sorts of nations, just as it was with the Soviets, is Forgiving Tit For Tat... play nice and you can come to the Big Boys table. Be assholes and we take away our toys (economic toys). But extend we a hand later to give them a chance to try again to avoid the escalating negative cycle.

I'm beginning to see the hidden logic of your argument here, which is basically coming down to "we really have to worry about brown people, because they don't mind getting nuked," which is the stupidest fucking thing I've heard this week.

That might be your opinion, I could not possibly comment. I have no idea what else you've heard this week.

Nice dodge. Your basically claiming that Iran is irrational based on "we know the Soviets better" rather than their known actions, which aren't particularly illogical, just undesirable.

[Stuart]

This particular part of the thread comes from your previous argument that nations' actions don't depend on what other nations do. With the exception of, say, resource grabs, what is the Valendamned difference between "strategic interests" and "what other nations are doing"?

Once again, you're misunderstanding the basic principles at play here. or rather you're confusing them. We started off by dealing with the action-reaction theory that stipulates countries introduce specific systems because others whom they perceive as opponents do so. This doesn';t happen, countries develop specific systems because they suit their national strategic position operational circumstances. Thus, China doesn't introduce an ASAT system because the US has an ASAT system, it does so because its perceived needs and operational circumstances require an ASAT system. Classic example. India and Pakistan have both developed nuclear weapons. In India's case it is because they face an opponent that vastly outnumbers them and they need an effective cost multiplier to offset their opponents numerical advantage. In Pakistan's case it is because they face an opponent that vastly outnumbers them and they need an effective cost multiplier to offset their opponents numerical advantage. In India, the opponent is China, in Pakistan the opponent is India. Neither Pakistan nor India introduced nuclear weapons because the other did.

Nations pursue their own strategic interests.

Okay, I guess my only problem with that argument is that it assumes an awfully high effectiveness of your ABM shield. If not, you can't actually afford to wait until the attack shows up on your screen, just in case it turns out to be a full-scale launch that will saturate your ABM. If your missiles are still sitting in silos when they're hit because too many weapons got through your screen, they aren't doing you any good. And short of some "hot nuke-on-nuke action" (which you can't run tests on for obvious reasons), ABM hasn't been proven to that level of effectiveness, particularly with respect to decoys.

Decoys don't work. We had that problem licked back in thr 1960s. At the moment we can give a level of success in the high 90 percents.

Iran doesn't seem to be acting irrationally whatsoever. "We don't like it" |= "irrational." They're doing exactly what I'd be doing in their case... they know the US can't afford to risk another war right now and they can improve their regional standing in the current brouhaha. The case is a little weaker for North Korea but their actions make sense if you try to put yourself in their shoes -- they just have a higher tolerance for risk right now because of their tenuous strategic situation.

On the contrary, both countries are behaving irrationally. They are going out of their way to send the message that deterrence will not work against hem and that they are prepared to pay any cost if it means hurting those they perceive as their enemies. In addition, both countries are studiously ignoring the requirements of international behavior - viz flying a ballistic missile over somebody else's territory. That's a big no-no and the result was major damage to NKs bargaining position. However, the issue here is can we be sure deterrence will work? If the answer is yes, we can rely on it, if the answer is no, we have to look to defense. The behavior of Iran and NK is such that we cannot be sure that deterrence will work and those two countries have only tehir own actions to blame for that perception.

Nice dodge. Your basically claiming that Iran is irrational based on "we know the Soviets better" rather than their known actions, which aren't particularly illogical, just undesirable.

No dodge at all. I treated your remark the way it deserved to be treated. The key point at issue is can we be sure that deterrence will work against Iran? The answer from a government perspective is no. And that means a defense system is essential.

[Stuart]

ABM hasn't been proven to that level of effectiveness, particularly with respect to decoys.

Something came up and I had to cut that bit short.

Firstly, during the Zeus test shots back in the 1960s, we scored 59 hits out of 64 including (a classified number) of skin-to-skin hits. There's nothing difficult about ABM. An inbound ballistic missile is a very easy target. It doesn't manoeuver, it doesn't defend itself and it doesn't use countermeasures.

The last may be contrary to some of the anti-ABM propaganda pushed out there but its true. Decoys are the earliest form of defense suggested against an ABM system and the earliest to be eliminated as a serious threat to the efficiency of an ABM system.

Given the range of target discrimination technologies available to us (most of them well-practiced since the 1960s and 1970s), in order to be effective, a decoy would have to be the same shape, mass, color and density (plus density distribution) have the same thermal image and same thermal distribution as a real re-entry vehicle. If it's going to be that alike, why not simply make it another re-entry vehicle.

Also, the decoy must behave like a RV. Modern radar track extraction will spot immediately a non-RV like behavior. We already use this against decoys from aircraft; the old-style dropping of chaff and flares doesn't work any more because they don't behave like real aircraft. In order to work against a modern missile they have to behave like an aircraft (in other words, not a ballistic arc downwards. That applies to ABM; if the target doesn't behave like an RV it can be filtered out. And so it goes; there are mroe than three dozen technologies that can be applied to distinguising decoys from RVs.

It doesn't end there. Releasing decoys form ICBMs is not an easy task, in fact all the problems there still have to be solved. The British tried for years to get decoys to work (a program called Chevaline) and their efforts failed dismally. At its simplest, getting the decoy to separate from the RV is not easy.

Only two types of people still suggest decoys are an effective counter to ABM. One are those who have only a Popular Mechanics level of knowledge of the systems involved and doen't realize what is going on. The other group are well aware that decoys don't work but keeping claiming they do knowing that refuting their claims means releasing classified information.

[K. A. Pital]

If decoys worked no one would think about increasing the maneuver capabilities of warheads. That's simple as 1-2-3. If people say missiles need last-stage mauever ability, that means it's vulnerable at last stage and decoys don't help.

[Turin]

...We started off by dealing with the action-reaction theory that stipulates countries introduce specific systems because others whom they perceive as opponents do so.

I understand the point you make here, but my original argument wasn't intended to be as specific as you're detailing the action-reaction theory. I'm saying countries introduce specific systems because others whom they perceive as opponents develop systems or procedures which can be countered with said system, not necessarily because they develop the same system. In the specific case of ABM, it is in the interest of countries whose opponents have ABM to develop ABM themselves in order to prevent the threat of one-sided nuclear exchange, because the other side might be a jackass (to use our earlier "jackass theory").

China's opponent across the Pacific is a nation lead by religious fundamentalists and nationalist morons who have a proven history of preemptive strikes against those they perceive as threats, who is developing a technology (ABM) that might be able to eat China's nuclear deterrent. This leads them to need ABM as well.

And short of some "hot nuke-on-nuke action" (which you can't run tests on for obvious reasons), ABM hasn't been proven to that level of effectiveness, particularly with respect to decoys.

Decoys don't work. We had that problem licked back in thr 1960s. At the moment we can give a level of success in the high 90 percents.

I'll admit I was surprised to find out that decoys aren't already deployed in the ICBM arsenal (in the post you followed up with). But for a "level of success in the high 90 percents," we seem to have an awful lot of difficulty making skin-on-skin hits today except in rigged tests.

Iran doesn't seem to be acting irrationally whatsoever. "We don't like it" |= "irrational." They're doing exactly what I'd be doing in their case... they know the US can't afford to risk another war right now and they can improve their regional standing in the current brouhaha. The case is a little weaker for North Korea but their actions make sense if you try to put yourself in their shoes -- they just have a higher tolerance for risk right now because of their tenuous strategic situation.

On the contrary, both countries are behaving irrationally. They are going out of their way to send the message that deterrence will not work against hem and that they are prepared to pay any cost if it means hurting those they perceive as their enemies.

Which may be a pretty damn shrewd perception to be sending if that's the thing your opponent fears most, isn't it? Because if your opponent can overwhelm you militarily, the only possible defense is to make sure that the cost of such would be too high for them to want to.

The Iranians are benefiting from the perception that they are a regional threat to US hegemony. They know they can't take on the US and they have no intention to. The North Koreans are getting us back to the table despite their nuke attempt. Why? Because the US administration doesn't dare go into open war without outright provocation because of the repercussions it will have here at home.

[NecronLord]

This thread has been merged at participant request. I deemed that there was merit in this as both topics appear similar, and allowing one to be purged while not allowing the other to be so seems wasteful.

I will however, not delete Turin's second, apparently superflous, first post in the second topic.

Direct your complaints to Beowulf.

[Medic]

China's opponent across the Pacific is a nation lead by religious fundamentalists and nationalist morons who have a proven history of preemptive strikes against those they perceive as threats, who is developing a technology (ABM) that might be able to eat China's nuclear deterrent. This leads them to need ABM as well.

Iraq hardly is the same opponent as China from our point of view, and economically, one is so much easier and causes far less ripples in the global economy. (Iraq) Whatever else could be said of Bush, it can't be claimed with a straight face he would attack China. We even had something of an incident with them over the P-3 Orion and everyone acted cooly. It was wrongly believed Saddam was dealing with terrorists and that he had a WMD program, but based on those estimations, Iraq wasn't a sane opponent whereas a PRC very much is.

Seriously, why would we attack China? There was a claimed clear-and-present danger from Iraq that if true is not at all amenable to reason (religiously-inspired terrorists) and we could do that without breaking a sweat, relatively speaking. China isn't invading Taiwan, we've not had mysterious super-viruses break out, we actively trade with each other and I'm not waiting with baited breath for an ICBM launched from the PRC to sail across the Pacific.

GWB and his administration's political machinations, social policies and ability to wage war against economically downtrodden 2nd world nations !comparable to brinkmanship with China.

[Starglider]

who is developing a technology (ABM) that might be able to eat China's nuclear deterrent. This leads them to need ABM as well.

China would require two orders of magnitude more interceptors to stop a US first strike than the US would need to stop a Chinese first strike (not even considering the fact that the US has a lot more harder-to-intercept SLBMs and plenty of advanced cruise missiles and bombers), and they don't have as many existing resources to leverage to build that system. I don't think it will be practical for China to deploy an ABM system to block Soviet or US ICBM strikes for some time yet, and it wouldn't do them a lot of good if they did, because both countries have other ways to nuke them. OTOH deploying a system to block Indian (note that China has gone to war with India several times in the 20th century), Pakistani and assorted bit player (Iran and NK now, who knows in another decade or two) nukes is relatively practical for them.

I'll admit I was surprised to find out that decoys aren't already deployed in the ICBM arsenal (in the post you followed up with). But for a "level of success in the high 90 percents," we seem to have an awful lot of difficulty making skin-on-skin hits today except in rigged tests.

Most people find this strange until they check the facts. I did and I did (to the extent that an interested layman can). Decoys not working is relatively obvious in hindsight. Missiles taking tens of shots to get working correctly is common and also not surprising if you have any experience of complex engineering projects. Unfortunately ABM is obscured in a huge cloud of propaganda, mostly anti but some of the pro stuff is nearly as bad. Incidentally the 'they have X so we must have X' argument you keep harping on about is a favourite line politicians like to use on ignorant electorates - and you're trying to take a bullshit propaganda tactic and reverse it to the even stupider 'if we don't do X they won't do X', just like lots of other clueless 'peace' activists for at least the last century.

[Turin]

Whatever else could be said of Bush, it can't be claimed with a straight face he would attack China. We even had something of an incident with them over the P-3 Orion and everyone acted cooly. It was wrongly believed Saddam was dealing with terrorists and that he had a WMD program, but based on those estimations, Iraq wasn't a sane opponent whereas a PRC very much is.

Seriously, why would we attack China?

One could have made the same argument for the USSR back in the day, but there we were, ratcheting up the count of warheads for decades. Why did Russia find the need to build a nuclear arsenal if they were rational players? By your logic, surely they knew we wouldn't perform a unilateral strike against them. Of course, they couldn't be sure of that, could they? For that matter, if ABM is such a swell thing for everybody, why did we find the need to limit it with the ABM treaty in the first place?

On top of that, the China argument you're making ignores the other side of this, which is the assumed irrationality of other third-party states like Iran (as Stuart was arguing).

There was a claimed clear-and-present danger from Iraq that if true is not at all amenable to reason (religiously-inspired terrorists)

Which was false, of course. From the perspective of the PRC or, perhaps more importantly, Iran, this was an irrational move by the US (and I would agree with them).

Most people find this strange until they check the facts. I did and I did (to the extent that an interested layman can). Decoys not working is relatively obvious in hindsight.

Not any more or less obvious than the difficulty in missiles or ABM, however. In theory, decoys aren't any more difficult than MIRVs. In theory, intercepting an inbound missile in the orbital stage is just a matter of figuring out ballistic paths. In practice, all these things are difficult. I still haven't seen any evidence that ABM is workable short of lobbing a nuke up, which we know has plenty of bad side effects (the aforementioned Van Allen pumping, for example).

Incidentally the 'they have X so we must have X' argument you keep harping on about is a favourite line politicians like to use on ignorant electorates - and you're trying to take a bullshit propaganda tactic and reverse it to the even stupider 'if we don't do X they won't do X', just like lots of other clueless 'peace' activists for at least the last century.

Please read the thread. I've argued at least twice now that this is not what I've been saying. Here, I'll break it down with crayon for you.

If we assume A->B
Then, If A=True, B=True
However, If A=False, B=True or False

Your veiled assumption that I'm some clueless hippy notwithstanding, I've already made the argument that international cooperation is difficult as all fuck. But I haven't seen any support for the idea that it's necessarily zero-sum.

[Stuart]

If decoys worked no one would think about increasing the maneuver capabilities of warheads. That's simple as 1-2-3. If people say missiles need last-stage mauever ability, that means it's vulnerable at last stage and decoys don't help.

That's exactly true although there are other reasons for manoeuvringa n RV during the final stages of re-entry as well - the primary one being to improve accuracy. We had a maneuvring RV on the Pershing II IRBM for exactly that purpose - the intent being to take out deeply-buried command bunkers etc. We used radar terrain matching for the control system coming in (I understand your equivalent used optical terrain matching which was a clumsier but less complex way of doing the same thing).

The whole Chevaline story is a dreadful warning on the subject of penetration aids. The British came to the conclusion (correctly) that Polaris A3 was hopelessly vulnerable to Soviet ABM defenses and wanted an improved version. Rather than buy Poseidon, they tried to upgrade A3 by reducing the number of warheads from 3 to 2 and using the extra capacity for penetration aids, primarily decoys. The system was a flop, the penetration aids didn't work (deploying them from the missile body proved much harder than anybody had expected and early 1970s discrimination technology was entirely adequate to filter them out). The British engineers even came up with the old chestnut "we don't make a decoy loook like an RV, we made the RV look like a decoy" (that argument is pure sophistry, when one sees that, we know we've hit the bottom of the intellectual barrel) but it didn't help (which the Nike engineers told them - and demonstrated it.

We've always assumed your target discrimination capability is as good as ours, there's no reason why it shouldn't be, we're not talking some ultra-super-dooper star wars developments here, any competent air defense crew know the rules and your's are better than most. What is spectacular these days is the way that the development of computers, missile propellents and active-array radars have put an ABM system into the reach of pretty much anybody with a military infrastructure. We can put the whole system into a truck these days which has implications that are truly enormous. A mobile ABM system that can be redeployed as needed is truly a revolution.

[Starglider]

Why did Russia find the need to build a nuclear arsenal if they were rational players? By your logic, surely they knew we wouldn't perform a unilateral strike against them.

The issue isn't just a possible first strike. The US came quite close to nuking North Korea and/or China in the Korean War. The USSR needed an arsenal and a trip-wire policy to discourage the US from using nuclear weapons to attack Soviet interests (i.e. win proxy wars), as much as the US needed one to discourage the USSR from invading Europe (and for a long time nuclear retaliation was the only really credible deterrent against that).

For that matter, if ABM is such a swell thing for everybody, why did we find the need to limit it with the ABM treaty in the first place?

The USSR was worried about the US technical lead and the fact that widespread US ABM deployment would leverage the US economic advantage to an even greater extent than the cold war already was. The US signed it because idiot academics and politicians were overruling the defence establishment at the time (inter-service politics didn't help; the Air Force didn't like ABM because it was essentially an Army project).

Which was false, of course. From the perspective of the PRC or, perhaps more importantly, Iran, this was an irrational move by the US (and I would agree with them).

It was rational in the context of the PNAC world view, which is to say rational under the same kind of reasoning that led the Soviets into Afghanistan. The flimsy justification was just PR nonsense; the evidence is pretty clear on the Bush administration wanting to attack Iraq from pretty much the day they got into power.

I still haven't seen any evidence that ABM is workable short of lobbing a nuke up,

Because you're using wall of ignorance tactics to try and ignore the Nike Zeus results, the PAC-3 results versus theatre missiles and the fact that both the recent US and Indian strategic ABM test results are pretty good for a brand new missile system. As always, wall of ignorance just confirms that you are in fact ignorant. You're aguing against a multi-decade expert in the field supported by various layman who've independently checked the evidence. You lost the technical side of the argument before you began.

But I haven't seen any support for the idea that it's necessarily zero-sum.

I don't personally think it's always zero sum. There are always winners and losers for a given agreement, but for a set of agreements it seems to me that there can be a net win (arguably opposed alliances such as in the cold war provide a stability for both sides). But the vast majority of individual cases are zero-sum. If you have any counterexamples I suggest you detail them.

[metavac]

One could have made the same argument for the USSR back in the day, but there we were, ratcheting up the count of warheads for decades. Why did Russia find the need to build a nuclear arsenal if they were rational players? By your logic, surely they knew we wouldn't perform a unilateral strike against them. Of course, they couldn't be sure of that, could they? For that matter, if ABM is such a swell thing for everybody, why did we find the need to limit it with the ABM treaty in the first place?

I think at this point the conversation would benefit from Stuart explaining what a 'rational state actor' is in the realm of political science and strategic studies, how analysts like himself determine a likely space of behaviors for this abstract entity, and how he would measure deviations from said behavior.

[Stuart]

I'm saying countries introduce specific systems because others whom they perceive as opponents develop systems or procedures which can be countered with said system, not necessarily because they develop the same system. In the specific case of ABM, it is in the interest of countries whose opponents have ABM to develop ABM themselves in order to prevent the threat of one-sided nuclear exchange, because the other side might be a jackass (to use our earlier "jackass theory").

Not so. China is developing an ABM system because it's primary military strength has always been its huge population. Back in circa '65 Mao said that it didn't matter if the Chinese lost 400 million people in a nuclear exchange because the other 600 million would survive to lead the world to socialism. It was an article of faith that a nuclear assault would not, could not, create a situation where the Chinese population was massacred to the point where it couldn't recover. As their familiarity with nuclear weapons grew, they realized (helped by us) that their enormous population was a source of weakness, not strength. Being a population-orientated power made them peculiarly vulnerable to a nuclear assault. Thus, China's greatest strength was also its greatest weakness. that's why they started developing an ABM system, they needed it to protect their population which was their primary source of power. It had nothing to do with any US development of an ABM system - which, if you knew the timelines involved is something you can see for yourself.

China's opponent across the Pacific is a nation lead by religious fundamentalists and nationalist morons

I'm trying to keep this discussion on an adult level so please spare me the juvenile posturing. It might win you a few cheers elsewhere but all it does here is serve to discredit anything you might say.

I'll admit I was surprised to find out that decoys aren't already deployed in the ICBM arsenal (in the post you followed up with). But for a "level of success in the high 90 percents," we seem to have an awful lot of difficulty making skin-on-skin hits today except in rigged tests.

The tests aren't rigged. The program is too urgent and they cost too much for us to waste time and money with idiocy like that. Each test is designe dto check out the performance of various parts of the system, find out what works and what does not, to improve the bits that worked and to fix the bits that don't. Whether the interceptor actually hits the target is irrelevent although to get a hit is nice from the public relations point of view. Because we are testing specific aspects of the interceptor performance, we automate the bits that are not under test. Simple example (one taken from an actual test). We wanted to see if a part of the system that handled terminal homing worked the way it was supposed to. So, we manually steered the missile into a position where that system would take over. In that way, we were able to start from a known baseline and could see what was working and what wasn't. In fact, that part of teh system worked extremely well.

We KNOW we can get skin-to-skin hits on RVs, we've been doing it since the 1960s.

Which may be a pretty damn shrewd perception to be sending if that's the thing your opponent fears most, isn't it? Because if your opponent can overwhelm you militarily, the only possible defense is to make sure that the cost of such would be too high for them to want to.

It's very far from shrewd, its incredibly stupid. What they are telling us is that they don't care how much damage they take as long as they inflict some on us. That means we (a) develop a defensive system and (b) start thinkinga bouta pre-emptive attack. if Iranian and North Korean policy was to incite a pre-emptive attack, their present policies are ideally suited to achieve that aim. If you were actually following this situation in any detail, you would be aware that NK behavior has resulted in even the Japanese talking openly about launching a pre-emptive attack on NK. They're also changing their constitution to allow for such an attack and have recently raised the Japanese armed forces to full ministerial level. All as a result of NK behavior.

I'm not interested in speculating on hypothetical governments in Pakistan.

Frankly, what you're interested in doing is irrelevent. Future governments in Pakistan are a key part of the equation and they have to be considered by people who are actually making decisions. Mushy is in a very precarious position, he's doing a balancing act trying to remain in power and (although he's doing it very well) it won;t take much to tip him off the wire. There have been five attempts on his life already and the Islamic terrorists only have to be lucky once. Once Mushy is gone, its a pretty good certainty that the regime that takes over in Pakistan will be fundamentalist and they will have access to both nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles - unless the Indians take them out first. So, what Pakistan gets up to is indeed a part of the equations and you trying to wish it away won't change that.