US Economy grows at fastest rate since 1984!!

[Darth Wong]

So of course having no defence and even more dead in the now more likely even't of an attack is a better solution?

How is the massive attack made more likely by the absence of an ABM system which would only stop a fraction of incoming missiles?

Anyway the point of the US ABM system is to defeat a limited attack from a nation with limited resources, the inability of such a system to totally defeat something it's not meant to is not very surprising.

Tell that to Shep. The SDI system was originally envisioned to block a Soviet attack, and that is the context in which Shep is defending it. The fact that the idea has since morphed into a different role is not relevant.

[theski]

and Back on Topic.... MORE GOOD NEWS>..

Construction Surges to Record in Sept.
Mon Nov 3,10:31 AM ET Add Business - Reuters to My Yahoo!



WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. construction spending surged unexpectedly in September to a record high as outlays for both residential and nonresidential building posted gains, a government report showed on Monday.

I will dress thy links!

Oct. Factory Growth Fastest Since 2000
Mon Nov 3,11:19 AM ET Add Business - Reuters to My Yahoo!


By Eric Burroughs

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. manufacturers cranked up output in October to its highest level in nearly four years and slowed the pace of layoffs, according to a report on Monday showing the strongest rebound among factories since the 2001 recession.

I will dress thy links!

Stocks Soar to 17-Month Highs

Reuters
Monday, November 3, 2003; 12:40 PM


By Denise Duclaux

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks jumped on Monday, driving the Dow and the S&P 500 to fresh 17-month highs after a surprisingly strong reading on the manufacturing sector lifted investors' hopes for a U.S. economic rebound

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dy ... ge=printer

Damm those tax cuts... Damm them straight to Hell!!

[Sea Skimmer]

A pity you have an evident reading-comprehension problem. You keep trying to equate a testing programme with an actual, deployable weapon. And the ABL test is already lagging two years behind its original schedule due to technical problems.

And your magic decoy systems are almost all paper

A Patriot battery —not a single weapon. Yet more of your bullshit nitpickery.

No, what he listed is the requirements of a single firing unit.

Because of how many missiles and warheads necessary to swamp the system which can be bought with $40 billion.

Too bad the threat nations don't have anything like that much money to spend.

In addition to the dollar problem there were also concerns over the technical feasibility of Nike Zeus. The ability to acquire the target RV, and to even discriminate between a RV and decoys was a concern. Also, it was felt that the system could be easily saturated due to the mechanical radars, thus rendering the entire system ineffective. The effects of nuclear explosions and the resulting electro-magnetic pulse (EMP) could render the huge radars required for the Nike Zeus system utterly useless. The other major concern for Nike Zeus was its accuracy and the fact that the TTR and MTR radars could only perform one intercept at a time.[/i]

Which is why phase array radars where introduced, and they worked just fine.

And this ludicrous sidetracking onto the T-64 supports your argument how, exactly...?

It is an example of how most weapons simply do not work without development and the deployment of trial models. If the US and the rest of the world didn't constantly take risks we'd still be running around with the weapons of 1914.

This requires some special, arcane knowledge? It's an engineering problem, nothing more.

That took the US and USSR a decade of work to get right, while both devoted rather more resources then anyone else has available to the problem.

Problems which have been solved and for which there is more than a wealth of technical information to work from.

And its all kept highly classifed.

It's more an issue of cost/benefit and utility. A C-17 is at least a useful piece of hardware. NMD on the other hand is a very dubious proposition which will not protect the country from a serious nuclear attack

No such attack is likely to be launched, a 5 missile blackmail from North Korea however is quite likely.

and not at all against any form of attack delivered by means other than ICBMs

Thats nice, and torpedoes wont stop tanks but we still buys those too. What exactly is your point?

Then you're being very simplistic. Those Topols can be MIRVed rather easily.

At a greatly increased cost yes. But then we've still got more ABM missiles then it has warheads for the price. Multipul warheads also mean less space for any form of decoy

http://www.physicstoday.org/pt/vol-53/iss-12/p36.html

excerpt



*
Reentry heating of a bomblet
Figure 3
Biological weapons in submunitions. A lethal biological agent delivered by a ballistic missile could be divided into 100 or more small bomblets, or submunitions, which would be released shortly after the boost phase. This strategy would overwhelm the planned NMD system with far too many targets to intercept. It would also be an effective way of dispersing the agent over a wide area, and so would likely be adopted regardless of NMD concerns. In its analysis, the panel found that such technical issues as dispersal of the bomblets, reentry heating, and the release of the biological agent did not present serious difficulties. (See figure 3.)

Too bad the amount of agent you could deliver by this means would be useleslly small.

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

A solution to ballon decoys had already been pointed out. Then there is the fact that in tests ballon decoy almost alwats failed to deploy.

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

And how much would such an active system weigh? They don't say, but somthing must be traded away and thats going to be warhead numbers and yeild. The defence is already winning without firing a shot.

No you don't, actually.

And a few paragraphs from a collage panel with no actual numbers for decoy weight or space requirements or there actual effectiveness has told you this how?

Based on faulty data and "cooked" tests.

That's nice, meanwhile your beloved decoys have yet to defeat an interceptor and most don't even exist as paper designs.

I'm afraid it doesn't quite work that way. The more variables the system has to contend with introduces increased degredation of defensive accuracy. And 1000 MIRVed Topols can deliver up to 6000 warheads.

And Russia can't afford that many in the first place so it doesnt matter, meanwhile MIRV's increase the missile cost, and even without that its still a 10 to 6 advantage.

Because Third World countries don't have the financial resources to do any better than SCUD knockoffs. And thanks for introducing yet another irrelevancy into this discussion.

And those nations are the threat. The threat which the system must defeat is not that of Russia, how hard is this to understand?

[Patrick Degan]

A pity you have an evident reading-comprehension problem. You keep trying to equate a testing programme with an actual, deployable weapon. And the ABL test is already lagging two years behind its original schedule due to technical problems.

And your magic decoy systems are almost all paper

At this point, so is the defence system.

A Patriot battery —not a single weapon. Yet more of your bullshit nitpickery.

No, what he listed is the requirements of a single firing unit.

Wrong. It covers a battery of sixteen launchers.

Because of how many missiles and warheads necessary to swamp the system which can be bought with $40 billion.

Too bad the threat nations don't have anything like that much money to spend.

At the rate the Chinese and Russian economies are growing, they soon will be.

In addition to the dollar problem there were also concerns over the technical feasibility of Nike Zeus. The ability to acquire the target RV, and to even discriminate between a RV and decoys was a concern. Also, it was felt that the system could be easily saturated due to the mechanical radars, thus rendering the entire system ineffective. The effects of nuclear explosions and the resulting electro-magnetic pulse (EMP) could render the huge radars required for the Nike Zeus system utterly useless. The other major concern for Nike Zeus was its accuracy and the fact that the TTR and MTR radars could only perform one intercept at a time.

Which is why phase array radars where introduced, and they worked just fine.

Which has fuck-all to do with modern countermeasures.

And this ludicrous sidetracking onto the T-64 supports your argument how, exactly...?

It is an example of how most weapons simply do not work without development and the deployment of trial models. If the US and the rest of the world didn't constantly take risks we'd still be running around with the weapons of 1914.

No, it a False Analogy. The example of upgrades to a conventional weapon system have no bearing upon the far larger challenge of nuclear offense/defence. That is like trying to compare spacecraft development to the design evolution of the Ford Mustang.

This requires some special, arcane knowledge? It's an engineering problem, nothing more.

That took the US and USSR a decade of work to get right, while both devoted rather more resources then anyone else has available to the problem.

And that groundwork is now a basis for anyone else approaching the MIRV problem.

Problems which have been solved and for which there is more than a wealth of technical information to work from.

And its all kept highly classifed.

Half of the problem is simple engineering. As for the rest, well...that's what espionage is for.

It's more an issue of cost/benefit and utility. A C-17 is at least a useful piece of hardware. NMD on the other hand is a very dubious proposition which will not protect the country from a serious nuclear attack

No such attack is likely to be launched, a 5 missile blackmail from North Korea however is quite likely.

And your basis for thzt surmise is...?

and not at all against any form of attack delivered by means other than ICBMs

Thats nice, and torpedoes wont stop tanks but we still buys those too. What exactly is your point?

I thought I made that clear enough, but to connect the dots for you, if NMD is meant to stop a serious nuclear attack, it is utterly inadequate to the task. And a small rogue state will not even attempt anything like an ICBM attack and instead employ other means, which destroys the other rationale for NMD.

Then you're being very simplistic. Those Topols can be MIRVed rather easily.

At a greatly increased cost yes. But then we've still got more ABM missiles then it has warheads for the price. Multipul warheads also mean less space for any form of decoy

It is still less of a cost than the NMD system. And apparently you still don't grasp the more missiles/more warheads and decoys equation. And one possible method of mounting decoys would not impose a penalty in warhead carriage.

http://www.physicstoday.org/pt/vol-53/iss-12/p36.html

excerpt



*
Reentry heating of a bomblet
Figure 3
Biological weapons in submunitions. A lethal biological agent delivered by a ballistic missile could be divided into 100 or more small bomblets, or submunitions, which would be released shortly after the boost phase. This strategy would overwhelm the planned NMD system with far too many targets to intercept. It would also be an effective way of dispersing the agent over a wide area, and so would likely be adopted regardless of NMD concerns. In its analysis, the panel found that such technical issues as dispersal of the bomblets, reentry heating, and the release of the biological agent did not present serious difficulties. (See figure 3.)

Too bad the amount of agent you could deliver by this means would be useleslly small.

That is not the point. The point is that introduces another level of complication to the problem.

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

A solution to ballon decoys had already been pointed out. Then there is the fact that in tests ballon decoy almost alwats failed to deploy.

Yes, and it is based on an utterly useless test in which the system was tasked to pick out a balloon from a cone and therefore bears no realistic correlation to a battlefield situation.

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

And how much would such an active system weigh? They don't say, but somthing must be traded away and thats going to be warhead numbers and yeild. The defence is already winning without firing a shot.

No, it is not. And a small LNOX cannister would not impose that much of a weight penalty.

And a few paragraphs from a collage panel with no actual numbers for decoy weight or space requirements or there actual effectiveness has told you this how?

Attacking the Messenger fallacy.

Based on faulty data and "cooked" tests.

That's nice, meanwhile your beloved decoys have yet to defeat an interceptor and most don't even exist as paper designs.

And your precious interceptors have yet to face a real-world conditions test and the system's alledged effectiveness exists only on paper.

I'm afraid it doesn't quite work that way. The more variables the system has to contend with introduces increased degredation of defensive accuracy. And 1000 MIRVed Topols can deliver up to 6000 warheads.

And Russia can't afford that many in the first place so it doesnt matter, meanwhile MIRV's increase the missile cost, and even without that its still a 10 to 6 advantage.

They will afford what they have to, just as we would if the tables were turned and it were we who were faced with a Russian NMD system designed to render our deterrent force valueless. As it is at the present time, this is a moot point: 100-250 interceptors will not stop a 1000-3000 warhead attack, and the rouge state missile threat is unrealistic.

Because Third World countries don't have the financial resources to do any better than SCUD knockoffs. And thanks for introducing yet another irrelevancy into this discussion.

And those nations are the threat. The threat which the system must defeat is not that of Russia, how hard is this to understand?

There is nothing to understand because the concept is ludicrous. A smal rogue state seriously interested in attacking the United States will not do so with missiles, and the present threat of massive and certain retaliation already deters attack. Even someone like Kim Il Jong is sensible enough not to risk any action which jeopardises his own survival on the throne.

[Sea Skimmer]

At this point, so is the defence system.

Which is why there shooting into the sky and hitting things.

Wrong. It covers a battery of sixteen launchers.

No, you can plug sixteen launchers into it if you wanted, Patriot batteries however do not have 16 launchers, they have 4 or 8 depending on configuration, but a single radar can only control a few missiles at a time anyway.

At the rate the Chinese and Russian economies are growing, they soon will be.

They also need that same money to deal with the block obsolescence of there entire militaries and in the case of China enormous infrastructure upgrades for there exapnding population.

Which has fuck-all to do with modern countermeasures.

You mean modern concepts that might become countermeasures after the same kind of devolopment issues BMD must go through.

No, it a False Analogy. The example of upgrades to a conventional weapon system have no bearing upon the far larger challenge of nuclear offense/defence. That is like trying to compare spacecraft development to the design evolution of the Ford Mustang.

No its really not, and of course the current BMD interceptors are completly convetional, they'd be much simplar if they where nuclear.

And that groundwork is now a basis for anyone else approaching the MIRV problem.

A groundwork yes, but its still a damn long and expensive road. The F-22 is a groundwork for anyone to build a 5th generation fighter, yet to expect some third world country to come up with a copy would of course be absurd. Of course by your claim nuclear weapons systems are a "far larger challenge"

Half of the problem is simple engineering. As for the rest, well...that's what espionage is for.

Which is why everyones managed to copy all of America's advanced weapons over the past couple decades... wait that hasn't happened.

And your basis for thzt surmise is...?

Logic. Third World nations ruled by idiots are far more likely to launch because they have nothing to lose.

I thought I made that clear enough, but to connect the dots for you, if NMD is meant to stop a serious nuclear attack, it is utterly inadequate to the task.

It is clearly not intended to stop a major attack.

And a small rogue state will not even attempt anything like an ICBM attack and instead employ other means, which destroys the other rationale for NMD.

Which is why you have multiple defence systems, building BMD doesn't mean that is the only thing that gets done to protect the United States. If we defend against terrorist bombings and cruise missiles then what happens when instead they go with an ICBM? Leaving any avenue uncovered is fucking stupid.

It is still less of a cost than the NMD system. And apparently you still don't grasp the more missiles/more warheads and decoys equation. And one possible method of mounting decoys would not impose a penalty in warhead carriage.

Yes, once more possibul paper concepts are assumed to be fully crediabul by you while things which exist in reaility and are the subject of extensive tests must fail.

That is not the point. The point is that introduces another level of complication to the problem.

Thats the never ending offense vs. defence thing for you. In this case the counter would need to be an eariler intercept or more simply a nuclear warhead for the interceptor.

Yes, and it is based on an utterly useless test in which the system was tasked to pick out a balloon from a cone and therefore bears no realistic correlation to a battlefield situation.

And you've got a realistic test in which decoys worked? Please do point it out.

No, it is not. And a small LNOX cannister would not impose that much of a weight penalty.

A canister, and distribution and control system, all of which must be rugged enough to sit ready at minutes notice for years on end and then function after a prolonged period of acceleration. Then you also need to make the whole warhead bigger to have space for it, those things are rather small.

Attacking the Messenger fallacy.

You're the one who made the assumption off a no numbers article

And your precious interceptors have yet to face a real-world conditions test and the system's alledged effectiveness exists only on paper.

Anyway its all still light years ahead of unfunded unsolicited concepts from MIT.

They will afford what they have to, just as we would if the tables were turned and it were we who were faced with a Russian NMD system designed to render our deterrent force valueless. As it is at the present time, this is a moot point: 100-250 interceptors will not stop a 1000-3000 warhead attack, and the rouge state missile threat is unrealistic.

Both Iran and North Korea are expect by all experts to have ICBM's by 2015, and the North already has NBC arms, while Iran is in possession or working on all three. The threat is not realistic how exactly?

There is nothing to understand because the concept is ludicrous. A smal rogue state seriously interested in attacking the United States will not do so with missiles, and the present threat of massive and certain retaliation already deters attack. Even someone like Kim Il Jong is sensible enough not to risk any action which jeopardises his own survival on the throne.

So America's safety must be based on the whim of a man who's the unquestioned ruler of country that spends half its GDP on defence while cannibalism is becoming a major concern in its provinces? That's reassuring. I'd rather see a fraction of a percent of our GDP for one year spent to remove the issue.

[SWPIGWANG]

On the very first intended interception test of the GBI system:

IFT-3, on 02 October 1999, successfully demonstrated "hit to kill technology" to intercept and destroy the ballistic missile target. The target was simplied to include a single decoy, rather than the multiple decoys used in the two previous fly-by tests. Despite a failure in the star tracker, the inertial measurement unit [IMU] of the interceptor oriented the EKV [built by Boeing], which detected the decoy and based on this detection subsequently detected the target warhead, which was destroyed on impact.

Lol, it was capable of discriminating between the real thing and the decoy.

I believe the decoy was a silly spherical balloon due to difficulty in software in identifying tumbling irregular shaped decoies at the time. Possible light weight counter measures against the current detection system have also been devised, from covering the real warhead with a decoy balloon, while mixed with a whole set decoy of baloons at the same time. Other things involving heating the balloons to change the IR signature or the actual warhead itself to completely mess up IR based sensors.

No realistic test of working decoys exists because no realistic decoys that is possible from a ICBM capable country has been tested.


But if I am the evil empire, I'd have my subs fire SLBM or cruise missiles at the missile defense sites (far below interception path of current ABM intercepters) with a saturation attack than fire a full salvo before counter strike hits. If I can't do this, what the fuck am I doing with ICBMs to start with? i'd be so much better off smuggling a bomb which allows denibility, done will enough will prevent the US from any counter attack.

The ABM system is a really expensive bluff tool. It probably is useful in terms of diplomacy, but as a weapon it do not do so well.

But I guess the US is rich enough to afford a whole magnitude more money than its opponent to gain the small factor of safety against suicidal mad man with no chance of winning....

Personally, I perfer kicking their asses before it comes down to that.

[Patrick Degan]

At this point, so is the defence system.

Which is why there shooting into the sky and hitting things.

Which are very convenietly equipped with transponders to help identify and locate them, and boosted up on launches announced well in advanced and following announced flight arcs. I'm sure our enemies would be just as courteous and accomodating before they launch their attack.

Wrong. It covers a battery of sixteen launchers.

No, you can plug sixteen launchers into it if you wanted, Patriot batteries however do not have 16 launchers, they have 4 or 8 depending on configuration, but a single radar can only control a few missiles at a time anyway.

That's sixteen 4-missile launchers, not one radar/control support truck for each launcher.

At the rate the Chinese and Russian economies are growing, they soon will be.

They also need that same money to deal with the block obsolescence of there entire militaries and in the case of China enormous infrastructure upgrades for there exapnding population.

Which their economy will be able to accomodate as it expands.

Which has fuck-all to do with modern countermeasures.

You mean modern concepts that might become countermeasures after the same kind of devolopment issues BMD must go through.

Far less so. Countermeasures are simple, passive systems in relative terms.

No, it a False Analogy. The example of upgrades to a conventional weapon system have no bearing upon the far larger challenge of nuclear offense/defence. That is like trying to compare spacecraft development to the design evolution of the Ford Mustang.

No its really not, and of course the current BMD interceptors are completly convetional, they'd be much simplar if they where nuclear.

Yes it is, really, and the interceptors are the least complex part of the system. That is like trying to judge the design of a gun by the bullets it chambers.

And that groundwork is now a basis for anyone else approaching the MIRV problem.

A groundwork yes, but its still a damn long and expensive road. The F-22 is a groundwork for anyone to build a 5th generation fighter, yet to expect some third world country to come up with a copy would of course be absurd. Of course by your claim nuclear weapons systems are a "far larger challenge"

False Analogy fallacy again. If a Third World country already posseses the technological resources for an ICBM programme and a nuclear weapons programme, it is already on the road to working out the problem of MIRVs. Exactly what is your basis for claiming that this is an insurmountable engineering challenge?

Half of the problem is simple engineering. As for the rest, well...that's what espionage is for.

Which is why everyones managed to copy all of America's advanced weapons over the past couple decades... wait that hasn't happened.

Sarcasm does not a rebuttal make. And four nations possess MIRVed ICBMs, in case it's slipped your memory, while the Chinese are developing a MIRV-capable ICBM of their own. Not quite the insurmountable technical challenge you seem to imagine it is.

And your basis for that surmise is...?

Logic. Third World nations ruled by idiots are far more likely to launch because they have nothing to lose.

Based on what? The alledgedly-insane Saddam Hussein did not launch his chemical weapons in Gulf War I even though he had them at that time. Sorry, but "logic" actually requires a basis in fact, not cartoon visions of insane leaders slobbering over the launch button.

I thought I made that clear enough, but to connect the dots for you, if NMD is meant to stop a serious nuclear attack, it is utterly inadequate to the task.

It is clearly not intended to stop a major attack.

Then as an adequate defence it is useless.

And a small rogue state will not even attempt anything like an ICBM attack and instead employ other means, which destroys the other rationale for NMD.

Which is why you have multiple defence systems, building BMD doesn't mean that is the only thing that gets done to protect the United States. If we defend against terrorist bombings and cruise missiles then what happens when instead they go with an ICBM? Leaving any avenue uncovered is fucking stupid.

Covering a closed avenue is even more idiotic. It is also a waste of resources and an unnecessary destabilisation factor.

It is still less of a cost than the NMD system. And apparently you still don't grasp the more missiles/more warheads and decoys equation. And one possible method of mounting decoys would not impose a penalty in warhead carriage.

Yes, once more possibul paper concepts are assumed to be fully crediabul by you while things which exist in reaility and are the subject of extensive tests must fail.

More handwaving on your part, particularly given that the "extensive" tests for NMD do not approximate real-world combat conditions and therefore are valueless as a valid gauge of effectiveness.

That is not the point. The point is that introduces another level of complication to the problem.

Thats the never ending offense vs. defence thing for you. In this case the counter would need to be an eariler intercept or more simply a nuclear warhead for the interceptor.

Except a nuke would disrupt radar and comm traffic through EMP, which is one reason why Nike-Zeus was abandoned.

Yes, and it is based on an utterly useless test in which the system was tasked to pick out a balloon from a cone and therefore bears no realistic correlation to a battlefield situation.

And you've got a realistic test in which decoys worked? Please do point it out.

Burden of Proof fallacy. Whereas by contrast, all you have to hang your hat on is a very highly unrealistic test in which a clearly distinguishable decoy "didn't" work.

No, it is not. And a small LNOX cannister would not impose that much of a weight penalty.

A canister, and distribution and control system, all of which must be rugged enough to sit ready at minutes notice for years on end and then function after a prolonged period of acceleration. Then you also need to make the whole warhead bigger to have space for it, those things are rather small.

Are you insane? How big does a cannister of compressed coolant really have to be? And what trigger for it has to be more complex than a simple contact fuse triggered by the release of the RV from the carrier pod?

Attacking the Messenger fallacy.

You're the one who made the assumption off a no numbers article

What's the matter? Couldn't count the number of objects depicted in the accompanying illustration of the concept? I'd say that was one possible indicator, or are your powers of reasoning that limited?

And your precious interceptors have yet to face a real-world conditions test and the system's alledged effectiveness exists only on paper.

Anyway its all still light years ahead of unfunded unsolicited concepts from MIT.

Yet another Attacking the Messenger fallacy.

They will afford what they have to, just as we would if the tables were turned and it were we who were faced with a Russian NMD system designed to render our deterrent force valueless. As it is at the present time, this is a moot point: 100-250 interceptors will not stop a 1000-3000 warhead attack, and the rouge state missile threat is unrealistic.

Both Iran and North Korea are expect by all experts to have ICBMs by 2015, and the North already has NBC arms, while Iran is in possession or working on all three. The threat is not realistic how exactly?

Iran is not working on ICBMs but IRBMs; their threats are regional and they're not interested in starting a war with the United States. North Korea's programme is only in its opening stages and they don't have the financial resources for a credible ICBM force and certainly not one that could hope to destroy the United States before receiving massive retaliation. In both cases, it is we who have the overwhelming preponderance of power and North Korea would also face nuclear threats from Russia and China.

There is nothing to understand because the concept is ludicrous. A smal rogue state seriously interested in attacking the United States will not do so with missiles, and the present threat of massive and certain retaliation already deters attack. Even someone like Kim Il Jong is sensible enough not to risk any action which jeopardises his own survival on the throne.

So America's safety must be based on the whim of a man who's the unquestioned ruler of country that spends half its GDP on defence while cannibalism is becoming a major concern in its provinces? That's reassuring. I'd rather see a fraction of a percent of our GDP for one year spent to remove the issue.

No, it is based on the already existing fact of an overwhelming preponderance of American retaliatory capability and upon the fact that North Korea does not have the economic base to sustain the buildup of a serious ICBM threat. Furthermore:

http://www.nautilus.org/DPRKBriefingBook/military/
CRS-RS21473_NorthKoreanBallisticMissileThreat.pdf.

Taepodong II is a dubious design which has never been flight-tested. Nor have the North Koreans yet tested a reentry heatshield or, for that matter, even conducted a basic nuclear test. At this point, the North Korean threat has been exaggerated in public discussion, which again undermines the rationale for deploying an NMD system of dubious theoretical and untested utility against a threat which does not in fact exist.

[MKSheppard]

Just got on and have been perusing the board, and I'll reply later, as I have
to do some stuff around the house and work on other things in teh pipeline
like my 3D models, etc...but i'll comment on this:



How is a balloon barriage like that going to stop a GBI vehicle? They look
nothing like the real thing, and they can quickly be shredded by a blast
of crystallized jello as described by Mr. Slade:

Not ball bearings or shot but jello.

Really

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

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

[jegs2]

Here's a thought: cut spending. This is not a partisan snipe; Bush is among the worst offenders for bloating the government since Johnson. Still, I get deeply irritated when I hear "we have to raise taxes to balance the budget" without a whisper of reducing spending.

That is the key...

[Patrick Degan]

Just got on and have been perusing the board, and I'll reply later, as I have
to do some stuff around the house and work on other things in teh pipeline
like my 3D models, etc...but i'll comment on this:



How is a balloon barriage like that going to stop a GBI vehicle?

The idea is to confuse radar, which you need to aim the interceptors.

They look nothing like the real thing

Satellites wouldn't be searching for the targets optically but with radar, and warheads would also be shrouded by balloon envelopes. On radar, all the objects would "look" alike.

and they can quickly be shredded by a blastof crystallized jello as described by Mr. Slade <snip>

Unfortunately, this would also create a cloud of debris which would damage our other satellites and for that reason is not a practical weapon.

[MKSheppard]

The idea is to confuse radar, which you need to aim the interceptors.

Problem. Such a balloon barriage would be screaming "HERES A WARHEAD HIDDEN INSIDE HERE!"

Satellites wouldn't be searching for the targets optically but with radar, and warheads would also be shrouded by balloon envelopes. On radar, all the objects would "look" alike.

So we just aim at the balloon cloud and let the kill vehicles shred the
balloons to reveal the real vehicles.

Unfortunately, this would also create a cloud of debris which would damage our other satellites and for that reason is not a practical weapon.

Good thing for us that warheads travel at a much lower altitude than most satellites,mmmhhhm?

[MKSheppard]

In addition to the dollar problem there were also concerns over the technical feasibility of Nike Zeus. The ability to acquire the target RV, and to even discriminate between a RV and decoys was a concern. Also, it was felt that the system could be easily saturated due to the mechanical radars, thus rendering the entire system ineffective.

Funny, the same site also says:

http://www.paineless.id.au/missiles/NikeZeus.html

19 July 1962
Intercepted an Atlas D RV. Zeus launched from Kwajalein, Atlas from Vandenberg. Passed within 2km of RV.

22 December 1962
Nike Zeus intercepted an RV and passed within 22 metres.

End 1963
A total of 13 RVs had technically been destroyed. Number of launches is unknown.

And the problem of mechanical radars being overwhelmed was eliminated by that
magical item known as Phased Array Radars, which entered service in the 1970s,
and which are going to form the bulwark of NMD.

The issue of countermeasures was addressed in detail by a recent panel formed for this purpose by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and the Security Studies Program at MIT. The panel, in which we participated, was chaired by APS past president Andrew Sessler and included 11 physicists and engineers, some with direct experience in ballistic missile defense and countermeasures issues.

A bunch of geniuses, and this is the best they can come up with?

A lethal biological agent delivered by a ballistic missile could be divided into 100 or more small bomblets, or submunitions, which would be released shortly after the boost phase. This strategy would overwhelm the planned NMD system with far too many targets to intercept.

How lovely, your bomblets will all burn up in the atmosphere.

There's a reason Re-entry vehicles are a certain size and shape. How are you going to
fit 100 bomblets that are cone shaped into a ballistic missile? A cone isn't exactly the
most efficient use of space.

Nuclear warheads with antisimulation balloon decoys. A nuclear warhead could be hidden within an aluminum-coated mylar balloon and released together with a large number of empty balloons, as illustrated in figure 4. Such "antisimulation"--making a warhead look like a decoy- -could be easier and more effective than making decoys look like warheads.

How lovely, they'll end up being shredded anyway by the explosive jello. Anything still left
after it impacts with a frozen crystal swarm of jello at closing speeds of over Mach 30
is going to be a bit more solid than mylar.

Simple techniques can be used to deny the defense system sensors any distinguishing physical signal that would show which balloon contains a warhead. For example, balloons could be given slightly different temperatures, either passively, by using surface coatings with different emissivities (figure 5), or actively, by using small battery-powered heaters.

Uh huh, so now you're including heaters and other things in the balloons? Not so cheep any
more eh?

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

So you're adding a lot of weight to a warhead and adding a complex system that has to stand
at alert status for possibly decades before being used, and yet can still be defeated by a
radar seeker on the EKV?

I mean hell, we have placed active radar seekers onto things as small
as air-to-air missiles that can pick out violently manuvering targets in a
mountainous background and down them with a perfect success rate (AIM-120)

I wonder how well those radar seekers will do in an enviroment with no mountains
to hide behind.

Really, the only foolproof and realistic method to defeat all of these methods of detection
is just to put a dummy warhead that looks like the real thing, flies like the real thing,
weighs like the real thing, and is the real thing, except for having a nuclear warhead,
and that takes away space on a ICBM that could be used for real MIRVs with
buckets of instant sunshine.

[MKSheppard]

OMFG, a nuclear warhead cooled down to just 77 kelvin is still twenty-five
times hotter than space itself, which is just 3 kelvin I don't think
we will be needing the Radar seeker as long as we have a sensitive enough
IR seeker head

[MKSheppard]

And the ABL test is already lagging two years behind its original schedule due to technical problems.

Got links for this? Everything I've seen indicates it's on schedule.

Which means exactly jack and shit. More bullshit nitpickery on your part.

"Practical" all depends on the circumstances. A fixed installation could actually be
worth it if it was solid state and cheap enough to be produced en masse, likewise,
a mortar which takes 12 hours to emplace would be useful in an island slog against
fanatical japanese in well-dug pillboxes.

A Patriot battery —not a single weapon. Yet more of your bullshit nitpickery.

I didn't know that individual Patriot launch trailers came with their own generators,
radar systems, and launch command centers. Even with just a single 4-launcher trailer,
you're facing three semi trailers for command, detection, and power.

Noted. [Brilliant Pebbles concession]

Feels good eh, Not like that fucking idiot Kast, who
never conceedes at all.

God, I wish he would stop polluting my Tariq Aziz thread.

"Seems" to work doesn't count for anything if the tests for the thing are conducted under highly "idealised" conditions.

How you ignore the repeated failures we had with Atlas and Titan, which blew
up on the launch pad due to fuckups with fuelling during testing and development
of the system. This is a first generation system, of course it will fuck up during
testing. The Russians had engine failures 15 out of the first 32 times they launched
their first ICBM to be deployed en masse, the SS-8.

False Analogy fallacy. The difference between the B2 and NMD is that the latter is not cost-effective against cheaper countermeasures

Erm, there already are cheap countermeasures for the B-2. Bi-static radar, or a really
powerful radar. Problem is said powerful radars are restricted to naval applications
usually, and Bi-static radar is very difficult to integrate into a cohesive system.

Because of how many missiles and warheads necessary to swamp the system which can be bought with $40 billion.

Then we spend more on interceptors which can be bought and deployed en masse cheaply
once we have the infrastructure in.

Oh really, and where did I claim that? [SBIRS]

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

That sounds like SBIRS is NOT part of NMD, when it clearly is.

Try taking your own advice.

Where's the fun in that

I see were back to your favourite red herring.

You keep saying our opponents can just mass produce said warheads and ICBMs,
while claiming we can't mass produce interceptors, calling it a red herring, the
huuuge discrepancy in pricing between the two.

Denial of an argument does not refute it.

You've said over and over the technology doesn't work, when as far back as the 1960s, we had successfully intercepted RVs in space 13 times with Nike-Zeus. The boosters, sensors, and kill vehicles are nothing exotic, they're proven technology which needs to be integrated into a single system.

You mean this:

http://www.paineless.id.au/missiles/HNikeZeus.html

I covered that in a post just above this one. Same site says Nike-Zeus intercepted 13 RVs
theoretically (Ie, they passed close enough to be counted as a kill).

And your evidence that I've read any of these books comes from where? Oh, that's right —pulled out of your own ass.

Your arguments are pretty much the same I can read in books I can get from my library's
used book store on "The Star Wars Debate", copyright 1981, 82, or some year within
the Reagan adminsitraiton.

Which has exactly what to do with figures provided by the Congressional Budget Office? I smell another Attacking the Messenger fallacy.

Provide me with a link to the actual report done by the CBO, not the "analysis" done by
those groups, and then I'll change my tune.

Sigh...

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

I'm not seeing any thing about EC3 there. All I see is a pricetag of just $48 billion for
the most advanced system, not fantastic prices like $118 Billion as your mythical
EC3 system has.

And this ludicrous sidetracking onto the T-64 supports your argument how, exactly...?

The russians deployed immature technology such as autoloaders and gun-launched
ATGMs, and kept on working on them, even though severe problems were encountered
with their first generations, allowing them to totally dominate us with their later
second generation and third generation equipment until we addressed the balance
with the next-generation tanks of the 1980s.

No one else has the capability the T-80 has as far as launching ATGMs through the gun,
as all the advanced stuff like that was kept only for Red Army units, not for puppet states
like Poland, etc. We tried gun-launched missiles in the 1960s too, and we gave up developing it further after the first failure, even though by the end of the service life of the Shiellagh
missile, it was fairly reliable.

This requires some special, arcane knowledge? It's an engineering problem, nothing more.

Funny, both the US and USSR had hellacious problems with MIRVs and getting it to work
properly without screwing up, and leaving six warheads frozen to a ICBM as it plummeted
back into the atmosphere.

Problems which have been solved and for which there is more than a wealth of technical information to work from.

So why can't we keep plugging away on NMD until we solve the problems inherent in it
and gain more technical information on the operation of NMD?

and is more likely to touch off an arms race rather than prevent one.

Funny, I don't see an arms race being launched by our adversaries.

Then you're being very simplistic. Those Topols can be MIRVed rather easily.

Six MIRVs for $50 million vs 10 GBIs for $50 million...hmmm.

http://www.physicstoday.org/pt/vol-53/iss-12/p36.html

Covered that in an earlier post before this.

No you don't, actually.

How are you going to violate the laws of physics then?

See above.

See above.

Which is a Red Herring.

Yet you claim the enemy can produce ICBMs to overwhelm a NMD system for cheeper
than it costs to build NMD, even though GBIs are 1/10th the price of a Topol-M.

Which ignores cost/benefit considerations in any comparison analysis.

Cost=1 Big ticket program

Benefit = Protection against several cities being incinerated by Kim Dong Small
at some point in the future, and removes his nuclear blackmail option; I'd say that
is money better spent than buying Kim Dong Small off again.

I'm afraid it doesn't quite work that way. The more variables the system has to contend with introduces increased degredation of defensive accuracy. And 1000 MIRVed Topols can deliver up to 6000 warheads.

1,000 Topol Ms = $50 Billion. Wow, that's fucking expensive.

Man of Straw.

1,000 Topol Ms = $50 Billion. Wow, that's fucking expensive.

Because Third World countries don't have the financial resources to do any better than SCUD knockoffs. And thanks for introducing yet another irrelevancy into this discussion.

So It's not cheep and easy to produce ICBMs then is it?

Furthermore, therer were legitimate concerns over SDI prompting a more aggressive posture from the US.

Wow, and you needed SDI to tell this? Read FM-100-5, in particular the 1982 Edition.

NATO's goal [in 1976] was to end the war with the border unchanged.

The new Army doctrine assumed, on the other hand, that once war had started, the border would cease to exist. As much as possible the war would be fought in the other side's backfield, with deep penetration not only by bombers but by armored forces, paratroops, and helicopter-borne infantry.

"Commanders," the new doctrine said, "need to use the entire depth of the battlefield to strike the enemy and to prevent him from concentrating his firepower or maneuvering his forces to a point of his choice. Commanders also need adequate space for disposition of their forces, for maneuver, and for dispersion."

As far as the future border was concerned, Starry described the Army's new policy this way: "Once political authorities commit military forces in pursuit of political aims, military forces must win something—else there will be no basis from which political authorities can bargain to win politically. Therefore, the purpose of military operations cannot be simply to avert defeat—but rather it must be to win." In other words, move the border eastward. The Red Army could no longer plan an attack and assume that, at worst, it would end up back on the existing border.

The new doctrine was also controversial for the open way in which it considered the possibility, even the likelihood, that both nuclear and chemical weapons would be used in a European war. Not for two decades or more had an Army document dealt so forthrightly with this sensitive issue. Starry, explaining the new doctrine, said that "it would be advantageous to use tactical nuclear and chemical weapons at an early stage and in enemy territory." Soldiers were advised to be prepared, from the first moment, for the use of such weapons by either side.

"By extending the battlefield and integrating conventional, nuclear, chemical and electronic means, forces can exploit enemy vulnerabilities anywhere," the manual advised. "The bat- tle extends from the point of close combat to the forces approaching from deep in the enemy rear. Fighting this way, the U.S. Army can quickly begin offensive action by air and land forces to conclude the battle on its terms."

Chemical weapons cannot, under U.S. policy, be used unless an enemy has used them first. Battlefield nuclear weapons can be used first but not before there has been a release by top political officials of the NATO nations. The new doctrine, by requiring commanders to focus their attention well into the future, provided time to request and obtain authority to use nuclear weapons and to use them far enough in the enemy's rear so they would not endanger friendly troops.

This was too controversial, and in 1986, it was toned down to soothe ruffled feathers in NATO.

Gorbachev was trying to back Reagan into a corner.

Uhm, by offering to destroy *all* of his nukes? Uhm, you back people into a corner by
threatening them, not offering gifts.

Learn the difference between diplomatic posturing and technological reality before you dig a hole for yourself.

I'd say an offer to destroy all nuclear weapons by the fucking #1 man in the USSR himself,
is a hell of a lot different than mere posturing by a Soviet Foreign Ministry apparatachik.

[MKSheppard]

Shep, while it may seem futile to try and bring you back to Earth, only a lunatic can tally up millions of projected short-term deaths and consider that a successful defense system. I know you're accustomed to reading war books and thinking of dead people as mere statistics, but they're not.

If I have to only take a single bite out of a shit sandwhich, as opposed to
eating the entire damn thing, I'll consider it successful.

[Patrick Degan]

The idea is to confuse radar, which you need to aim the interceptors.

Problem. Such a balloon barriage would be screaming "HERES A WARHEAD HIDDEN INSIDE HERE!"

And the next question afterward would be "which are decoys and which are warheads?"

Satellites wouldn't be searching for the targets optically but with radar, and warheads would also be shrouded by balloon envelopes. On radar, all the objects would "look" alike.

So we just aim at the balloon cloud and let the kill vehicles shred the balloons to reveal the real vehicles.

Wasting limited ammunition on blind shooting. Brilliant

Unfortunately, this would also create a cloud of debris which would damage our other satellites and for that reason is not a practical weapon.

Good thing for us that warheads travel at a much lower altitude than most satellites,mmmhhhm?

Um, not quite. Warheads reach orbital altitude as part of their ballistic trajectory.

[Patrick Degan]

In addition to the dollar problem there were also concerns over the technical feasibility of Nike Zeus. The ability to acquire the target RV, and to even discriminate between a RV and decoys was a concern. Also, it was felt that the system could be easily saturated due to the mechanical radars, thus rendering the entire system ineffective.

Funny, the same site also says:

http://www.paineless.id.au/missiles/NikeZeus.html

19 July 1962
Intercepted an Atlas D RV. Zeus launched from Kwajalein, Atlas from Vandenberg. Passed within 2km of RV.

22 December 1962
Nike Zeus intercepted an RV and passed within 22 metres.

End 1963
A total of 13 RVs had technically been destroyed. Number of launches is unknown.

http://www.fas.org/spp/starwars/program/nike_zeus.htm

Nike Zeus

Much like the NIKE air defense systems that preceded it, the ABM system evolved through many stages. The same Bell Labs that produced NIKE AJAX and NIKE HERCULES spearheaded the ABM effort, although many more subcontractors were involved.

America's ABM system was the result of a research and development effort started in 1956. It began with the Army's NIKE ZEUS system, a concept very similar to the other NIKE systems. ZEUS had radars to acquire and track the target and also a radar to track the intercepting missile, as well as a computer. Another radar not found in other NIKE systems was a discrimination radar used to determine which objects being tracked were threatening, because of decoys being mixed with incoming warheads. However, this system suffered from the same problem as other NIKE systems and the HAWK system: it could track and intercept only one target at a time.

The system demonstrated its ability to intercept single objects successfully with its first live intercept at Kwajalein in July 1962.

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.

And the problem of mechanical radars being overwhelmed was eliminated by that magical item known as Phased Array Radars, which entered service in the 1970s, and which are going to form the bulwark of NMD.

Which still is vulnerable to the swarm principle and decoys.

The issue of countermeasures was addressed in detail by a recent panel formed for this purpose by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and the Security Studies Program at MIT. The panel, in which we participated, was chaired by APS past president Andrew Sessler and included 11 physicists and engineers, some with direct experience in ballistic missile defense and countermeasures issues.

A bunch of geniuses, and this is the best they can come up with?

Attacking the Messenger fallacy. Yet again

A lethal biological agent delivered by a ballistic missile could be divided into 100 or more small bomblets, or submunitions, which would be released shortly after the boost phase. This strategy would overwhelm the planned NMD system with far too many targets to intercept.

How lovely, your bomblets will all burn up in the atmosphere. There's a reason Re-entry vehicles are a certain size and shape. How are you going to fit 100 bomblets that are cone shaped into a ballistic missile? A cone isn't exactly the most efficient use of space.

Small spherical objects with ablative coating can also function for survivable reentry and sufficently if targeting accuracy is not a premium consideration.

Nuclear warheads with antisimulation balloon decoys. A nuclear warhead could be hidden within an aluminum-coated mylar balloon and released together with a large number of empty balloons, as illustrated in figure 4. Such "antisimulation"--making a warhead look like a decoy- -could be easier and more effective than making decoys look like warheads.

How lovely, they'll end up being shredded anyway by the explosive jello. Anything still left after it impacts with a frozen crystal swarm of jello at closing speeds of over Mach 30 is going to be a bit more solid than mylar.

The explosive jello concept is not being included as part of the EKI design and apparently exists only in the mind of Stuart Slade, so you can cease dragging that red herring out for display.

Simple techniques can be used to deny the defense system sensors any distinguishing physical signal that would show which balloon contains a warhead. For example, balloons could be given slightly different temperatures, either passively, by using surface coatings with different emissivities (figure 5), or actively, by using small battery-powered heaters.

Uh huh, so now you're including heaters and other things in the balloons? Not so cheep any more eh?

A ridiculous argument. A small heater is hardly a big-ticket item, nor would a thermal insulation coating constitute a significant expense.

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

So you're adding a lot of weight to a warhead and adding a complex system that has to stand at alert status for possibly decades before being used, and yet can still be defeated by a radar seeker on the EKV?

As I said to Sea Skimmer when he made much the same inane argument, how big does a cannister of compressed coolant really have to be? And what trigger for it has to be more complex than a simple contact fuse triggered by the release of the RV from the carrier pod?

I mean hell, we have placed active radar seekers onto things as small as air-to-air missiles that can pick out violently manuvering targets in a mountainous background and down them with a perfect success rate (AIM-120)

AIM 120 has never had to face the challenge of shooting down a target travelling at a velocity of 7km/sec.

I wonder how well those radar seekers will do in an enviroment with no mountains to hide behind.

The question is, can they pick out warheads from decoys?

Really, the only foolproof and realistic method to defeat all of these methods of detection is just to put a dummy warhead that looks like the real thing, flies like the real thing, weighs like the real thing, and is the real thing, except for having a nuclear warhead, and that takes away space on a ICBM that could be used for real MIRVs with buckets of instant sunshine.

Nonsense. Both the shrouded warheads and the decoy balloons would be travelling at the same velocity along the same flight trajectory. The balloons aren't just going to "float away" like soap bubbles when released from the carrier pod.

[Patrick Degan]

OMFG, a nuclear warhead cooled down to just 77 kelvin is still twenty-five times hotter than space itself, which is just 3 kelvin. I don't think we will be needing the Radar seeker as long as we have a sensitive enough IR seeker head.

Um, no; 77°K would be about the ambient temperature at low-orbital altitudes. Remember, the Earth radiates 30% of the heat it receives back to space.

And the ABL test is already lagging two years behind its original schedule due to technical problems.

Got links for this? Everything I've seen indicates it's on schedule.

http://www.nti.org/d_newswire/issues/th ... _misd.html

From November 1, 2002 issue.
U.S. Plans I: Pentagon Delays Airborne Laser Tests

The Pentagon plans to delay a previously planned shoot-down test of the U.S. Airborne Laser system because of weight problems on the Boeing 747 that houses the system, a senior defense official said this week (see GSN, Aug. 12).

“We’re still assessing … the fourth quarter of calendar year 2004 as being the shoot-down time frame,” said Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish, head of the Missile Defense Agency.

The test of the system’s lethal capacity was originally scheduled for 2003, but documents submitted to Congress in February by the Defense Department indicate that the test is now planned for the end of 2004.

“Basically, the problem we have with the Airborne Last is not that it’s carrying too much stuff, but in one part of the airplane it has too much weight,” Kadish said, referring to the back of the aircraft, which holds the lasers (Laura Colarusso, Inside the Air Force, Nov. 1).

http://news.softpedia.com/news/2/2003/S ... 4649.shtml

excerpt

What lies ahead in the coming months is expected to be a difficult engineering endeavor. Program managers recognize that they still have to overcome high hurdles, and indicate the shootdown attempt is likely going to occur in 2005, not late 2004. "It gets more and more challenging to hold to the 2004 date," notes ABL program director USAF Col. Ellen M. Pawlikowski.

Also:


In future, one of the main problems ABL managers will have to wrestle with is weight, in particular its distribution. There are places where inordinate stress could be put on the aircraft if the weight of components increases. Some of the tanks containing COIL's chemical ammunition already are heavier than expected.

Pawlikowski acknowledges that "we have had more weight growth than we had anticipated at [critical design review]." This occurred in part because laser components that were to have been made of composites had to be made of titanium instead.

But both Miller and Pawlikoski argue that weight shouldn't be a problem, at least for the YAL-1A. The aircraft is certified for operations with a gross take-off weight above 800,000 lb., while the mission weight for the prototype is expected to be 660,000 lb.

Weight could be a concern in the long run, however, as ABL won't necessarily be able to cruise climb, like a freighter, but may need to reach its 40,000-ft. operating altitude immediately. If the system is too heavy it won't be able to do so. "Weight is still very much a watch item for me," Pawlikowsaid.

"Practical" all depends on the circumstances. A fixed installation could actually be worth it if it was solid state and cheap enough to be produced en masse, likewise, a mortar which takes 12 hours to emplace would be useful in an island slog against fanatical japanese in well-dug pillboxes.

Except the criteria for THEL was for a weapon whicnh could be ported to the battlefield for theatre defence. MTHEL only barely meets this requirement and requires so much support for just a single weapon that it's utility must seriously be questioned.

I didn't know that individual Patriot launch trailers came with their own generators, radar systems, and launch command centers. Even with just a single 4-launcher trailer, you're facing three semi trailers for command, detection, and power.

Apparently, neither do the people at Raytheon, who don't mention any of this array being necessary simply for one launcher.

"Seems" to work doesn't count for anything if the tests for the thing are conducted under highly "idealised" conditions.

How you ignore the repeated failures we had with Atlas and Titan, which blew up on the launch pad due to fuckups with fuelling during testing and development of the system. This is a first generation system, of course it will fuck up during testing. The Russians had engine failures 15 out of the first 32 times they launched their first ICBM to be deployed en masse, the SS-8.

False Analogy fallacy. Atlas, Titan, and the SS-8 were never tested under artificially rigged conditions which "ensured" success and in any case is a whole order different problem than an NMD system.

False Analogy fallacy. The difference between the B2 and NMD is that the latter is not cost-effective against cheaper countermeasures

Erm, there already are cheap countermeasures for the B-2. Bi-static radar, or a really powerful radar. Problem is said powerful radars are restricted to naval applications usually, and Bi-static radar is very difficult to integrate into a cohesive system.

A bi-static radar is hardly the same thing as a decoy balloon, balloon shroud, and other passive countermeasures and certainly nowhere near as inexpensive. What conceivable purpose did you have for trotting out such a patently obvious red herring?

Because of how many missiles and warheads necessary to swamp the system which can be bought with $40 billion.

Then we spend more on interceptors which can be bought and deployed en masse cheaply once we have the infrastructure in.

Still don't get it, do you? Buying more interceptor rockets does not balance out the already-existing cost disparity between ICBMs and the NMD system as a whole.

Oh really, and where did I claim that? [SBIRS]

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

That sounds like SBIRS is NOT part of NMD, when it clearly is.

Out-of-context quote. SBIRS may be part of an NMD system, but it too is not the source for the overall expense of the C3 setup and could easily exist as a seperate addition to the already existing early-warning network.

You keep saying our opponents can just mass produce said warheads and CBMs, while claiming we can't mass produce interceptors, calling it a red herring, the huuuge discrepancy in pricing between the two.

As I seem to have to keep saying, the price discrepancy is not ICBM/GBI, it is ICBM/NMD system as a whole. Exactly what part of this is so difficult to understand?

Denial of an argument does not refute it.

You've said over and over the technology doesn't work, when as far back as the 1960s, we had successfully intercepted RVs in space 13 times with Nike-Zeus. The boosters, sensors, and kill vehicles are nothing exotic, they're proven technology which needs to be integrated into a single system.

And again:

http://www.fas.org/spp/starwars/program/nike_zeus.htm

Nike Zeus

Much like the NIKE air defense systems that preceded it, the ABM system evolved through many stages. The same Bell Labs that produced NIKE AJAX and NIKE HERCULES spearheaded the ABM effort, although many more subcontractors were involved.

America's ABM system was the result of a research and development effort started in 1956. It began with the Army's NIKE ZEUS system, a concept very similar to the other NIKE systems. ZEUS had radars to acquire and track the target and also a radar to track the intercepting missile, as well as a computer. Another radar not found in other NIKE systems was a discrimination radar used to determine which objects being tracked were threatening, because of decoys being mixed with incoming warheads. However, this system suffered from the same problem as other NIKE systems and the HAWK system: it could track and intercept only one target at a time.

The system demonstrated its ability to intercept single objects successfully with its first live intercept at Kwajalein in July 1962.

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.

And your evidence that I've read any of these books comes from where? Oh, that's right —pulled out of your own ass.

Your arguments are pretty much the same I can read in books I can get from my library's used book store on "The Star Wars Debate", copyright 1981, 82, or some year within the Reagan adminsitraiton.

Not my source except only in your own imagination. Another pathetic strawman.

Which has exactly what to do with figures provided by the Congressional Budget Office? I smell another Attacking the Messenger fallacy.

Provide me with a link to the actual report done by the CBO, not the "analysis" done by those groups, and then I'll change my tune.

Read it and weep:

http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=19 ... e=0&from=7

Sigh...

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

I'm not seeing any thing about EC3 there. All I see is a pricetag of just $48 billion for the most advanced system, not fantastic prices like $118 Billion as your mythical EC3 system has.

Basic math beyond your grasp? Expanded Capability 1 + Capability 2 + Capability 3, plus ancilliary costs for annual operation and upgrades. Work it out. And my reference to "Expanded Capability 3" was a slight error on my part.

And this ludicrous sidetracking onto the T-64 supports your argument how, exactly...?

The russians deployed immature technology such as autoloaders and gun-launched ATGMs, and kept on working on them, even though severe problems were encountered with their first generations, allowing them to totally dominate us with their later second generation and third generation equipment until we addressed the balance with the next-generation tanks of the 1980s.

No one else has the capability the T-80 has as far as launching ATGMs through the gun, as all the advanced stuff like that was kept only for Red Army units, not for puppet states like Poland, etc. We tried gun-launched missiles in the 1960s too, and we gave up developing it further after the first failure, even though by the end of the service life of the Shiellagh missile, it was fairly reliable.

So... your argument is the development of an autoloader for a tank is equivalent to the development of NMD systems?

This requires some special, arcane knowledge? It's an engineering problem, nothing more.

Funny, both the US and USSR had hellacious problems with MIRVs and getting it to work properly without screwing up, and leaving six warheads frozen to a ICBM as it plummeted back into the atmosphere.

And as I said to Sea Skimmer, that effort now comprises a groundwork for anybody else pursuing the problem of MIRV afterward.

Problems which have been solved and for which there is more than a wealth of technical information to work from.

So why can't we keep plugging away on NMD until we solve the problems inherent in it and gain more technical information on the operation of NMD?

Little thing called the laws of physics.

and is more likely to touch off an arms race rather than prevent one.

Funny, I don't see an arms race being launched by our adversaries.

—yet.

Then you're being very simplistic. Those Topols can be MIRVed rather easily.

Six MIRVs for $50 million vs 10 GBIs for $50 million...hmmm.

And were right back to your favourite red herring yet again, aren't we? And six MIRVed Topols would loft 18-36 warheads.

http://www.physicstoday.org/pt/vol-53/iss-12/p36.html

Covered that in an earlier post before this.

If that's what you choose to call it...

No you don't, actually.

How are you going to violate the laws of physics then?

The balloon decoy method doesn't violate physics, neither do any of the other passive countermeasures described in the MIT paper.

Yet you claim the enemy can produce ICBMs to overwhelm a NMD system for cheeper than it costs to build NMD, even though GBIs are 1/10th the price of a Topol-M.

You just utterly refuse to let go of this red herring. The cost of the GBI rockets is inconsequential compared to the cost of the NMD system As. A. Whole. How many times must this be said and in how many different ways?

Which ignores cost/benefit considerations in any comparison analysis.

Cost=1 Big ticket program

Benefit = Protection against several cities being incinerated by Kim Dong Small at some point in the future, and removes his nuclear blackmail option; I'd say that is money better spent than buying Kim Dong Small off again.[/quote]

The North Korean ICBM threat argument is ludicrous on its face, as is the "mad dictator" cartoon. As has been mentioned before, Taepodong II is a dubious design which has yet even to face its first flight test, and there has yet been no basic nuclear test conducted by the DPRK of even a Trinity-class atomic weapon, nevermind one suitable for mounting on a missile of any sort. For all of Kim Il Jong's posturing, there is no sign that he is prepared to undertake any action which risks his own survival on the throne. Furthermore, the DPRK hasn't the financial resources for a credible ICBM force ad certainly not one sufficent to challenge the United States. Stop swallowing the propaganda and do some rational analysis for a change.

I'm afraid it doesn't quite work that way. The more variables the system has to contend with introduces increased degredation of defensive accuracy. And 1000 MIRVed Topols can deliver up to 6000 warheads.

1,000 Topol Ms = $50 Billion. Wow, that's fucking expensive.

So's NMD, but Topol can more credibly deliver more bang for the buck.

Man of Straw.

1,000 Topol Ms = $50 Billion. Wow, that's fucking expensive.

So's NMD, but Topol can more credibly deliver more bang for the buck.

Because Third World countries don't have the financial resources to do any better than SCUD knockoffs. And thanks for introducing yet another irrelevancy into this discussion.

So It's not cheep and easy to produce ICBMs then is it?

Another in the long line of your strawmen. Third World countries are not the same as a nuclear-armed superpower.

Furthermore, therer were legitimate concerns over SDI prompting a more aggressive posture from the US.

Wow, and you needed SDI to tell this? Read FM-100-5, in particular the 1982 Edition:

NATO's goal [in 1976] was to end the war with the border unchanged.

The new Army doctrine assumed, on the other hand, that once war had started, the border would cease to exist. As much as possible the war would be fought in the other side's backfield, with deep penetration not only by bombers but by armored forces, paratroops, and helicopter-borne infantry.

"Commanders," the new doctrine said, "need to use the entire depth of the battlefield to strike the enemy and to prevent him from concentrating his firepower or maneuvering his forces to a point of his choice. Commanders also need adequate space for disposition of their forces, for maneuver, and for dispersion."

As far as the future border was concerned, Starry described the Army's new policy this way: "Once political authorities commit military forces in pursuit of political aims, military forces must win something—else there will be no basis from which political authorities can bargain to win politically. Therefore, the purpose of military operations cannot be simply to avert defeat—but rather it must be to win." In other words, move the border eastward. The Red Army could no longer plan an attack and assume that, at worst, it would end up back on the existing border.

The new doctrine was also controversial for the open way in which it considered the possibility, even the likelihood, that both nuclear and chemical weapons would be used in a European war. Not for two decades or more had an Army document dealt so forthrightly with this sensitive issue. Starry, explaining the new doctrine, said that "it would be advantageous to use tactical nuclear and chemical weapons at an early stage and in enemy territory." Soldiers were advised to be prepared, from the first moment, for the use of such weapons by either side.

"By extending the battlefield and integrating conventional, nuclear, chemical and electronic means, forces can exploit enemy vulnerabilities anywhere," the manual advised. "The bat- tle extends from the point of close combat to the forces approaching from deep in the enemy rear. Fighting this way, the U.S. Army can quickly begin offensive action by air and land forces to conclude the battle on its terms."

Chemical weapons cannot, under U.S. policy, be used unless an enemy has used them first. Battlefield nuclear weapons can be used first but not before there has been a release by top political officials of the NATO nations. The new doctrine, by requiring commanders to focus their attention well into the future, provided time to request and obtain authority to use nuclear weapons and to use them far enough in the enemy's rear so they would not endanger friendly troops.

This was too controversial, and in 1986, it was toned down to soothe ruffled feathers in NATO.

And this ridiculous additional strawman makes your point how, exactly...?

Gorbachev was trying to back Reagan into a corner.

Uhm, by offering to destroy *all* of his nukes? Uhm, you back people into a corner by threatening them, not offering gifts.

By making an offer with a condition which Reagan was almost certainly going to reject —either committing him to a level of disarmament he wasn't prepared to accept or creating the conditions for the summit to collapse and for Reagan to catch the "blame" for it. Again, learn to see through the propaganda.

Learn the difference between diplomatic posturing and technological reality before you dig a hole for yourself.

I'd say an offer to destroy all nuclear weapons by the fucking #1 man in the USSR himself, is a hell of a lot different than mere posturing by a Soviet Foreign Ministry apparatachik.

An offer which meant nothing since it was never meant to be taken seriously and was bound to be rejected out of hand.

[Patrick Degan]

I may be absent from this board for the next several days. If so, I shall address rebuttals upon my return.

[MKSheppard]

I may be absent from this board for the next several days. If so, I shall address rebuttals upon my return.

That's ok by me, this thread is starting to become a drag, really. I don't
mind if we move it to a more leisurely pace from now on. And I do have
some very long night skuel classes today and tomorrow...

[LadyTevar]

Fer Gawd's Sake, SOMEBODY lock this stupid spammy off-topic thread?

The past 3 pages have had only ONE post about the US economy, and the rest about blowing shit up!!!

[MKSheppard]

The past 3 pages have had only ONE post about the US economy, and the rest about blowing shit up!!!

Be quiet you!

[StimNeuro]

Fer Gawd's Sake, SOMEBODY lock this stupid spammy off-topic thread?

The past 3 pages have had only ONE post about the US economy, and the rest about blowing shit up!!!

How is this spam? Topics change and morph to become new topics all the time. It's the way most people think and they way most conversations evolve. Shep and Degan have been engaging in a serious discussion for the past 3 pages.

[Vympel]

A topic is not spammy purely by virtue of it being off-topic. I considered splitting it, but who cares really- the economy discussion was dead.

[MKSheppard]

I really don't feel like continuing this thread, so you win this round, Degan.