MARK INDIA - GBI sees through decoys, kills target

[Sea Skimmer]

This is due to INF treaty right? W84 warheads are still maintained I believe so when Russians make good on their threat to terminate INF Tomahawks could be converted back.

The INF treaty applied only to ground launched ballistic and cruise missiles. The US withdrew nuclear Tomahawks from the fleet as part of a general policy to remove all deployed nuclear weapons from US surface warships. The submarine Tomahawks were removed at the same time as just not being necessary and expensive to keep around in such small numbers. The reduction of air launched weapons was a matter mainly of cost savings and the need to reduce the number of deployed nuclear warheads in general under SORT, AGM-129 was pricey and unreliable so it died, and the AGM-86 stockpile was scaled back from 1000 to 500.

W-84 was only used on the ground launched Tomahawk. The Ship/Sub Tomahawk, as well as AGM-86 and AGM-129 missiles all used various versions of W-80. Both warheads had similar firepower, but W-84 was heavier built so it could have more security features, logical given its deployment in Western Europe. Both warheads are kept in reserve stocks at the moment, especially W-80. Unlike earlier treaties SORT makes no requirement that surplus warheads be destroyed, they just can’t be kept deployed on missiles.

On an unrelated note I wonder why GBI bases are located only in Alaska and California. Shouldn't there be one somewhere in Maine? Or would that destroy any credibility of "not directed at Russia" mantra?

That’d be expensive, the current deployment of NMD and GBI interceptors was made on a truly emergency basis by the Bush administration to ensure that NMD became a reality while Bush was in office. Otherwise the Democrats would have had too easy a time killing it and leaving the US defenseless once again. GBI can cover the east coast, particularly against ICBMs coming over the north pole, that's good enough for now. In the future the US may add additional GBI bases but none are planned at this time. Also keep in mind the US is working on the new mobile KEI missile, which has much more capability then THAAD, though still not on par with GBI. It will use THAAD’s mobile radar (which can also guide GBI, world’s most powerful mobile radar period) for fire control. That will mean in 5-7 years the US will be able to vastly increase its ABM coverage without building any expensive new bases at all. We'd just have the ABM batteries deploy in a field beside the peacetime barracks.

[Uraniun235]

Is there a good centralized resource for missile defense progress? There have been one or two times elsewhere where I've wanted to join in a debate over it but I kind of want something more solid to stand on than "some guys who make some good points at this internet forum".

[Stuart]

On an unrelated note I wonder why GBI bases are located only in Alaska and California. Shouldn't there be one somewhere in Maine? Or would that destroy any credibility of "not directed at Russia" mantra?

There are only a limited number of trajectories that lead from launch site to target, so we can position the launch batteries so that they cover those trajectories. It's like infantry trying to advance through a choke point. At the moment, all the significant threats we face come over the Pacific so the initial two batteries are positioned to cover them. However, the big cost item on an ABM system us the ground-based environment. Once we have that we can add extra missiles very economically. By the same notion, once a nation has an air defense system (air defense is a much harder problem to crack than missile defense), it can be upgraded to a missile defense system very easily and cheaply.