US Missle Interceptor Tests a Success 391
An anonymous reader writes to mention that the U.S. Missile Defense Agency and Lockheed Martin recently reported success in the test flight of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile system. "THAAD is designed to defend U.S. troops, allied forces, population centers and critical infrastructure against short- to intermediate range ballistic missiles. THAAD comprises a fire control and communications system, interceptors, launchers and a radar. The THAAD interceptor uses hit-to-kill technology to destroy targets, and is the only weapon system that engages threat ballistic missiles at both endo- and exo-atmospheric altitudes."
IT'S SPELT MISSILE (Score:2, Informative)
Translation (Score:5, Informative)
Testing for more testing, not for use... (Score:4, Informative)
'Lockheed Martin's program manager and vice president for the THAAD program... "On the expansive range at PMRF, the THAAD missile can fly greater distances, increasing our testing options and creating a realistic tactical environment"'
The article seems to indicate that this testing is not to allow for use, but to allow for further testing. This wasn't the "prove it works" test, but rather the "we could possibly get it to work" test.
I'm personally against the political use of such systems - it defeats the progress we've made in terms of MAD over the REAL threats to humanity in terms of nuclear weapons - politicians are already eager enough to justify use of weapons when in "this new terrorist era" or whatnot. But if it DOES work, and it does save lives, then it's development is still a net good - I'd just still be against deployment until we have direct evidence it would be necessary to save humanity. I'd much rather put 10000 times the effort into not needing such a tool, rather than spend all our efforts on a new arms race.
Ryan Fenton
Not anymore. (Score:5, Informative)
If you look on the top of the page you linked to, it says "The State Department web site below is a permanent electronic archive of information released prior to January 20, 2001. Please see www.state.gov for material released since President George W. Bush took office on that date."
A quick Google search reveals that the U.S. dumped the 1972 ABM treaty in December of 2001 [cnn.com].
There are a lot of things that I take issue with Bush for, but this frankly isn't one of them; I've always been of a mind that it's lunacy to prevent nations from defending themselves. If the world is getting dangerous because of ICBMs, maybe that should be the focus of restrictions, not systems that protect from them. But then again, I've never been down with the whole "MAD" concept in general.
Re:Sounds great but... (Score:5, Informative)
They use nothing but the actual hardware that's in the field. No special stuff to track the target. This is actually a working, real-world style system. Typically, they put the operator on alert for a couple of days or a week (at least in Aegis tests), and they fire it sometime during that window without notifying anyone. They also usually fire a couple of other missiles at the cruiser (well, near misses) that the crew also has to destroy while launching their interceptor.
It's a neat, nearly totally mature capability and it is currently a real deterrent.
Re:Testing for more testing, not for use... (Score:4, Informative)
White Sands proved that they could shoot down short range missiles, and the PMRF testing is ensuring that they can hit medium range missiles. It's just another step. Now they'll try more complex geometries. But the test was nearly 100% valid as a real-world training exercise. The system works now; they're not saying "we could make it work." They're saying that it just did.
Re:New arms race? (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.davidsuzuki.org/about_us/Dr_David_Suzu
"If you build a missile defense that is so fragile almost anything an adversary does will cause it to collapse, then you invite a weak adversary to (attack)" - Theodore A. Postol
Re:Not anymore. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:New arms race? (Score:4, Informative)
THAAD is intended for use against tactical weapons, such as those that might be deployed over a theater. Mixing eras, it would be used against weapons with V-1 and V-2 missile ranges. It's also far less expensive (and apparently far more effective within its given role) than the more well-known ABM system, and will be complementary to the eventual deployment of the ABL, which itself sort of straddles the divide, being dependent more on the curvature of the earth than anything else for its range.
And nuclear weapons (Score:3, Informative)
Joke all you want, but that's what we've actually been doing. Didn't anybody ever tell you that close counts with hand grenades?
And nuclear weapons.
Which, unfortunately, was exactly the "big boom" "kinda close" that had been contemplated in some previous ABM designs.
After all, if it has blossomed, MIRV style, into a cloud of decoys and multiple real nuclear bombs on independent trajectories, spread out by quite a bit by the time your missile gets there, you need a BIG boom to disable all of them that matter. And without an atmosphere to carry a shockwave it helps if you can irradiate with heat, gammas, and neutrons, and can vaporize the whole antimissile and hit the targets with the vapor.
Problem with that is you're setting off your OWN nukes above your OWN targets - and high enough above the atmosphere to do a major electromagnetic pulse when the gamma burst makes a sheet of electrons the size of a continent jump upward by a few miles. (With defenses like that who needs an enemy missile with a real warhead? Other than to provoke the defense.)
So, yes, "hit to kill" is a BIG improvement over the "miss-to-kill technology they were using in previous models". (Assuming you have at least as many anti-missiles as they sent warheads and convincing decoys.)
Re:Not anymore. (Score:3, Informative)
The MAD concept, as insane as it was, worked rather nicely. If either side thought they could survive a nuclear exchange (Say, because they had a working anti-missile system) they would have nuked the other side in a heartbeat. Then everyone in the world would have had to deal with fallout from several thousand nuclear devices exploding. I suspect that a "limited nuclear exchange" between two countries in the next 20-40 years is unavoidable and we can only hope that the devistation that results from that is enough to persuade the rest of the world that pursuing these weapons is a losing proposition.
Re:Not anymore. (Score:1, Informative)
"The establishment of the Zionist regime was a move by the world oppressor against the Islamic world," the president told a conference in Tehran on Wednesday, entitled The World without Zionism.
"The skirmishes in the occupied land are part of a war of destiny. The outcome of hundreds of years of war will be defined in Palestinian land," he said.
"As the Imam said, Israel must be wiped off the map," said Ahmadinejad, referring to Iran's revolutionary leader Ayat Allah Khomeini.