Critics Say US Antimissile Defense Flawed, Dangerous 312
Hugh Pickens writes "The New York Times reports that President Obama's plans for reducing America's nuclear arsenal and defeating Iran's missiles rely heavily on a new generation of antimissile defenses which last year he called 'proven and effective.' Now a new analysis being published by two antimissile critics at MIT and Cornell casts doubt on the reliability of the SM-3 rocket-powered interceptor. The Pentagon asserts that the SM-3, or Standard Missile 3, had intercepted 84 percent of incoming targets in tests. But a re-examination of results from 10 of those apparently successful tests by Theodore A. Postol and George N. Lewis finds only one or two successful intercepts, for a success rate of 10 to 20 percent. Most of the approaching warheads, they say, would have been knocked off course but not destroyed, and while that might work against a conventionally armed missile, it suggests that a nuclear warhead might still detonate. 'The system is highly fragile and brittle and will intercept warheads only by accident, if ever,' says Dr. Postol, a former Pentagon science adviser who forcefully criticized the performance of the Patriot antimissile system in the 1991 Persian Gulf war. Dr. Postol says the SM-3 interceptor must shatter the warhead directly, and public statements of the Pentagon agency seem to suggest that it agrees. In combat, the scientists added, 'the warhead would have not been destroyed, but would have continued toward the target.'"
It's a whole lot more basic than that (Score:5, Informative)
The problems with anti-missile defense are more basic than that:
(1) Basic geometry -- you have to station a slew of defensive missiles every 20 miles along your borders. That's because you are not going to hit anything going Mach 12 across your path-- you need a close to head-on intercept angle.
(2) Cheap and easy countermeasures. Even if you bankrupt your country setting up (1), the bad guys just switch to using sub or boat launched cruise missiles. Or low-trajectory ICBM's. Or put the bomb on a freight or passenger plane. It's mighty foolish to spend a trillion $ and have all that effort counteracted by a visit to UPS and $187.54.
JR Oppenheimer did this math in his head in 1952 as he was testifying to a govt comittee. Nothing has changed since then.
Re:The antimissile defense might be flawed (Score:1, Informative)
This is like DejaVu all over again... There is a long history of overselling technology for political gain.
In 1972 the Salt II treaty resulted in the end of the ABM project for which Raytheon was a major contractor. In reality the project was doomed from the start. The incoming nuclear missiles would detonate prematurely. When people realized that the missile batteries near Andover MA, and Washington DC would result in detonations over those cities the goal became protecting the missile silos to allow retaliation. Cities and their residents would not be saved.
Raytheon then focused on Surface to Air Missile Version D (aka SAM-D). When it was completed it was re-named Patriot. It was intended to hit incoming Soviet bombers (think Soviet version of SAC). When bombers were no longer a threat the missiles were re-programmed for ballistic missiles (i.e. obsolete Soviet SCUD missiles). That didn't work so well.
Re:all it has to do is damage a warhead (Score:4, Informative)
"a warhead is pretty fragile and a lot of things have to work in unison and perfectly together to produce a nuclear explosion. if you hit it hard enough to damage it and prevent an explosion it's good enough"
Not really, this missile is targeting re-entry vehicles that must survive the shock of launch, the heat of re-entry, and frequently contain ground penetrating warheads (for use against hard targets like other silos or bases).
Glancing blows will only deflect the impact point.
You have four main weapon delivery mechanisms:
1. High altitude burst, for EMP, but you risk taking out your own equipment. (Taking out your recon satellites in the opening shot of a war)
2. Low altitude burst, maximum destruction of soft targets
3. Ground burst / laydown (deprecated somewhat in favour of ground penetrating), some hard targets, and maximum area denial (fallout)
4. ground penetrating, maximum damage to well protected hard targets or wide area damage to structures in solid ground (shock waves through the ground destroying foundations for quite some distance)
These warheads are complex, but hardly fragile.
Re:It's a whole lot more basic than that (Score:3, Informative)
Contrary to what you may have seen on TV or in comics - you can't just make an exoskeleton power armor in a cave with a box of scraps.
Or a nuke for that matter.
On the other hand, portable nukes have been around since the '50s. [wikipedia.org]
And it is not really the radiation that is the problem - it's the low yield.
As an attack device it is practically useless unless you are aiming it at very large numbers of humans in the field somewhere.
Its only advantage over conventional explosives is that it is smaller (you would need a truckload of TNT for the same effect) and it irradiates the area.
And you can get the same effect with some fertilizer and a much smaller quantity of literally ANY radioactive material by making a "dirty bomb".
Re:What does PATRIOT stand for? (Score:2, Informative)
then there's the part about falling...
yeah. i count two land wars in asia ongoing atm with two more imminent given that the factor distinguishing Obama's foreign policy from Bush's is "we won't use nukes if you don't already have them." But we'll still invade you to "liberate" your people and reduce the "threat" you pose us all the way on the other side of the globe. Just like the Bushies would have done.
More change plox Obama. The current amount is insufficient.
Oh, and i wonder how many more countries we can invade that neighbor China before they get rightfully paranoid. It's not like they don't have a history of being colonized by Europeans or anything. Something about the Boxer Rebellion. I can't remember. Neither can our current foreign policy wonks.
Re: all it has to do is damage a warhead (Score:5, Informative)
and 1/3 were from a SCUD missile that landed on a barracks after being deflected from its target by a Patriot missile.
Incorrect. The Dhahran barracks were not hit by a "deflected" missile. No intercept of that incoming Scud was ever attempted. There was a software bug in the Patriot Missile system that caused the system clock to drift. The longer the system was kept running without being restarted the worse the drift got. As a consequence of this the system never detected the incoming threat and no intercept was attempted.
Re:It's a whole lot more basic than that (Score:2, Informative)
1) Basic geometry -- you have to station a slew of defensive missiles every 20 miles along your borders. That's because you are not going to hit anything going Mach 12 across your path-- you need a close to head-on intercept angle.
Every 20 miles? Did you sit down and figure that out, or did you just pull a number out of your ass? And you certainly can hit a Mach 12+ target at right angles, provided you have an accurate track early enough. See the cruiser that shot down a satellite a couple years ago--that was a target moving a good bit faster than Mach 12, and nowhere near head-on.
Cheap and easy countermeasures.
Decoys are of relatively little use, and haven't really worked since the 70s. In order to stand a chance at working, they need to have a good approximation of the infrared and radar signatures of a warhead, and (to continue decoying into the reentry phase) have the same ballistic behavior. You wind up with a decoy pretty much identical to a warhead in size, shape, and weight. And at that point, you might as well use that space and weight for a real warhead or better missile performance.
JR Oppenheimer did this math in his head in 1952 as he was testifying to a govt comittee. Nothing has changed since then.
So one guy, a specialist in nuclear physics, pulled numbers out of his ass regarding missile dynamics, seekers, and integrated air/space defenses almost 60 years ago, where nothing has changed but the introduction of ICBMs, better radars, incredibly more powerful calculating and computing resources, better infrared seekers, worldwide near-instantaneous data connections, miniaturization, and so on? Yep, nothing's changed, all right.
A few things y'all need to be aware of, not in any particular order and all from unclassified sources...
When the Patriot SAM system (of Desert Storm fame) was developed, it had hardware and software limitations intentionally added to restrict its ability to act against ballistic missiles and warheads.
The US had an OPERATIONAL ABM system 35 years ago. Not "in development", not "conceptual", not "being tested", but operational, deployed, active. And it worked quite well. Yes, the missiles themselves had small nuclear warheads, but the intercepts took place at very high altitude (essentially in space) so blast and radiation weren't much of a concern, and were much more likely to achieve a kill. Better a small friendly nuke going off 80 miles up than a much bigger hostile one at 10,000ft. But even then, the missiles were accurate enough to sometimes make "skin-to-skin" hits.
Many of the larger Soviet/Russian SAM systems (SA-5/SA-10 in particular) have the kinematic ability to act in an ABM role (just like late-model Patriot and Standard systems), since they were designed to hit fast, maneuvering high-altitude targets. Fitting them with a small nuclear warhead was already reasonable given the only threat they were defending against was NATO bombers carrying nukes themselves; the ABM capability really just required a relatively simple software change and a radar good enough to track the incoming warheads. It's very likely this was done in practice, given how many of the missiles were set up in the air defense network already, ABM treaty or not.
Remember, missile warheads are ballistic weapons. They don't maneuver, and until they hit sensible atmosphere, their flight path is very predictable. The USAF already tracks things like stray bolts in orbit, to a pretty high precision. Also, like any ballistic weapon, accuracy gets worse as distance increases. On a missile with multiple warheads, the "bus" (basically a spacecraft with thrusters and very sensitive navigation systems that carries the warheads) does all the maneuvering and targeting for the warheads, releasing them one at a time. For accuracy, it needs to do this pretty close to the target. If you can hit the bus before it starts dispensing (and
They're right (Score:3, Informative)
US anti-missile missiles are not effective at destroying Iran's imaginary intercontinental nuclear missiles.
Re:The plight of power (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What does PATRIOT stand for? (Score:4, Informative)
Pretty well. The Patriot carries a 200 lb (90 kg) warhead, which is easily enough to kill a soft target like an unarmored shipping container.
Plus, a container travelling at 25 knots (by ship) or less than a 100 mph (road or rail) is a very easy target to intercept.
Why, I'm surprised you'd even have to ask that sort of question.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:What does PATRIOT stand for? (Score:4, Informative)
Interesting and providing the link was useful. It allowed me to find my own quote from that article:
The author freely admits that there is no way to back up his claims of what Mitterrand apparently said.
Re: "The delivery vehicle of the future is wind" (Score:3, Informative)
The Japanese tried the balloon trick alright, but they've loaded them with incendiary bombs [wikipedia.org], mainly to set off forest fires on US territory; not to deliver biological agents.