Why Drones Could Be the Future of Missile Defense 167
An anonymous reader writes "With North Korea's failed missile launch Friday, it is clear many nations around the globe are attempting to acquire missiles that can carry larger payloads and go further. Such moves have made the United States and its allies very nervous. Missile defense has been debated since the 1980's with such debate back once again the headlines. Most missile defense platforms have technical issues and are very expensive. One idea: use drones instead. '... a high-speed (~3.5 to 5.0 km/s), two-stage, hit-to-kill interceptor missile, launched from a Predator-type UAV can defeat many of these ballistic missile threats in their boost phase.' Could a Drone really take down a North Korea missile? 'A physics-based simulator can estimate the capabilities of a high-altitude, long endurance UAV-launched boost-phase interceptor (HALE BPI) launched from an altitude of approximately 60,000 feet. Enabled by the revolution in UAVs, this proposed boost-phase interceptor, based on off-the-shelf technology, can be deployed in operationally feasible stations on the periphery of North Korea.'"
Parent post written by anti-US propagandist (Score:4, Informative)
Missile defense, as the name implies, _is_ defensive. It gives _us_ the advantage, which is a good thing — unless, of course, you don't want us to have that advantage.
Re:SBX-1 (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Parent post written by anti-US propagandist (Score:4, Informative)
Exactly. Close 100% of North Korean GDP is going towards military uses whether the US has missile defense or not. Forcing North Korea to use up a large part of that budget building a larger, yet less effective, arsenal is a win.
Re:Parent post written by anti-US propagandist (Score:4, Informative)
How infinitely arrogant one has to be to decide their "enemies" are not even capable of acting rationally.
Some aren't. It wasn't very rational for Hitler to start a two-front war. Seemed like a great idea to him, though.
Re:SBX-1 (Score:4, Informative)
Decoys of warheads are for the re-entry phase.
Decoys don't work during re-entry. Chaff, mylar balloons and lightweight dummies won't survive atmospheric drag.
Decoys are useful during the mid course 'coast', after the booster stages have separated but before warheads return to the atmosphere. Just after booster separation, it is possible to maneuver warheads to a small degree. This allows independent targeting by warheads from a single missile (MIRVs [wikipedia.org]). Its also possible to spread some decoys between them so as to make mid-course interception more difficult as well as obfuscate the identity of the actual targets and confuse terminal defense systems (if any).
Mid course is where the SBX-1 [wikipedia.org] and GMD [wikipedia.org] are expected to work.
The re-entry phase is the trickiest to defend against. Warheads are moving fast and may not be differentiated from decoys until they hit the atmosphere. From this point, there may only be seconds until a warhead reaches its target. And in those seconds, defense systems need acquire their target, calculate trajectories and the ABMs accelerated to target. If the targets are 'hard targets' (missile silos, bunkers, etc.) the job is somewhat easier in that the warhead must strike within a few hundred yards laterally and at a low altitude. This gives ABM systems a smaller footprint to protect and a shorter flight to target. Populations targets are large and can be attacked with high altitude blasts. So terminal ABM systems have to get up higher, cover larger areas and have much less decision time to work with. Guess which types of targets North Korea will most likely select.
In general, the sooner you can knock an ICBM down, the easier a job it is. Knocking them out in their silos is best.