I don’t know much about ballistic missle defenses other than the fact that the patriot-4 seemed to work pretty well in iraq and that the military is working on lasers which can blow apart rockets in mid flight. I also read in some magazine (i forget which, maybe popular science) that anti-aircraft guns can be used to shoot down a missile.
But the Iraqi missiles were soviet made and probably employed 1980’s technology. not only that, but patriot missiles tend to only work when the missile being fired has a low altitude. I do not know much about north koreas missile’s except this blurb and i am unaware of how advanced our anti-missile technology is right now.
Does anyone have any idea if the US could intercept north Korean missiles directed at South Korea or Japan?
Theoretically, yes, if the U.S. had advanced warning, good tracking, and the proper defenses already in place. There are existing missile defense systems that can destroy ICBMs/SLBMs during the boost phase with a fairly highly degree of reliability.
But if fired on a depressed trajectory and launched from close to the DMZ at Seoul, it almost certainly couldn’t be intercepted in time, as the flight time would be less than 3-4 minutes.
A missile shot at Japan or South Korea wouldn’t be a ballistic missile - it would be something like an advanced SCUD.
Japan currently has 27 Patriot missile batteries in place, protecting major population centers. South Korea also has the same PAC-3 Patriots that were used to protect Kuwait.
So the answer is… Maybe. If the Patriots were on alert, and there was a battery protecting whatever it is that North Korea shoots at, then I’d give it a pretty good probability. Early information suggests that the Patriots in Kuwait had better than a 90% success rate.
Actually, Sam, the “advanced Scud” developed in later years by several former-Societ-clients IS a ballistic missile, just a very short-range one. It has a ballistic (up, then down) trajectory and a programmable guidance system (inertial or GPS) to correct the flight path.
Anyway: A launch from southern NK vs. Seoul or the DMZ would be almost hopeless for intercept. Not enough reaction time. A shot towards, say, Pusan, or Western Japan, could conceivably be within Patriot capabilities but probably very tight – not only would it almost surely be moving faster than a Scud; but also, for a modern enough system, the warhead would likely drop the spent booster for the terminal phase, making a much smaller target (the old Scuds tended to fly as a whole package all the way to the target).
Early reports from the Pentagon said the Pats were highly effective in the first Gulf War too, and that turned out to be a load of bull… so I’d take that stat with a grain of salt.
They discussed this on a news program here in Japan a month or so ago.
Basically there would be 8 minutes from it being shot until impact. In that 8 minutes the Japanese government would be running around like a chook with its head cut off.
The news program didn’t hold any hope for the US being able to do anything either.
The patriot performance in gulf war 2 is about the same as it was in gulf war three. The software in the versions was deliberately skewed so the soviets would not get into a snit about having a missile defense capability.
Now the pac three patriot has the software un inhibited , so the al samouds and scuds were toast. I believe the only ones not engaged were heading off to parts of the desert that were empty or the sea.
Is that true? I think I read that one of the patriot’s problems in the first gulf war was that it tended to go after the fuel tank or other large object after the scud came apart.
Anyway, even on full alert, there’s little chance. It really depends on what the launch platform is. Typical ICBMs (N. Korea has several, I’m not sure of their specific capability) generally travel at around 15000 miles per hour on re-entry. That’s too fast for any weapons targetting system to track - only specially designed missile tracking systems can track them, but they’re not directly linked to weapons systems.
Assuming, even, that a patriot had a radar that could track the missile - assuming the patriot battery was near the target - it would have about 4.1 seconds (I think) to intercept the missile. Assuming a 15,000 mile re-entry, and a 9 mile range on the patriot.
Let’s assume it could launch and intercept in that time - which I doubt is even long enough to launch. And assume that it had a tracking radar capable of painting the target. Most likely, it would detonate behind the target, if it detonated at all. The missile is going too fast most likely to actually hit it directly, so the round would rely on it’s proximity fuse. Assuming the missile was in the proximity fuses range long enough to cause a detonation, the ICMB would still outrun the shrapnel from the patriot’s warhead, because it’s traveling faster than the explosion launches those fragments.
However, if they’re launching towards South Korea or Japan, they probably wouldn’t be using ICBMs as such. I’m not familiar enough with the specific weapons North Korea employs to guess on that, but I did want to outline some of the (huge, gaping) problems using a conventional SAM to intercept ICBMs has.
The older Scuds were at times unreliable at staging – that was what was meant by saying they tended to fly as a whole unit. Thing was, you’d acquire target with the whole missile, and by the time you got to intercept it may or may not have let go the warhead .
The problem with the older Patriots is that they were designed for ‘proximity kills’ - the Patriot would get near the missile and detonate, sending shrapnel through the guidance system, payload, etc. The shock wave would knock the missile off course.
The problem with this is that the SCUDs are horribly inaccurate in the first place, so knocking them ‘off course’ is irrelevant - they aren’t ON a course. So you’re just as likely to knock one into a target than away from one. And the SCUD is such a dumb missile that destroying the electronics and guidance doesn’t really have much effect in terms of rendering the missile harmless.
So the early Patriots actually worked quite well. It’s just that it didn’t make much difference. If they had been shooting at precision missiles that were flying towards specific targets, they would have been assessed as being much more effective.
The PAC-3 Patriot is designed to kill by actually hitting the missile and exploding, which blows the missile apart. This makes them much more effective against a SCUD. Impact with a nuclear missile would almost certainly stop a nuclear detonation, although there’s be a pretty good spray of radioactive crap all over the place. Still, that beats losing a city.
The next question would be, “If N. Korea succeded in blowing up a S. Korean or Japanese city, could the U.S. and its allies turn all the N. Korean cities into radioactives craters?”
Based on past experience, I’d say no, at least if the US/Japan wasn’t expecting it. A couple years ago, North Korea did indeed fire a missile across Japan. There was no advance warning, and it was completely unexpected to the Japanese. Lucky for them, the missile was unarmed, and splashed harmlessly into the sea. North Korea later claimed it had used the missile to launch a satellite, though there is no evidence supporting the existence of an orbiting North Korean satellite.
I also seem to remember reading about field tactical nukes that i assume would be the equivalant to loading a real big howitzer with a nuclear bullet<im sure thats not quite the right wording but…> How you going to stop THAT from raining down on South Korea? Well at least the capital etc.
There is considerable disagreement about the Patriot performance in Gulf War I. This report, a report to Congress, casts considerable doubt that any SCUDS were destroyed by Patriots.
There has been little analysis of Patriot performance in Gulf War II. That remains to be seen.
I should point out that there are major differences between the Patriot I fielded in the Gulf War I and the Patriot III now fielded.
The I was tasked as an anti-aircraft system, the Anti-Missile feature was sort of a “Well, maybe.” The III is a much more serious system.
[sup]Me, I think we ought to bomb N. Korea NOW![/sup][/ul]