Is missile defense viable? (Nope.)

Great Debates
1

From this thread:

This is a bit of a sticking point to me, so I’m going to get on my hobby horse and shout about this for a bit. Sorry.

It depends on what you mean by SDI and what your goal is. Technically, we had a “viable” missile defense system in the 1970s (Nike X), if your idea of viable is giving you enough time to launch a counterattack. On the other hand, if you are trying to promote the idea of a nearly invaulnerable missile shield (Hi, Ronnie!) then no, it isn’t viable and probably never will be.

There are two basic ways of intercepting incoming missiles; directed energy (laser/particle beam) and physical interception (anti-missile).

If you’re talking about directed energy weapons (laser/particle beam) there are significant technical hurdles which are decades away from solution; One is energy throughput levels, which are limited, among other things, by the thermal capacity of the lasing medium.
It was thought for a while that the throughput issue would be solved by using a free-electron laser, but for reasons I’m not really conversant with, that hasn’t panned out. [URL=http://www.fas.org/spp/military/program/asat/miracl.htm]MIRACL, the DoD chemical laser program, is closer than anything to an effective energy weapon, but it’s hardly practical for deployment given its limitations and maintainence. Even with development it would probably be decades before it could be considered a functional, viable weapon.

The other is thermal blooming, which is turbulence caused by heating of the air, resulting in beam absorbion and scattering. Thermal blooming problems may never be resolved; bad Tom Clancy novels aside, no amount of adaptive optics is going to make up for the fact that when you pump gigaJoules of energy through the atmosphere, it is going to heat up.

Particle-beam weapons are still conceptual, at best. 'Nuff said.

As for physical interception, you end up in a situation if limited returns. You have to build x number of interceptors with p confidence of interception for y incoming missiles. So if, say, you have, say, an 80% of interception per interceptor (hopelessly optimistic), then 2 interceptors gives you 94% chance of interception per incoming missile. If you have 1000 incoming missiles, you take 60 impacts–oops, just lost 30% of your population there. Given that any significant target is going to have redunant incoming, your percentages go down (88% for two incoming, and so forth). You can build more interceptors, of course, but then your opponent can build more missiles, too. Pretty soon, you’re getting negative returns on your investment; by building more intereceptors, your encouraging your opponent to build redundant offensive capability, which overwhelms your ability to intercept.

The real purpose of ABM (from a strategic standpoint) wasn’t to create an protective shield, but to delay destruction of counterstrike ability and thereby remove the possibility of a disarming first strike. With the launch detection capabilities in the late '70s onward combined with increased accuracy and reliability of our ballistic missile submarine deployment of the Trident and the Ohio-class boomers, a disarming first strike (against us) wasn’t really a possibility. “Star Wars”/SDIO was an outdated concept long before Ronnie started babbling on about his 1980’s Style Death Rays.

And it goes without saying that missile defense is hopelessly obsolete in the post-Cold War environment. No missile shield is going to stop someone from sailing a yacht into Port of Los Angeles with a 10MT warhead in the for’w’rd hold and turning Long Beach into a radioactive sauna. Not only is it not viable, even with billions (more likely trillions) of dollars and man-millenia of effort, it isn’t even advisible.

Comments?

Stranger

2

At the very minimum, a theater-wide ABM defense can be developed and fielded. The Navy’s Linebacker program is accomplishing this with only a tweaking of the AEGIS combat data system and an upgraded Standard missile. The Standard is a robust and proven system that has been fielded for about thirty years, and AEGIS has a similar record of proven success.

3

Proven against what? Can you give an example a real-life combat situation in which either system has defeated multiple targets?

4

This article details improvements to the missile and combat systems.

Here are the specs of the SPY-1 radar system that feeds data into AEGIS.

I have personally seen the system track and target multiple contacts, and we can track objects in low earth orbit if the altitude limiters are removed.

5

Perhaps more importantly a theater defense system needs only track the missile in its launch phase. It greatly simplifies the targeting as few rockets jinx to the left or right when trying to go straight up.

6

We already have an effective missile defense system – it’s called the “shoot a nuke at us and we’ll blast you back to the Mesolithic era” deterrent.

I can only think of two “intelligent” reasons for the continued push for an SDI project:

  1. It keeps contractors rich on government money.

  2. If completed, it makes a terrific club for intimidating others into submission (“Do as we say, or we’ll nuke you – and you can’t strike back!”)

But then, giving juicy contracts to beneficiaries and pissing off the rest of the planet is par for the course for the country these days, it seems…

7

I should point out that my Ozymandias-style rant was intended to encompass only SDIO/NMD/stragetgic-ballistic ABM systems. Theatre defense is a whole 'nother animal, though Patriot and THAAD didn’t really work as advertised.

Some more information on theater defensive systems. Here’s some info from RAND about the costs of development and implementation.

As far as stragetic-level weapons, tracking isn’t really the problem–that can easily be resolved down to a few meters, probably finer–but effective, non-nuclear interception is another baby entirely. Comparing it to “a bullet hitting a bullet” is missing the mark by a few orders of magnitude.

Stranger

8

The only reason I can see for the continued support of an almost certainly non-workable interceptor program is ideological. The very concept of MAD - that we can’t defend ourselves, that we can’t unilaterally wage war without unacceptable consequences- is repugnant to the conservative faction. The idea of some tiny third world nation, with a score or so of nuclear warheads capable of reaching the US, being able to effectively defy us is even more repugnant.

Although it would probably be illegal, I would love to see something like the following: After the US declares that it’s interceptor system is online and operational, some billionaire offers the Russians (they can use the money) twenty million dollars a shot to test the system. Once a month, with plenty of advance notice, the Russians launch a missile with dummy warheads targeted on D.C. If (when) the warheads get through, they shower the city with strips of confetti printed with “BANG! You’re Dead.” After the twentieth successive failure of the interceptor system, maybe even the most fanatical Republicans would get the message.

9

Which doesn’t work too well against stateless opponents. Using a tiny bit of that money to hire and train more Arabic translators would improve our security more than any number of missiles.

10

Your second link is subscriber only Mr. Moto. Would you care to supply a few details for those of us not able to see it?
Your post initially surprised me, but article in Signal supplies some necessary context:

So having failed on the first go around, the navy is now looking at the problem from a different angle.
Now redirecting research after the an initial failure is the right way to get things done, but your post seems to imply that everything is beer and pickles with the navy theatre defense program. It’s not.

11

Why are we so hellbent on creating massive defense systems while the backdoor remains open?

Building an SDI against strategic arms may have its merits, yet it will not stop a nuke brought in via ports or across the Canadian or Mexican borders. What are the real threat levels with strategic enemies capable of a missile attack vs. non-strategic enemies?

While R&D may offer eventual cost-effective ABM programs, shouldn’t some of this money also go to exploring other defensive measures as well? It makes no sense to me to focus all efforts on the skies while some nutjobs come in under the radar and cut us off at the kneecaps on our own soil.

12

Certainly. But doing one thing doesn’t mean we should exclude other things.

13

…If we have an infinite amount of money to waste, that is.

In the real world, we need to prioritize how we spend money in terms of how realistic the threat is and how likely we are to be able to reduce it. National missile defense fails in both categories.

14

Sorry. I forget sometimes that I’m subscribed to that site. The page is a description of the AEGIS system’s SPY-1 radar.

Also, jshore, do you have anything to add to the discussion besides an unsupported assertion that missile defense is a waste of money?

15

Why NMD won’t work, from 1999.

Could Mr Moto bring us up to date on eg. current counter-counter-measures and the like?

16

There have been lots of threads here discussing the unworkability of missile defense systems, Mr. Moto. In case jshore doesn’t get around to digging up the cites he provided in many posts to those earlier threads, I found a few of his posts including more details and links here and here and here and here.

(And jshore, you can repay the favor you now owe me by remembering that not everybody has followed these discussions ad nauseam the way you have, so whenever you drive by a new thread on the subject you ought to include a link to a previous thread. ;))

17

My expertise is in Navy systems, and I’m more expert in some than others.

The Navy has long had a need to protect ships and battle groups against missiles. For many years, this focus was on how to counter antiship cruise missiles. The Standard missile has some capability here, and closer in the missiles can be intersected with a Phalanx or RAM (Rolling Airframe Missile) Close In Weapons System.

There was a threat in the “bad old days” that may reemerge, concerning the attack of a naval battle group by a ballistic missile. This threat is the focus of the Navy’s Theater Wide program, and some of the issues concerning this program are detailed in my previous links.

I don’t know yet if national missile defense is feasible, given the costs and the threats faced. I’m not inclined to write it off just yet. However, I think defense of a theater battlespace is quite possible, can be done cost effectively, and is absolutely needed given that numerous countries have shorter range ballistic missiles that could threaten our forces in a foreign conflict.

18

…by, say, being fired from a fishing boat. Could you at least continue that graph of 3 hits to 17 misses in tests between 1983 and 1999 in that article? Has a single actual missile actually been detected from a random launch site and subsequently been actually destroyed yet?

19

AIDS has been in the public consciousness about as long as SDI. And we have spent billions on it.

We have never cured anyone of AIDS, and there is no vaccine. And these are decades away from discovery, if they are even possible.

Therefore, all spending on AIDS was a waste, and we should not attempt to cure the disease.

Right?

Regards,
Shodan

20

No. I can’t continue that graph because it concerns national missile defense. My arguments have concerned theater-wide missile defense, specifically the Navy variant of it.

I’m sure you can see that mixing the data up wouldn’t be kosher. Indeed, the article that the graph came from is careful to draw distinctions between theater-wide and national missile defense.