Well, the North Koreans have a three stage ICBM that still has some kinks being worked out. If the kinks get worked out and the prevailing winds are right, they will be able to hit the U.S. west coast.
Story from CNN. There are other stories on this out there but from sites I’ve never heard of before.
Call me cynic but I don´t think the US goverment would be particulary enthusiastic about reporting a nuclear test in NK; it would make them look quite bad, with all the jazz about pre-empive wars and WMD excuses used to invade Iraq.
In a related development, I note the front-page story in today’s New York Times. It reported signs that the PDRK might be getting ready for a test.
Then, after press-time we get this.
What could it mean? Was it a nuke? A test of non-nuclear component? A failed test? A spoof?
Hummm…
Well, we have one ‘ground-based interceptor’ ready to go in Alaska, and will have 5 more by mid-October. Sure, they ain’t perfect, but they’re looking better by the day…
Dude, you´d be safer under a tinfoil umbrella than with that defense shield. :dubious:
In the Magical Land of Stupid Exaggerations, perhaps. Personally, I’ll take whatever odds the GBI’s offer over the odds a ‘tinfoil umbrella’ offers.
Yeah, but we have this wonderful countersystem called “Being able to nuke the entire planet into oblivion.” It’s worked for us quite well, even with the Soviets who also possessed such a system. The likelihood that North Korea would launch a nuclear strike on the West Coast just to get themselves incinerated is fairly slim.
The age of the ICBM passed decades ago. We keep them around as a deterrent, but that’s it. The ICBM has one advantage as a launch vehicle: speed. It’s built to get a nuclear warhead to target before the other side can react. Multiply several thousand times, and you win the war at the push of a button.
Once early warning satellites went up, launch windows shortened, nuclear missile subs were deployed the first-strike game was up in that department. That’s why the end of the Cold War was marked by the US and Soviets working on space drops and stealth planes. Nowadays we shouldn’t be worried about missiles, we should be worried about somebody sending the damn thing Federal Express or loading it on a boat. Aside from making it difficult to tell who launched and retaliate, you can move a MUCH bigger warhead through conventional slow shipping methods than on a missile.
Between the reasons given by laigle and the system reliability I don´t think I exaggerated one bit.
Powell was on TV this morning saying that while they don’t know what caused the explosion, they don’t believe it was a nuke.
MAD presumes that neither side wants to be destroyed, and the Jongmeister doesn’t strike me as the most stable person in the world.
It’s not perfect, to be sure. But any chance to stop a missle is better than no chance. DHS is not a perfect defence against someone smuggling in a nuke, so we should get rid of DHS? I think not.
Not perfect is what you end up with when the military follows normal R&D protocol with performance based testing an such. When they skip that part, and go straight to deployment, you end up with an expensive and ineffective moneypit whose only utility is to fool frightened children into thinking they are safe.
Right on. But since that is hardly the case with NMD, we don’t have to worry about that.
Huh?
Read and weep:
Missile Defense Agency Faulted On Testing and Accountability
I can picture those defense industry contractors practising synchronised swimming on their vaults ala Uncle Scrooge laughing their asses off at the fools that they´ve had.
Brutus, it´s called risk assessment, you´d agree that it be foolish for me to cough up a couple million dollars to build an bunker to be safe from meteorites, don´t you? To begin with the chances of being hit by one are rather minimal and a bunker ain´t that good for something bigger than a T.V set blazing down the sky.
With the ABMS you have in one hand a very small risk of a ICBM attack, and in the other a system that has yet to be proven marginally effective in the best operational conditions (enemy hands you the path and time of launch of the ICBM and is kind enough to install a transponder on it). All that at a cost of a metric crapload of money. Assessing the risk and the (lack of) effectivity of the system it´s crystal clear that it´s been a huge rip-off. That money could have been put into other areas where it would have actually saved lives (like healthcare, for example) or where it would have effectively reduced the possibility of a nuke beign smuggled into US soil, which is by far the most probable scenary for such an attack.
Let’s be fair to the DoD. It’s not their fault they’re being told to do the virtually impossible. The Pubbies are the ones who have drivelled on to the public with pseudo-science about lasers and particle beams until they actually think there’s a viable chance of shooting down ICBMs. Hell, now they’re selling the idea that you’re going to take one out with a ground based interceptor missile.
And in other news, if someone tries to shoot me I’ll up a rock and throw it down the trajectory of the bullet, that’ll keep me safe.
Because if you have forgotten, North Korea has the worst Human rights record on Earth, and has repeatedly stated that it will go to any length to reunite the peninsula under Communist rule.
Good Non-answer.
If Powell had a shred of credibility left, that would have been encouraging news.
Brutus, I happen to agree with the overall political decision to eventually develop some type of effective ICBM countermeasure, and would even support spending money on fundamental research into the concept, but to actually believe that the ICBM defense system being currently deployed is in any potential way is to show yourself as either an absolute fool to the wild claims of politicans or else being the intellectual equivalent of the Greater Western Prarie Chicken.
When they attempted to perform a test on shooting down an ICBM, they put a fucking transponder on the warhead ! The liquid nitrogen coolant that throretically provides guidance to the system leaked, and the IR eye wasn’t even working. The fact that otherwise intelligent people like you actually believe that bull-shit just amazes me.
A number of non-partisan sources such as MIT’s Technology Review magazine looked closely at the testing scheme as a whole and found that the system was fundamentally flawed. More cites will be provided upon request.
We’d be better off spending the money now on installing radiation detectors at port facilities to scan cargo, people, or anything else for “dirty” or suitcase bombs, both of which are much more likely to be used to attack America.
I have no philisophical opposition to the development of an ICBM defense system, but to think that the one we’re spending money on right now is possibly effective is just plain asinine.
Ahh, the Clinton approach. I liked that myself. I can’t even bring myself to fault Bush much for pulling out of the ABM treaty. The way he did it sucked, and this rush to deployment is insane, but sooner or later it would’ve had to go in the face of the reality of increasing worldwide missile capability.
When we move to get out of the outer space treaty (no nukes in or weaponization of space), I hope we have someone in the white house with the wisdom needed to craft a new treaty to replace it that will allow defensive systems, yet still prevent anyone from lofting orbital missile platforms. The short latency between launch and strike of those could render obsolete any missile defense system we could afford to build.