Do you mean available to the public or known by the public? Yes and no respectively.
To anyone reading that doesn’t know, they were almost completely ineffective.
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A Missile defense shield will certainly put into doubt the capability of a small ICBM arsenal. It will also encourage the owners of said small arsenal to change the “small” part.
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…and thats before counter measures like penetration aids, MIRV’s and even MARV’s*.
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You end up with the seventies era French calculus. That even in the worst case scenario, the French bombers could destroy 10 USSR cities. All NK (or any other “small” party) has to do is maintain an arsenal with which one has a high confidence that such devastation will result to the enemy.
*Pls don’t say that its beyond NK capabilities, the last 15 years has been full of "experts: saying DPRK cannot do xyz, typically followed by them doing exactly that.
It’s a joke, son. Marijuana is smuggled into the US by the hundreds of tons. Which implies that the US authorities can’t effectively detect it. Which in turn implies that undetectable marijuana would be a good “stealth coating” to hide your potentially detectable nukes.
Obviously that’s not 100% really true since marijuana wouldn’t significantly absorb whatever detectable radiation the weapon might give off.
OTOH, it does show that maybe, just maybe, it’s be easier to let professional smugglers who’re rarely detected bring it in via illicit ports versus having NK secret agents trying to hide it in a shipment of ordinary Chinese- or SK-made merchandise coming in through a legit port.
There’s a lot to be said for hiring people who bring in many tons of illicit stuff every day when you just need to move a couple hundred pounds of extra-illicit stuff once. Experience counts.
OK, from my lips to God’s ears/Ears: If, God forbid, a nuclear ICBM or shorter range missile is launched against the US or its allies, and it is intercepted in full or or enough to degrade its full power, a few posters upthread will update/revive this thread with a touch of humility.
That was a tongue-in-cheek example. I just meant that there are plenty of other ways to deliver a warhead. You could deliver it by boat, or by truck, or any of the hundreds of methods used by smugglers. If 50 kilos of marijuana can be successfully smuggled in on any given day, then it stands to reason that a warhead could too. It would also work to just put the warhead into a Cessna and fly it in to whichever city you want to nuke. You don’t even have to land the plane. A missile defense shield would be totally useless to stop that kind of attack, and it actually saves the attacker money.
Yes, I agree that their purpose is not to nuke the US. I said their purpose is to scare us, but you said it better. My point was that, hypothetically, if they DID want to nuke us, then an ICBM would be far from the only way to do it, and probably not the most cost effective way to do it. Now, if their goal is to say “Don’t invade us or we will launch a nuke”… well, I’ll admit that the smuggling option isn’t as dramatic. But we would be foolish to assume that an ICBM is the only delivery method they might use even if that’s the method they threatened.
…no more like amazement, that the Korean People’s Army Strategic Force was had soldiers on strike or undergoing a go-slow, since they apparently only launched one.
I think that the point overall, as AK84 said, is that folks’ thinking of missile defenses as absolute shields are fooling themselves. Reagan’s SDI sold the vision of an impenetrable shield. Realists have been fighting a rear-guard action against the echoes of that folly ever since.
The best shield at any given level of tech will sand off some fraction of the best attack at the same level of tech. That’s true whether we’re discussing nukes or pistols at 20 paces. It happens that for current tech ICBMs, the cost tradeoff is especially unfavorable to the defense.
As that applies to near-peer powers such as US, Russia, or China, that means any defense can be cost-effectively overwhelmed. That doesn’t mean a defense is always useless under all circumstances. It just means it’s not a panacea and in fact can simply feed the arms race in a particularly expensive direction.
As that applies to non-peer powers it means pinprick attacks can be reduced to mere coin-flips or even less favorable odds for the attacker. Does Kim feel lucky? Does he? That has some non-zero utility.
OTOH, absent significant amounts of actual combat experience with systems like these, nobody knows whether the success rate for the defense will approach 90% or 0%. Statistical confidence in an outcome is a property of both lots of experience in the past *and * lots of events you’re scoring now. e.g. With coin flipping we have lots of experience that tells us we can rely on a 50/50 statistical result. But the one thing you can say for sure about a single coin-flip is the outcome won’t be 50/50. As they say in sports, on any given day any given team can beat any other given team.
So considering the stakes, how much trust, really, should the owners of a never-used defense system place in it when faced with a onesy-twosy attack? Damn good question.
Finally, as **sbunny8 **has said so well, if the goal of the enemy is to put a nuke on your territory, the best way to defeat any defensive system is to operate where it doesn’t. So, like toothpaste in the tube, our ICBM defensive system probably doesn’t really reduce the threat to us, it simply moves it into a different avenue of approach.
If one buys into the Reagan era claim that “We defense-spent the Soviet Union into bankruptcy”, then one ought to consider that for the expense of maybe $500K, Al-Qaeda has caused the US to spend (and continue spending) a few trillion dollars. Yes, we’re richer that AQ. But how much so? Can we afford an “exchange ratio” of offensive / defensive spending of over a million to one? For how long? At what opportunity cost?
I’m not picking on you Leo. You did a nice job of encapsulating the common idea that “Well, a defense can’t hurt and might help.” That’s seductively true. As far as it goes. The problem is that in this case it goes only a tiny percentage of the way towards the safety it implicitly promises. That disconnect is affirmatively dangerous.
As far as I can tell, not a live test. Of course lots of missiles systems have had fantastic kill ratios in tests and exercises and pretty abysmal ones in actual combat.
This IMO is the opposite fallacy from viewing BMD as absolute shield. If you can foresee or even hypothesize any way to get around a defensive system eventually, it’s not worth it.
I’m not going to say any particular advance is beyond NK’s ability forever. That doesn’t mean BMD isn’t worthwhile. It’s not a given that the current system or especially enhancements has no capability v decoys for example, maneuvering warheads are a large advance from where NK is now, etc.
On the French comparison I guess you really mean the 1960’s, 1964 to 1971 if referring to French bombers, Mirage IV’s as the only element in their strategic nuclear force. That comparison is somewhat apt in that the Mirage IV’s were potentially stoppable by the Soviet air defense system, though French were satisfied enough they were not. The case from 1971 when the French added SLBM’s and IRBM’s was different in that the Soviets didn’t have any systems to stop those in general (besides, potentially, the ABM’s eventually allowed by treaty for Moscow only). The reason being the technical infeasibility of such a system against the huge US BM threat, and no political reason from Soviet POV to really see the lesser Western nuclear powers as a separate threat. Lots of big differences between that actual 1970’s situation and US v NK now.
So let’s take the 1960’s case. The argument seems to be the Soviet air defense system was useless because the French figured the Mirage IV had a credible capability to defeat it. But the problem with that argument is ignoring the degree of credibility of offense and defense, which depends on specifics; and the relative burden of the defense. The US BMD system now is expensive per unit but nothing like the burden of the whole 1960’s era Soviet AD system to the USSR. And it’s ability to undermine the certainty that NK ICBM’s pose a threat isn’t necessarily as limited as the Soviet AD system v the Mirage IV. Even with that difference, it’s not clear the Soviets gained nothing at all in deterrence from having a big AD system. And to extend the analogy further, less clear the system was useless because somebody said ‘but eventually the Americans will have VLO a/c and pls don’t tell me the Americans can never develop those…’.
Anyway even considering French v Soviets 1960’s, there’s still the big difference (which might be a pro-Soviet AD system argument at least to have built the system prior to the 60’s and lots of US BM’s) that the US, French and British threats were not really separate threats from Soviet POV, even if different enough from French/UK POV for it to be worthwhile to them to have those offensive capabilities.
Any analogy like that from past is quite limited actually for that reason. But again, the fact that a defensive will only stay ahead of an offensive capability for a limited time is not necessarily a valid argument against it at a point in time. Nor is the argument it’s not an ‘absolute shield’ even at that point in time.
I seem to recall proposals for missiles that would release large clouds of ball bearings (or something similar) in the paths of incoming ICBMs. Could this type of shrapnel weapon be effective? I’m guessing not since the idea apparently hasn’t been pursued.
I have not suggested that BMD is useless. A limited one, which seeks to defend either National Command Authority (as the Russian system around Moscow) or own weapon sites (as the US Safeguard system was) is rather useful and probably stabilizing, as the make it more likely that NCA will survive long enough to give a launch order/enough missiles will survive to enable counterstrike-not to mention soak up warheads when the enemy saturates it, warheads which don’t hot unprotected areas.
The question is whether such a system is feasible to protect the entire national area, which was the focus of the “Star Wars” system and the current missile defenses today. Air Defences are set up to prevent conventional as well as nuclear attack. Outside of short-range missiles, the only realistic use of BM is with nuclear payloads. A conventional air attack can be degraded to such an extent that damage caused is acceptable. In the case of missile defense; even a single leaker will cause devastation far beyond even the worst conventional attack, and in any real war you are going to have multiple leaders. Half a dozen destroyed cities and millions killed seem to be a poor “best case scenario”. Versus a small nuclear power, which is going to absolutely
Such a system also has the potential to give politicians a false sense of security, which is a very bad thing. And although recent threads have shown that any criticism or contrary observation leads to accusations of being “anti-American”, fact is that the United States political leaders have not exactly distinguished themselves in making accurate assessments of risks and capabilities recently, example no 1 Iraq, no 2 post Taliban Afghanistan, example no 3, Syria
ETA: In response to Corry El
ETA 2: Corry El, would current ABM systems have good perormance against even a system with similar countermeasures capabilities as the British Chevaline?
This. Everyone is freaking about these missile defense shields like we all did in the 80’s and nothing came of it. It’s called a “Cold War”. Which is what we have with these countries that have a, albeit minimal, nuclear capability. NK leadership knows that if they do anything they’ll be wiped out by everyone. China, Russia, etc. will not defend them for any reason after that as NK offers very little in return other than a mass exodus of extremely malnourished and poor people that no one wants.
My guess is that NK leadership saw how effective a deterrence a nuclear capability is and is now developing said capability. This also gives them a bargaining chip that they can use to lift sanctions or get aid.
IMO they also know they are on borrowed time as this tactic has not worked well for other like kingdoms (Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, etc.) and are trying to stay the inevitable. Might as well ride it out in total luxury for the elite few versus a trial and jail time for the remainder of your pitiful life.
Probably why the Chinese are totally cool with it’s deployment to South Korea and haven’t pulled out the stops to get them to halt said deployment…
You do raise a valid point. The region is right next to China* and* Russia. Just how many assets can the US deploy, before those two start getting seriously nervous and start building up their local forces to defeat a shield. Guam and Yokahama are both probably high on the Chinese and Russian respective [del]shit list.[/del] strategic targeting.
The Russians are already saying that the INF treaty is not in their interests anymore and many analysts have said that US, outnumbered approximately a 1000-1 against China in theater missiles should also consider withdrawing…with knock-on effects for Europe and potentially the Mid East.
Man, Strategic forces are hard.
What does “live test” mean here?
Presumably he either means a scenario where the soldiers playing the enemy are unrestricted in the strategies they can use, or he might mean a war where a belligerent nation actually sends a nuke and they try to shoot it down.
One can hope that never happens, since it puts the United States in the ethical position of being forced to murder tens of millions of people in order to show it’s not bluffing. If the USA doesn’t nuke whoever did it (North Korea, Iran, whatever), even though the nuke got shot down, other nuclear armed nations might doubt the resolve of the United States to carry out MAD if it ever came to that.
It’s good to know they’re following TSD.com 
Yup, the first thing SDMBers will be doing with nuclear war breaking out is getting on this thread to tell people “I told you so”. I’m serious, that is what they will be doing.
And then someone else will criticize the update as a zombie post.
Which is completely wrong, because you call a post-atomic mutated survivor that looks like the shambling undead a “ghoul”, not a zombie. The ones who retain sentience really get bent out of shape if you call 'em a zombie.