North Korea to Launch ICBM

[Jocko]

I.E. We should be afraid.



I.E. We should be afraid.



I.E. We should be afraid.



I.E. We should be afraid.


Like I said, all you have is fear.

No, Tony. See, a working ICBM defense means you don't have to be afraid. You're welcome to try to outlive a nuclear blast based on pure bullheadedness, but I'd rather let the interceptors have first crack at it before I rely on bravado as a survival technique.

 

[Cleon]

Emphasis mine. Are you saying you disagree with drkitten, who seems utterly convinced that an ABM system can't work?

Theoretically, sure, an ABM system can work.

Theoretically, I could date Jessica Alba. However, realistically, given the vast difference in attractiveness levels ("hottie" versus "overweight, balding nerd"), social status ("more money than god" versus "reasonably middle class"), etc., my chances with Ms. Alba are slim-to-none.

Similarly, realistically, an accurate, functional ABM system simply is not going to happen any time soon. The difference is that the government has thrown billions of dollars at the idea, not to mention 20+ years of research both public and private, and they still haven't been able to get it to work.

Yet still, ABM backers keep trying to get more funding and to promote the idea. Even I finally gave up on Jessica after the third restraining order; at a certain point, you either accept the fact that it isn't going to happen, or you wind up needing psychiatric help.

 

[gnome]

I am against the ABM program--I personally think the offense will generally have the upper hand in any such arms race, making it potentially a colossal waste of money.

Now that I've said that--if we actually HAVE made something over my objections, I'd love to see it knock down a North Korean missile. It would be priceless... look, here's our big scary missile that maybe if we're nuts enough we'll attach a nuke to sometime. It's launching... it's headed for your airspace... POW! WTF?!!!

Does North Korea have the surveillance capacity to determine exactly what blew up their missile, if we keep mum?

 

[geni]

Emphasis mine. Are you saying you disagree with drkitten, who seems utterly convinced that an ABM system can't work?

There is always an element of uncertiantly when dealing with areas around clasified material. There is the posibility that the NSA can crack RSA public-key encryption. Unlikely but as far as I know not mathmaticly imposible.

 

[Jocko]

Similarly, realistically, an accurate, functional ABM system simply is not going to happen any time soon. The difference is that the government has thrown billions of dollars at the idea, not to mention 20+ years of research both public and private, and they still haven't been able to get it to work.

Boy, am I glad the Wright Brothers never met you.

Or Enrico Fermi.

Or Bill Gates.

Or Einstein.

Or anyone else who ever looked at 20 years of failure as anything but an opportunity to improve and overcome.

 

[Skeptic]

Boy, am I glad the Wright Brothers never met you.

Or Enrico Fermi.

Or Bill Gates.

Or Einstein.

Or anyone else who ever looked at 20 years of failure as anything but an opportunity to improve and overcome.

The problem with this logic is that, for every inventor who met success after 20 years of failure, there are 254,334 (approx.) inventors who continued to fail after 20 years of failure.

 

[Huntster]

The North Korean ballistic missle program, at this point, is a very real threat, but unlike that of the USSR during the Cold War, who had thousands of missles/warheads. The most disturbing part of this threat is the proliferation to that country, and to Iran through cooperation with North Korea.

Time is the major problem here. The more time they get to build their stock, the worse it gets for us.

Ultimately, the use of a ballistic missile against the United States is national suicide. Without the capability to deny firing them, and without the capacity to remove thje retalitory threat of U.S. submarines, any such offensive move removes the threat of that nation for centuries.

The biggest nuclear threat to the United States is smuggling one in. It would be easy, cheap, and there would be great deniability.

 

[geni]

Boy, am I glad the Wright Brothers never met you.

Or Enrico Fermi.

Or Bill Gates.

Or Einstein.

Most of these people did thier best work before being employed by the US goverment.

Or anyone else who ever looked at 20 years of failure as anything but an opportunity to improve and overcome.

There are always exceptions but most of the time 20 years of failer means you should take the hint.

 

[Crossbow]

Considering how poorly the ABM system has worked in tests,
It would be very, very foolish (to put it mildly), to test the ABM technology against an actual nuclear ICBM.

 

[Trantor]

I wonder which type of missile NK is planning to test? From what I've read so far, the missile that is now fueled and ready for launch is a suppose to be a Taepo-Dong 2. This two-stage type of missile can place a warhead no further than the West Coast of the US. It was first tested in 1998.

The North Korean's have been working on a three-stage version of the Taepo-Dong 2 missile and if successful, will be able to target the entire US. A couple of years ago, I remember reading that they already had all the hardware ready and all that was left was the testing. If indeed this missile that is being prepared for testing is the three-stage version, it will be taken very seriously by the US and Japan.

It would be nice to have an ABM system up and running, that could at least shoot down a limited missile attack, but the test results so far have been pretty negative. It seems that an interceptor type ABM system can be overcome with decoys and sheer numbers pretty easily. Lasers are another possibilty that have some excellent advantages, but that too has many difficulties to overcome and would be very costly.

 

[Metullus]

Considering how poorly the ABM system has worked in tests,
It would be very, very foolish (to put it mildly), to test the ABM technology against an actual nuclear ICBM.

I don't see why it would be foolish to test ABM technology against the NK ICBM. I just would not announce the test beforehand. If it works, then great. If it fails, then "what ABM test?"

 

[drkitten]

There is always an element of uncertiantly when dealing with areas around clasified material.

.... and an important area of uncertainty that would be knocked out is exactly what our doctrine is for developing/using an ABM system.

For example, technologically speaking there are three major ways that an ABM defense could work. You could try to destroy the missiles in the boost phase, in the ballistic flight phase, or in the final approach to the target(s). All three of these approaches have major problems (which is part of why I do not believe that any such "test" would be any more successful than the Patriot fiasco), but it would reveal a lot about what we plan to do in a real attack scenario.

For example -- suppose that our doctrine calls for destruction of the missiles in the boost phase. The basic problem is distance and the curvature of the Earth; we have nothing that can hit a boosting missile in Korea from US-controlled territory. In order to deploy a successful ABM, we either need the close cooperation (in secret) from a friendly country like Japan, an already-deployed (in secret) weapons platform in space, or a weapons platform deployed from mobile, probably seaborne, platforms -- and, again, a secret.

In any of these cases, secrecy of the system is crucial to having a realistic chance of knocking out a missile strike. If we (for example) proclaim to the world that we have a highly illegal set of bomb-pumped X-ray lasers in orbit to knock out boosting rockets, we will have lost the element of strategic surprise for the next time we need to use the system. I believe our chances of success with such a venture are negligible now -- but they would be even lower if the N. Koreans knew about the lasers and simply sprayed a coat of ablative foam onto each of the missiles, or spun the missiles during launch phase.

 

[drkitten]

I don't see why it would be foolish to test ABM technology against the NK ICBM. I just would not announce the test beforehand. If it works, then great. If it fails, then "what ABM test?"

You're assuming that the ABM test itself would not be obvious.

 

[Huntster]

Considering how poorly the ABM system has worked in tests,It would be very, very foolish (to put it mildly), to test the ABM technology against an actual nuclear ICBM.

And how poorly did U.S. ABM systems work in tests?

 

[Metullus]

You're assuming that the ABM test itself would not be obvious.

I suppose we could paint the thing to look like an Irridium Satellite or something...

I'm assuming that a failed test might not be obvious. I might be way off base - not my field - and I would happily bow to your greater expertise in this matter.

Whatever the case, I think that it would be foolish to announce in advance our intention to attempt such a test even if we were very confident in the outcome...

 

[drkitten]

I suppose we could paint the thing to look like an Irridium Satellite or something...

You mean the nuclear bomb-pumped laser that suddenly explodes and sends an EMP over a third of the globe, and gets picked up by every radio telescope on the planet?

I'm afraid that putting a manufacturer's name-plate saying "Iridium" will not be as effective a camoflage as you think. ("No, really, officer. That's not a stolen battle tank. It's a motorcycle -- see the "Harley-Davidson" logo painted just there?")

I'm assuming that a failed test might not be obvious. I might be way off base - not my field - and I would happily bow to your greater expertise in this matter.

It really depends on what sort of countermeasures we deploy -- and how utter the failure is. (If, for example, the bomb-pumped laser fails to go off, then the satellite would just look like a satellite.) But most of the realistic ways of ABM defence involve throwing a hell of a lot of mass/energy out into international airspace in a way that would be fairly obvious to all involved.

 

[Metullus]

You mean the nuclear bomb-pumped laser that suddenly explodes and sends an EMP over a third of the globe, and gets picked up by every radio telescope on the planet?

Yup. That's the one.

I'm afraid that putting a manufacturer's name-plate saying "Iridium" will not be as effective a camoflage as you think.

I was thinking a couple of name-plates and a paint job. But if you don't think it would work, well... as I said I happily bow to your greater expertise in this matter.

("No, really, officer. That's not a stolen battle tank. It's a motorcycle -- see the "Harley-Davidson" logo painted just there?")

Of course that would not work, Hogs are way too loud...

It really depends on what sort of countermeasures we deploy -- and how utter the failure is. (If, for example, the bomb-pumped laser fails to go off, then the satellite would just look like a satellite.) But most of the realistic ways of ABM defence involve throwing a hell of a lot of mass/energy out into international airspace in a way that would be fairly obvious to all involved.

So, depending on what system we deploy, it is possible that deniability is an option?

 

[Trantor]

The best defense against nuclear missiles is to detonate a rather large nuclear device in the space around an incoming missile attack. This was the plan back in the 60's, and it's still the best option available. The biggest drawback to this approach is that large detonations in the region of the upper atmosphere is very bad for the Earth's atmosphere/protective barriors, and the EMP wave produced could also cause considerable damage to high tech devices thruout a very wide area.

 

[geni]

2). It will not work as a deterrant, either: if the North Koreans are not deterred by the possiblity of nuclear annihilation in retaliation, certainly the lower chance of them hitting an American city won't stop them.

Judging by the accury displayed by the previous missiles used by NK it is questionable if they could het a target that small.

 

[Kiwiwriter]

Missile maniacs

What I've read on this missile is that the North Koreans are not yet able to accurately target this weapon yet.

But given the population of America, they could hit just about anywhere east of the Mississippi and be assured of causing unparalleled chaos.

I don't think the planet can survive the deadly combination of nuclear weapons and tin-pot paranoid dictators. Then there are biological weapons, religious fundamentalists, chemical weapons, and suicide bombers. Either people start behaving rationally and reasonably towards one another, or we'll all die.