Interceptor Missile Test Fails

[a_unique_person]

If this stuff turns out to be useless for stopping missiles It may yet be usefull against Martians, although "the chances of anything coming from mars are a million to one" he said.

Famous last words.

 

[RussDill]

The funny thing is, you aren't being sarcastic.

http://edition.cnn.com/2004/US/12/10/iraq.friendlyfire/index.html

Right, you don't remember anything about the patriot actually stopping missiles, do you? Or anything about scud missles killing hundred of people. Are you one of those people who don't wear seatbelts because they can kill people?

 

[RussDill]

Prior to 9/11, Rice advocated cutting anti-terrorism spending and concentrating on anti-missile defence. She played a key role in misleading Americans into believing Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and Saddam posed a dire threat. She urged Bush to invade Iraq and plunge deeper into Afghanistan. Her ludicrous claims about Iraqi "mushroom clouds" panicked many Americans. For this alone she should have been dismissed.

The most important function of national security adviser -- and I can say this having myself been interviewed at the White House for a position on the National Security Council -- is to co-ordinate all national security policy. But under Rice, defence, state and CIA were at each other's throats. She allowed the president to humiliate himself over Iraq's non-existent weapons, Saddam's uranium and "drones of death."

After the European powers refused to join the trumped-up Iraq war, Rice famously advised Bush to "punish France, ignore Germany, and forgive Russia." Bush followed this amateurish, vindictive misadvice, seriously damaging U.S.-Europe relations and helping advance dictatorship in Russia.

Bush's second-term foreign policy may grow even more aggressive, unilateralist, and driven by right-wing ideology and religious zealotry.

lots of claims, no sources.

 

[The Fool]

Right, you don't remember anything about the patriot actually stopping missiles, do you? Or anything about scud missles killing hundred of people. Are you one of those people who don't wear seatbelts because they can kill people?

I'm curious...how many patriots were launched at scuds for how many hits? I have seen claims that vary from a very impressive 80% or something similar down to as little as nil hits....

 

[RussDill]

I'm curious...how many patriots were launched at scuds for how many hits? I have seen claims that vary from a very impressive 80% or something similar down to as little as nil hits....

http://www.cdi.org/missile-defense/patriot-performance.cfm


Basically, PAC-1 didn't do very well, PAC-2 and PAC-3 is performing much better.

 

[Frank Newgent]

In tightly controlled tests, with one missile firing at one incoming, all the while we have multiple missiles already in silos, test stoppages are to be expected. We would stop a test if our embedded testing equipment were offline. We stop for weather because the test is measuring pure capability. (As skeptics, we all know the necessity of removing extraneous variables, right?) We stop for "anomalies". We must exhaustively test every variable in the equation. You're asking the Wright Brothers to design and build an airplane and expect it to cross the Atlantic on the first attempt.

Is it a problem if the transponder in the test missile goes haywire?

 

[Frank Newgent]

Quote from the link.

The military is in final preparations to activate missile defenses designed to protect against an intercontinental ballistic missile attack from North Korea or elsewhere in eastern Asia.

Wednesday's test was to have been the first in which the interceptor used the same booster rocket that the operational system would use.

 

[kalen]

According to this BBC infographic , the system is supposed to be able to discriminate between real warheads and decoys. Does anybody have any idea how this is done? I can see that discrimination can be done with respect to size, but if the decoys are outwardly identical, there is no way as far as I can fathom.

There must be dozens of strategies one can employ to confuse the radar/system, decoys are only one. And who says a decoy has to be a decoy? You have MIRVs, radar reflecting chaff, etc. Also, one has to worry about spies taking out radar facilities as a prelude to a missile attack.

Spend the money on something else.

 

[tedly]

This is a great weapon for the last war. That is the first flag.

This is a very sophisticated and complex weapon, with several simple and relatively cheap swamping counter measures, from decoys to just building more missiles. Second flag.

We are told that the system will be able to differentiate between decoys and warheads. We postulate an enemy that can build an ICBM, a guidance system, a nuclear bomb, and can't figure out how to build camouflage that will fool a detection system that has never seen this decoy or warhead. It will do this with about a million lines of computer code that has to work first time, and hasn't been beta tested against the weapon thrown against it, because the first time will be the only time. flag three.

This is a weapon that can only be used by someone who isn't worried that his launch site will be radioactive waste in less than flight time of the missile. totally assured self destruction. We are to believe that this tactic will be used by someone bright enough to build an ICBM. There's flags all over this one.

By this time it should be apparent that this is a bad idea. I have no doubt that a working system can be built by American can-do and know-how. We need a good dose of good old Yankee why-bother.

The effort going into this could better be spent in talking people out of going nuclear. At the moment, many nations are noticing that the closer you are to having a bomb, the less likely you are to be invaded or treated rudely. Notice our stance towards NK, Pakistan and India, as opposed to Iraq.

There's got to be a better way

 

[Dorian Gray]

If you thought an arms race with a communist Soviet Union was fun, taking a mere 45 or so years to bring about collapse, holy jeepers will an arms race against newly capitalist Ukraine, Belarus, Khazakstan and Russia be a hoot. Because don't you guys remember? Putin announced a new weapon system last month or so. And Bush and Putin are ALLIES.

 

[Brahe]

So wait...the argument is that it only provides a certain layer of protection, that isn't even 100% in itself, so don't do it. Why does this sound vaguely familiar to a certain armorment issue? With people using one argument on one issue, but the same people using the opposite argument on another issue.

(sigh)

Let's try an analogy here. Suppose I build a bullet-resistant vest around some basic material (let's call it material A) which prevents 50% of bullets fired at it during tests from penetrating. Now, it's not 100% effective, but it's better than nothing, so my investment was a good decision, right?

But let's suppose that a different material (material B) would prevent 90% of bullets from penetrating. If this is the case, then my decision to use material A over B was a poor decision.

But wait! Let's further suppose that I'm building these for members of bomb squads which don't regularly face criminals armed with guns, but are instead mainly faced with defusing bombs. If this is the case, then it would be an even better decision to focus investment on improved protection from bombs (such as remotely operated robots) rather than improved protection from bullets.

100% protection is not necessary for a missile defense shield to be a good investment. But if there is a _better_ use of the money, then a missile defense shield is a bad investment. What's more, if the missile defense shield is designed to counter a threat which is less pressing than other threats, then it is indeed a waste of money. It's not enough to spend money just improving protection, we have to spend our limited resources on the biggest improvements available.

 

[Brahe]

An engineering test has failures in the course of testing. What a big surprise.

The failure of a single test does not necessarily doom an engineering project. But when the project fails test after test, then it's time to re-evaluate the goals of the project to see if they're realistically achievable and also to re-evaluate your methods to see if they're the best way of achieving those goals.

In the case of the missile defense, it's also worthwhile to evaluate the usefulness of the expected product to ensure that the project itself is a worthwhile expenditure of funds. If a nuclear weapon hidden in the cargo hold of a ship is more likely than a nuclear weapon delivered with a ballistic missile, then, all other things being equal, one should spend more on a way to counter the ship-delivered nuke. Spending should be proportional to the likelihood of attack as well as the potential damage inflicted from such an attack.

 

[richardm]

I must admit I've rather changed my mind about this missile defence wotsit.

I used to think it was a colossal waste of money, and that it would never work.

Now, I think it probably can be made to work, failed tests notwithstanding. Obviously it could be quite easily overwhelmed, given a sufficiently determined enemy, but for the most part I think it is something that could be potentially save lives. The US would look like a tremendous jackass if some steam-powered missile ever dribbled over the ocean and hit, and nothing to be done about it because the programme was cancelled due to lack of success during the development phase.

The problems are evidently difficult to solve, but not intrinsically impossible, surely? And the money could perhaps be better spent elsewhere - but that seems to be true of almost any new military programme.

 

[a_unique_person]

lots of claims, no sources.

http://edition.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/04/01/rice.speech/

Undelivered Rice speech scrutinized
Democratic senator seeks release of text
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- National security adviser Condoleeza Rice planned to deliver a speech on September 11, 2001, about national security that said nothing about Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda or Islamic fundamentalist groups.

A description and excerpts of that undelivered speech were first reported in The Washington Post on Thursday, and the excerpts were confirmed by administration sources.

But the administration disputed suggestions that the speech showed the administration was not focused on terrorism before the deadly attacks.

"What matters is what we were doing on terrorism, not whether there is a speech on terrorism. We were acting on terrorism," National Security Council spokesman Sean McCormack said.

Rice is scheduled to testify next Thursday before an independent commission investigating the 9/11 attacks, according to a news release from the commission.

Administration sources confirmed the accuracy of leaked excerpts from the prepared text of the speech that were printed in The Washington Post, but would not provide the full text.

Rice was scheduled to deliver the speech at the School of Advance International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, but the plans were scrapped with the 9/11 attacks.

NSC officials said the speech was meant to be a broad look at the administration's efforts to fight terrorism. In it, Rice argued that the United States should build a missile defense system.

One line printed in the Post referred to "the suitcase bomb, the car bomb and the vial of sarin released in the subway" and noted the government spent about twice as much on "counterterrorism efforts" as on missile defense.

"In May the president appointed Vice President Cheney to oversee a coordinated national effort to better protect the U.S. homeland against a terror attack using WMD. But why not missile defenses as well?" she was to have said, the Post reported.

Deputy National Security Adviser for Communications Jim Wilkinson dismissed the suggestion that because al Qaeda and bin Laden were not mentioned in the text that the White House was not focused on the threat they posed.

But Sen. Charles Schumer, D-New York, urged the White House to release the full text of the speech.

"Dr. Rice's speech suggests that at the very least there was a disconnect between the public security message and the policy prescriptions top White House officials were pushing and the private warnings federal agencies were issuing about imminent threats to our homeland," Schumer said in a letter sent to the White House and released by his office.

The question of whether the administration recognized the terrorism threat was raised during public hearings last week by the independent commission investigating the 9/11 attacks.

Former counterterrorism chief Richard Clark charged the administration did not heed his warnings about the magnitude of the terrorism threat before 9/11, and that the administration undermined the war on terror by invading Iraq.

 

[a_unique_person]

This thing has already been deployed and is operational?

For it to work, it has to be automated, there is not enough time for human intervention. It is located in Alaska, presumably to defend against attacks from the USSR.

http://slate.msn.com/id/2111185/

There is no need to repeat here the dozens of reasons for skepticism that an antiballistic-missile system has much chance of shooting down a single enemy warhead. (For some of those reasons, click here.) If it can shoot down one warhead (a lucky roll of the dice), the bad guys can simply launch a second warhead—and there hasn't yet been even a rigged test involving multiple targets. Everything about the system is way too complicated—the software; the command-control network; the integration of early warning radars, target-acquisition sensors, and weapons-launch centers. Yes, landing on the moon was complicated, too (to use an example cited by many advocates), but that was child's play by comparison. For one thing, the moon landing was a one-sided enterprise. As the spacecraft approached the lunar surface, the moon didn't suddenly shift direction or turn into a mirage. By contrast, an enemy can easily load a missile with decoys, which can lure an interceptor to the wrong target. Also, the trip to the moon took days; if something went wrong, corrections could be made. The trip to an enemy warhead darting across the heavens at 15 times the speed of sound must be completed in a half-hour or less, everything must be automated (there's no time for human intervention), and nothing can go wrong at all.

But Wednesday's test tells us that we are a long, long way from having to discuss the system and its problems at this level of detail. We can't even count on the rocket getting out of its launch silo, much less the millions of minute operations that must follow. President Bush fielded a half-dozen antimissile missiles and called them "operational." But they're a ruse. The Pentagon's test director, Thomas Christie (a veteran missile engineer and lifelong civil servant who, alas, is retiring next month) has testified repeatedly that the program is not yet ready for deployment, not yet ready to be called "operational."

This all reminds me of the Roman legion that was ordered by some nutcase (IIRC, Caligula, but it might not have been), to attack a field of reeds. The reeds were all beaten, the awards handed out, the legion made to feel like utter idiots.

We have here something very similar. An 'operational' missile defense system that isn't, and can't be, because god knows what it would do if was really turned on. And the guys who run it may as well be hacking up a field of reeds.

 

[Keneke]

Does anybody have any idea how this is done? I can see that discrimination can be done with respect to size, but if the decoys are outwardly identical, there is no way as far as I can fathom.

Yes. IR, EM pattern matching, ballistic trajectory pattern matching, vibration pattern matching, and luminescence are all methods of discerning the difference between two objects from a distance. It is even possible to determine, between two identical warheads, but one with a nuclear device inside and one without, which is which.

 

[Frank Newgent]

Yes. IR, EM pattern matching, ballistic trajectory pattern matching, vibration pattern matching, and luminescence are all methods of discerning the difference between two objects from a distance. It is even possible to determine, between two identical warheads, but one with a nuclear device inside and one without, which is which.

Theoretically. But the test missles are still carrying transponders so that they can be located by the system, no?

 

[RussDill]

http://edition.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/04/01/rice.speech/

OMG, she said we should look into missile defense as well as protection from terrorists using WMD, that totally substantiates everything in the other article!

 

[Keneke]

But when the project fails test after test, then it's time to re-evaluate the goals of the project to see if they're realistically achievable and also to re-evaluate your methods to see if they're the best way of achieving those goals.

Failed test percentages do not equate to percentage chances that a system would work. Like I said earlier, tests are aborted for many reasons. Any change of an external variable, even weather, mucks up a test. Most of the failures, including this latest one, happened because we never even launched the interceptor for whatever reason. This is like a biologist throwing away samples that are contaminated. Is that called a failure to demonstrate? No, it's just called an abortion, and has no bearing on whatever he's trying to prove.

Once again, people are pointing to the functionality of the system that is still being tested. I didn't like it when Bush deployed it too early, but we'll keep on working at it.

If a nuclear weapon hidden in the cargo hold of a ship is more likely than a nuclear weapon delivered with a ballistic missile, then, all other things being equal, one should spend more on a way to counter the ship-delivered nuke.

Missile Defense is $10B out of $402B in defense spending alone (2005 estimate). Homeland security, which investigates those elusive ship-bound nukes you are afraid of, totals $40B. The total federal budget tops $2T. Missile defense is less than 2.5% of total defense spending, and less than 0.5% of the total budget.

The point is, MIssile Defense has nothing to do with terrorists and their lo-tech methods. That is Homeland Security. What we are concerned with are nations that would launch ICBMs. You don't have to build one, you only have to buy one.

(source: whitehouse.gov)

 

[Keneke]

Theoretically. But the test missles are still carrying transponders so that they can be located by the system, no?

Not quite. The transponders are detected by other radars to compare its actual position ("truth") to what the radars being tested see. Then the difference between truth and radar position are measured, and we can determine the accuracy of our radars.

We did have earlier tests where our radars merely tracked the transponders, but the purpose of those tests were to cover other areas, such as the real-time effects of a missile interception. (boom!)

Isolating variables, remember?