U.s. missile shield won't work

[Balschoiw 0]

U.S. Missile Shield Won't Work: Scientist Group

Quote[/b] ]WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The multibillion-dollar U.S. ballistic missile shield due to start operating by Sept. 30 appears incapable of shooting down any incoming warheads, an independent scientists' group said on Thursday.

A technical analysis found "no basis for believing the system will have any capability to defend against a real attack," the Union of Concerned Scientists said in a 76-page report titled Technical Realities.

The Pentagon (news - web sites)'s Missile Defense Agency rejected the report.

"It will provide a defense against incoming missiles for the first time in this country's history," said Richard Lehner, an agency spokesman.

The Pentagon's initial deployment involves 10 interceptor missiles in silos in Alaska and California. It is designed to protect all 50 U.S. states against a limited strike from North Korean missiles that could be tipped with nuclear, chemical or biological warheads.

Boeing Co. is assembling the shield, which would use the interceptors to launch "kill vehicles" meant to pulverize targets in the mid-course of their flight paths, outside the Earth's atmosphere. Using infrared sensors, the vehicles would search the chill of space for the warheads. So far, the interceptors have scored hits five times in eight highly controlled tests.

The Missile Defense Agency "appears to be picking numbers out of thin air," the report said of past Pentagon assertions of a high probability of shooting down targets.

"There is no data to justify such an assumption," added the scientists' group, which is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Its findings dovetailed with an audit last month by Congress's General Accounting Office (news - web sites) that said the system's effectiveness would be "largely unproven" when the initial capability goes on alert.

DANGEROUS POLICY IMPLICATIONS

Even unsophisticated countermeasures that could be mounted by countries such as North Korea (news - web sites) remain an unsolved problem for midcourse defenses against long-range missiles, the scientists' report said.

Balloon decoys could be given the same infrared signature as a warhead by painting their surfaces, it said. The project could also be confused by sealing the warhead in a large balloon so the kill vehicle could not determine its exact location or tethering several balloons to it.

Overstating the defensive capabilities of the ground-based defense is dangerous, the group said.

"If the president is told that the system could reliably defend against a North Korean ballistic missile attack, he might be willing to accept more risks when making policy and military decisions," the report said.

"All indications are that it would not work," added Lisbeth Gronlund, a physicist who is a co-author of the report and co-director of the group's global security program.

"And the administration's statements that it will be highly effective are irresponsible nonsense," she added in a telephone interview.

Overall, the Pentagon estimates it will need $53 billion in the next five years to develop, field and upgrade a multilayered shield also involving systems based at sea, aboard modified Boeing 747 aircraft and in space

It was a no-brainer under Reagan and it is a no-brainer under Bush. Sure some will benefit...

[Pathy 0]

For years the US has tried to develop SDI, but.....no i am not suprised if it is not going to be done any time soon......at least in the Reagan years it was a useful bargaining chip in arms limitation talks with the USSR.....

[Gadger 0]

Well its a shame to see all that US tax dollars put to waste. Hopefully they'll get it right soon, then us Euro's can build one for a fraction of the cost.

[theavonlady 2]

In contrast:

Quote[/b] ]Israeli-U.S. Laser Downs Long-Range Missile in Test

May 7, 7:54 AM (ET)

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - A laser beam under joint Israeli-U.S. development destroyed a long-range rocket for the first time in a test in the skies over the American Southwest, Israel's Defense Ministry said on Friday.

Israel has sought an effective defense against ballistic missiles since 1991 when Iraq launched Scuds into the Jewish state during the first Gulf War. It has since developed the Arrow anti-ballistic missile with U.S. funding.

"This is a significant step forward," a ministry spokesman said of the test on May 4 of the "Nautilus" Mobile Tactical High Energy Laser (MTHEL) held at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.

Israel sees the Nautilus as another potential countermeasure to possible ballistic attack by enemies, which would include most Arab states and Iran. In turn, they see Israel's undeclared nuclear arsenal as the biggest strategic threat to the region.

The Nautilus laser is being developed mainly by U.S. aerospace giant Northrop Grumman Corp with the help of several Israeli high-tech firms specializing in optics and military hardware.

"The (Nautilus) project has the potential to fill an important operational need for Israel," said Shmuel Keren, the Israeli military's director of weapons systems and infrastructure development.

"The (Nautilus) system can answer our need for a system which can intercept missiles and cruise missiles for which currently there is no effective solution."

The Defense Ministry declined to elaborate on the test or the exact range of the intercepted missile.

In earlier tests the MTHEL laser had successfully eliminated 28 short-range Katyusha rockets and five artillery shells in flight as well as several "hostile objects" on the ground.

[bn880 5]

There are extremely easy countermeasures against laser based weapons.

[Grizzlie 0]

Can u give an example?

[hellfish6 7]

Clouds and smoke.

[somebloke 0]

and mirrors

[Akira 0]

and rabbits in hats...

[Balschoiw 0]

Quote[/b] ]and rabbits in hats...

Haha !

"Daddy, we go out to watch corn circles!"

"Be sure to wear your tinfoil hats to avoid bad muslim Laserguided missiles !"

The material of the hat is the deciding factor

[toadlife 3]

The star wars programs were not a complete waste of money. Though the goal of the project has yet to be reached, great technological advances have come out of the research, similar to the advances that came out of the space program.

[bn880 5]

Can u give an example?

Basically, type of casing used, I mean you can figure it out.

[Tex -USMC- 0]

To answer the original question: no.

[bonko the sane 2]

somehow this reminds me of the Patriot missile blunder...

[m21man 0]

@Balschoiw - Strangely, your posts are becoming more and more like Avon's .

Quote[/b] ]The star wars programs were not a complete waste of money. Though the goal of the project has yet to be reached, great technological advances have come out of the research, similar to the advances that came out of the space program.

Dittos with a lot of canceled programs. They seem like huge wastes of money, and they usually are, but a lot of useful information is collected and may someday be used in other projects. Maybe someone will someday create a working missile defense system using data gotten during the Star Wars program.

[raedor 8]

@Balschoiw - Strangely, your posts are becoming more and more like Avon's .

Quote[/b] ]The star wars programs were not a complete waste of money. Though the goal of the project has yet to be reached, great technological advances have come out of the research, similar to the advances that came out of the space program.

Dittos with a lot of canceled programs. They seem like huge wastes of money, and they usually are, but a lot of useful information is collected and may someday be used in other projects. Maybe someone will someday create a working missile defense system using data gotten during the Star Wars program.

imho it is just wasted money.

which kind of "great technological advances" did they get by testing this missile defense system?

[m21man 0]

Quote[/b] ]which kind of "great technological advances" did they get by testing this missile defense system?

For starters, some powerful lasers ...

[Grizzlie 0]

I was asking because it is interesting point, there is alot of myths about lasers and methods of defence agains them.

Remember that u want to defend VERY fast moving object, so smoke screens, ect. r rather useless.

Mirrors - well, as far as i know there is no mirror which can reflect 100% of light, so sooner or later it would be destroyed (rather sooner i think).

And we have to remember about costs and weight of any method of defence of missile.

Clouds - yes, u r right, but u rather won't be waiting for cloudy day

[Balschoiw 0]

As a lot of these LRM´s are GPS guided nowadays it only takes some hacks into the satellites to make them brainless.

Doesn´t need even an EMP pulse. They pointed out that risk prior GW2. Even landunits would be partly lost without GPS.

Oh well, that´s another story but seriously this revived SDI is a real big waste of money for very little sucess...

[MLF 0]

There are extremely easy countermeasures against laser based weapons.

non which are practical when building missiles or even AC for that matter.

[Jinef 2]

They would be made practical if laser systems become widespread.

[stgn 39]

As a lot of these LRM´s are GPS guided nowadays it only takes some hacks into the satellites to make them brainless.

Doesn´t need even an EMP pulse. They pointed out that risk prior GW2. Even landunits would be partly lost without GPS.

Oh well, that´s another story but seriously this revived SDI is a real big waste of money for very little sucess...

Only takes some hacking I would like to see you hack in to a military satelite the biggest problem is that the US is cheap and use the public GPS insted of the military cause you can easily buy a GPS jammer wich will render the public one usless up to a range of 100km.

To the last part you only learn from faliur and what you loose one place you might gain another.

STGN

[raedor 8]

As a lot of these LRM´s are GPS guided nowadays it only takes some hacks into the satellites to make them brainless.

Doesn´t need even an EMP pulse. They pointed out that risk prior GW2. Even landunits would be partly lost without GPS.

Oh well, that´s another story but seriously this revived SDI is a real big waste of money for very little sucess...

Only takes some hacking I would like to see you hack in to a military satelite the biggest problem is that the US is cheap and use the public GPS insted of the military cause you can easily buy a GPS jammer wich will render the public one usless up to a range of 100km.

To the last part you only learn from faliur and what you loose one place you might gain another.

STGN

sure. but you can "waste" your money much more effective...

[Baron Hurlothrumbo IIX 0]

For years the US has tried to develop SDI, but.....no i am not suprised if it is not going to be done any time soon......at least in the Reagan years it was a useful bargaining chip in arms limitation talks with the USSR.....

....like the two times the USSR offered unilateral disarmament only to be turned down??

[Apollo 0]

There are so many method's and ways for a country like Russia to nuke the U.S ,be it by submarine ,ICBM ,local planted nuke etc. that the whole concept of a "missile schield" is rediculous in the first place.It's only purpose is to stop ICBM's ,not the other ways of nuking a country like with sub's ,and even in getting ICBM's down it's very uneffective ,because there are easy ways to get around the defenses even with ICBM's ,The Russian had made multiple sollutions for it ,one was to just spam dud ICBM's toghether with 1 or 2 real ones ,dud ICBM rockets are and probably will always be cheaper than the installation's used to get down 1 ICBM ,take into account that the Russian's would spam and additional 500 Dud ICBM's togheter with some real ones then it's easy to see that such system's would be uneffective as you would need more than 500 missile schield station's on a very localized spot to kill of those 500 ICBM's shot at that same local region (provided that the missile interceptor's have a 100% chance of getting down the ICBM ,the real chance ATM is like 30%) ,since it's impossible to predict the inpact region of such an attack hours before the inpact it would be impossible to mobilize such missile schield installations (provided they could be mobile) near to the region of inpact unless you really build thousands of such installation's.Note that the price of such an installation is easily the tenfold of a dud ICBM.

Technoligy's developed for this project? I don't know ,as far as i know the missile shield program uses rather modern day technoligy's and costruct's them in an Anti ICBM installation rather than develloping very special technoligy's for it ,even AFAIK the targetting system used is one borrowed from local rocketry producer's (like the cruise missile producers) rather than specially developed ,wich might be partly a reason for the rather bad result's of the project.