Missile defense is speeding ahead, but will it work?

[seemslikeadream]

Workers lower a ground-based missile interceptor into its silo at Fort Greely near Delta Junction, Alaska, in July as the first component of a national defense system designed to shoot down enemy missiles.

The Washington Post and The Associated Press

MARK FARMER / AP
Workers lower a ground-based missile interceptor into its silo at Fort Greely near Delta Junction, Alaska, in July as the first component of a national defense system designed to shoot down enemy missiles.

WASHINGTON — At a newly constructed launch site on a tree-shorn plain in central Alaska, a large crane crawls from silo to silo, gently lowering missiles into their holes. The sleek white rockets, each about five stories tall, are designed to soar into space and intercept warheads headed toward the United States.
With five installed so far and one more due by mid-October, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is preparing to activate the site sometime this autumn.

But what the Bush administration had hoped would be a triumphant achievement is clouded by doubts, even within the Pentagon, about whether a system that is on its way to costing more than $100 billion will work. Several key components have fallen years behind schedule and will not be available until later. Flight tests, plagued by delays, have yet to advance beyond elementary, highly scripted events.

Better than none?

Senior officials at the Pentagon and the White House insist the system will provide protection, although they use terms such as "rudimentary" and "limited" to describe its initial capabilities. Some missile defense, they say, is better than none, and what is deployed this year will be improved over time.

This notion of building first and improving later lies at the heart of the administration's approach, which defense officials have dubbed "evolutionary acquisition" or "spiral development." At the outset, the system will be aimed only at countering a small number of missiles that would be fired by North Korea, which is 6,000 miles from the West Coast of the United States.

more
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002055193_missile06.html

[leesa]

1. I guess that depends on how you define "will it work"

If that means will it enrich the military industrial complex beyond their wildest dreams, then I would say it will work splendidly.

[hatrack]

2. Gotta work better than the truth!

We'll tell Fred that you were doing a great job of taking care of the missile defense system.

But last night, you parked it out back. And this morning - it was GONE!

[ugarte]

3. The right-wingers say even if it doesn't work

our 'enemies' will think it might work and will hesitate to attack us.

So why not just make a dummy one out of wood and cardboard and just say we have one?

But then that wouldn't put billions in the corporate pocket.

[reprobate]

4. Won't work. It's purpose is to put billions in the corporate pocket.

It really has no other purpose. From what I recall at the time of the tests all the tests were either failures or were fudged. In factr one of the tests even had a homing beacon on the target, and it MISSED.

Besides, has anyone thought of the fact that if a terraist wanted to attack us with nukes, they would NOT us ICBMs which take a shitpot full of aupport equipment and an industrial base to maintane. They would simply put a nuke on a container, mark it for target city, and send it on. We inspect almost none of the container shipments coming in.

Thanks for protecting us Georgie, you dipshit.

[Bridget Burke]

6. Yes, what if all that money were spent to inspect containers?

Many container ships come up the Houston Ship Channel to drop their cargo. They wind through a multitude of petrochemical factories. Even a big "conventional" bomb could cause a lot of damage.

A dirty bomb or a primitive nuke would be even worse. This has been known for a long time, but only a small percentage of the containers are inspected.

[Kinkistyle]

5. Yes! With new "Box cutter" targetting system it will!

The new Box-Cutter targeting system will ensure that it will be relevant for the new millenium.

[Minstrel Boy]

7. "It's Maginot Linetastic!" says Don Rumsfeld, 72, champion gurner

and apocalypse buff.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

9. SPACE MAGINOT! Now THAT is a meme to spread!!! Jee-nee-az! (nt)

[Tims]

8. Better than none?

Hardly. $100 billion could be used in much better and more proven ways to counter the real threats we face. Not long after the US announced it would be going ahead with this boondoggle violating the antiballistic missile treaty, the Russians publicly announced minor changes and upgrades that they could make to their weapons which would completely nullify the ability of this system to intercept ANY missile.

The problem with a missile defence system is that it is extremely difficult to track and intercept even well behaved missiles on a simple ballistic path with no counter-defences. As soon as any counter measures are taken or if the missile exhibits any form of controlled flight, the difficulty increases exponentially. No one with any engineering knowledge at all that doesn't have a financial stake in producing these things believes that these missiles will work even marginally.

These missiles are being placed in Alaska, meaning they are intended to defend against missiles coming from Russia or China and possibly from North Korea. Russia and China are quite capable of defeating or overwhelming any missile defense, so that leaves only Korea (in fact, Russia would more than likely simply attack with submarine based missiles). Do we really need to spend $100 billion to protect ourselves from a second-rate power who currently have only a jury-rigged missile which can't even make it even halfway across the Pacific and which has nowhere near the payload capacity to carry the fairly primitive nukes the Koreans may possess?

Again, missile defence a cornerstone of the neocon's PNAC agenda. It is promoted, not on sound science, but like everything else in this administration, on ideology - the facts be damned.

Not only is this project not better than none, it actually makes us more vulnerable by diverting funds from proven defensive systems, better intelligence gathering, better protection of our ports and boarders, etc., etc.

[seemslikeadream]

12. space-based interceptors have slipped behind schedule

New Delays in U.S. Missile Defense

Wade Boese

Amid a final push to deploy several long-range, ground-based ballistic missile interceptors this fall, the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) again postponed a much-delayed inaugural test of two crucial components comprising the interceptor. Pentagon officials said the test delay would not upset deployment plans. Meanwhile, MDA confirmed that tentative plans to develop space-based interceptors have slipped behind schedule.

Nearly two years ago, President George W. Bush set 2004 and 2005 as the goal for erecting the first elements of a system to defend the United States from long-range ballistic missile attacks. To fulfill the president’s order, MDA is fielding up to six ground-based missile interceptors at Fort Greely, Alaska, and two additional interceptors at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, before the end of the year. A dozen more interceptors will be added in 2005.
The interceptors consist primarily of a high-speed booster and an exoatmospheric kill vehicle (EKV). The booster carries the EKV into space and releases it in the path of an oncoming enemy warhead. The EKV is then supposed to zero in on and collide with the warhead.

...

The uninterrupted deployment has drawn the scorn of some Democrats. Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), ranking member on the Senate Armed Services’ Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities, said Aug. 18, “The continuing delays indicate the immaturity of this system, which is still untested, unproven, and problem-prone.” A day later, Rep. John Tierney (D-Mass.) declared that “the system has not been realistically or consistently tested.”

But Lehner said in a Sept. 15 interview that the latest test delay should not diminish confidence in the interceptors being deployed and would not affect the deployment schedule. He said Obering’s concerns pertained only to “test-unique equipment,” which are not part of the interceptors being installed in Alaska. Lehner added that deployment of the interceptors and any decision to put them on alert was never tied to completing any specific test, but to determinations by military commanders on the military utility of such actions.

....

The environmental assessment revealed another schedule delay: a four-year slip in plans to deploy three to five space-based interceptors for testing purposes. Last year, MDA said that such a deployment could take place as early as 2008. Yet, in its latest report, MDA put the date at 2012 and described the concept as “too speculative” to warrant a thorough environmental impact assessment at this time.
Lehner said that the space-based interceptor schedule has been moved back due to more urgent priorities and a lack of funding support from lawmakers. As part of the fiscal year 2005 Defense Appropriations Act, Congress cut $163 million from a $511 million request to develop the interceptor that might be placed on a space-based platform.

....

Some have already made clear they do not agree with MDA’s optimistic outlook. During preparation of its draft report, MDA said it received 285 public comments, mostly negative, about its missile defense efforts, particularly the prospect of putting weapons into space.
http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2004_10/MD_Delays.asp

[sofa king]

10. I recommend everyone read this Scientific American article.

Why National Missile Defence Won't Work

http://www.globenet.free-online.co.uk/articles/nmd.htm

My father worked on the initial missile defense system proposed in the 1960s. It was a nuclear-intercept system very much like the one proposed recently as the modern "hit to kill" system continues to fail, test after test.

One of the reasons why the United States entered into the ABM Treaty of 1972 is because the great physicist Dr. Hans Bethe came to a simple conclusion: a missile defense system simply becomes a benchmark which a potential enemy needs to overcome. The system itself creates a missile race.

Got a six-ABM system in Alaska? That's just great. Now North Korea knows they need at least seven missiles--and they'll build them. So we have to build more ABMs. And they build more BMs. Want to stand down unilaterally? You can't, not without making America even less safe than it was, because now your enemy has far more missiles than they did before.

And of course, such a system is "defensive" only in the same sense that a shield was defensive in a Roman maniple--it protects the swordsman so that he can more effectively attack. That puts your potential enemies even more on edge, cutting down the critical assessment period which leaders have before they consider a launch essential.

Ninety-something Dr. Bethe repeated his reservations in a letter to President Clinton and signed by 49 other Nobel laureates in 2000.

http://www.fas.org/press/000706-letter.htm

If you ask me, Dr. Bethe is still correct. I suspect that what the issue is really about is feeding defense contractors a steady stream of high-dollar research and development time.

[Q]

11. The Bushies know that once a program like this is started...

...it's virtually impossible to stop. It doesn't matter to them if it works...it provides a steady stream of cash to Bush* defense contractor/supporters.