WP: (Missile Defense) Interceptor System Set, But Doubts Remain

[kskiska]

Network Hasn't Undergone Realistic Testing

Wednesday, September 29, 2004; Page A01

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 H. Rumsfeld is preparing to activate the site sometime this autumn. President Bush already has begun to claim fulfillment of a 2000 presidential campaign pledge -- and longtime Republican Party goal -- to build a nationwide missile defense.

But what the 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.

The paucity of realistic test data has caused the Pentagon's chief weapons evaluator to conclude that he cannot offer a confident judgment about the system's viability. He estimated its likely effectiveness to be as low as 20 percent.

more…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58080-2004Sep28.html

[Dudley_DUright]

1. Dang, I was just about to post this KS

and you beat me by one min.

[kskiska]

3. Awwwww

Sorry about that, Dudley.

[Dudley_DUright]

5. Sure you are

:-) Good article (for once) from the WaPo.

[VegasWolf]

2. Sure they need to find out if the missle can hit a target when-

the target is not broadcasting its GPS position to the missile.
"I'm right here!" They said this was only for initial testing,
but really, don't you think that finding the target is the hard
problem to solve?

[Massacure]

4. Well 20% might save a city or two, but can it even nail 20%?

[Jack_DeLeon]

6. I'm glad we've done this.

Yeah people are going to argue that this doesnt work, or it wont ever work. However I will disagree.

It may not work well, and hopefully we will never have to actually use it, but I think its good that we are actually committed to developing Missile Defense now.

If it doesnt work now hopefully over the years they will eventually get it working better and continue to improve upon it.

The patriot missile system wasnt developed overnight to its current state, we shouldnt expect the same out of the NMD.

[Nihil]

14. Think about what you've just said

> If it doesnt work now hopefully over the years they will eventually
> get it working better and continue to improve upon it.

If it doesn't work when it has to, most of the inbound nuclear missiles
will hit their targets and destroy everything within a fearful radius.

Just for a moment, ignore the possible second/third/fourth strike
options, ignore the fallout problems, ignore the nuclear winter fears
and only consider the "pure" first strike effect.

Most of the inbound nuclear missiles have hit and obliterated their
targets ... and you think that there will be a chance to "get it working
better"? And that it somehow justifies this ridiculous strategy?

Wow.

Nihil

[Jack_DeLeon]

15. So whats your solution?

Either we have this missile defense and work on continuing to improve it, or we dont have missile defense at all.

If we dont have a missile defense then all missiles would get through, with a missile defense atleast there is some chance that some wouldnt. Some chance to stop some missiles would still be greater than no chance to stop any missiles.

[Nihil]

17. Rather novel ...

Concentrate on making sure that the missiles are NOT LAUNCHED!

The biggest nuclear threat to the USA is not from an ICBM but from a
man (or woman) with a suitcase, a small van or even a light aircraft.
This missile defence system cannot do one little thing to prevent the
initiation or successful completion of such a weapon. As far as this
system is concerned, there is a 0% chance of success and a 100% chance
that the weapon will get through. (Also remember that this money
could have been used more wisely and that the absolute best it could
do is help a fraction of the mainland USA, none of the "extremities".)

If you wish to address the (comparatively small) risk of a missile
attack then work with the (comparatively small) number of countries
who are in a position to deliver such an attack.
("Work" in this context will largely equate to "stop pissing them off"
with juvenile posturing, threats, blackmail and backstabbing).

All this ABM system actually provides to the America is an
expensive, f*cking huge dildo that the president can wave in an
attempt to hide the fact that all the blue pills in the world can't
turn him into a man.

Nihil

[teryang]

7. Ridiculous waste of resources

Nuclear deterence worked for five decades.

Does it work against shipping containers?

[Media_Lies_Daily]

9. I hear they're working on anti-suitcase missiles, too.

[Kool Kitty]

11. My sentiments exactly.

Why doesn't Rummy just sit on the roof of the Pentagon and toss money into the wind? Same result.

[Nihil]

13. You're missing the vital point ...

If Rummy did that then his mates would all have to run around on the
grass to pick up the money. This way, they get it delivered to their
door without even having to lift a finger. Can't go risking that bypass
operation when the state can do the work for you!

[Kool Kitty]

16. Good point.

I hadn't thought of that. ;-)

[Charles19]

18. Makes no sense at all

Think about it if they get a 1 in 5 hit rate, which they won't but they say they did so I will use that for the sake of argument. All a potential enemy has to do is launch a few more missiles. Which its a hell of a lot cheaper to make more missiles than create a missile defense that is laughable, doesn't work, and won't ever work.

Only reasons the fiscal conservatives aren't going nuts about this is because this is free R&D for Israel.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

8. I've got a very simple solution to the problems facing this system...

...simply pay all of our potential enemies to attach homing devices to each one of their missiles.

Simple, right?

[daleo]

10. So, if North Korea has about 10 bombs/missiles

Only 8 will get through the shield. Quite a deal, for 100 billion dollars.

[Carolab]

12. So they're back to the old "star wars" crap

again...remember when * was chastised for being focused on this right away rather than on the terrorists? Honest to God, I think he lives for the good-old days when Reagan was prez and we were living under "cold war" fear. This has GOT to stop!!!!!!!

[Barrett808]

19. MIT Professor Ted Postol , patriot and whistleblower

Postol Criticizes Missile Plan

The Tech: What are your main qualms with the National Missile Defense Plan?

Postol: The current system, which is hardware that we can talk about, is perhaps the most vulnerable of all missile defenses I’ve looked at in my career. Basically, it’s a missile defense that has no chance of working. First of all, it operates at a very high altitude in the near-vacuum of space, and at these altitudes there is essentially no air drag to cause a light object to blow up relative to a heavy one. So a feather and a rock travel along together. This means that building a decoy that could travel along with the warhead is a nearly trivial task. There are some details that matter: you want it to heat and cool with the sun like the shell of the warhead, but these are things that any intelligent MIT undergrad could figure out. In fact, I’m sure if the intelligent undergrads at MIT were involved, there would be much more effective countermeasures than these guys are now considering as realistic. But basically, because you’re operating in the near-vacuum of space, you have this extremely large vulnerability due to the fact that there’s no air drag that your adversary has to contend with when they deploy countermeasures. So an inflated balloon in the shape of a warhead looks like a warhead. A traffic cone off the street looks like a warhead. A balloon with a stripe on it can look like a warhead. You can’t see the shape of the object, so when the balloon slowly tumbles, and the stripe comes into view and disappears, its brightness will change much like an object that was maybe precessing in front of you. So you can virtually simulate or emulate all the signals that you could possibly exploit for telling the warheads from the decoys with the simplest of objects.

Now what the missile defense advocates would like you to believe is that we have some adversary, say North Korea. Let’s just do a little logic here. Advocates of this missile defense system are claiming there’s some adversary out there who’s got the vast industrial and scientific base needed to build an intercontinental-ranged ballistic missile, the independently-vast scientific base to build nuclear warheads -- because that’s a different industrial and scientific activity -- and the ability to build the heat shields to put the warhead in so it can survive re-entry, but they can’t figure out how to deploy a balloon along with this warhead. That’s what they want you to believe, and if you believe that, I’ve got this bridge out here I want to sell you. So basically there are really extraordinary leaps of faith required to believe that this current system has any chance of working, and I don’t think it’s in the American interest to build a weapons system of this scale that has no chance of working. In fact, it could provoke responses on the part of potential adversaries that would eventually leave us in a much less secure situation, because if people respond due to concerns about what this system might do or might become at a later time, then what you’re going to have is a responding enemy while you have no capability to offset this response. So in the end you’re worse off. It’s sort of like waving a plastic gun in front of a frightened person with an AK-47. It’s just not very smart. So the system has really no capability. I think it’s just a bad idea to build weapons systems that don’t have a chance of working and then basically misinform your population in telling them they’re protected. I think there’s a moral question here that really gets to the heart of what science and engineering ethics are about. For example, if you’re an engineer and you know a bridge could fall down while people are on it, and you just tell them, “Go ahead, it’s safe, don’t worry,” that would be an unethical act. And to willfully and knowingly look at a weapons system that’s supposed to protect American citizens and know it’s not going to work but tell people otherwise is no less immoral than telling people that that bridge is okay. I think there are very far-ranging issues here.

The Tech: How have you dealt with your recent brushes with the Pentagon, personally and professionally?

Postol: On five occasions, I’ve written analyses based on lawfully-derived unclassified sources that the government has claimed are secret. So this is the fifth time it’s happened to me now, and you kind of get used to it.

(more)

http://www-tech.mit.edu/V121/N30/30postol-transcript.30n.html

[Dudley_DUright]

20. Ted Postol is a fearless critic of this technical nonsense

I admire his courage and perseverance.

[Barrett808]

21. Let's hope he can keep it up. n/t

[Mountainman]

22. I guess the weapons evaluator didn't get Rove's memo

This is like a bluff in a poker game. The repubs can claim they are protecting us without ever showing their cards or proving that it works.

Their friends got their 100 billion in payments, and the sheeple will vote for the administration who has taken a part of their paychecks and given it to Bush's wealthy supporters.

Still no universal health care or no new jobs but we have a lot of holes in the ground with shiny white missiles in them.