The Pentagons Missile Defense Agency tested a key leg in its missile shield triad yesterday, shooting down both a sub-sonic cruise missile in the atmosphere and a ballistic missile in space with a ship-based interceptor.
To say the least, missile defense has been extremely controversial over the years, and it is a subject of heated debate over whether the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on systems over the years have been worth the cost.
But it is worth chalking up this test in the win column for the embattled agency.
From a Raytheon release:
In a first of its kind dual missile defense test, Raytheon Company-produced Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) and Standard Missile-2 (SM-2) simultaneously engaged targets over the Pacific Ocean.
This was the first time a U.S. Navy ship demonstrated simultaneous ship engagements against both cruise and ballistic missile targets. It was the eighth successful intercept for the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense systems SM-3.
The SM-3 Block IA destroyed a short-range ballistic missile target in space while SM-2 Block IIIA engaged a cruise missile threat at a lower altitude. Both intercepting missiles were fired from guided missile cruiser USS Lake Erie (CG 70) by the ships crew. The ballistic missile target was launched from the U.S. Navys Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kauai. The subsonic cruise missile target was launched from a range aircraft.
This test, Flight Test Mission-11, was the second with the Block IA version of SM-3, and the first IA with a full-capability solid divert and attitude control system. Raytheon is delivering Block IA rounds for operational use on Navy cruisers and destroyers.
The SM-3 Block IA provides increased capability to engage short– to intermediate-range ballistic missiles. The SM-3 Block IA incorporates rocket motor upgrades and computer program modifications to improve sensor performance, missile guidance and control, and lower cost. It also includes producibility and maintainability features required to qualify the missile as a tactical fleet asset.
Its definately worth noting the complexity of such a test. Two different kinds of missile threats, tracked by the Aegis radar system that was feeding information to two different interceptors — each with its own seeker technology — to a terminal kill. Experts on both sides of the debate recognize the sterility of such tests. In the real world, adversaries might incorporate decoys and other defenses to keep their missiles from being shot down.
But, despite the incredible costs, its important to remember that well-meaning people are hard at work trying to solve a problem and a threat that has so far kept most nations helpless to confront militarily.
(Gouge: MS)
– Christian
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
I don’t question their motives, I question whether their motives are based on a realistic threat assessment.
Missile defense reminds me of the Maginot line. Not its effect on French attitudes and morale, but its effect on France’s budget.
Erecting a fortified line along a part of your border to a dangerous neighbor seems like a good idea. It frees up troops for other parts of the front and is generally cost effective (in fact, Germany’s fortifications on their side of the Rhine did just that).
But when you completely overengineer those defenses and they suck up more and more of your nations resources, they become less and less useful (first rule of warfare: If your enemy has an impregnable fortress, make sure he stays there).
So let’s say those interceptors actually work, and the lasers, and the bomb carrying pigeons.
The US still spent hundreds of billions on a project that has only very limited strategic value.
China and Russia can make it worthless by just building more ICBMs and decoys (vastly cheaper than the interceptors), and the idea of thousands of attempted intercepts where each failure will cost millions of lives should discourage even the most ruthless warmonger. And both countries have shown in the past that they’re unlikely to start WWIII, too.
And terrorists and terrorist States would just smuggle the bomb into the country. Thousands of miles of hardly patrolled coastline and borders as well as millions of unchecked containers make that easy. All the while the much more scarce funding of securing the US against those threats is used to shore up the defenses of Pork City, TX and American Samoa.
Good Morning Folks,
I’m not sure what this test proves. The Ages can track a SRMB ie Scud, and the Standard 3 Missile can shoot it down. If this test is the same as past tests the target had a homming device to guide in the inceptor, I’m Scuds launched in anger would have this feature turned off.
All aside what does this have to do with protecting the U.S. from the TopolM or the SSN-27 SLBM, a TopolM in wraps if you like, ICBM that Russia might get to working sometime in the future.
ALLONS,
Byron Skinner
The US still spent hundreds of billions on a project that has only very limited strategic value.
China and Russia can make it worthless by just building more ICBMs and decoys (vastly cheaper than the interceptors),
I absolutely agree with this- BUT- its really not meant for Russia or even China. Its meant for the Korea’s, Iran’s etc. By the time we get the bugs out they probably will have medium ranged missiles capable of hitting US west coast or Europe, Middle East, etc. These tinpot dictatorships could never threaten a US carrier group- but in 5-10 years time they could drop a nuke on a flattop if we didn’t have this capability. That’s just one example. A Desert Storm buildup would also be a lot harder if our enemy nuked the main port.
Sure – we can’t be complacent or spend half our budget on them- but goes without saying and has happened with other weapon systems (nukes over conventional forces, missile firing intercepters over fighters)
Like Barnett said, no one’s going to whack a flattop, because to do so would be national suicide.
Even more, no one’s going to whack a flattop with a frickin’ nuke.
No one’s going to nuke America proper with a missile–that would most definitely be national suicide.
If we ever get nuked, it’ll be delivered by land. Unless one wants to pretend MAD doesn’t apply–especially when the destruction wouldn’t be mutual.
Sure, Iran or NorK might (will?) get the ability to fire a few nukes at our mainland. We already have the ability to turn the entirety of those countries into a glass parking lot.
The US still spent hundreds of billions on a project that has only very limited strategic value.
China and Russia can make it worthless by just building more ICBMs and decoys (vastly cheaper than the interceptors)
Emas, meet bleh. bleh, meet Emas. Gee, you guys really look alike! You’re sure you’ve never met?
Seriously, though, where comes this idea that ICBM’s – especially fancy ones with multiple warheads, decoys, etc. – are cheaper than interceptors? ICBM’s, such as China’s DF-41, are a lot more expensive than interceptors like the Standard Missile series (the SM-3 is a bit bigger than the SM-2). The land-based THAAD interceptor, which would be the item more likely to engage a DF-41, is a bit bigger and more expensive, to be sure, but it’s no ICBM-sized item either.
But the real comparison is not in terms of dollar “cost” – Chinese and Russian wage levels being what they are – but how much of China’s or Russia’s weapons engineering manpower, production capacity and strategic materials are required to produce such units. In these terms, modern ICBM’s are anything but “cheap.” The Russians couldn’t sustain an economic “pissing contest” of this kind with the U.S. even back when Russia was the Soviet Union. With a shrinking population less than half its Soviet-era size and a comparatively trivial GNP, even with recent oil revenue, that isn’t going to change soon. Russia can engineer fancy missiles, but they can’t mass-produce and deploy them. Much of their Soviet legacy missile force is in questionable condition or known to be inoperable or decommissioned.
China is in better shape, but only relatively. They have a lot of military stuff on their shopping lists and there is no reason to suppose ICBM’s have a particularly high priority compared to say, aircraft, shorter-range missiles, submarines and amphibious warfare gear. There are certainly Chinese military types who want to go up against the U.S. – someday. There are a great many more who want to grab back Taiwan and think they can keep us out of things while they’re doing it. ICBM’s are not a major factor in these calculations.
If this test is the same as past tests the target had a homming device to guide in the inceptor, I’m Scuds launched in anger would have this feature turned off.
Byron, there seem to be a lot of poorly informed people out there – many of them technologically illiterate journalists – who have promulgated and repeated this bit of nitwittery. The left-wing anti-U.S. military activist hack “community” have been happy to pile on for ideological reasons even when they almost certainly know better.
No missile defense tests have ever been run with “homing devices” in the targets. A “homing device” is something the interceptor could see directly to guide it to the target. What the THAAAD tests – not the SM-3 tests discussed here – have used are target vehicles with GPS transponders that report continuous position data as a stand-in for the honkin-big X-band radar that finds targets for the interceptors actually based in alert silos in Alaska. There is no comparably powerful radar at the Pacific Test Range so the target transponders are used simply to compensate for the lack of a real radar on the test range powerful enough to provide initial position data at realistic ranges from intercept. All the radar does, in any event, is provide rough guidance to get the interceptor into the right general area. The actual homing is done using an entirely self-contained infrared seeker in the warhead that finds the target and kills it on its own. There is nothing on the warhead that can directly “hear” the GPS transponder or use it for guidance. Given the error envelope of GPS data from a fast-moving source, the seekers in the warhead are a lot more accurate than any “cheat” coordinates that might be gotten from the transponder anyway.
Finally, to reiterate a key point, the SM-3 missile is designed to work in conjunction with the Aegis radar as installed on Ticonderoga-class cruisers and Arleigh Burke-class destroyers. These radars are what would be used for initial guidance in a real engagement and so require no compensatory lash-up like the GPS target transponders used for THAAD tests for reasons explained above. As with THAAD, though, the radar guidance for the SM-3 is only useful for getting into rough intercept position. Just like THAAD, the SM-3 uses a self-contained infra-red seeker in the warhead to actually home on and kill the target. Radar simply isn’t accurate enough to do this job if it is located elswhere than on the warhead. It can’t be located on the warhead because it is impossible to build a radar set with sufficient power and range that is light enough to do the job. Thus, all exo-atmospheric missile interceptors use infra-red seekers.
There have been past intercept failures in both the THAAD and SM-3 programs, but all the recent tests of both have been successful.
Whether deployment of effective missile defense is advisable is a strategic and political question. Whether is is possible, however, is a physics and engineering question and the answer is pretty clearly ‘Yes.’
The point of ABM is not to down a full level attck from Russia or even China. What ABM does is raise the retaliatory threshhold. We no longer have to nuke half of Asia if only one or two missiles are launched are launched from North Korea.
Yes, I know that ABM technology is expensive. What would a successful nuclear attack somewhere in the U.S. cost us? I’ve got a feeling that ABM technology is a pittance in comparison.
TABM’s might become relevant air attack means with conventional warheads for nations that expect enemy air superiority.
Despite experiences like the Arrow interceptor missile which costs ten times as much as its adversary Scud but still requires two shots for a near-certain kill, it might actually be useful to develop ABM technologies against TBM’s.
IRBM’s and ICBM’s are a completely different affair. They would never have conventional warheads due to cost/effect considerations and their use is therefore much less likely. That’s because nuking someone means today getting nuked to hell. With certainty.
ABM technologies for longer range missiles are also much more complex because of the velocities involved and while TABM; might be included in standard area air defense assets, strategic ABM is much more elaborate.
Are strategic ABM worth the effort?
Let’s assume the optimum case; 100% reliability and the adversary does even expect 100% reliability.
What would happpen? If he really, really wants to nuke you, he sends his nuke by containr, using air or sea freight.
You cannot check all containers that are about to enter your country before they do (in fact, almost none are checked at all, even after getting unloaded in harbours) and CIA/NSA and such have their limits.
YOU CANNOT ESTABLISH A RELIABLE SECURITY AGAINST NUKES. The best security againt nukes is the threat of massive retaliation and decapitation of the enemy’s leadership.
It’s astonishing how people – even after getting told about the container issue – keep entangled in the illusion of SDI.
After all, the whole ABM thing is no more than PsyOps.
“Yes, I know that ABM technology is expensive. What would a successful nuclear attack somewhere in the U.S. cost us? I’ve got a feeling that ABM technology is a pittance in comparison.”
We *already have* a fully functioning ABM shield. It’s made up of strategic bombers, ICBM silos, and boomers.
Good Morning Folks,
One point seems to be over looked here, the Missile Defense Interceptors being developed here are by design not ment to be used agains an orbital weapons system, ie. Russia and China.
As for the other bad guy North Korea who is trying to deveolpe a IRBM alonf the the techology of the 50′s U.S. Jupiter, liquid fueled system, well ther fireworks works display of the last 4th. of July show how far they have to go. Iran, well they are buy there ballistic missile technology from North Korea, nuff said.
The fact is that even if this system worked and it doesn’t there is no enemy to defend against unless of course Mexico or Canada become threats.
The Russians, well it very unlikely that the Russians have a working ICBM system, the SSN-27 and the topol M, same system were spectular failures in 05 when Putin wanted to do a GW military dress up and show the world what he had, which was five failures, 2SSN-27′s and 3 Topol-M’s in a row. As for the great Soviet/Russian nuclear weapons arsnal well it been managed and protedted by U.S. paid contractors for about ten years now and any old Soviet nuclear scientists have been fully employed in the U.S. for years.
With two wars going on the spending of precious resourses on this Missile Defense Program is a waste of funds beyond belief who oly justification is corporate welfare for Wall Street who is not contente with just low double digit profits in the Defense Indsutry and of “Mo Pork” for Alaska.
ALLONS,
Byron Skinner
Where does this idea that Iran and NK can’t/won’t be deterred by MAD come from?
If they were that crazy, they’d already have acted. If they were that crazy, Kimmie would be shelling Seoul and Iran would be openly marching its army into Iraq and taking potshots at our ships.
Because if they were that crazy–that is, unconcerned with their own death–then those sort of options would look real attractive to them. I note they haven’t done anything of the sort, however.