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Missile Defense

Russian military leaders have expressed concern about US plans for a national missile defense system. Will defense technology be limited by possibilities for a strategic imbalance? Is this just SDI all over again?

lunarchick - 09:12am Jul 2, 2001 EST (#6404 of 6409)
lunarchick@www.com

Read to date. It seems there's a need to shake out the US military area - back to useful functionality.

carlp - 01:59pm Jul 2, 2001 EST (#6405 of 6409)

FOr a more useful debate forum, try egroups.com and http://www.egroups.com/l/stop-star-wars

smartalix - 03:11pm Jul 2, 2001 EST (#6406 of 6409)
Anyone who denies you information considers themselves your master

Lunarchick,

The military could easily trim 30% and still be a capable fighting force if it reorganized to eliminate inter-service redundancy and the ponderous waste in C3I due to that and inter-service rivalry, and reduced fraud, waste, and abuse from contractors and the bureacracy, and we stopped using the DOD account to fund pork everywhere.

And maybe monkeys will fly out of my ass...

gisterme - 03:25pm Jul 2, 2001 EST (#6407 of 6409)

rshowalter 6/30/01 8:01pm

rshowalter wrote: "...Note especially:

" For example, Ted Postol of MIT, among others, argues that NMD cannot discriminate between reentry vehicles and decoys (e.g., balloons) that are designed to confuse defenses.6 This was a problem that also dogged the Nixon-era ABM. The technology was different but even the corporate contractors that devised the ABM system believed that its radars could not differentiate between decoys and reentry vehicles."

As you should know by now, Robert, the flight profile of an ICBM can be broken down into three general phases:

1) The boost phase where the reentry vehicle(s) and decoys ride atop a huge flaming rocket that is vulnerable to attack by satellite based lasers or kinetic projectiles or even aircraft based lasers. Tracking of ICBM boosters would most likely be accomplished by satellite based infrared sensors that are known have far better resolution than radars. Remember that the infrared signature of a flaming ICBM is orders of magnitude brighter in both optical and infrared wavelengths than the automobile headlight example you gave for the HST tracking example ( gisterme 6/27/01 3:06pm ). Also remember that the Hubble optics were developed by the same folks that build the optics for US reconnaissance satellites. There's no reason to think that those recon satellites would have any less resolution than the HST. Those satellites probably wouldn't even need to use adaptive optic technology to direct a space based laser since the ICBM payload stays atop the booster until it is well clear of the atmosphere. Finally, using a line-of-sight speed-of-light weapon like a powerful laser one doesn't need to know the exact range to the target.

2) The transition phase , where the booster and payload are actually in space and separation of the payload from the booster takes place. Decoys can't be deployed until the ICBM has cleared the atmosphere and there is no longer thrust from the booster. Once clear of the atmosphere, after booster burn-out, decoys such as balloons, chaff and other kinds of radar-confusing garbage can be effective because the low-mass decoys can "stay with" the re-entry vehicles. Also, recall that hits from a powerful laser have a significant impact force on the target. In space, a short laser hit would deflect the trajectory of a low mass object like a decoy but have less effect on a more massive object like a re-entry vehicle. That might be a "speed of light" way to separate the "wheat" from the "chaff" (just a guess).

3) The re-entry phase is where the low-mass decoys such as chaff and balloons will be left behind by the reentry vehicles as they re-enter the atmosphere. So unless the decoys have similar aerodynamic cross sections (drag-to-mass ratio), radar signature and infrared signature to the reentry vehicle they are useless once reentry begins. Most of the effectiveness of chaff and balloons is due to the fact that you can have a huge cloud of them deployed while in space without having to pay a huge mass penalty during the boost phase. If you want decoys that can continue to work during the actual reentry, the last 90 miles or so of the flight, then you can't have too many because they must have an aerodynamic cross section similar to the reentry vehicle itself. So for an ICBM to present decoys that followed the real re-entry vehicle into the atmosphere, most of the ICBM payload would have to be decoys rather than bomb

gisterme - 03:49pm Jul 2, 2001 EST (#6408 of 6409)

smartalix wrote: "...The military could easily trim 30% and still be a capable fighting force if it reorganized to eliminate inter-service redundancy and the ponderous waste in C3I due to that and inter-service rivalry, and reduced fraud, waste, and abuse from contractors and the bureacracy, and we stopped using the DOD account to fund pork everywhere.

That's good advice for ALL bureaucracies everywhere, not JUST the DOD. Just substitue any department name for "the military", any program acronym for "C3I" and the corresponding department acronym for "DOD", change a couple of other words here-and-there and you've got an equally valid statement. Unfortunatly the term "effiecent bureaucracy" is an oxymoron.

"...And maybe monkeys will fly out of my ass..."

They'd have to make their way there from your cranial cavity first, smartalix...but who could blame them for wanting to escape such a limited habitat? :-) However the flying monkey scenario seems about as likely as the occurance of an efficient bureaucracy.

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