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Missile Defense

Technology has always found its greatest consumer in a nation's war and defense efforts. Since the last attempts at a "Star Wars" defense system, has technology changed considerably enough to make the latest Missile Defense initiatives more successful? Can such an application of science be successful? Is a militarized space inevitable, necessary or impossible?

Read Debates, a new Web-only feature culled from Readers' Opinions, published every Thursday.

gisterme - 03:18pm Oct 18, 2003 EST (# 15219 of 15226)

Will -

"...If there is something to do about it, then the system’s designers should release at least the general outline of their capability..."

Why??? Why release anything about what the defense system's capabilities are, especially about details of the actual engagement strategy? Those are things an adversary might be able to do something about if he knew anything at all. For example, if he knew we could defeat balloons he might try something else. Maybe that's one reason why the "decoys" used so far in flight tests haven't seemed too realistic. I have no doubt that the decoys used so far have been plenty good enough to accomplish the goals of the particular test shot. Test programs are complex incremental procedures. Just because they're not doing a particular thing right now doesn't mean that it isn't on the schedule or won't be done...or needs to be done.

That the NMD program is going ahead at an accelerated rate is a good enough indicator for me that there are no "show stoppers". That's why it doesn't surprise me at all that there's been no public discussion about "anti-countermeasures" capabilities. That the designers say "we can discreminate the target from the decoys" is enough for me. Let the adversary dope out what he wants to do about that.

"...They haven’t..."

I think that's a wise move on "thier" part. Just as an adversary would want to have his countermeasures unknown to us, wouldn't we want our anti-countermeasures abilities unknown to him? I surely would.

"... Very knowledgeable and smart people who study these problems would no doubt have some clue how the countermeasures problem might theoretically be solved..."

No doubt. They might also know how it's being solved right now. I'm afraid that we can only speculate about that unknown.

"...However, nobody has..."

Has what? Solved some particular problem? How would we know if they're not telling? :-)

"...We know what the types of radars are that will be used...

X-band radar. Here's something about that.

http://www.fas.org/spp/starwars/program/gbr.htm

Here's an example of some X-band radar images of the earth taken from space:

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/radar/sircxsar/

The point is that the synthetic aperture radars we're talking about here are not the sort of thing one would think of as an image from Doctor Stragelove.

"...and the infrared detectors in orbit, what their capabilities are. They’re not adequate to the job, so the experts say..."

Not experts who have their hands on the sensors that are actually being used. Otherwise the program wouldn't be going ahead.

Why do you say we know what the capabilities of the IR sensors are? Do you have a link?

What other types of sensors might be on board other than IR? Unknown? Good.

gisterme - 03:22pm Oct 18, 2003 EST (# 15220 of 15226)

"...No, I haven’t forgotten that. That’s why I linked the article from the Journal of International Security Affairs, which discussed ABM diplomacy and strategic power bargaining..."

You haven't. Thanks for linking that.

fredmoore - 05:25pm Oct 18, 2003 EST (# 15221 of 15226)

Will,

wrcooper - 01:53pm Oct 18, 2003 EST (# 15215 of 15220)

'They could even launch them in test flights to determine how they stand up to the forces of launch and deploy automatically in space, etc'

If a potential attacker performs such tests then the US could easily characterise that materiel for future deletion. So, I don't think attackers would be keen to test decoy systems outside of a supercomputer simulation.

Also, there are significant problems in developing countermeasures. I would much rather be a defender working on (HPCS) high prf coherent source (x-ray frequency and beyond) detection methods at the best universities and defence labs in the world than an attacker working on dumb countermeasures borrowed from 80's Soviet technology. The US detection capability may not be up to scratch as we post but from my limited knowledge of coherent source techniques, I can see the possibility of ultimately ruling out realistically fielded decoy countermeasures

IMHO an MD defence shield will eventually be possible depending on advancements in HPCS techniques but it leaves open two issues which have been mentioned already but which are worth rehashing:

1. You cannot defend 5% of the world's population from the other 95% if unsustainable 'humanitarian ideologies' (eg 'Gattica') are in force and there is open revolt, no matter how exacting your technology.

2. If all nations can plot the course of human affairs as accurately as they can plot the tracks of ICBM's then it will be apparent that the least resistance trajectory has depended on and will continue to depend on the distribution of world energy resources. The conclusion could be reached scientifically that it would be far cheaper and more beneficial for all nations to invest in a KAEP style world energy plan than continue to invest in adversarial technology with the ambition of being the last one standing after a MAD confrontation.

Now I think that even if a KAEP style plan could be agreed upon, there is enough current instability in the world socio-economic fabric to warrant a continuation of MD shield R&D. Provided The US could show no intent to harm other nations with this posture, such continued R&D could actually be beneficial in an emerging more unified world political structure.

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