Missile Defence Hypocrisy (1 Viewer)

[JayV]

Sorry, Eric, but they are not the same thing -- not even remotely. Once again, aircraft-based countermeasures do not work by shooting anything down.

Suppose you're trying to locate and punch me in a darkened room. I pop a road flare to destroy your night vision and then run away. Does this sound like shooting anything down?

-j

 

[Holadem]

I believe the term is 'hitting a bullet with a bullet' and regardless of location, I suspect the mechanics and obstacles are not much different.

Doesn't that render flares and such almost completely useless in commercial aircrafts (limited field of vision)? Especially since those things probably need to be fired from behind their targets.

--
Holadem

 

[Cary_H]

We're talking apples and oranges here. Detecting the launch and disabling a MIRVed ICBM from altitude whether it's launched from land, sea, or even subsurface is far tougher a task than defending a single aircraft from something like a Stinger.
Off the top of my head, I thought a Stinger was optically guided. Anyway, if it's IR guided as someone stated earlier, it's not important to get a hit on it. What's done is to try to divert it's attention to a heat source other than the heat signature of it's intended target. The conventional means is the target popping "chaff", an array made up of number of flares into the flightpath of the missile.
Conventional chaff, simply metal foil, or Window as it was coined when it made it's debut, was to render the radar returns of your enemy incomprehensible. Later, keying on the radar frequencies being put up by your enemy became the norm. Nowadays the cat and mouse game to out-thwart your adversary and their counterthreats to your counterthreats to their counters to your attempts to render their new weapon designs ineffective, continues.
Anyway, whether IR, radar, or optically guided, at close range a salvo of several Stingers is virtually undefendable. That's why military aircraft that might be expected to operate in a Stinger-type environment are armoured. Our civil airliners OTOH are pretty much dead-meat.

 

[Steve Ridges]

I don't think this is likely to happen. People already freak out at the idea of the pilot having a gun let alone an anti-missle system.

 

[Jeff Gatie]

Steve, it an anti-missle "defense" system. It has no offensive capabilities, only defensive. The flares and/or lasers are harmless to the missle itself (and anyone on the ground, other planes, etc). The only thing they do is distract or disrupt the IR seeker in the missle head, so I don't think any passengers would be concerned. Besides, every time I've flown since 911, most people on the plane expressed no concern over the pilot being armed. However, I have heard some concern that the pilot may be unarmed.

 

[D. Scott MacDonald]

Personally I feel that if defending our airfleet from 1000 rogue missiles is worth $10bil then defending against 14-20 thousand nuclear warheads capable of leveling entire cities is a bargain at ten times the cost. (to pitch a median number)

While I won't really argue this point, I will make a few additional points:

A nuclear warhead can be delivered a number of different ways: an ICBM, a car bomb, a cigarette machine , etc. If Osama got hold of a nuclear warhead, we cannot assume we are immune to it simply because we have a great missle system.

ICBMs are best suited to deliver a bunch of warheads all at the same time, such as an all out nuclear war. If a country (or group) wanted to deliver a single warhead, it would probably choose a different delivery mechanism. So to me, the usefullness of a working ICBM system is in direct proportion to the liklihood of a country wishing to wage all out nuclear war, which is pretty small right now IMHO.

In contrast, there are very few ways to shoot down an airliner, so a missle defense system on an airliner should significantly decrease it's likelihood of getting shot down.

 

[JayV]

I'd like to point out that flares can pose a fire hazard, but this system appears to be laser-based.

Holadem, that's a good question/point about acquisition. I have no idea what they are doing here, but I noticed that the LAIRCM article I linked claims it "autonomously detects and declares IR missile threats, then tracks and emits infrared laser energy to disrupt and jam the missiles’ guidance". Perhaps it reads the missile's rocket exhaust? I really couldn't say.

-j

 

[Eric_L]

D. Scott MacDonald has the best answer yet. Thanks, it does make sense. I would still rest easier though knowing that if a wacko got hold of the launch button of one of the thousands of icbms, or if the North Koreans decided to try out one of their new long range missiles (nuclear or otherwise) that we wouldn't just have to write off the target immediately.

While I agree the threat of all-out nuclear war is small - the chance of a rogue force acquiring or commandeering an existing site is higher than ever.... Also, Remember "Crimson Tide"? Who says that the missile defence system would be used to disable foreign missiles?

I also agree (now) that the mechanics of disabling shoulder mount missiles is different than long range missiles - but I do stand on the argument that cost/benefit still stands to reason. The likelihood of being on a jet that is targeted may be a bit larger, but there is also more loss of life/property to consider as well. We can't plug all the holes, but it doesn't mean we shouldn't plug the ones we can.

 

[Kevin-M]

D. Scott makes a very good point. Even if the US were to make a 100% infallible missile defense system, be it laser or missile based, that would simply mean terrorists wouldn't bother with ICBM's. They could concentrate on shipping a warhead here in a cargo container and detonating it when it was at the docks.

Only 30 to 40 percent of cargo containters get searched, so there's a very good chance that any sort of weapon shipped here would never be found before it was detonated.

 

[Dan Lindley]

Actually, only 2% of cargo containers get searched. The seas are avast with piracy... see the recent Atlantic. Think the war on drugs. Lots gets through.

As for the fire hazard of flares, this is IMHO a rather over-inflated problem. And I wonder if there is an agenda in the objections to flares. Planes just don't fire off flares if someone lights a bic in a park. They have darn good reason. And if they have reason, how many people on the ground really will die from fires that will likely start on roofs? How much more maximal time for escape could you ask for? And compare to the alternative: a plane coming down in the neighborhood. I'll take flares any time. And another way to look at this, is what are the odds of a plane crashing in your neighborhood anyway? If you live in a flightpath, your odds are far higher to suffer from an accident crash, than from a terror crash -- whether from flares or a missile or a bomb (to date, terror crashes are a subset of accident crashes). And guess what, the odds from a accident type crash are so slim....that they are near nothing. The year 2002 was a perfect year for commercial aviation in the US.

 

[chris_everett]

A launch of an SA-7 (probably got that number wrong) or a stinger would also emit IR light, which would be detectable to a defence system, and give it a target, that's probably how they plan to acquire a SAM.
RE: effectiveness of an ICBM defence:
There are two methods of shooting down an ICBM. A super powered laser, or a projectile. The laser has a lot of advantages (it goes the speed of light) but also has many problems. Mostly being we have nowhere near the tech level to pull it off. The current scheme involves hitting a missle with a missle, something that makes hitting a bullet with a bullet look trivial. A system based in the US would be faced with hitting a small (less than 10ft long) fast moving (mach 12 or so) difficult to kill (no guidance, no motors) target head on. Given our difficulties hitting SCUD missles, far easier targets, and our near zero success rate in testing.....
Possibility two. Orbital based platforms, in low earth orbit, to destroy missles on launch. Missles are still big then and traveling relativly slowly, but we would have to have dozens of these weapons platforms, as they could not hold position over, say, North Korea, and given our difficulties in getting just one internatonal space station in orbit, can you imagine building dozens of similer structures as weapons platforms? (They have to be big to carry missles that carry enough propellent for super fast acceleration) To say nothing of the political difficulties of having this much firepower in space, flying over other countries.

ICBMs are big scary things, but in many ways they are more bark than bite. Some estimates at the end of the cold war showed that as many as half of Russia's missles would have blown up in the tubes because of poor maintenance. The DPRK has missles that might hit an alaskan island. Not much of a threat (apology to anyone on an alaskan island) considering the cost for such a move. Terrorists are not going to be buying an ICBM on the black market, and shipping it out in a truck. Warheads maybe, but not an entire ICBM and it's launch facilities. Could we build a "missile shield"? probably. Could we afford it? yeah. Would we be better off spending the money elsewhere? (securing ports, or buying all of Russia's warheads) Almost certainly. And that's what the debate comes down to. Where is our money best spent?

My apology if this is too close to political...

 

[D. Scott MacDonald]

Also, Remember "Crimson Tide"? Who says that the missile defence system would be used to disable foreign missiles?

I'm not as up on the specific technologies being investigated (I think that Chris covered some of them pretty well), but I'm not sure that we would be able to shoot down missiles fired from submarines that were not aimed at the US.

First, here are my assumptions (feel free to prove them wrong):
1. ICBMs move really, really, really fast.
2. Our missile defense system will most likely intercept them with another missile. Chris mentioned lasers, but I think the tests performed so far have all been missile-on-missile.
3. The intercepting missile will probably move slower than an ICBM simply because it needs to be pretty mamaneuverable in order to intercept the ICBM with pipinpoint accuracy.

If my assumptions are correct, we would not be able to easily intercept a missile fired away from the US as the intercepting missiles would not be able to catch them.

However, I will make another assumption that all of our ICBMs have some sort of self-destruct mechanism, so hopefully we already have an answer for this scenario even without a missile defense system.

 

[Chris Lockwood]

> The DPRK has missles that might hit an alaskan island. Not much of a threat

People in Japan might disagree with that.