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posted by Fnord666 on Friday February 02 2018, @10:51AM   Printer-friendly
from the 1-out-of-3-isn't-so-good dept.

Demonstrating again that anti-missile missiles work best under carefully controlled circumstances, a test of such a weapon fired from Hawaii has missed its target.

The US$30 million test was fired from the Kauai Aegis Ashore site in Hawaii. It was supposed to see a SM-3 Block IIA anti-missile missile intercept a target representing an incoming missile that was launched from an aircraft.

The US Pacific Command, contacted by CNN, confirmed that a test took place but not the outcome, saying only that the test took place on Wednesday morning.

The Raytheon SM-3 Block IIA is a joint US-Japan development built to provide a defence against medium-range and intermediate-range ballistic missiles.

Defense News noted that without further information from the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) it's impossible to know whether the problem was in the interceptor, the targeting radar, or the Raytheon-developed Aegis weapons system used by the US Navy was at fault.

Additional Coverage at DefenseNews and USNI News.

The Raytheon SM-3 Block IIA Interceptor.


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  • (Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Friday February 02 2018, @11:10AM (10 children)

    by PiMuNu (3823) on Friday February 02 2018, @11:10AM (#631948)

    Lasers! The only solution.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 2, Offtopic) by Runaway1956 on Friday February 02 2018, @11:21AM (7 children)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Friday February 02 2018, @11:21AM (#631949) Journal

    Guns work. Plain old projectile weapons.

    Given a missile, with redundant targeting capabilities. Give it radar, infrared, and magnetic anomaly detection. If the radar fails to lock on a target, the infrared takes over. If the infrared fails, then it falls back to magnetic detection. Now, you are out in the middle of a vast ocean, aboard a floating mass of iron and aluminum. Guess what that damned missile is going to lock onto when the magnetics take over? Uh-huh - first guess is right!

    Our guns were always at the ready when a missile was launched. And, we knocked the bird down, every time.

    I don't believe that you will ever hear anyone bragging about the Tartar missile system - but if you do, ask them how many birds they had to shoot down.

    NOTE: I'm talking about a 5" 54 caliber dual purpose naval gun - not an M-14 or some such.

    • (Score: 4, Informative) by ledow on Friday February 02 2018, @11:36AM (5 children)

      by ledow (5567) on Friday February 02 2018, @11:36AM (#631951) Homepage

      I think it's a different problem.

      Given thousands and thousands of square kilometres of empty air, detecting something moving might be relatively easy.

      But how do you have anything close enough to it, that can be authorised and launch quickly enough, that can then catch it up (wherever it may be within range) and get close enough to it that it can remove the threat? Even if it's dumb and just travels in a boring predictable trajectory, that's like trying to catch a tiny ball that someone drops through your open fist without knowing when they're going to do it.

      It's a logistics problem, not a technical one. If your radar covers a 1000 miles radius, say, and you have to authorise and launch and then travel at "missile speed + a bit more" and travel an average of 500 miles to get to it, it's no easy feat to have ANYTHING ready in time. Let alone then lock onto one of the world's fastest moving objects which is trying its best to evade you and destroy it before it can get anywhere interesting.

      Some naval gun - even the one that fires a million rounds a minute - isn't going to be able to cover that kind of range effectively enough and fast enough, unless it literally goes over their heads. A missile itself isn't going to be able to catch up another fast-moving missile with accuracy enough to get close to explode it. Any plane intercepting has the same problem. Any kind of beam weapon suffers greatly from the inverse square law (yeah, you aren't going to shoot it down from a satellite and if you have a Megawatt laser you still need to be quite close).

      Sure, we can do demos and take out things that are threats to the weapon doing the shooting itself, but protecting thousands of square km of ocean (not least what happens if it makes land and you then have to deal with all kinds of other obstacles between you and it) constantly against unpredictable attacks of single fast-moving incoming missiles is no easy task. We've lost HUGE PLANES in that kind of arena, never to be traced. Detecting, tracking, approaching and destroying a cruise missile in time is going to be nigh-on impossible.

      The "four minute warning" was a famous phrase but it was always bunk, we would literally never have that much time. It's also far too short a window to do much about anything at all.

      Certainly a "one-shot-kill" of an incoming missile stands little chance of success on its own.

      • (Score: 4, Interesting) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday February 02 2018, @12:57PM

        by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Friday February 02 2018, @12:57PM (#631971) Homepage Journal

        That's how a fighter pilot who scrambled during the Cuban Missile Crisis referred to his jet's nuclear antiaircraft missile.

        --
        Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
      • (Score: 5, Interesting) by bradley13 on Friday February 02 2018, @02:34PM (3 children)

        by bradley13 (3053) on Friday February 02 2018, @02:34PM (#632004) Homepage Journal

        Most of your points are valid, but I think a couple of problems are not as bad as you think:

        "A missile itself isn't going to be able to catch up another fast-moving missile"

        That's absolutely true, which is why that's not generally the goal. The goal is to meet the other missile, while travelling basically in the opposite direction. Which is entirely possible, but it gives you an extraordinarily short interception window. And the high relative speed means that you have almost no time to correct your trajectory, if anything goes wrong.

        ...protecting thousands of square km of ocean (not least what happens if it makes land and you then have to deal with all kinds of other obstacles between you and it) constantly against unpredictable attacks

        You may not know if or when a missile is incoming, but you normally are defending a defined patch of dirt (or water). If the other missile wants to do you harm, it must enter your range. If it doesn't enter your range, you can safely ignore it. This simplifies the problem of defense considerably.

        Note that this wasn't trying to knock down a cruise missile, but rather a ballistic missile. There was no surprise involved - they knew the shot was coming, and from where. As such, it's pretty embarrassing that they missed. AFAIK, in the only successful test of this system, the target actually sent out continuous active telemetry: "here I am, I'm travelling X m/s, in direction Y, at altitude Z, please shoot me".

        Who wants to bet it's a yummy "cost plus" contract, too - so no loss to Raytheon even when they screw the pooch. Aaaaannnddd - yes: $66,441,462 sole-source, cost-plus-fixed-fee, cost-plus-incentive-fee modification for Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) integration, test, and Aegis Ashore support under the Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) Block IIA contract... The modification brings the total cumulative face value of the contract to $2,073,834,069" [defense.gov] Yummy stuff, if you can get it: a few million here, a few million there, all cost-plus, and pretty soon you've raking in a couple of $billion. It's almost better if it never works, because you can always propose another contract to fix it.

        --
        Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
        • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday February 02 2018, @10:50PM

          by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Friday February 02 2018, @10:50PM (#632218) Journal

          As you say, Ledow made some good points - but your view of the situation is closer to the bull's eye. If we can't shoot down our own missiles, what chance to we have of killing a hostile missile? Given the parameters of the test, a navy destroyer could have been positioned to intercept with guns.

          This test would also have been a good test for the new rail guns. :^)

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 03 2018, @12:36AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 03 2018, @12:36AM (#632272)

          Of course it's a cost-plus contract. It's not a question of money-grubbing, it's the nature of this being R&D type work.

          This is a huge unknown project, to the point that people in chat are even questioning if it is technically possible. If they were to make this a fixed-cost contract, nobody would even try to do it. No company would be willing to risk failure on such a huge known, so the government willing to accept the risk of failure (read: pay the ongoing and increasing costs of failure) because they want the system enough. If you want to complain, complain about the decision makers wanting to get the device in the first place, not the means by which they are trying to procure it.

          As for it being a sole-source contract, I cannot defend that. I can name at least three contracting companies who would be able to perform this, so I don't know why this would be sole-source except for corruption.

        • (Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday February 03 2018, @01:21AM

          by frojack (1554) on Saturday February 03 2018, @01:21AM (#632287) Journal

          AFAIK, in the only successful test of this system, the target actually sent out continuous active telemetry: "here I am, I'm travelling X m/s, in direction Y, at altitude Z, please shoot me".

          You don't have a clue what you are talking about.

          --
          No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
    • (Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday February 03 2018, @01:09AM

      by frojack (1554) on Saturday February 03 2018, @01:09AM (#632284) Journal

      Magnetic detection of mostly aluminum rockets?

      --
      No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
  • (Score: 3, Funny) by c0lo on Friday February 02 2018, @11:58AM

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Friday February 02 2018, @11:58AM (#631956) Journal

    Lasers! The only solution.

    ENOSHARK - core dumped.

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 02 2018, @01:12PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 02 2018, @01:12PM (#631975)