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Pentagon shoots down mock intercontinental missile in sea-based test
In a first for the Pentagon's push to develop defenses against intercontinental-range ballistic missiles capable of striking the United States, a missile interceptor launched from a U.S. Navy ship at sea hit and destroyed a mock ICBM in flight Tuesday, officials said.
Previous tests against ICBM targets had used interceptors launched from underground silos in the U.S. If further, more challenging tests prove successful, the ship-based approach could add to the credibility and reliability of the Pentagon's existing missile-defense system.
The success of Tuesday's test is likely to draw particular interest from North Korea, whose development of ICBMs and nuclear weapons is the main reason the Pentagon has sought to accelerate its building of missile-defense systems over the past decade.
Also at Bloomberg and DefenseNews.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by dltaylor on Tuesday November 17 2020, @09:26PM (3 children)
Last time they "tested" an interceptor, it turned out that they already knew where it was coming from, and when. That make it much easier to get something into the general area and call it a "hit".
Even if you're at "tactical alert" and have your consoles all staffed, identifying a potential threat, discriminating that from a super sonic biz jet, such as the proposed Boeing/Aerion AS2, projecting its trajectory (assuming it doesn't have some form of terminal guidance), and selecting live warheads from decoys all takes time, even with computer assistance. Plus, if you're worried about rogue adversary, they could launch from somewhere other than their own country. Additionally, if, for example, North Korea does attack, are they really going to launch one, hoping to cover their ass with a "crazy commander" story, or launch half a dozen?
Then, you must have an interceptor platform in range, with sufficient stores to cover the threat.
I am not against the concept, but there's been so much "cheating" on these fat-cat weapons contracts, which seem to be driven more by Pentagon staff (military and civilian) looking for their post-retirement gig, and congress critters looking for bribes, I mean, campaign contributions, that I don't have any confidence that the testing will ever have any real-world relevance.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by NateMich on Tuesday November 17 2020, @11:59PM (1 child)
As someone who was in the Navy and directly involved in these sorts of exercises, I'd say that the main thing making this unrealistic is that everyone went out to try and shoot down an ICBM.
I can pretty much guarantee you that they are not out there looking for things like this on a regular basis. There may be situations where they are on alert and are looking for it, but that would be very unusual.
What I'm saying is, if someone suddenly shot something at us, I would not expect them to respond in time unless there was plenty of warning about the threat ahead of time.
(Score: 2) by pdfernhout on Wednesday November 18 2020, @02:57PM
Thank you for your service. I have little doubt you are correct about a potentially problematical initial quick response to an unexpected attack (even as the USA has multiple ways to retaliate afterwards).
Beyond that, the whole idea of deterrence via "MAD" (Mutually Assured Destruction) relies on the other party being *sane* and not some crazy leader (or rogue individual) who does not care about the consequences of retaliation -- or even maybe intentionally is inviting the consequences for whatever ideological reason (whether to rain down destruction on internal enemies via the retaliatory strike or to rain down destruction on external enemies via misdirection about who actually attacked). Bioweapons (COVID-19 either now or an engineered variant someday?) have some similar properties of lots of collateral damage which some leaders might find acceptable (e.g. are millions of deaths worldwide acceptable if they cause a certain change in political leadership in a certain country?). So, it makes sense to think about defense against WMDs while at the same time such defenses undermine MAD which creates its own risks...
And even beyond the limits of MAD, there is a deeper issue here which is rarely discussed -- the one in my sig of: "The biggest challenge of the 21st century is the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity."
Expanding on that irony:
https://pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html [pdfernhout.net]
"Nuclear weapons are ironic because they are about using space age systems to fight over oil and land. Why not just use advanced materials as found in nuclear missiles to make renewable energy sources (like windmills or solar panels) to replace oil, or why not use rocketry to move into space by building space habitats for more land? ... There is a fundamental mismatch between 21st century reality and 20th century security thinking. Those "security" agencies are using those tools of abundance, cooperation, and sharing mainly from a mindset of scarcity, competition, and secrecy. Given the power of 21st century technology as an amplifier (including as weapons of mass destruction), a scarcity-based approach to using such technology ultimately is just making us all insecure. Such powerful technologies of abundance, designed, organized, and used from a mindset of scarcity could well ironically doom us all whether through military robots, nukes, plagues, propaganda, or whatever else... Or alternatively, as Bucky Fuller and others have suggested, we could use such technologies to build a world that is abundant and secure for all. ... We the people need to redefine security in a sustainable and resilient way. Much current US military doctrine is based around unilateral security ("I'm safe because you are nervous") and extrinsic security ("I'm safe despite long supply lines because I have a bunch of soldiers to defend them"), which both lead to expensive arms races. We need as a society to move to other paradigms like Morton Deutsch's mutual security ("We're all looking out for each other's safety") and Amory Lovin's intrinsic security ("Our redundant decentralized local systems can take a lot of pounding whether from storm, earthquake, or bombs and would still would keep working")."
Anyway, a bit of good news (even though the Heritage Foundation paints it as bad news) is that the total number of nuclear weapons the USA has deployed has reduced considerably from around 30,000 the peak of the Cold War to now about 3,800 (or about the level of around 1957) -- see the chart "A Smaller and Less Diverse Nuclear Arsenal":
https://www.heritage.org/military-strength/assessment-us-military-power/us-nuclear-weapons-capability [heritage.org]
Ted Taylor would be happy to hear that news (about weapons help helped design) if he was still alive...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Taylor_(physicist) [wikipedia.org]
One thing I remember Ted Taylor mentioned was how backpacked-sized nuclear landmines stopped being produced when some started going missing...
See also my SN post here:
"Missing some of bigger picture on social change"
https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=37776&cid=1001737 [soylentnews.org]
"We -- as a society -- desperately need to figure out overall how to do much more good and healthful things with all this high technology (and wealth we can produce with it) instead of doing much more bad and unhealthy things with all that... As if all the previous social challenge was not enough, there is now increasing knowledge among thousands of scientists about what makes the new coronavirus so contagious and so deadly. And the new virus has been recently shown to be create-able from scratch in the lab in yeast starting from just a genetic sequence (which presumably could then be altered by knowledgeable scientists in nefarious ways)... That possibility of tailored bioweapons has all sorts of implications for social organization that we as a society have not yet come to grips with. And then those concerns may be even deeper in the context of possible massive permanent job loss to AI, Robotics, other automation, voluntary social networks, cheaper energy, better design, and so on... As Bucky Fuller said, humanity is getting its final exam in the universe..."
Not that I agree with everything in the book "Retrotopia" by John Greer, but it raises the important issue of "Progress in what direction?" and speculates about how we can build on the best ideas from our technological and political past while avoiding some of the worst diminishing returns of our technological/political present. Ironically, it may be groups like the Amish who may be having the most productive discussions about the effects of high technology on human happiness and local (economic) security...
The biggest challenge of the 21st century: the irony of technologies of abundance used by scarcity-minded people.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Wednesday November 18 2020, @01:38AM
Yup, it's the modern equivalent of this event [youtu.be] as depicted by Messrs.Chapman, Cleese, Gilliam, etc.