Missile Defense: Primetime

Bullseye, baby:

Destroying the satellite's onboard tank of about 1,000 pounds of hydrazine fuel was the primary goal, and a senior defense official close to the mission said Thursday that it appears the tank was destroyed, and the strike with a specially designed missile was a complete success.

Here's the Pentagon briefing from this morning with video of the intercept (1:00 minute in). As General Cartwright says, "We have a fireball.":

As most of you know, missile shield opponents have had a litany of defeatist talking points about the program since its inception as the Strategic Defense Initiative under Reagan:

1. Missile defense technology is unproven. It can never work. We suck.
2. OK, OK, even if you get it to "work" the "tests" are highly scripted. We always know the what, when, where, and how of every attempted shot. Scientific method? Shut up, scripter.
3. Oh and by the way, until you can prove it "works," we're not going to fully fund it. Figure that one out, rocket scientist.
4. So you somehow got it "working" with no "money" ---- big deal, doesn't matter. The threat is minimal, therefore the need to mitigate it isn't worth those billions. You're building a 21st century Maginot Line.

Each point has been thoroughly trashed with this emergency defensive operation. Geopolitical bonus points for proving our defensive capabilities to North Korea, Iran and others. Even more bonus points for giving China the finger when it comes to our new, ancillary anti-satellite prowess.

With this slamdunk live-fire operation, the Missile Defense Agency (of which I am a contractor) deserves thunderous kudos. I've blogged about various missile defense successes over the past year, but this shootdown really caps what is unquestionably the best year of the program since inception (PDF):

• Total of 9 successful flight tests & intercepts
• 5 sea-based Aegis intercepts, 4 ground-based intercepts (THAAD & GMD)
• First simultaneous double intercept (2 targets, 2 interceptors)
• First non-US intercept (Japanese Aegis cruiser Kongo)
• Actual birds in the ground: 21 interceptors fielded at Ft. Greely, Alaska, 3 interceptors in the hole at Vandenberg, California. Another 21 SM-3 missiles deployed at sea.

Hopefully this track record of scientific achievement and military capability will finally be enough to quiet the naysayers. With likely Democrat victories this fall, the program surely would have been gutted like it was in the 1990's (imagine how much further along we'd be today...). But now, that's a little less likely.

And as Michael Goldfarb says:

The "rogue" satellite cost more than a billion dollars. One suspects its destruction will be of greater value to this country than any mission it could have performed as a functioning spy satellite.

Thanks for the target, National Recon Office! And a hearty congratulations to everyone involved.

UPDATE: Welcome, HotAir. I'm in a fantastic mood, so here's my favorite missile gag (again!). Heh, Ace says I'm a rocket scientist --- NOT! Just the son of one (I'm a non-tech exec).

Comments

[mesablue]

Meh, you are obviously biased.

Like we've ever really been to the moon.

[MKSheppard]

You forgot the "it's too complex!" line that they've been whining about since the 1970s; that it would take more computing power than the US could ever deploy to successfully manage an ABM system.

Considering that they estimated that it would take 40 MIPS to run a continental ABM system in the 70s and used that back then as "proof" that it was "impossible"....then consider that in 1992 a 486DX2 hit 53 MIPS.

[Mike in NY]

So we need to deploy more SM-3s. Think about this, it was a pretty big deal for China to take out that one Satellite, but with the deployment of more missiles onto more ships, the US Navy can now essentially take down EVERY one of a given nation's low orbiting sats in a matter of hours.

[Mark]

As I recall, back in the '80's the main argument against was that there was no way to stop a massive Soviet attack. That it would be far easier to produce the offensive weapons, decoys, jamming systems, etc, than it would be to produce the defensive systems to respond to them, and that in that kind of arms race, the offense would win. I don't think many serious people considered the possibility of shooting down onesy-twosy launches as being remote. With the fall of the Soviet Union, the odds of a massive assualt have diminished greatly (but not disappeared) and the utility of a system that can shoot down a few at a time has skyrocketed (heh). And who knows, with the computing power now, maybe the defense is gaining the upper hand even against larger assaults. Maybe a Rocket Scientist can answer that question.

[Cuffy Meigs]

While these are significant leaps, we're still very early here.

We've yet to test against a MIRV with decoys. We've yet to utilize completely our SBX floating radar. Airborne laser is still in that "cool, but unlikely" category. We haven't run the real-life tests (on alert for the next 72 hours, no clue regarding launch site, missile type, target area, etc.). We need radar and interceptor bases in Europe (like Alaska & CA).

All of the above is achieveable, in fact, necessary if we are to fully deploy a trusted system.

[MKSheppard]

We've yet to test against a MIRV with decoys.

Decoys never have worked; never will.

1.) The IR signature of an actual nuclear warhead is quite distinguishable against a very cold background of space, because the fissile material in the warhead generates a unique internal signature (remember, plutonium is warm to the touch); oh I wonder why we put a IR seeker on our Kill vehicle....

2.) MIRVs don't all deploy at once; they deploy very slowly; the warhead bus "aims" and fires each RV, then has to correct for the loss of mass, before "aiming" the next RV. This means that if you try putting out 10 decoys at once, the decoys will be so obvious and easily discarded. This also means that you can defeat MIRV systems by making the interceptor fast and long ranged enough to hit the warhead bus before the MIRVs deploy; killing all of them in one hit.

[pajama momma]

Cuffy Meigs is actually a contractor working with the Defense Missile Agency

You are? Oh smart men make me so hot.

Heh, Ace says I'm a rocket scientist --- NOT! Just the son of one (I'm a non-tech exec).

You're not? Oh, um, nevermind then.

*puts vibrator away*

[MKSheppard]

Sorry if I'm being a bit sanguine with my comments; but we solved all these problems back in the 1960s and 1970s; and then deployed a functioning ABM system called SAFEGUARD.

Which was then killed after ONE day of operation by Ted Kennedy and Congressional Democrats who defunded it.

The problems that NMD has had for the last ten years (1998-2008) or so are similar to the problems that were encountered during the "shakedown" process of the 1960s which took us from NIKE-HERCULES to NIKE-ZEUS, and finally to a functioning, integrated system by the 1970s in SPARTAN and SPRINT.

Then we threw it all away. We've had reinvent a lot of the work and do it over again, because the hardware for the old Safeguard system no longer exists, and it would have been cost prohibitive to revive SPRINT/SPARTAN, so we had to certify and integrate a completely new system in SM-3 and in GBI; and that took a lot of time and money. Now, it's working and shaken down. It's just a matter of increasing funding to raise production from a single GBI a month to something more useful, like say...seven; which would give us 84 GBIs a year, and in five years, we could have 420 deployed.

[Cuffy Meigs]

But you gotta admit, there's a degree of magnitude of complexity/precision going from nuke-tipped (70's) to hit-to-kill interceptors (now). You could be sloppy and still hit back then.

[Trimegistus]

Regarding the "arms race" problem of interceptors vs. decoys: I don't quite understand that. How is it cheaper to launch _anything_, even a dummy warhead, on a suborbital trajectory than it is to hit said warhead with an interceptor? The launcher has to be bigger, even if it is a dummy -- otherwise you just ignore the obvious dummies that they're launching on cheap boosters.

But "missile defense is impossible" was never about facts and analysis anyway. It was about Reagan.

[MKSheppard]

That's the thing, Cuffy. We were getting hit-to-kills back then, even though the systems weren't designed for it (!)

Out of 64 Nike-Zeus test launches against fast, high speed ballistic targets, 57 resulted in direct hits; which was quite surprising, since Zeus wasn't designed to do that.

[Cuffy Meigs]

Oh, and PJM, are you like Wanda and foreign languages, except your thing is burnout velocities, crossing angles, and x-band?

[pajama momma]

your thing is burnout velocities, crossing angles, and x-band?

*pulls vibrator back out*

[Cuffy Meigs]

I didn't know about that, MK. In any case, my point was yes, it works (shaddup, hippies!), but it's not 100% yet (increase funding!).

[hydrazine]

You can intercept me any time Cuffy

[Cuffy Meigs]

So then the missile officer sensually flips the plastic bodice of a switch cover off the smooth, red launch button...

[Quality Weenie]

Hey, there is a good chance you work with my Brother in Law and Uncle in Law.

BIL works on the missle thingy for a contractor.

UIL retired last year from contractor but worked on the program also.

I always get updates from BIL after tests with the press releases and video (if avilable)

[Greg D]

Mark:

It was proved back in the 1980's that the cost of the defense goes up as the square root of the increase in the offense. Add 4 times as many missiles to the attack, the defense only needs to grow by a factor of 2. Grow the attack by a factor of 100, the defense only grows by a factor of 10. That's a guaranteed losing deal for the attacker.

Oh, BTW, one of the anti-spoofing measures proposed was to shoot each possible target w/ a low power laser. Light items (like decoys) would move a lot. Heavy items (like warheads) would only move a little. (If you're going to make your decoys as heavy as your warheads, it makes more sense to just add extra warheads, instead.) Quick, easy target discrimination.

[Mark]

Thanks for the good responses. Having gotten my info from reliable sources like Newsweek and the Evening News at the time, I knew there was cause for doubt regarding my statements. It's just that the initial posts weren't addressing what I recalled was the main point of the anti-SDI-ists.

[doubleplusundead]

Very cool, looks like we trashed any chance that the Russians or Chicoms would have at getting any valuable intel or tech and gave our missile defense systems a good test.

[Democrats]

This project is a waste of time and money, and does nothing to advance dialogue with ruthless, murderous dictators, we could be buying votes with pork barrel projects or create a cumbersome ineffective domestic welfare program with this money.

[Stupid Typical Fucking Moonbat]

No wonder you're a fucking wingnut, you're one of the blood-drinking profiteer pigs of the military industrial complex!!!1!11eleventy!1

[Mike]

Could one of you guys put this into some sort of perspective for me? How close is the US to deploying something that could shoot down the sort of nuclear missile Iran is likely to end up with if it's not stopped? If the mullahs are still a few years away, how much could the system be improved in that time? Does this mean we don't have to worry about stopping Iran, because if they ever launch a nuke we can just swat it out of the sky and then lay waste to their cities?

[doubleplusundead]

Cuffy's probably more able to answer that, but I'm guessing we're looking more at the ChiComs or Russians when we're designing the missile defense system.

If the Iranians do anything, they'll try and sneak one into a harbor in a civilian cargo ship, if that, they aren't even close to designing a nuclear device small enough to launch in a missile...and they don't even have a conventional missile that can touch the US itself, the closest thing they can hit is a military base, but even then, I doubt they'd do that because they know they'd get vaporized. I could be wrong...

[Mike]

Thanks. Incidentally I've linked this post at

http://monkeytenniscentre.blogspot.com/2008/02/gates-now-witness-firepower-of-this.html

with an appropriate Photoshop

[Cuffy Meigs]

Thanks for the link, Mike.

To answer the "who's this designed to counter?" question, the system is being designed & deployed to counter limited threats and rogue launches. I can't say which region(s) we're defending against, but you can prolly figure it out easily.