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U.S. missile shield not yet ready for North Korean nukes

DEFCON Warning System

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Tens of billions of dollars spent over three decades have still left the Pentagon with no reliable way to shoot down nuclear-tipped missiles approaching the U.S. homeland — a vulnerability that has taken on sharp new urgency after North Korea’s Independence Day test of its first ICBM.

Instead, the missile defense system designed to shield the United States from an intercontinental ballistic missile — a diverse network of sensors, radars and interceptor missiles based in Alaska and California — has failed three of its five tests, military leaders acknowledge. Even the two successful ones were heavily scripted.

“If the North Koreans fired everything they had at us, and we fired at all of the missiles, we’d probably get most of them,” said Jeffrey Lewis, the director of the East Asia nonproliferation program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies. “But is ‘probably get most’ a good day or a bad day?”

The Pentagon’s official stance on Wednesday was that the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system, designed by Boeing and a slew of other defense contractors, can knock out a missile whizzing through the atmosphere. But that view is in the minority.

Most current and former military officials and other experts argue that the chances of protecting U.S. territory from a surprise or short-notice ICBM attack would be slim at best. As recently as last month, the outgoing Navy admiral in charge of all the Pentagon’s missile defense programs told Congress he has “reliability concerns” with the system.

According to the Pentagon, Congress has provided at least $189.7 billion for missile defenses of all kinds since 1985, the heyday of Ronald Reagan’s “Star Wars” Strategic Defense Initiative, which aimed to provide a space-based defense against a Soviet nuclear attack. Some of that investment has paid off — for example, on the Patriot missiles now widely used by the United States and its allies, along with other land- and sea-based systems designed to deflect shorter-range missiles in battle. But defenses against incoming ICBMs, falling from space at enormous speed, have proven far more elusive — and not for lack of trying.

The Ground-based Midcourse Defense system alone is estimated to ultimately cost at least $40 billion, according to a 2013 estimate from the Government Accountability Office.

“Partly we are failing because it is the hardest thing the Pentagon has tried to do,” said Phil Coyle, who served as the Pentagon’s chief weapons tester in the Clinton administration and in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy in the Obama administration. “We’ve had more success with short-range and medium-range systems. But they are going more slowly, they are traveling in the atmosphere. That is different than traveling at 15,000 miles per hour in space. Especially when the enemy is trying to fool you,” such as with countermeasures and decoys.

Read more at Politico
 
Garv said:
This is comforting. 189 BILLION dollars, and we dont have a system that works...?

Yep. Missile defense is really hard. Like shooting a bullet with a bullet and you don't know where the gun is, or what type might fire at the time, or what direction, or where it is firing at. Even in testing I don't think our missile defense has more than a 50 percent success rate! And that's against just one warhead. When the North Koreans get MIRV, solid fuel rockets and even more launch vehicles/decoys it will be almost impossible.

So probably 2021/22 at best.
 
Garv said:
This is comforting. 189 BILLION dollars, and we dont have a system that works...?

Of course!!! The entire US budget is at the militaries disposal. Because if there is one thing America is good at is spending very sick & growce amounts of money on it's already sick/growce, gaint, private military industrial complex INSTEAD of spending the money on it's people or land.

US military should be renamed "Thee US Fedral Boondoggle".
 
apollonights said:
Garv said:
This is comforting. 189 BILLION dollars, and we dont have a system that works...?

Yep. Missile defense is really hard. Like shooting a bullet with a bullet and you don't know where the gun is, or what type might fire at the time, or what direction, or where it is firing at. Even in testing I don't think our missile defense has more than a 50 percent success rate! And that's against just one warhead. When the North Koreans get MIRV, solid fuel rockets and even more launch vehicles/decoys it will be almost impossible.

So probably 2021/22 at best.

So where does our system fall in line against Russia's missile defense? Is ours better/worse? We're basically advertising that our country is open to a missile attack. Why are we advertising this for our enemies to see...? Doesn't make sense. Lol.
 
Garv said:
So where does our system fall in line against Russia's missile defense? Is ours better/worse? We're basically advertising that our country is open to a missile attack. Why are we advertising this for our enemies to see...? Doesn't make sense. Lol.


Russia's missile defense is a lot of claims but no real evidence. Aside from swarm ABMs, which date back decades, it is not very likely they have a good missile defense programme.
 
Garv said:
apollonights said:
Garv said:
This is comforting. 189 BILLION dollars, and we dont have a system that works...?

Yep. Missile defense is really hard. Like shooting a bullet with a bullet and you don't know where the gun is, or what type might fire at the time, or what direction, or where it is firing at. Even in testing I don't think our missile defense has more than a 50 percent success rate! And that's against just one warhead. When the North Koreans get MIRV, solid fuel rockets and even more launch vehicles/decoys it will be almost impossible.

So probably 2021/22 at best.

So where does our system fall in line against Russia's missile defense? Is ours better/worse? We're basically advertising that our country is open to a missile attack. Why are we advertising this for our enemies to see...? Doesn't make sense. Lol.
From what I've read Russia doesn't really have missile defense. Also our enemies know that but:

A. America is really far away from most of our enemies
B. They don't have missiles that reach or hold a warhead or reenter with a warhead
C. They don't have nuclear weapons
D. We do have SOME anti-missile technology and if you have three missiles one might not even work under operational conditions. You'd want to send a few missiles or have MIRV to be sure to get even one hit.

North Korea is working REALLLY hard to overcome all those challenges.

Edit: I did more reading on the subject of Russia's missile defense. They do have a ABM system for their capital called the A-135. Designed to intercept simple ICBMs. There normal S-series systems also have anti-missile abilities up to a IRBM.
 
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