Transterrestrial Musings

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I would rather we focus on the only truly effective means of ensuring that nobody launcehs a missile at us - get rid of the damned things all together.

Yes, I favor global nuclear disarmament. Of course, I'm not enough of a naif to suggest that this would be any easier than building a 100% effective anti-missile system, but I think it should be our priority.

Posted by Tony ADRAGNA at December 14, 2001 01:05 PM

I agree with your point about the argument over deterrence value. Although I am only a dilettante in game theory, the two opposing viewpoints seem approximately equally valid, as far as projecting the consequences. The major problem with missile defense is that it is quite likely not to work at all!! As I am sure you are aware, the physics is blindingly difficult, and the command and control necessary to allow the system to work against a missile with decoys or jamming mechanisms is hard to contemplate. If the system is meant to deter a simple missile, lacking those things, won't it simply force them to suitcase bombs or other things that are completely unrelated? Although I do not work in that industry, I am somewhat familiar with the basic principles involved, and it seems to me that the "hit a bullet with a bullet" approach may not be the best one. This is not to say that missile defense can't be done, but it may not be cheap (by which I mean it could cost TRILLIONS of dollars) Is that worth it? Maybe, but the cba revolves around how great the threat is assessed to be, and whether this is the best approach. On the other hand, it could be tremendous corporate welfare for an ailing aerospace industry.

Posted by Paul Orwin at December 14, 2001 01:09 PM

"Yes, I favor global nuclear disarmament. Of course, I'm not enough of a naif to suggest that this would be any easier than building a 100% effective anti-missile system, but I think it should be our priority."

One does not preclude the other (though I think your priority a much more difficult problem than missile defense), and building a missile defense may make it easier to reduce nuclear weapons, by rendering them ever more useless and cost ineffective.

In any event, we won't know until we at least do some serious testing and system development, which will not cost "trillions of dollars" and is currently precluded by the treaty.

I am somewhat familiar with the technology (it's been a few years since I've been professionally involved) and I think that "hitting a bullet with a bullet" is achievable and something that gets easier every year. We've already proven the feasibility, now it's just a matter of refining it, improving reliability, and getting costs down. I see no reason (at least from any laws of physics sense) why this is not achievable.

Posted by Rand Simberg at December 14, 2001 01:50 PM

Take the logic of deploying a defensive military system that is not 100% effective and apply it elsewhere. Is it wrong to give troops flak jackets because it only protects them against a percentage of fragmentation wounds, not 100% of them?

Also, look at the logic of "one missile getting through would result in deaths too numerous to write-off as an acceptable failure rate": therefore all of them getting through is better?

When it comes to nuclear weapons, if an anti-missile defence stops even one nulcear weapon wiping out one city, that would seem to be money well spent.

Posted by Perry de Havilland at December 14, 2001 06:06 PM

The "flak jacket" analog has been thrown at me repeatedly (believe me, I've taken alot of "flak" on my argument). It's actually not a good analogy, because flak jackets do actually protect against the percentage of fragmentation wounds that they're designed to protect against. But, if you want to protect your head, then you put on a helmet, you don't rely on just having a flak jacket covering your chest.

Better yet, you take down the threat before it has a chance to be the cause of life endangering fragmentation wounds...

Posted by Tony ADRAGNA at December 15, 2001 11:16 AM

On the assumption "if we don't build a defense, they (any they) won't build missiles". I actually don't make that assumption. In fact, in my "From Left Field" essay I make quite clear that I assume no such thing. I specifically note that arsenals might increase absent a missile defense system. I do question the assumption that arsenals won't increase simply because the value of individual missiles is minimized. The argument that arsenals will grow in an attempt to overwhelm a defense system is just as valid.

Posted by Tony ADRAGNA at December 15, 2001 03:28 PM

"I am somewhat familiar with the basic principles involved, and it seems to me that the "hit a bullet with a bullet" approach may not be the best one."

I'd just like to ask. Did the patriot missile system during the Gulf war fail everytime? that was a war 10 years ago on a system developed earlier then that.

on another note:

"Better yet, you take down the threat before it has a chance to be the cause of life endangering fragmentation wounds... "

Do you think that solution would be feasible every time? Wouldn't a series of preemptive attacks against China and N. Korea be kinda bad for our worldy PR?

Again, you don't see Marines going into a conquered territory without that flak jacket and helmet even after the "threat" has been eliminated.

And one more point:

"The argument that arsenals will grow in an attempt to overwhelm a defense system is just as valid."

Yes, but how many arms and production races have the US lost since 1850+? With China and N. Korea already in high gear, if we decided to start a new arms race with them, they'd be left in the dust by the time they have become a major threat.

Posted by Nick M. at December 18, 2001 12:42 PM

You will note that I did not say that it cannot work (although recent estimates suggest that 90% of Patriot missiles missed their targets), only that it might not be the best system. I am not opposed to the idea of stopping ICBMs from killing us all (that would be absurd. I am simply of the opinion that better methods may be in the offing. The massive expense of the BMD project more or less prohibits substantial investment in diverse approaches. On the free-market/libertarian side, private contractors working hard toward a very lucrative contract might be a substantial source of new, fresh ideas. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be working out

Posted by Paul Orwin at December 18, 2001 05:47 PM

You will note that I did not say that it cannot work (although recent estimates suggest that 90% of Patriot missiles missed their targets)

Precision guided munitions were nowhere near as accurate as they are today back in the Gulf War. Buit look how accurate they have become...

Posted by Nick M. at December 19, 2001 04:25 AM

Not to be nasty, but I will gladly look at how accurate they have become, if you will just give me some place to look...Your ellipses are not particularly instructive. Do you know of a source to back up the assertion that they have become more accurate?

Posted by Paul Orwin at December 19, 2001 09:11 AM

Asking for cites is mandatory with a discussion using statistics : )

Unfortunately, my primary source of information that I have as handy reference (FAS), does not contain information on statistics of accuracy between the gulf war and Kosovo to allow a comparison. I could only find vague reference on transcript on congressional hearings, or statistics on the percentages of precision guided munitions out of the entire bombing campaigns, and the percentage of damage done that was credited to their use. So for now, I'll temporarily concede the point, or until I can find the time to search for recent Pentagon briefings over the past 2 months, which is where I heard numbers of improvement (I dare not repeat the actual numbers, only because I don't want to find them and be wrong and then have to apologize on that ; > )

Oh, and btw, on your Patriot Anti-missile system claim:

http://www.fas.org/spp/starwars/docops/ra910425.htm

The poor statistics were due to the breaking of of Scuds in mid flight, and counting any sizeable piece of debris as a "no kill" even though in many cases the Patriot took out the warhead.

That was a decade ago. You think there would be no improvements in accuracy in a period of ten years?

Posted by Nick M. at December 19, 2001 05:26 PM

Well, I know it is hard to find citations for this sort of thing, but I am skeptical of the value of a Raytheon press release! Notice that the only # they cite is that 90% of missile attacks were unsuccessful. They also say that Iraqi Scuds were "souped up" to go faster, and broke apart due to poor engineering. The press release strikes me as dubious, since either the Iraqis and Syrians were good engineers who could soup up the rockets to evade the system, or they were bad engineers who couldn't even maintain the system. Did GAO ever do an assessment, or an outside, non-interested party? If so, I would like to see their results. In any event, we are not talking about theater defense, which is a well tested technology (examples include the Patriot and the anti-missile systems that carrier groups use), but a National missile defense. This can't be tailored to the attacking missile, and we can't afford to launch 10, 20 or 100 anti-missiles/ attacking missile. On second thought, a limited NMD that did just that could diffuse the arms race issue, but might be impractical from a Cost-benefit POV. Anyway, this may be beyond the scope of a blog discussion, but it is worth thinking about.

Posted by Paul_Orwin at December 20, 2001 08:21 AM

"...we can't afford to launch 10, 20 or 100 anti-missiles/ attacking missile."

Well, actually, it's not obvious that we can't afford that. Anti-missiles can become quite cheap if bought in quantity, and the interceptors themselves are pretty small. I continue to believe that there is a good possibility, if not probability, that defense is cheaper on the margin than offense, but we won't know until we seriously examine some concepts, something that one or the other branches of government have prevented since Reagan first proposed missile defense almost twenty years ago.

Posted by Rand Simberg at December 20, 2001 11:03 AM

The limited case is probably a lot more feasible, and as I said it is used in theater engagement (at least that's what Tom Clancy says!). It's awfully boring if we agree, though.

Posted by Paul Orwin at December 20, 2001 12:22 PM

ABM thought experiment

Start with the assumption that the US has an ABM system capable of effectively defending main US territory

1) expansionist middle-eastern leader (EMEL) has ballistic missile launch capabilities and proven nuclear capability

2) EMEL invades smaller, richer neighbor for oil reserves

3) US attempts to rally a multinational response to remove the invaders

4a) EMEL threatens to nuke US city if US forces land in the region

5a) safely behind its ABM system, US responds by saying any attack on the US will result in the complete annihilation of the attacking country

6a) EMEL likely doesn't want to die and doesn't launch

7a) mutlinational forces successfully remove EMEL

Why would EMEL choose this route when he could...

4b) EMEL threatens nuke nearby port city / holy city / strategic oil reserve

5b) US leaders try to justify nuking one far-off country if it nukes a second far-off country

6b) US is unable to project force in theatre (locals abandon coalition; US fears a nuke strike on carrier group); EMEL wins

7b) US decides to drill in all national parks and off-shore sites to make up for reduced oil supplies

I'm not hearing a grand strategic vision for an ABM system that would adequately deal with the threat in 4b. All I'm hearing is a vision of a system that would protect the US (continental only? what about Hawaii and other territories? I dunno...) and let the rest of the world go to he##.

This US-only ABM system is being brought to us by the same people who want to globalize the economy. Am I the only one who sees the irony here?

Posted by Scott H at December 20, 2001 03:30 PM

First, comments to Paul:

Did you read the complete article? THey gave 2 different statistics, the one from Saudia Arabia (with he 90 percent claim) and the 50% claim in Israel, which due to the criteria of the IDF for a kill assessment, reduced their claims by 35%. Please feel free to contribute any sources which correct this claim.

As for the engineering of the missile systems, with such a higher velocity then what the missile was designed for, could it be considered that the missile itself wasn't designed to withstand such g-force for a certain period of time, that the engineers couldn't fix? Doing research, some imply, or think, that the break up was intentional, to make defenses easier to defeat. Instead of 1-5 targets to shift through, you had to deal with 15.

On your more recent post: I was under the impression that this current NMD *was* more theater oriented. Regans star wars progam was the all encompassing shield, but was so costly, this is a more toned down and realistic version. Of course, I may be wrong on that.

To Scotts post:

No offense, buit this seems like a very faulty thought experiment.

1. If your thought experiment was true. Then why did we win the Gulf War, when Saddam threatened to use Biological and chemical warfare? Did the Kuwait resistance, and Saudi, Syrian, and Egypt forces cower and abandon the coalition?

This disproves 6b

2. Politicians do NOT have a say in defense policies. That is distinctly a DoD and Commander in Chief job.

THis nullifies 5b.

3. The POTUS would threaten the EMEL with the nuclear destruction of his nation and powerbase if a WMD is used. EMEL cowers.

Esentially the 4b scenario ends back up as 6a.

Not only that, with a a bit of good intel gathering, a quick airstrike could render ther EMEL's nuclear capability moot in a single strike.

Why do you think that noone used nukes ever since WWII? because it was politcally incorrect to do so?

4. Your thought experiment even rpoves that a NMD is a good idea, because then the EMEL would not consider a attack on the US due to the shield being in place, and needs to consider other options. Once one option of a horrific attack occuring is sufficiently nullified, then we can began to look into nullifying other options.

I'm sorry if you think the US should not defend itself from outside agressors. Me, living in the US, thinks it is a perfectly good idea to protect ourselves from a nuking : )

Posted by Nick M. at December 22, 2001 11:53 AM

To Nick M:

You have a serious mis-understanding of US defense heirarchy if you think that "Politicians do NOT have a say in defense policies. That is distinctly a DoD and Commander in Chief job." -- the CinC is the President, a civilian politician (unless you're implying that a military conspiracy forced the Supreme Court to... oh never mind). It is fundamental to our democracy that our military is SUBSERVIENT to the the civilians. Yes, that causes situations like our involvement in Viet Nam. But it prevents situations like us becoming a military dictatorship... Any decision to use nuclear weapons would have to be cleared by the highest levels in the military chain of command -- and the highest levels are CIVILIANS (Sec of AF, Presidient, etc.).

As far as the Gulf War, Saddam did not threaten, say Riyadh, with devestation unless the Saudis kicked out the US -- He lobbed Scuds at Israel. I think a some radioactive, burning Saudi oil-fields would have removed Saudi support for the US: hey, if you can't protect us, get the hell out.

Also, you seem to think I'm against ABM systems. I'm not -- I'm just looking for a good one. Preferably one with theater capablilities as well as a domestic, because you don't know where you'll need it. We can't just protect ourselves and let the world go to hell in a handbasket. It's a globalized economy, remember?

Posted by Scott H at December 24, 2001 07:58 AM

This thread seems to be lacking in the details of the current accuracy of the Patriot PAC 3 system. This is the first line of defense against theatre ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and aircraft today. I exerpt a quote from Janes Def Wkly below.

This type of system development is what NMD/TMD defenses should use as a primer for how to test, refine, and deploy a future BMD system. Define the threat, test a system, revise the definitions as circumstances change, retest the system and its improvements as needed, and deploy generational upgrades as possible. It doesn't happen overnight and as the Gulf War showed it isn't perfect either.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++

"The Patriot PAC-1 modification was successfully demonstrated in September 1986 against a Lance missile and the PAC-2 against another Patriot missile in November 1987. The first deliveries of PAC-2s were accelerated to begin in September 1990 in time for use in the 1990-91 Gulf War. Fire units in Saudi Arabia and Israel were loaded with a combination of the PAC-1 Patriot missile and the PAC-2 version. It is estimated that around 160 Patriot missiles were launched against Iraqi Al Hussein missiles during the Gulf War in 1991. While it is believed that 81 Al Hussein missiles were launched against targets in Saudi Arabia and Israel, some missiles were not intercepted by Patriots either because no Patriot batteries were positioned and available to fire or because the Al Hussein missiles were computed to fall harmlessly into the sea. The actual Patriot success rate has not been revealed, although it would be difficult to determine a definition of success when the debris from intercepted missiles still causes damage on falling to the ground and it cannot be determined whether or not Patriot destroyed the incoming threat warheads. It is reported that in excess of 500 Patriot missiles have been launched in trials and in the 1990-91 Gulf War. Since 1991, 20 PAC-2 (MIM-104C) missiles and two GEM (MIM-104D) missiles have been fired against ballistic missile targets, four in June 1999, with all of them successful except for one of the earlier PAC-2 missiles.

"In June 1999, five PAC-2 missiles were fired against aircraft and drone targets, and in February 2000 a successful launch was made with a distance of 30 km between the launcher and the ECS. "

Posted by tom roberts at December 24, 2001 09:31 AM

+++++++++++++++++++++++++

"In June 1999, five PAC-2 missiles were fired against aircraft and drone targets, and in February 2000 a successful launch was made with a distance of 30 km between the launcher and the ECS. "

Posted by tom roberts at December 24, 2001 09:31 AM

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