GMD Intercept Success

Jake McGuire wrote:
Ed Kyle wrote:
Once operational, the greatest rouge threat might be the use
of conventionally-armed missiles against the U.S., something
like the rain of missiles that fell on Israel recently. Such an
attack would quickly deplete an anit-missile system and it
would be politically impossible to respond to it with nuclear
weapons.

ICBMs cost a lot of money - apparently much more than their warheads.
Even the US can't justify putting conventional warheads on them because
it's too damn expensive. Who else is going to be able to afford to do
it. And in a world where ICBMs are only used to carry nuclear
warheads, who is going to take the risk of launching a bunch of them at
the US, hoping that we sit and take it?

Wrong. The US did look at puting conventional warheads on SLBM-s,
however, it was abandoned as the only safe way ( from the POV of
definitely not escalating to a nuclear war) would have been converting
all of the missiles. It is only in conventional non-wisdom where
strikes by ICBM-s with conventional warheads are not worth it. The
cost is not the problem and never was.


Then, avoiding the issue of what parts of the US one could threaten
with 50-mile-range artillery rockets, we certainly wouldn't use the NMD
against them.

You can threaten pretty much all of the US with them. Its a question
of placement.


And finally, artillery rockets are easy and cheap to make and hard to
trace. ICBMs (or even IRBMs) get made in expensive factories and are
pretty simple to identify. Launching a bunch of them at the US would
certainly justify having said expensive ICBM factory blown to bits, and
probably a bunch of other military production facilities as well.

IRBM-s with reaonable accuracy have been made in cheap factories in
bulk in the past. Doing so becomes easier each year.


-jake


--
Sander

+++ Out of cheese error +++

Jake McGuire wrote:
Ed Kyle wrote:
Once operational, the greatest rouge threat might be the use
of conventionally-armed missiles against the U.S., something
like the rain of missiles that fell on Israel recently. Such an
attack would quickly deplete an anit-missile system and it
would be politically impossible to respond to it with nuclear
weapons.

ICBMs cost a lot of money - apparently much more than their warheads.
Even the US can't justify putting conventional warheads on them because
it's too damn expensive. Who else is going to be able to afford to do
it. And in a world where ICBMs are only used to carry nuclear
warheads, who is going to take the risk of launching a bunch of them at
the US, hoping that we sit and take it?

Conventionally armed ICBMs are being debated these
days. See, for example:

"http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/index.php?id=556"

I would look at it this way. If I were an North Korean-type
enemy of the U.S. who wanted a deterrent that I might
actually be able to use if I had to (realizing that I could
never hope to use a nuke and have my country survive),
I might be willing to spend an enormous amount of
money on said deterrent. With a quiver of conventioally
armed ICBMs, I would at least be able to make U.S.
civilians pay whenever a U.S. bomber dropped a load
of bombs on my country, if it ever came to war.

If U.S. civilians suddenly discovered that war was real
and not something just to watch on TV, they might not
be so eager to continue attacking me. During the next
"Korean-ish War" I would be able to demonstrate to
them how powerless their Pentagon really was when it
came to protecting *their* lives. The U.S. government
might come under a lot of internal pressure to negotiate
a settlement rather than continue the fight.

- Ed Kyle

"Jake McGuire" wrote:

:ICBMs cost a lot of money - apparently much more than their warheads.
:Even the US can't justify putting conventional warheads on them because
:it's too damn expensive.

And yet we're talking about doing PRECISELY that very thing. The
problem isn't just the expense of the things. It's the accuracy at
the terminal end. When the best you can do is hundreds of meters, you
want to be throwing BIG bombs.

--
"Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute."
-- Charles Pinckney

Rand Simberg wrote:
On 1 Sep 2006 13:38:47 -0700, in a place far, far away, "Ed Kyle"
made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a
way as to indicate that:

Today's 9-1-06 Ground Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) test appears to
have succeeded.

"http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060901/us_nm/arms_missile_usa_dc"
"http://www.mda.mil/mdalink/html/mdalink.html"

A good day for Orbital Science's Pegasus-based Orbital Boost Vehicle
(OBV) Ground Based Interceptor (GBI).

What's amusing is that the Boeing press release buried the lede.

http://www.boeing.com/news/releases/...60901a_nr.html

"Although not a primary objective of the test, the kill vehicle
intercepted the warhead and destroyed it."

Yes, just an inadvertent side effect of a test of a *missile defense
system*.

Yes, because its one of those outcomes of the test they are not going
to promise to repeat, especially not apparently not having finished
the kill vechicle software. Working once through luck in a particular
situation is no guarantee of repeatability.

--
Sander

+++ Out of cheese error +++

Sander Vesik wrote:
Yes, because its one of those outcomes of the test they are not going
to promise to repeat, especially not apparently not having finished
the kill vechicle software. Working once through luck in a particular
situation is no guarantee of repeatability.

Generally speaking, a type of weapon becomes _more_ accurate and
capable as it is developed, so I don't see why it would be surprising
for our ABM's to similarly improve in capability. There are some
exceptions (such as the disastrously flawed magetic exploder on our
early-WWII torpedoes compared to the earlier fuses) but such
degradations of capability through development are not the norm.

- Jordan

Jordan wrote:

Sander Vesik wrote:
Yes, because its one of those outcomes of the test they are not going
to promise to repeat, especially not apparently not having finished
the kill vechicle software. Working once through luck in a particular
situation is no guarantee of repeatability.

Generally speaking, a type of weapon becomes _more_ accurate and
capable as it is developed, so I don't see why it would be surprising
for our ABM's to similarly improve in capability. There are some
exceptions (such as the disastrously flawed magetic exploder on our
early-WWII torpedoes compared to the earlier fuses) but such
degradations of capability through development are not the norm.

That doesn't preclude the one success being at a time when the chance of
that success is .1%.

Ian Stirling wrote:
Jordan wrote:

Sander Vesik wrote:
Yes, because its one of those outcomes of the test they are not going
to promise to repeat, especially not apparently not having finished
the kill vechicle software. Working once through luck in a particular
situation is no guarantee of repeatability.

Generally speaking, a type of weapon becomes _more_ accurate and
capable as it is developed, so I don't see why it would be surprising
for our ABM's to similarly improve in capability. There are some
exceptions (such as the disastrously flawed magetic exploder on our
early-WWII torpedoes compared to the earlier fuses) but such
degradations of capability through development are not the norm.

That doesn't preclude the one success being at a time when the chance of
that success is .1%.

Well, yes, but that would be improbable. We have to go on the basis of
the most probable interpretation of the data from the various tests,
which _seem_ to show an increasing ability to intercept more and more
difficult ICBM-like targets.

We can also use actual battle data as a basis for evaluation. The
early Patriot heavy SAM/ABM, used in Desert Storm, enjoyed about a
25-75% kill rate _per engagement_ (*), depending on one's definition of
a "kill" (**). This was in 1990. It is reasonable to assume that the
Patriot III's currently being used are more effective weapons. One
must, however, factor into this the knowledge that the early Patriots
were engaging SRBM's, not ICBM's or even IRBM's -- which are harder to
intercept.

When one goes from ABM's to energy cannons, the tests of the Air Borne
Laser system in the early 2000's were quite encouraging, which is
probably why they were put into production. The ABL is highly accurate
and lethal versus missiles in the boost phase; less effective against
missiles which have already expended their fuel (for the obvious
reasons). It does put enough energy onto the target to cause
considerable damage through thermal explosion, though.

In general, we can assume that BMD systems will increase in relative
effectiveness until the offense makes an advance, such as the
deployment of an effective decoy or other kind of penetration-aid
system. Fortunately, the enemies we most fear right now, North Korea
and Iran, are technologically more primitive than are ourselves, and we
HOPE (***) that they cannot deploy effective penetration aids (****).

- Jordan

(*) Meaning that multiple missiles may have been launched.

(**) This isn't weaselling; the question is whether you define a "kill"
as "a hit hard enough to knock the missile off course / prevent any
delicate device from detonating" or "complete physical desruction of
the warhead," which is obviously harder to achieve (and not necessary
for most military purposes).

(***) If they do deploy such aids, it wouldn't be the first time that
someone was surprised by the capabilties of an ostensibly-less-advanced
enemy.

(****) But the hope has some foundation in that most penetration aids
either increase the mass of the payload, make the flight profile more
complex and hence likely to fail, or both. It was not a trivial thing
for us to progress from single-warhead ballistic missiles to MIRV's,
which is an advance on roughly the same scale.

Ed Kyle wrote:
Today's 9-1-06 Ground Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) test appears to
have succeeded.

I gotta question about the timeline of the test that maybe some of the
readership can help with:

I'm trying to figure out what happened in the GBI/EKV test yesterday
and am having a bit of difficulty with the length of time between
target launch and intercept.

What we have from various report is,

Interceptor speed at burnout said to be 18,000 mph, which is the 8 kps
that I remember from BMDO briefings in 1997.

Target speed said to be upward of 15,000 mph or 6.7 kps which is right
for an ICBM with a range of ~8,000 km, about the range from NK to the
west coast of CONUS. Consistent with that, General Obering said, "But
what we saw today was a very realistic trajectory for the threat, for
the target, and a very realistic trajectory, a very realistic intercept
altitude and intercept speeds for the target enemy -- interceptor
against the target. "

So far so good: We can imagine that the target booster rocket might
have flown into a trajectory (X,Y.Z, Xdot, Ydot, Zdot) emulating that
of an NK ICBM rather than a simple minimum-energy trajectory from
Kodiak.

But then we come to the timeline, and there's where I'm having trouble
figuring out what went on.

Target launch from Kodiak at 10:22 or 10:23

GBI launch from VAFB at 10:39, said to be 16 or 17 minutes after target
launch

Intercept at 10:45 or 10:46, said to be 7 minutes after GBI launch

Let's assume it took three minutes for the STARS to get into the 6.7
kps ICBM trajectory and that it didn't get too far downrange while
doing so. That means that it was at least 7500 km from Kodiak at
intercept.

And, applying similar arithmetic, the EKV could have been no more than
about 3,000 km from VAFB at intercept.

So here's the problem I'm having: there isn't anywhere that satisfies
those two distance conditions. The nearest I can come is a location far
south of VAFB, around 8 N, 117 W, and even that is only 6,300 km from
Kodiak.

Clearly I'm failing to understand something, probably something obvious
(it's happened often enough before). Help!

P.S.: It would help a lot to know the launch azimuth of either or both
of the rockets, particularly the GBI . I've checked the usual NOTAM
sources but haven't found anything -- if any of you have them, please
let me know.

Allen Thomson wrote:
Ed Kyle wrote:
Today's 9-1-06 Ground Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) test appears to
have succeeded.

I gotta question about the timeline of the test that maybe some of the
readership can help with:

I'm trying to figure out what happened in the GBI/EKV test yesterday
and am having a bit of difficulty with the length of time between
target launch and intercept.

What we have from various report is,

Interceptor speed at burnout said to be 18,000 mph, which is the 8 kps
that I remember from BMDO briefings in 1997.

Target speed said to be upward of 15,000 mph or 6.7 kps which is right
for an ICBM with a range of ~8,000 km, about the range from NK to the
west coast of CONUS. Consistent with that, General Obering said, "But
what we saw today was a very realistic trajectory for the threat, for
the target, and a very realistic trajectory, a very realistic intercept
altitude and intercept speeds for the target enemy -- interceptor
against the target. "

So far so good: We can imagine that the target booster rocket might
have flown into a trajectory (X,Y.Z, Xdot, Ydot, Zdot) emulating that
of an NK ICBM rather than a simple minimum-energy trajectory from
Kodiak.

But then we come to the timeline, and there's where I'm having trouble
figuring out what went on.

Target launch from Kodiak at 10:22 or 10:23

GBI launch from VAFB at 10:39, said to be 16 or 17 minutes after target
launch

Intercept at 10:45 or 10:46, said to be 7 minutes after GBI launch

Let's assume it took three minutes for the STARS to get into the 6.7
kps ICBM trajectory and that it didn't get too far downrange while
doing so. That means that it was at least 7500 km from Kodiak at
intercept.

And, applying similar arithmetic, the EKV could have been no more than
about 3,000 km from VAFB at intercept.

So here's the problem I'm having: there isn't anywhere that satisfies
those two distance conditions. The nearest I can come is a location far
south of VAFB, around 8 N, 117 W, and even that is only 6,300 km from
Kodiak.

Clearly I'm failing to understand something, probably something obvious
(it's happened often enough before). Help!

P.S.: It would help a lot to know the launch azimuth of either or both
of the rockets, particularly the GBI . I've checked the usual NOTAM
sources but haven't found anything -- if any of you have them, please
let me know.

I haven't had time to sit down and do the math, but it seems probable
to me that this intercept could have occurred along a track that would
have been similar to the Athena launch track, visibile at:

"http://spaceflightnow.com/athena/kodiakstar/010919track.html"

News reports said that the intercept occurred a "few hundred" miles
off the California coast, so I doubt that the latitude would have been
much south of 30 N. The intercept altitude might have been pretty
high, playing a role in the timing. ICBMs usually reach higher
apogees than LEO launch vehicles do.

- Ed Kyle

Ed Kyle wrote:
Allen Thomson wrote:
Ed Kyle wrote:
Today's 9-1-06 Ground Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) test appears to
have succeeded.

I gotta question about the timeline of the test that maybe some of the
readership can help with:

I'm trying to figure out what happened in the GBI/EKV test yesterday
and am having a bit of difficulty with the length of time between
target launch and intercept.

What we have from various report is,

Interceptor speed at burnout said to be 18,000 mph, which is the 8 kps
that I remember from BMDO briefings in 1997.

Target speed said to be upward of 15,000 mph or 6.7 kps which is right
for an ICBM with a range of ~8,000 km, about the range from NK to the
west coast of CONUS. Consistent with that, General Obering said, "But
what we saw today was a very realistic trajectory for the threat, for
the target, and a very realistic trajectory, a very realistic intercept
altitude and intercept speeds for the target enemy -- interceptor
against the target. "

So far so good: We can imagine that the target booster rocket might
have flown into a trajectory (X,Y.Z, Xdot, Ydot, Zdot) emulating that
of an NK ICBM rather than a simple minimum-energy trajectory from
Kodiak.

But then we come to the timeline, and there's where I'm having trouble
figuring out what went on.

Target launch from Kodiak at 10:22 or 10:23

GBI launch from VAFB at 10:39, said to be 16 or 17 minutes after target
launch

Intercept at 10:45 or 10:46, said to be 7 minutes after GBI launch

Let's assume it took three minutes for the STARS to get into the 6.7
kps ICBM trajectory and that it didn't get too far downrange while
doing so. That means that it was at least 7500 km from Kodiak at
intercept.

And, applying similar arithmetic, the EKV could have been no more than
about 3,000 km from VAFB at intercept.

So here's the problem I'm having: there isn't anywhere that satisfies
those two distance conditions. The nearest I can come is a location far
south of VAFB, around 8 N, 117 W, and even that is only 6,300 km from
Kodiak.

Clearly I'm failing to understand something, probably something obvious
(it's happened often enough before). Help!

P.S.: It would help a lot to know the launch azimuth of either or both
of the rockets, particularly the GBI . I've checked the usual NOTAM
sources but haven't found anything -- if any of you have them, please
let me know.

I haven't had time to sit down and do the math, but it seems probable
to me that this intercept could have occurred along a track that would
have been similar to the Athena launch track, visibile at:

"http://spaceflightnow.com/athena/kodiakstar/010919track.html"

News reports said that the intercept occurred a "few hundred" miles
off the California coast, so I doubt that the latitude would have been
much south of 30 N. The intercept altitude might have been pretty
high, playing a role in the timing. ICBMs usually reach higher
apogees than LEO launch vehicles do.

- Ed Kyle

And, the reported velocities might have been burnout velocities, rather

than actual speeds at the time of the intercepts. Or the intercept
might have occurred during descent from apogee, while the target
was accelerating so that it would have spent quite a bit of time
flying a lower speed prior to the intercept. Etc.

- Ed Kyle