This is a very easy situation to understand, any country has the right to establish defensive systems that are not capable of offensive measures. So as is with everything else Russia's Bark is bigger then its bite. Putins administration is posing this as a problem to return to cold war politics which helps reaffirm the position to contest the Program. Its all rhetoric, I say let them cry out because its advantageous for us for them to do so. At the end of the day they wont be able to do anything from stopping the implementation however we possess leverage and another tool of bargain for our own strategic and political affairs for use in the UN, such as Syria and Iran. The only problem is we do not have a leader that knows how to properly use it to ones advantage.. MD is a defensive and political tool any nation that has the capability to ascertain the capabilities has the right to implement them period
Missile shield
- Thread starter Superman111
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PhysicsMan
Member
North Korea's AND Iran's target would be the US. Which makes people wonder why the hell they are devoting most of the political and material resources to Europe. Also, analysis has shown that any missile defense that can be put up now and in the sizable future is fully incapable of working against any solid ICBMs and is highly unlikely to work against liquid fuel ones. And that is only for early stage interceptions (logistically near impossible for Iran and not much easier for N. Korea) - any other stage is even less likely to be intercepted. That is US government's own analysis done a few years ago which wasn't widely publicized - allowing to continue to pour money into the systems that will not work.
It's not that simple. Russia's main problem seems to be that this is a pan-European BMD, built by the US that excludes Russia. Russian elites are trying, rather desperately, to be perceived as a member of the privileged club of advanced European nations. Being on board in this BMD is vital to that, because the BMD is another way to show who's in and who's out.
The problem with simply ignoring their side is that if at some point in the future Russian elites decide that they will never be accepted as equals and allies in the West, they will become a lot less cooperative on key issues across the board, and quite likely toss their lot in with powers less then friendly to the West. So far they've been fairly accommodating in many key issues, and they've built close ties with major European powers. If this beneficial cooperation is to continue, Russian concerns about being on the received end of a strategically offensive BMD need to be addressed with more then just words.
Neither North Korea or Iran have a ICBM that will reach the continental US. All the their current designs are IRBMs.
- Iran can reach Europe, so the NATO countries become their hostage against US intervention. The missile defense for Europe is to block their taking that course of action, or rather to make it an unreliable strategy.
- The best the latest generation of North Korean missiles can do is reach Hawaii, if they ever get them to work. But they have plenty of missiles that can reach Japan. Because of the feelings about Japan in the area from WWII and before, North Korea attacking Japan would be a bit like when Iraq attacked Israel during Desert Storm.
It doesn’t make any difference if an ICBM is liquid or solid fueled for purposes of intercepting it.
If by “early phase’ you mean a boost phase interception with a missile, that is all but impossible due to the kinematics.
Mid course interception is practical if you can get early enough warning of a launch. That is the key – the sensor system. The satellite shootdown was against a target even faster than an ICBM, but it took 2 ships to do it because the missile had to be launched before the target was above the horizon in order to meet it. One ship to track the target ant the other to shoot it down. Against Iranian missiles that tracking would be provided by the radar system in the Ukraine that Russia so detests. Against North Korea they deployed the Sea-based X-band Radar.
There are a lot of seemingly contradictory reports. The results depends on the assumptions behind the report. If the assumption was that they were trying to stop a major power (Russia or China) with an overwhelming number of missiles and no leakers permitted, then no, it will never work. Against North Korea or Iran with only a couple missiles, it is very possible to achieve greater than a 90% chance of success. It all depends on the assumptions.
PhysicsMan
Member
It makes a crucial difference. Solid fuel rockets are capable of more thrust, producing higher acceleration, thus reaching higher speed faster, reducing the already near-impossible response time.
By early phase I mean the early part of the boost phase, while the velocities are still manageable. You are correct, it's all but impossible. However, it is the only phase where interception was concluded to be not fully impossible.
Mid course interception is not just impractical, it's not possible. Just for the reasons you mentioned - not possible to create a sensor network that would be able to detect and track the target fast enough. Knocking out a satellite with a perfectly known trajectory is a relatively simple task.
I am talking about US being the target, so Ukraine is not an option.
Actually, it was a rather definitive report. It was a government requested comission made up of the elite academicians from the top US institutions, with the relevant expertise in the technologies involved. This report focused only on N. Korea and Iran as the targets. Sorry to disappoint you, but they concluded that it's all but impossible to defend against either country's ICBM launch.
well put!
The reports I have seen only say that boost phase interception is the only way to kill a MIRVed ICBM before it can deploy its warheads. Only the most strident (and older) reports say that mid-course and terminal defense ABM systems cannot possibly work.
Actually they have systems in place that can detect and track missiles from North Korea (the Sea-based X-band Radar and at Kwajalein Atoll), and the radar for the European missile shield would also cover the path from Iran to Washington D.C.
It is currently too expensive to build a space based system sensor that can cover missiles from any direction, such as from Russian SSBNs. But Iran and North Korea are one dimensional threats.
The Ukraine was the proposed location of the radar system, not the target. This location also covers the flight paths for a missile from Iran to both Europe and the east coast of the US.
I was under the impression you were arguing that Iran would never threaten Europe, and therefore it was a waste of money to install a system to defend them. Note, the word is threaten – Iran doesn’t want to nuke Europe or the US, because unless they can take out the entire US nuclear arsenal in one salvo, they are going to get the self illuminating parking lot treatment.
And from your analysis that no defense is possible against an ICBM, I am curious where you think the money being ‘wasted’ should be allocated instead.
Would you mind sharing this report with the rest of us?
Is it this one http://rmp.aps.org/pdf/RMP/v76/i3/pS1_1?
Or maybe this one http://russianforces.org/files/Brie...fenseProposal_August24,2007_FinalReduced.pdf?
Or if you are bound by secrecy, how about a document number? There are a number of posters on this site that may be able to confirm its contents.
PhysicsMan
Member
They can detect and track but is it fast enough to initiate a successful launch?
The West policy stems from the fact that they have no confidence in the Iranian regime (led by fundamentalist nutcases) being a rational one, making its threats credible (which in itself, despite of the fundamentalist nature of the leadership, is a ridiculous assumption, in my opinion). Having said that, the primary ideological (as well as political) target for Iran is the big devil - US, not Europe.
I am of the opinion that money shouldn't be wasted in general. To that end, there shouldn't be an attempt in the near future to create such a defense structure. Main two reasons being a) extreme technological [+financial+political] difficulty, b) very low likelihood of any of the feared scenarios becoming anything but a political game. These efforts should be reserved for a more distant future when the technologies are more mature and the political climate better understood.
I'm impressed, you know your way around google. I was at the colloquium at Urbana where professor F. Lamb (one of the members of the panel and its co-chair) delivered his summary of the report's findings. As I hinted before, he was far from optimistic on what they found.
The interceptors are not collocated with the radar, but about 1000 miles farther down range near the Baltic Sea. Mid-course interceptors do not chase the target, they rise to meet it or take it head on. In addition any missiles targeted on the US would probably face additional SM-3’s fired from Navy ships tied up at east coast bases or in the western Atlantic.
While the US is the Great Satan, the Iranian goal is to forestall a US/NATO intervention that could deliberately or not brings down the regime. Triggering a nuclear exchange with the US is not on their agenda, yet. To that end threatening the NATO powers with a nuclear attack is sufficient, they don’t have to be able to attack the US directly.
Check the bottom of page S3 of the report – It deals only with boost phase interception, and does address mid-course or terminal phase interception.
p.s. When trying to find reports with Google, used the advanced search and filter for PDF files only. That excludes all the boards, blogs, and most of the magazine and news reports.
PhysicsMan
Member
What I meant by "fast" was ability to analyze within the needed time period the trajectory of the missile, in order to be able to launch a high probability of success interceptor. At this point (and foreseeable future), it does not appear to be a high likelihood scenario.
So, they threaten to bomb Europe (or US), and the West gets scared that they would, and back off? That is what I was referring to as ridiculous. That situation requires the West to believe that Iran is capable of following through with such a threat. That, in turn, means that the West thinks that the Iranian leadership is completely mad, and that is the part I am having trouble with. Everyone knows they're not mad and will never launch a nuclear weapon at the West proper, so why the missile defense? And why in Poland, for instance? And why is Poland so desperately wanting it to be there? Are they afraid of Iran? And the rest of Europe would rely on the Polish interceptors? Has anyone looked at the map? It's like protecting Chicago from a New York missile attack by placing the missile defense in San Francisco. I just don't see Italians sleeping better with this brilliant plan in mind.
And I said as much earlier. However, the first part of that talk was devoted to detailing how any later phase of flight interception is even more problematic to achieve.
Don't you mean the one in the Czech Republic? Or are you suggesting that the US is going to take over the Soviet-era early-warning radars in Ukraine?
Ok come on. Seriously. What are you talking about? A proposed radar in Ukraine?
The original proposal was for the Ukraine, they backed out under Russian pressure.
I was looking at an older presentation when I wrote that.
It's complete foolhardy to propose that the west is wasting its resources to build an ABM that's late against Iran or other countries in the middle east. Also building an ABM against Russian will be commendable owing to the fact that the country in it's struggle to resurrect it's Soviet era strategic relevance has been supporting deviant and despotic government just because it feels that's the best way of opposing the west. Their aging nuclear arsenals are the only strategic deterrence against the west and if there was anyway of making them strategically irrelevant that'll be the best for global peace. Even though i have no doubt for what the Russians are worrying about i think the US and NATO are on the proper feet-development of ABM against Russian arsenals. I wonder too why the Russians need to worry afterall they claim the s-500 is capable of shooting down ballistic missiles does that not make other countries missiles irrelevant? I wonder why the US and NATO aren't complaining? Although it'll be costly on the Russians to lunch a pre-emptive strike on the anti-missile installation because it'll be tantamount to aggression which may call for US-NATO retaliation. But on the average if the Russians do honestly carry out their threat with their most modern Iskander it'll rather represent a test of the shield and thereabout if it couldn't penetrate the shield they'll it justifie their concern and will rise the crescendo of their anti missile rhetorics. But on the whole attempting it is a risky game. Those who live in Russia are human beings who like to live and enjoy life like anybody they're no robots and they wouldn't like their country to be rained down with nuclear bombs. It's only foolhardy for any individual to assume the US with leadership cutting-edge technology can't manufacture a capable and complete anti-missile shield against all systems, i know the Russians know this.
I don't know about aging. Given how their ICBM production has been ramping up. They've re-armed a large chunk of the SLBM trucks with new Sineva variants, they're putting the Bulava into mass production along-side the Yars, and apparently another new missile (Avangard). There is a heavy liquid-fuel ICBM under development, and a new strategic nuclear cruise missile. It seems to me that they're intent to keeping their nuclear arsenal quite modern.
I would agree. Russia's nuclear program is their biggest deterent. They don't want that to be taken away by aging or by a NATO ran missile shield. I think there have been many reasons given in this thread why Russia is upset about it. I would say it is probably a combination of several of them if not more. The truth is if any of our countries (not to exclude the Russians if there are some in here) had someone set up missiles that could have a direct effect on our military strategy we would be extremely upset. Even if it was one of our allies we would still want to be involved to ensure everything was on the up and up. The whole situation has been handled badly.
Do they plan to deploy the liquid fueled missile, or is it just a backup for a solid fuel design?
Yes they do. It's supposed to be a 1 for 1 replacement of the SS-18 Satan.
Supermoves
New Member
Put your mind to rest dear boy, there is NO WAY the Russians are actually going to hit the missile shield...for two reasons.
1) If the U.S. felt that Russia might actually strike the missile shield, they would never deploy it in the first place. If russia hit the shield, it would require a military response from the U.S. and there is NO WAY Washington will put themselves in that position. They will simply negotiate the locations prior to putting them active.
2) The missile shield is currently active and operating and russia has not blown it up yet. That is how we know they will not blow it up ;-)
1) If the U.S. felt that Russia might actually strike the missile shield, they would never deploy it in the first place. If russia hit the shield, it would require a military response from the U.S. and there is NO WAY Washington will put themselves in that position. They will simply negotiate the locations prior to putting them active.
2) The missile shield is currently active and operating and russia has not blown it up yet. That is how we know they will not blow it up ;-)
LloydTasiD
New Member
It can be understood that Russia would be upset at western influence in it's previous domain. But really, it's just that: a previous domain. Poland has allowed part of the missile shield to be built in its own country. That comes down to Poland's right, not Russia's.
Also, this is a missile shield not a missile spear. It is a defensive system. If anyone really thinks that NATO is just going to shoot missile depots in Russia unprovoked, you seriously don't have a brain. If NATO was that stupid, then it would have happened a long time ago already and it would be called WWIII not the Cold War. Russia doesn't have to worry about being attacked unless it attacks because it is a shield. Defensive not offensive.
You spelled "quiet" wrong twice, Nakalemo. That doesn't help your argument.
LloydTasiD
New Member
Oh yeah, and Russia may be upset because it's nuclear deterrent is taken away. You don't need nuclear strike ability if you don't plan on using it. Like I said, why would NATO attack now when Russia is not a threatening enemy, and not when Russia was a threatening enemy.