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Missile Defense

Russian military leaders have expressed concern about US plans for a national missile defense system. Will defense technology be limited by possibilities for a strategic imbalance? Is this just SDI all over again?

smartalix - 03:31pm Jul 6, 2001 EST (#6698 of 6705)
Anyone who denies you information considers themselves your master

Gisterme,

Excellent response. I underestimated you.

Regarding a rotating missile during launch, why would it be impossible? I see a second-generation (anti-ABM) booster spinning like a gyrojet slug. Why not a rotating missile? Why can't you spin a gyro-stabilized device? You've never heard of MEMS or fiber-optic gyros?

It would be even easier to impart a spin on the MIRV upon separation from the bus, however.

As far as armor, ablative armor is not that heavy. Even the silicon tiles on the shuttle (which are not ablative, they just shed heat very efficiently) are light, else they would not be used as a coating on a spacecraft.

As for weight, the Russians, for example, have lots of experience launching very heavy payloads, and the technology isn't that difficult once you have developed reliable launch capability. Never underestimate the determination of a (potantial) foe. What is the lift capacity of a Long March?

As far as reflectivity, it wouldn't need to be perfect, just good enough to reduce the amount of energy that gets transferred to the missile. Just pasting sheets of gold foil on the outside of the booster would make the laser's job significantly more difficult. Speaking of gold, most military hardware costs more than its weight in gold, anyway. Gold is a very useful metal outside of sheer monetary value. As for the decoys, I used gold as an example, but a lead alloy would be more than neccessary to get an identical flight profile to that of a real warhead. I would plate the booster and the MIRVs with iridium, actually, as it is a much harder metal.

I dismiss the "one or two" missile red herring. No "rogue" nation would launch at us anyway, so I am basing my arguments upon a launch by a nation with a realistic nuclear capability. If we scare russia into renewed nuclear development, they could field some very potent weaponry. Granted, they had trouble developing MIRVs at first, but the technology is now relatively mature, with the question being one of hardening the booster and warhead.

Also, Chinese and Russian air defense (I refuse to even address the red herring of "rogue" nations), They are much more sophisitcated than Iraq in that matter.

Russian and Chinese air defence increasingly sophisticated, say Jane's Editors
Russia's new BUK-1M-2 self-propelled surface-to-air missile (SAM) system is "probably one of the best thought-out and most capable mobile air defence systems yet to come out of Russia," according to Jane's Land-Based Air Defence editors Chris Foss and Tony Cullen.

This still does not address cruise missiles, kamikaze supersonic bomber jets, submarine-launched missiles off the coast, tramp steamers, and motor vehicles.

You argue the technology well, and you do have valid points. I never said that we will never have the capability. I have said we do not have it, and won't for some time. I also said that fielding an ABM system unilaterally is a measure guaranteed to escalate nuclear weapon development, and prod nations into developing other weapons systems of mass destruction to bypass any ABM system we would field.

An ABM system as a part of a multinational anti-nuclear proliferation effort is a different story.

rshowalter - 04:35pm Jul 6, 2001 EST (#6699 of 6705)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

In ten minutes, I'll have big pieces of your answer -- many from 400 postings back -- but not as clean as I'd like -- and I'll have to do more work to get it clean, and am on it.

gisterme, you may recall your phrase, slightly modified:

" N times brigher and M times bigger."

Well, for a lasar weapon, the reasons you can't necessarily hit what you can see are basically independent of brightness (how big N is) if the signal is bright enough.

And for burning a hole in something with a lasar, the target you hit has to have a small area, so that the lasar energy can be concentrated enough to do some damage. (So your target is an upper practical value of M , and that value stays small)

rshowalter - 04:37pm Jul 6, 2001 EST (#6700 of 6705)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

In the "smart rock" way of going at it, the problems are different, but there is "theoretical feasability" subject to some big but checkable IF's.

For a smart rock, IF you have enough accelleration and IF you have stable enough closing controls (and if you talked to me, I think you always could have them) THEN (subject to the big ifs) you can always destroy a target with a "smart rock"

If you have enough smart rocks for your targets, and if you don't have to build something of unobtainium , and if you can pay for it.

These are big if's too.

Back in about 15 minutes with more -- but not a fully finished exposition.

rshowalter - 04:42pm Jul 6, 2001 EST (#6701 of 6705)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

That is, of course, if you see the target, and have all that fancy (and maybe physically impossible to get) equipment ready right when it is needed.

If ranges are large, the accellerations needed for smart rocks are, to say the least, "inconvenient" to obtain.

And seeing the target ain't easy -- and if you're using an IR detector, you can't forget that a little cooling goes a long way (luminosity is T^4th)

And that there are a thousand natural shocks that electronics is heir to.

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