U.S. reports successful sea-based missile shield test

Reuters via Yahoo! ^ | Thursday December 11, 2:17 pm ET

[So Cal Rocket]

WASHINGTON, Dec 11 (Reuters) - A missile from a U.S. Navy Aegis cruiser knocked out a dummy warhead over the Pacific Thursday, the fourth intercept in five such tests of a sea-based anti-missile shield, the Pentagon said.

The Standard 3 missile fired from the Lake Erie off Kauai in the Hawaiian islands "successfully engaged the target with hit-to-kill technology" about four minutes after the target was launched, said Chris Taylor, a spokesman for the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency.

The last test, on June 18, failed. The sea-based defense is to be integrated into a multilayered missile shield. President George W. Bush has ordered that an initial operating capability be fielded by Sept. 30, 2004, notably to defend against a perceived threat from North Korea.

Lockheed Martin Corp., based in Bethesda, Maryland, is the prime contractor for the Aegis weapon system and vertical launch system installed in Aegis cruisers and destroyers.

Raytheon Co. builds the Standard 3 missile.

The test on Thursday was designed to evaluate selected long-range surveillance and track functions of the Aegis system, the Missile Defense Agency said.

The Pentagon plans to spend $50 billion over the next five years to develop a missile shield, including components based on land, at sea, in the air in laser-firing Boeing Co. 747 aircraft, and in space.

[Frank_Discussion]

Yeah! Hot dang!

[Coop]

FYI

[Semper Paratus]

And Dean will re-introduce the ABM Treaty if elected.

[Southack]

[Poohbah]

But everyone knows that the Clinton NMD architecture was deliberately designed to not work so that the ChiComs could nuke us with impunity, especially since we gave them the same technology that our own missiles have, even though our missiles don't actually work...

I swear, logic is just wasted on some folks.

[demlosers]

Cool!

[FairOpinion]

I am so glad the test was successful! This will shut up the neysayers.

More interesting info from another article:

"Last December, President Bush (news - web sites) ordered the Pentagon (news - web sites) to have ready for use within two years a bare-bones system for defending American territory, troops and allies against attack by ballistic missiles, calling such action an essential step toward providing defenses against threats such as missiles armed with chemical, biological or nuclear warheads.


Under Bush's plan, 20 Standard Missile-3 interceptors would be placed aboard three Navy ships with improved versions of the Aegis system that uses radar to detect and track hostile missiles and cue on-board weapons to intercept them.


This sea-based system was outlawed under the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, but Bush gained the flexibility of testing it when the United States withdrew from the treaty last year. The plan also calls for the development of ground-based interceptors. "

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=519&ncid=718&e=6&u=/ap/20031211/ap_on_re_us/missile_defense_test

[Servant of the 9]

"successfully engaged the target with hit-to-kill technology"

But .....But ...... But, I thought the Council of Concerned Liberal Scientists said it couldn't be done.

NO FAIR, make 'em stop. This is suposed to be too hard.

/SARCASM

So9

[anymouse]

No, x42 line-item vetoed proven SDIO space-based interceptor missile defense enabling technology projects (Brilliant Pebbles, Clementine II and Delta Clipper/DC-X) and reorganized SDIO into an ineffective BMDIO.

Meanwhile he enabled US companies like Motorola, Hughes and Loral to transfer missile delivery technology to the ChiComs by giving them techtransfer waivers over the objection of rational people that understood the national defense implications.

Whether his motives were due to an affinity for his socialist brothers in Mao suits, or the large bags of cash they provided to the DNC or just plain indifference, he still compromised US national security. We are poorer in many ways because of x42's blind hatrid of President Reagan's dream of a World free from nuclear blackmail and terrorism.

We still aren't there yet, but this is one step towards President Reagan's vision. It is too bad that we don't go back to basics and impliment space-based interceptors, rather than doing things the hard way from the ground.

[Paul Ross]

The Aegis NMD approach is NOT the Clinton plan. Clinton was expressly limiting the NMD site to one installation to conform to the old ABM Treaty which he venerated as Holy Writ. His schills that he appointed to the DOD and at State (e.g., Strobe Talbott) were consciously and expressly sabotaging the SM-3 development so that it would not be a realistic strategic missile interceptor...slowing it down, making it smaller, shorter range. All of these policy-driven acts of sabotage have had to be 'undone'. You should know this, since you purport to be in the field.

Any way, if all the 'stops' were pulled out on the Aegis NMD deployment (as I advocate), we would already have this thing deployed...not just being tested.

The specter of GWB shamefully echoing BeelzaBubba's "Three No's" performance for his Chinese puppet-masters should be burning in your brain.

[GOP_1900AD]

The flaws in overall US geopolitical strategy which were set in place in 1945, and have festered since, will soon come to a head IMHO. We are in arrogant defiance of both Von Clausewitz and Sun Tzu. Like a gambler on a Las Vegas roll, we've been both incredibly lucky since '45, and, have actually been played bigtime, leading us slowly but surely into the present box canyon. Our gambler's luck has led us to incorrectly endorse the validity of the theories imbued in the UN and globalist economics which are the key assumptions behind many of our initiatives. The questioning which should have occured if not in 1948, then in the early 1950s, based on what the Korean War told us, was never allowed to fully develop. We'll see, indeed, we'll see!

[Paul Ross]

And Dean will re-introduce the ABM Treaty if elected.

National Security Danger Bump.

Worth pointing out to the most vexed of the Libertarians, and fellow constitutionalists who are breathing fire to abstain from voting for GWB.

The consequences are so dire, it is frightening. Which needs to be stressed to Karl Rove and Andrew Card when they so cavalierly risk their base with alienating triangulations.

As even the democrat Zell Miller has said, we need to put party aside and do the things the nation requires. Such sensibility is completely lost on the RATs.

As for the GOP, its leaders should all be forced to read about USAF Col. John Boyd.

In his biography “Boyd, The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War,” Robert Coram reports John Boyd’s “To Be or To Do” speech, which the colonel would give his disciples. Doing the right thing would neither ensure success nor garner rewards, Boyd said.

“One day you will come to a fork in the road. And you’re going to have to make a decision about what direc- tion you want to go.”

Boyd would raise his hand and point. “If you go that way you can be somebody. You will have to make com- promises and you will have to turn your back on your friends. But you will be a member of the club and you will get promoted and you will get good assignments.” Then Boyd would raise his other hand and point another direction. “Or you can go that way and you can do something — something for your country and for your Air Force and for yourself.

“If you decide to do something, you may not get pro- moted and you may not get the good assignments and you certainly will not be a favorite of your superiors. But you won’t have to compromise yourself. You will be true to your friends and to yourself. And your work might make a difference.”

Boyd would pause and stare. “To be somebody or to do something. In life there is often a roll call. That’s when you will have to make a decision. To be or to do? Which way will you go?”

[DannyTN]

"We are in arrogant defiance of both Von Clausewitz and Sun Tzu."

You want to explain that?

[Alamo-Girl]

Bump!

[GOP_1900AD]

Yes, quite simply, since 1945 we have based our contingency planning on only a limited set of war scenarios and have essentially hoped that MAD would preclude another major great powers conflict. On top of that, since the 1980s, we have increasingly conned ourselves into believing that we have passed beyond the end of history and are therefore no longer subject to its rules. Our "War on Terror" conveniently skirts the harsh reality that major nation states such as the PRC and CIS ensemble are the real powers behind both so called "rogue states" and the terrorists. You see, if we embraced that reality, then the whole notion of a "world community" and its relative, the so called "global economic system" would be dashed to pieces. These things are the latest utopia. As we know, utopias are not real. Hard reckoning is on the way.

[Light Speed]

Like Russia...China is sssswimming in U.S. dollars..and the tech is comming to their feet like something out of an overdramatized Hollywood movie.

Party officals slot the corporate crowd....the intrigues never end as spying/deception and theft go.

Now the concern is that China can really do **Nano technology....the reality is they can place units of small scale in space which can hunt down U.S. satillites and piggyback them to their deaths on command via detonation...or simply introduce nano technology on command which would eradicate the units software and leave it as useless as a hand crank washing machine.

[risk]

NMD bump -- see http://www.raytheon.com/feature/sm3/ for some fluffy PR on the SM3 ("The kinetic warhead is based on technology developed during the Lightweight Exo-Atmospheric Projectile (LEAP) program.")

[DannyTN]

Ah, I see. So we have failed to "Know your Enemy" as directed by Sun Tzu and I'm not familiar with Von Clausewitz's writings but I take it they had to do with utopias.

[Paul Ross]

As I said above. This should already be deployed.