Posted on 08/18/2014 1:05:07 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Call it a billion dollar + scam. Add another congressionally funded $225 million tax dollars. Expect millions more on request.
In April 2002, noted MIT physicist Theodore Postol headlined his Technology Review article "Why Missile Defense Won't Work."
The notion is more hoax than possibility. His reasoning was detailed and technical. What's supposed to work doesn't as claimed
Hitting and destroying a missile with another one isn't possible. It may never be other than occasional lucky exceptions. Claims otherwise are fabricated to maintain funding and deceive populations into believing they're safe.
According to Postol, "(t)his should be of profound concern to every US citizen" and every Israeli one.
"The officers and program managers involved in developing the antimissile system have taken oaths to defend the nation."
"Yet they have concealed from the American people and Congress the fact that a weapon system paid for by hard-earned tax dollars to defend our country cannot work."
The same holds for Israel's Iron Dome. Postol asks is it more sieve than effective missile shield?
Israel's early warning system alone works as intended. It gives people time to shelter for safety.
According to Postol, "the probability of (Iron Dome) destroying the artillery rocket warhead is essentially zero."
The same holds for Iron Dome intercepts "chasing rockets from behind. Occasional Iron Dome intercept attempts arise in a near-vertical trajectory.
"That is the only engagement geometry where (it) has a non-zero chance of destroying the rocket - the artillery rocket warhead," says Postol.
At least 95% of ID attempts fail. During the 1991 Gulf War, fabricated Patriot missile defense success was reported as 96% or greater.
Postol and others at MIT analyzed the data. They called likely Patriot success ZERO.
When Israelis see overhead explosions erroneously called successful intercepts, they're observing ID warhead explosions.
Money spent on ID and other missile defense hoaxes are wasted taxpayer dollars and shekels. People are deceived to believe otherwise. Safety is available in shelters alone.
"I would not spend money on an interceptor that has a near-zero chance of intercepting an artillery rocket," says Postol.
A July 10 erroneous Reuters report is typical of major media lies. It claimed Israel's Iron Dome interceptor has shot down some 90 percent of Palestinian rockets it engaged during this week's surge of Gaza fighting, up from the 85 percent rate in the previous mini-war of 2012."
Postol calls these type reports media deception. "(T)he press needs to engage in more due diligence on these matters," he says.
Verifiable facts, not fabrications, should be reported. People have a right to know. ID intercept attempts fail the great majority of the time.
Crude Hamas rockets with 10 - 20 pound warheads "are not lethal weapons," says Postol.
They don't work as intended. Sheltering in time is the best defense. ID success is a political deception.
At the same time, it's expensive. It's a small missile. It weights about 200 pounds.
It costs $400,000 each, not $20,000 according to some Israeli sources. Raytheon produces it in America.
According to Postol, "(t)here's a significant question there about whether the Congress and the American people have accurate information about what this system is really costing."
Most important is its ineffectiveness. People are deceived. Huge amounts of money are wasted. Big Fat Lies substitute for truth and full disclosure.
Media scoundrels are complicit. They regurgitate fiction, not verifiable facts. Israelis and Americans are willfully deceived.
On July 19, Postol headlined his Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists article "The Evidence that shows Iron Dome is not working."
He explained much of what's covered above. "Close study of photographic and video imagery of Iron Dome engagements with Hamas rockets (currently and during 2012 Pillar of Cloud hostilities) shows that the low casualties…can be ascribed to Israeli civil defense efforts," not ID effectiveness.
Data show its performance hasn't improved from two years earlier. It's a failed system. It's willful deception. It's a hoax.
Effectiveness requires destroying rocket warheads. Their back ends are empty pipes.
If destroyed, warheads will fall and explode on the ground. Destroying a rocket warhead "is a considerably more demanding mission than damaging other parts of the targeted rocket," says Postol.
Success depends on approaching the rocket almost directly head-on. Engaging from the side or back has virtually no chance of success.
Photos of ID contrails show most ID intercept attempts either chase Hamas rockets from behind or the side.
"In both such cases, geometry and the speed of the interceptors and rockets make it extremely unlikely the interceptor will destroy the rocket's warhead," says Postol.
ID can miss many ways. "Because of the uncertainties in the exact crossing speed and geometry of two high-speed missiles, even a perfectly operating Iron Dome fuse may fail to place lethal fragments onto an artillery rocket's warhead," Postol explained.
"In addition, unless the distance between the Iron Dome warhead and the warhead of an artillery rocket is small (roughly a meter or so), there will be a greatly diminished chance that a fragment from the Iron Dome warhead will hit, penetrate, and cause the detonation of the artillery-rocket warhead."
Front-on engagements guarantee no success. Their "geometry merely indicates that an ID interceptor has a greater-than-zero chance of destroying the target-artillery rocket warhead."
Small-sized incoming rockets pose other problems. Successful intercepts are even harder to achieve.
When ID interceptors explode overhead, but have contrails showing they crossed the expected rocket trajectory from behind or either side, "it can be said with a high degree of certainty, that no intercept could have occurred," says Postol.
"It is absolutely clear: There is no evidence in the public record to show that Iron Dome is performing at an intercept rate of nearly 90 percent."
At best, it's 5% or less. Perhaps it's close to ZERO. Willful public deception deprives Israelis of information they need to know.
Transparency is nonexistent. Big Fat Lies substitute for truth and full disclosure.
ID is a hoax. It doesn't worked as claimed. Perhaps it never will. Hitting a missile with another one is like hitting a bullet with one fired at it.
Success may be a scientific impossibility other than occasional lucky exceptions.
Hundreds of millions of dollars are spent on failure. Willful deception keeps people from knowing they've been had. According to Postol:
"In the absence of Israeli data backing claims of Iron Dome efficiency, and based on the unambiguous evidence I have reviewed, a conclusion seems clear:"
"The Israeli government is not telling the truth about Iron Dome to its own population, or to the United States, which has provided the Israeli government with the bulk of the funding needed to design and build the much-heralded but apparently ineffective rocket-defense system."
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Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
His new book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks World War III".
http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html
Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.
Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.
It airs three times weekly: live on Sundays at 1PM Central time plus two prerecorded archived programs.
http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour
Is this guy serious?
10 to 20 pounds of a cheap industrial explosive like TNT will take down a large house with out a problem and kill everyone inside.
He says something like that and thinks people will take his opinions seriously?
Yup, In a way computers SLOW down time.
Get up above a few billion operations/second and it’s like you have all the time in the world. :-)
Exactly, but if the trajectory changes due to any factor, or there isn’t enough time, it should miss. How can the early warning system calculate all those factors and intercept 90% of the time? It seems beyond remarkable. Maybe with multiple intercept points and ID missiles fired, I could see 90%. But they only fire 2 interceptors per rocket, correct? There are so many factors that can change the trajectory. Are the intercept points calculated on launch towards apogee, or after apogee? Or both? Is there enough time?
Burn time, wind, weight and time all factor into calculating the intercept. So if you got one wrong, then you would be making the best estimation. All of this has to be done by a computer, unless you have plenty of time. I imagine Israel doesn’t have much time from launch to impact.
Amen
Burn time, wind, weight and time all factor into calculating the intercept. So if you got one wrong, then you would be making the best estimation. All of this has to be done by a computer, unless you have plenty of time. I imagine Israel doesn’t have much time from launch to impact.
Burn times for the Hamas rockets are short. By the time they reach apogee, they have already burnt out and are decelerating. My understanding is the Iron Dome only fires if the rocket's trajectory appears likely to strike a populated area. It doesn't need to vaporize its target either since knocking it off its initial trajectory will send it over less densely populated areas.
Exactly what set of criteria the Iron Dome uses I don't know but it doesn't seem all that difficult given the computational power available nowdays.
Why does it only work in Israel?
At least, this rate of successful intercept attempts.
Yea, I caught that too. What a absolute moron. No “professor” can HONESTLY be that stupid.
Okay, so he’s intentionally lying to deceive his readers.
The guy should be strapped to a 10 to 20 pound explosive package and see what happens. If he’s telling the truth, he should live. Since it’s not lethal. HIS WORDS, NOT MINE!
These are the people that are teaching our children, and lead our country. Liars, liars all of them.
Open heart surgery was considered undoable, and transplants unthinkable, but technology moved ahead at first with baby steps, then with giant leaps.
I think the same with Iron Drome... who cannot imagine that eventually it will be highly efficient system with lasers that zaps rockets out of the sky like fly swatters....
I see too, robots, like Gork, who will rule areas...
No one talks about this, but Iraq and Afghanistan has battle hardened our military. We fight, and what we’ve learned these years about fighting a war in the 21st century far and away outweighs the left, and some right-wing critics that say Iraq was a dumb war.
At least, this rate of successful intercept attempts.
It works only in Israel for much the same reason no one is willing to buy the Iron Dome... because no one else would tolerate the sort of attacks the Israelis put up with.
He knows it works and he's a Hamas sympathizer.........
One problem that Mr. Postal his is the Israeli BODY COUNT and associated destruction, unless he claims that nearly all 5,000 missiles simply fell on farmland.
Beyond that, trying to discount a 10 to 20 lb. warhead is like trying to discount a 10 to 20 lb. bomb. Yes, it’s not like the Oklahoma Bombing, but NO, you don’t want to be very close. If he wants, how about he have one detonated 200 feet from his (no doubt) very expensive home, and find out just what it can do.
Whada maroon!
I think he was blathering on and on with his point, which seemed to be that ID wasn’t successful at detonating/destroying the inbound *warhead* and that it was simply knocking them off trajectory, and allowing the still live warhead to fall, albeit not along it’s initial trajectory, and still detonate upon impact.
Well, maybe so... But in my stinky opinion, ID should still be credited with the intercept for knocking the inbound missile off it’s trajectory, even if it didn’t manage to destroy the warhead.
I do agree that early warning and shelters are vitally important, but I can’t blame the IDF for doing everything and anything to defend and defeat. The author seems to think that ID should be abandoned based solely on cost/benefit ratio. Well, perhaps the IDF is gathering the same data in order to improve ID. Nothing hones better than practice!
Yes...a math problem solved with high speed data processing.
We’ve been hitting missles with missles since the 1960’s, my father led the team that did it stationed in the Marshall islands.
Israel should agree with the “professor” and keep the technology, and the enormous advances in the technology in the past month, to themselves. Just keep thinking that about ID, professor Luddite.
We need a thread of all the works of God protecting Israel. This is how we glorify His Name among the nations and why Israel exists. How would I gather the info?
By the way, your post caused my monitor to get very blurry.
The press would would scream to all the world about how Israel’s ‘Iron Dome’ is a piece of crap. It would lead the nightly news on every channel. No major news corporation outside of FOX ever has anything positive to say about Israel. They are indifferent at best, openly hostile at worst.
Whenever you hear someone claim the liberal news media is covering for Israel you are listening to someone who is totally out of touch with reality. You are listening to someone who is utterly convinced the Jews run the world. This is the kind of person who, in another life, would support the theory that white people invented AIDS in a lab to kill black people.
A good conversation between you two a joy to read.
At this point I think it’s clear why it works in Israel and no where else: geographical location. Or proximity really.
That entire theater of operations is very small comparatively speaking. So I imagine the calculations needed to make such a system work so effectively there are simpler and more accurate in their predictions. In larger systems (such as intercepting ICBMs) I imagine the calculations and level of precision would be much greater. Too great to make it practical or reliable for our applications.
Think of it this way: it’s the classic case of launching probes to outer space. The longer the distance the greater even smaller error has an impact. This is because of distance. The greater the distance errors have a larger impact.
So in larger systems the smaller errors introduced by random variables such as the rocket fuel not burning as intended or wind speeds not as predicted, these errors compund and conspire against the success rate in larger systems. But in smaller, more localized systems these errors and variables become negligible enough that the two rockets can indeed be made to collide.
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