[dighton]

It’ll never work! It’ll never work! It’ll never work!

(Indescribably cool stuff.)

[Tulsa Ramjet]

wait till the ABL comes online. you'll be droolin' then.

[RHINO369]

It might never, the physics department at my university (university of illinois at urbana)claimed that in order for this to be effective we'd have to launch the counter missiles within 2 minutes of launch. That means you'd have to give the command of the system to a local officer at the sites.

Not a problem except if some air force officer mistakes a Russian space mission for a ICBM we could get into trouble. Or even worse we could launch when nothing was there, and Russia could interpret the counter missile as a ICBM headed towards them.

[aculeus]

Really cool.

BTW, isn't interesting how the "everyone hates us" claque always manages to ignore one billion Indians? The USSR had a lock on that country not long ago and our really really dumb President has managed to turn them into a virtual ally.

[Billthedrill]

Thanks for the ping. All you really need to know to realize that this is nearly there are two words: "post-apogee intercept." You may absolutely depend on Japan being vitally interested. They've already been overflown once. That we know about.

Back when I was a Navy missileer three decades ago a "skin-to-skin" at maximum range was the ne plus ultra of the field. It is simply hard to explain how difficult this is or how good you have to be to bring it off. My congrats to all involved. We may be needing this, and if we do, we'll need it badly.