Posted on 09/06/2006 12:40:40 PM PDT by Paul Ross
The news about the successful missile defense test conducted Friday by the Defense Department came at an opportune moment. Not only do we have constant reminders from North Korea and Iran of the importance of this program, but the program itself has been in real need of a boost, because congressional appropriations have been lagging.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
It is true that the ground-based mid-course defense system that the United States has been building in Alaska and California is too limited in scope. The United States currently has a grand total of 11 land-based interceptors. In addition, according to Gen. Henry Obering, director of the Missile Defense Agency, in congressional testimony last spring that the United States has just 10 interceptor missiles aboard AEGIS cruisers. As encouraging as the success of Friday's test is, this is clearly too thin a defense. What we have is known as a "limited defense capability," and it is clearly that.
The opinion makes a strong case to push on right away to deploying the space-based Brilliant Pebbles.
Once a missile carrying MIRV's has released it's warheads, it probably too late. These missiles often release decoy's as well as real warheads. There is no current way of determining which is which. Booster or mid-course interception is clearly the way to go probability wise
If you know their location, of course. If they get ahold of Russian RT-2PM - SS-25 mobile ICBM launchers (which can fire small ICBM's) make in-flight interception much more feasible.
Paul:
There was a more recent article, like a month ago, stating that 2 more Aegis ships were deploying with Standard-3's. We have probably 2-3 times the number of seaborne ABM's than this article states, since the number of platforms went from 1 to 4 very recently.
That would just prior to launch phase. Absolutely the ideal time.
Actually this article is from today. I suspect you're right that the opinion howver may be slightly dated in info, but not by much. It's got the general limitations pegged. As for 2-3 tiumes the number of SM-3s, that may be possible. But it remains a glaring fact that this is just grossly inadequate. We have 80 or so Aegis cruisers. And only just now three that can engage ballistic missiles?
The number eight comes to mind. Maybe that is the number on the way plus the ones already outfitted with the ABM system.
Most likely. It seems that the schedule only just recently got bumped up. There has been grumblings in the Navy of antipathy against Naval NMD by the Gordon Englund in the DOD. [He was the one who killed TBMD for example, and has said no to the fix to the SM-3 so it has a decent range and closing velocity ] But that pretext of "service rivalries"...as real as they can be, just rings hollow to me when you get up to the Deputy Sec.Def position.
Well, I suspect it's a lot more than slipping the missile in the VLS cell. I'm sure that the AEGIS radar & combat system needs a considerable face-lift to be capable of being anthing more than a 'shooter'.
As I understand it, the primary adaptation required is a software upgrade...which is broadly transferrable to the rest of the fleet. Hardware-wise, the major requirement is for the transition to the SM-3...with the exo-atmospheric kinetic warhead. Ideally we should have already gone with the FlightIIa version which was the ORIGINAL DESIGN...but Clinton (via Madeline Albright and Strobe Talbott) killed it, so that it wouldn't be an effective missile defense. Squandering scarce Navy R&D monies...he shrank the upper stage from the conformal 21 inch diameter down to 16 inches...slowing it down and shortening its range substantially. [Pretext: to stay within the ABM Treaty...now defunct.]
Bush however has never approved the fix of this sabotage. Even though it would be a relatively inexpensive program, with a lot of bang for the buck so to speak. Either he has traded it away for phoney political promises made by Putin and China's leaders, or he felt we could simply dither a decade on this. Needs a good kick in the pants...either way.
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