Posted on 12/03/2017 5:37:46 PM PST by blam
Camp Pendleton sure as hell is! Bremerton was the only one I listed outside California.
I thought you were referring to Pendleton, Oregon.
Vandenberg Air Force Base is in Santa Barbara County, Camp Pendleton is in San Diego County, and Moffet Field is in Santa Clara County. Last time I looked those were all in California.
Vandenberg might be a good place to start. The golf course at McChord.
I remember playing football in the median of the old
Southfield Road in western Detroit in the mid- to late 50s. There was a NIKE battery active there as well. All the boys wondered why the Army had set up a missile battery so far inland. A couple of the older lads wanted to know if they got drafted, could they get stationed so close to home. Idiots.
Moffet is in a hole and crowded. Two of the best sites would already be half prepped, former Ft. Barry and Mill Valley AFS.
My favorite feature was the nuclear warhead. No hit-to-kill required. Just get in the general area and vaporize the incoming warhead with a nuke, along with decoys and anything else in the RV.
While in the AF my wife’s father worked on the Genie missile with a 1.5kt nuclear warhead. Except it was made to be fired air to air into incoming Soviet bomber formations.
While visiting the Atomic Energy Museum in Las Vegas a few years ago she was excited see her father’s initials on the side of the deactivated one they have there.
Why bother?
The west coast now belongs to Mexico - let them defend it.
Yes,
THAAD can do what you say, and the real performance will not be published openly. But if THAAD was the primary protection, then it would be one or two per major metro area. Patriot is even shorter in range and the one in Alaska is the long range. So we are designed for a long, mid, and short range multiple defense system. We would need them all.
And do not forget the Aegis, they can patrol the coast where ever a target needs defense. My understanding is that they are in the THAAD range of missile defense.
One final comment, these systems are not designed for long term stand off defense, they are for the one or two missiles that might get launched in a rogue government launch or an accidental launch. So these would not be a defense if we thought we would “live” with NK being armed. The concept for that is mutual assured destruction, something that we are not sure NK would understand.
We had defenses up and down the California coast, many created during WWII. Some were upgraded for the Cold War. But as you say, most were dismantled by the early 1990s. Some have plaques on the remains of the defensive positions, at least the ones that are in now state and federal park systems around San Francisco. Come to think of it, most of the military bases around here were shut down and we're sitting ducks for an invasion (once the Chinese build up their navy so we're okay for a decade or two).
There is a park called Nike park in Naperville (west of CHIcago)so named because of its past military function.
Too bad the Presidio of Monterey was turned into a national park. But the elimination of San Francisco might be beneficial (semi-sarc.)
With all due respect, are you sure about that?
I am pretty sure the Presidio in Monterrey is not a national park...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidio_of_Monterey,_California
The Presidio of Monterey, located in Monterey, California, is an active US Army installation with historic ties to the Spanish colonial era. Currently it is the home of the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center (DLI-FLC). It is the last Presidio in California to have an active military installation.
I’m in the Seattle area and near a park named “Nike Park.”
Shortly after 9-11 they took an old Nike bunker/silo and turned it into some sort of command facility. I read about it in the paper. When I mentioned it to a friend (old-style cop with a great knowledge of the whole local area) he played dumb. “Well - there aren’t any near that town...”. So I’m guessing that whatever it is must be pretty important. (Although pretty sure it isn’t an anti-missile site ..... yet!).
Thank you for your expansion on THAAD & Aegis details.
I stand corrected. I confused the Presidio of San Francisco, which was turned into a National Park with the Presidio of Montery. “1994: Sixth Army was inactivated and the Presidio closed as an active U.S. Army installation per BRAC. The Presidio was transferred to the National Park Service.
1996: Park becomes privatized through congressional action.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidio_of_San_Francisco
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Prsf_Presidio_map.jpg
Fort Ord was also closed in 1994, it would probably have been where a THAAD battery could have been posted vice the Presidio of San Francisco because of more space.
The only available space on Presidio of S.F. appears to have been where the golf course was located.
Are you familiar with the old missile launch site and (a few miles north) tracking station above Pacifica?
I think it was Nike, but who knows; it has been completely stripped of anything interesting.
You might find this site as fascinating as I did;
According to this source, not only is THAAD capable of defending against ICBMs but the AEGIS SM-3 missile is quite a bit more capable than THAAD, and the whole of the US can be defended by just a few missile ships.
I don’t know if this is accurate information, but
Take it for what it is worth.
Thanks for that link; great photos!
I don’t know how good THAAD is but I worked on part of it and it is very effective in the testing so far.
At any rate some west coast protection would not be a bad idea.
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