Posted on 01/31/2018 3:02:08 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Don't be too shocked by the news that a U.S. ballistic missile interceptor test has failed.
First reported by CNN, the Hawaii based test was conducted by the personnel assigned to the Aegis ashore missile defense system. But while the test is obviously a disappointment, the U.S. remains years away from having a missile defense program that can, with high confidence, launch and destroy nuclear warhead armed ballistic missiles.
"High confidence" are the key words here.
U.S. ballistic missile defense capabilities are actually pretty competent nowadays. While they might struggle with advanced countermeasure-equipped ballistic missiles from China or Russia, North Korean missiles would be vulnerable to U.S. attack across the three stages of flight: boost, midcourse and terminal.
The problem is that when you're dealing with nuclear weapons, competency is a poor substitute for "high confidence."
After all, American presidents present and future are unlikely to gamble with a North Korean showdown if they only have 95 percent confidence that the ballistic missile defense system will work. Put simply, the 5 percent margin is small, but it carries with it the prospective cost of a destroyed city and hundreds of thousands of dead Americans.
Kim Jong Un knows this. The North Korean leader's determined push for a nuclear ICBM capability shows that he believes his prospective ability to destroy a U.S. city is all he needs to maximize the political effect of that capability.
All of this speaks to the final issue.
As the months click down to a confident North Korean ICBM+nuclear warhead program, Trump has few good choices remaining. Ultimately, the only real outstanding issue for North Korea's missile scientists is how to construct a re-entry survivable and target-accurate warhead vehicle, and much of that work can be done in the lab.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonexaminer.com ...
As I understand it, this was a test of a new (and ultimately much more capable) variant of the SM3. I believe only the first stage (booster) is shared with the previous version. With that much new development some issues are expected. Yes it would’ve been more confidence building to hit, but you learn from failure too. I wonder just how much detail on the cause will be made public.
“Incoming Snowflake Alert!”
You should work on your vocabulary so as to make meaningful contributions to this forum. But before that, have a point. These actions will help you to avoid making a fool out of yourself.
Where lies the higher confidence level, a newly minted NORK ballistic missile fired from Asia or U.S. ballistic missile defense capabilities?
“Free Republic does not advocate or condone racism...”
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FYI
When self-professed conservatives stop posting comments that are reasonably construed to be promoting racism, then I will stop complaining about them.
Believe me, there are other things I’d rather be discussing. I hate it about as much as dealing with people advocating for abortion or homosexual marriage. These things do not belong on a conservative forum.
I know a few people who were associated with the early ABM project, and my father was one of those people. It worked a lot better than they led people to believe.
I will just say that with 1960’s computer technology, and the intent to have a nuke warhead go off in close proximity to the incoming if it were a warshot, some test intercepts resulted in hard contact hits. That’s hitting a missile launched from Vandenburg heading toward Kwajalein.
Whatever the technicalities involved, I think the lefties back in Reagan’s day were protesting the general idea that we should be able to defend ourselves against sudden attack by Russian missiles, mocking the plan by calling it “Starwars” - and by extension the whole idea that Russia was somehow a threat to us that we had to be wary of - funny how things have flipped with the left now outraged about what the Russians supposedly did to this country during the election - but of course the aim of their rhetoric is still to embarrass a Republican president, so maybe not such a flip after all.....
My first political memories were at age 4 or 5, when I heard jokes about JFK that my Dad repeated (that's right, we weren't Catholic, but at least we weren't in the same camp as the Southern Baptists who preached Papal Plot Conspiracy Theories).
At age 8 or 9, I remember hearing hushed whispers about these two twins in my class - Barbara and Beverly Aasland were their names - who had parents who were actually going to vote for Barry Goldwater that year!! You know the one - that scary psycho who was hellbent on blowing up every little girl who was out picking daises in the soon-to-be radioactive farmlands of America? This rumor was relayed with such gravitas that I feared putting a target on my back by confessing, "Um, the last I heard, my parents are planning to vote for him too".
When I first started REALLY actively following politics at around age 10 or 11, the big debate over Vietnam was "Escalation? Or De-escalation?" That phase lasted a year or two, to be replaced with "Maintain current troop levels? Or implement 'Vietnamization' == gradual replacement of US combat troops with ARVN troops?"
Another big issue was over the Dem's growing determination to curb 2nd Amendment rights. But the MSM buzzword back then wasn't "assault rifles," but rather "Saturday Night Specials," by which they meant cheap handguns for sale in urban areas. Don't remember what Saturday had to do with it!
2 or 3 years after that, I found myself unable to make a dent in 1 or 2 of my fellow High School students' absolute conviction that the only danger to the world was the US's nuclear arsenal. The answer to world peace was for America to unilaterally disarm. Honest! They sincerely believed that the SOLE REASON the USSR & China maintained large nuclear arsenals was as self-defense against the US, and that if we put down our weapons first, they would soon join us, and the world would live happily ever after.
Of course, these very same fellow students assured me in at the start of the summer of 1972 that Nixon was going to lose in a landslide to McGovern that Fall. Well yes, it WAS a landslide - 49 out of 50 states! They got that part right at least. Heh heh!
To allow us to spin what we want the “others” to think - can’t hide such a test with all the satellites up there...
Well I cannot complain. Just the thought of that individual shortens my temper. Apologies to the Administrator
Just to be clearer than my post was...I was directing the alert at Unlearner and supporting your original post..
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