Quote:
Originally posted by MagiK:
Umm Rokken, The Reagan Era Starwars has nothing to do with the current plans to deploy ABM's. The Bush ABM system is being developed under some older research and current $$'s being spent on new black projects. Someone Mentioned the SPY-1 Radar system [img]smile.gif[/img] hehe Yep SPY-1's and their upgrades would be just dandy for shooting down incomming warheads, (see Clancy's Red Rabbit Novel, he gets the tech exactly right) The ABM system is not inteneded to be a "false safety blanket to quiet the public" it will be a working system that will not be 100% effective untill further work is done, shit no system ever fielded for anything has ever been 100% effective. Just because it isn't 100% are you saying we should just leave that door wide open? The ABM's will be built, they will be a bargaining chip on any future issues with China and or N. Korea.
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Do the math, MagiK. BM's at terminal velocity travel on the order of 10km/sec. SM-2's travel at about 2000km/hr (or roughly 550m/sec). The BM will reenter at about 100km altitude, leaving the Aegis at most
15 seconds to react. That's detection, identifying, tracking, programming the weapon, and launching - and let's not forget the limits on the Aegis system, only four missiles may be terminally guided at any given time. (That's how many illuminators are on deck) What happens when you have 10 warheads per missile entering the target area? (the number of MIRVs per SS-20). Could get ugly quickly.
It just isn't possible with todays technology; the only reason SDI had even a
hope of succeeding was the orbital detonation-lasers and hunter/killer satellites - more time to react, and they hit the BM's when they are travelling the slowest, during the orbital phase. Once a few billion was spent trying to make it work, and coming up with nothing they basically had no hope of successfully building an ABM system.
I just realized that I've heard about the tests they mention in the article, about a year ago. Interestingly enough, the tests were rigged - they kept failing, but the heads of the project wanted success so they just kept skewing the parameters of the test in favour of the system until they got a success. (eg, the firer knew when the missile was coming, where it was coming from, and they didn't have to id and arm the system first)
In the real world, the Aegis system is
never left on automatic, since the disaster with the Vincennes. This would be required to have any hope at all to stop
any incoming ballistic weapons.
Edit> for math...
[ 12-18-2002, 07:47 PM: Message edited by: Sir Krustin ]