To follow-up on recent threads about Hit-to Kill Interceptors:

For those interested, this is the national track record in Hit-to-Kill intercepts. There have been four projects (beginning in 1979). Three of these for exoatmospheric intercepts and one for endo (in the air) intercepts. In the language of the defense community these two regions create a layered defense--an overlay (the exo part) and an underlay (the endo part).

Lockheed HOE (Homing Overlay Experiment)--4 flights, 1 hit Lockheed ERIS (Exoatmospheric Reentry Vehicle Interceptor Subsystem)--2 flights, 1 hit Lockheed THAAD* (Theater High Altitude Air Defense)--7 flights, 1 hit Raytheon (Another Exo project)--2 flights, 1 hit

*I might be off one or two on the total number of THAAD flights.

So, the track record is 15 flights and 4 hits. That means, if 15 nuclear warheads were coming, then 11 of them would have gotten to their targets. At least on HOE and ERIS, the faults were found and were fairly easy to fix. THAAD is just a very, very tough problem technically. Don't know what happened on the 2nd Raytheon flight. This body to body hit stuff can be done, but is not trivial.

In any case, neither the exo or endo portions is anywhere near the point where one could make a case for deployment--no matter how much DOD or Bush or anyone else might like it.

This says nothing of countermeasures--balloons or more sophisticated decoys that we KNOW the Russians have.

Michael Munn, PhD Retired, Lockheed Ballistic Missile Defense Chief Scientist

-- Michael Munn (kuti@theriver.com), January 20, 2000

Answers

Now that the Patriot system has been in production and use for something towards a decade, do you have any feel for its common success rate? BTW, Raytheon builds the Patriot, right?

Yes, I realize that we are comparing different kill methodologies and technologies; what I am getting at is what might a common kill rate be after significant debugging.

I'd also not be surprised if a pending deadline (as in believable deployment, from the employees' perspectives) might light a major fire under the process. Right now, probably darn few believe the current DC crew will ever allow even limited deployment.

Finally, can you discuss other alternatives, such as ground-based or airborne-based high energy platforms?

-- Redeye in Ohio (cannot@work.com), January 20, 2000.

Redeye asked:

"Now that the Patriot system has been in production and use for something towards a decade, do you have any feel for its common success rate? BTW, Raytheon builds the Patriot, right?"

I don't know anything really about Patriot. What I do know is that the size of target and its speed is radically different bewteen targets Patriot usually engages and nuclear warheads. Ballistic nukes are coming in at a speed of 3Km/sec plus and have dimensions of on the order one meter in length. I doubt that Patriot is designed to engage these so its intercept ability is near zero.

"I'd also not be surprised if a pending deadline (as in believable deployment, from the employees' perspectives) might light a major fire under the process."

It never has in the past.

"Finally, can you discuss other alternatives, such as ground-based or airborne-based high energy platforms?"

I worked on High Energy Lasers during the 70's and don't know what progress has been made in the interim. This was a very, very difficult problem in MANY technical areas. Don't know if those have been resolved. What little I see on the news (Airborne Laser Lab etc.) suggests to me they are still struggling with the same problems we had way back then.

Michael Munn, PhD.

Retired Lockheed Chief Scientist

-- Michael Munn (kuti@theriver.com), January 20, 2000.

OK, the "light a fire" comment was admittedly absurd, now that I think about it. Been in the midst of too many I.T projects that flamethowers didn't make move any faster. Sorry about that! I didn't mean to consider using Patriot as a substitute. I was wondering what sort of success ratio Patriot is now up to, and thus trying to infer what sort of ratio some years of additional work on these systems might yield. Not to mention looking at the probablities math vis-a-vis multi-layered defensive systems.

Anyhow, thanks for your most well-grounded information!

-- Redeye in Ohio (cannot@work.com), January 20, 2000.

---I was under the impression that Patriots had been purposefully "dumbed down" to conform to some ridiculous "treaty" with the russians and others. Is this the case? Also, on using missiles for defense, it would seem that the russian abm theory on this makes sense if you are going to use any kinetic weapons, they put low yield nukes in theirs, meaning you can get a "hit" without physical contact. Yes, these are nukes, but exploding out of the atmosphere are much less dangerous than in the atmosphere. They already have this system in place, again from what I understand. --lasers, not too knowledgable, but from what I remember, the big problem is thermic expansion due to the use of certain frequencies in the infrared which cause massive heat loss in the atmosphere. "Blooming" I think it's called. I thought the new way was to use different segments of the spectrum, like xray's, to eliminate that problem, which I thought was the main drawback. --also, what is the status of other directed energy weapons, particle beam devices? ---and another, telemetry spoofing? Make them miss, not detonate, fizzle, fail to stage separate, etc? that seems like an intelligent way to go also. --just a layman, who don't want to glow...

p.s. I am of the strong opinion that IF any of these smaller states have A-made public pronouncements of their desire to war on the US, or have expressed any infidel jihad statements, then B-this is prima facie evidence of a threat of war, and we would be completely morally, ethically and legally justified in any and all preemptive strikes on any of their facilities or installations that are engaged in research, production or deployment of weapons of mass destruction, ie, the Israeli example towards Iraq some years back. Also, any of their other command and control facilities.

in other words, threaten me, make a hostile move, you get whacked, and whacked hard and permanent.

wish we had done that with russky land and china land a LONG time ago.

right now, iran, iraq, and north korea are prime examples of where I feel a first strike would be both beneficial and responsible to insure the safety of the US.

fallout from russia and china would have to be taken into consideration, but the longer we wait, the more peril we will be in, because there WILL be a next global war, those states are obviously preparing for it, of that there's no doubt.

-- zog (zzoggy@yahoo.com), January 20, 2000.

THAAD had an additional successful flight test. The last two were the successes...so hopefully, they've learned something!

-- Mad Monk (madmonk@hawaiian.net), January 20, 2000.

Michael,

The people working on the various programs realize that they may be working against the grains of sand in the hour-glass. It would be nice to postpone deployment of a system for another 10 or 15 years, until the system is perfect, but, is it better to deploy a rudimentary system and improve on it, or to wait until it's foolproof before putting it in the field? The answer, of course, depends on whether or not someone shoots at you before you finish development.

-- rocky (rknolls@no.spam), January 20, 2000.

UH----what zog said.

-- Johnny (jljtm@bellsouth.net), January 20, 2000.

"Hit-to-kill" or whatever this "defense" system is called, is a fool's errand. At whatever level it is mounted, it is trivially easy to counter, by doubling, tripling, quadrupling, quintupling the number of missiles in the strike phase. Most of them need not even be nuclear missiles.

Say we deploy 100 anti-missile launchers. They couldn't possibly cope with 500 incoming objects. Some large fraction will arrive on target. If (say) 10% of the lot were nuclear -- end of story. Of course in the meantime we would have launched sufficient weapons to eliminate the attacker's cities. Which said attacker certainly knows we can do. So we'd be back to Mutual Assured Destruction. Which is where we started. After having spent uncounted billions on this cockamamie defense system which can't conceivably get the job done.

Who was it said "We have the best government money can buy"?

And then there's the classic one liner--

"How can you tell an honest judge in Chicago?"

"He stays bought."

-- Tom Carey (tomcarey@mindspring.com), January 20, 2000.

Tom, from what I've read, the Soviet General Staff college absolutely does not , repeat does not, agree with you. Sov general officers are taught that nuclear war is survivable. Period. Then they go to major length to teach how this can be done. Basically, you prepare the military, you prepare industry, and you prepare the populace. Ever hear of whole buried factories in the Urals?

Survivable (to the Soviets) does not mean everyone survives, it means that the nucleus of the country survives, that enough industry to continue the fight survives, and that enough of the population survives to continue the fight and the country.

I don't know the Chinese perspective on these issues, except that Sun Tzu in very general terms teaches that war is only one facet of a generations-long conflict. Business affairs are another facet, for example, as are politics as we know the term. One thing Sun Tzu does teach is that you'd better know your enemy even better than you know yourself. Or don't even try to take them on.

Before responding in this thread I had to go grab my copy of Tom Clancy's "The Cardinal of The Kremlin". I've long been awed by how dialed in to the intelligence community Clancy seems to be. That book dealt in large part with Soviet high-energy weapons systems. And I am remembering that many of the world's greatest theoretical physicists have (alleged to have been from) Russia.

My bottom line? I'm still wading through sections of Bruce Clayton's "Life After Doomsday". If it comes to that, I have to do what I reasonably can to help my loved ones survive. Right?

Or should I concede that without a perfect defense all is hopeless and resort to that exercise some of us were taught during the original Cuban missle crisis -- you know, the one when you bend over, pucker up and kiss your %^*& goodbye? Uh, no thanks. I'm too old and too tired to take major surprises like this in good-natured stride. I need some prep. time!

-- Redeye in Ohio (cannot@work.com), January 21, 2000.

One thing that some of you may be missing is that say we have 100 ABMs and incoming strike of 200 missiles. Say that the ABMs are only 50% effective in stopping incomings. That's 100 less potential warheads to hit targets. If you live in a target area, would you be more reassured that because we couldn't come up with a 90+% effective system, we deployed no system at all. Or would you pray that the warhead that the only 50% effective ABM hit was the one headed your way? Better a 50% chance of a hit than 100% because no one built anything.

Or say that it's a strike from a nation that can only hit us with a few missiles (N. Korea or China). Would you rather lose 10 cities or 5?! Considering the potential human cost and economic loss (how much would it cost to replace San Fransico or Seattle), it may be better to have at least some kind of defense, even if not perfect.

The Soviets have a basic ABM system, and according to some who study the Soviets, it may be more extensive than we realize. We have squat. Both the Soviets have sunk vast amounts of money and labor into insuring that at least most of their industry and population survive a conflict while we have no effective civil defense program at all. They sure believe that they can take us, and when the time is right, they will.

-- Bill (billclo@msgbox.com), January 21, 2000.

"it may be better to have at least some kind of defense, even if not perfect."

This argument ignores the other side's readiness to construe our mounting a missile defense system as preparation for a preemptive strike of our own. The mindset in Russia that "what's foreign is a threat" predates the 1917 revolution by some centuries, and has been reinforced by the last 80-some years of Politburo propaganda. Given that, our violation of the existing treaty can only be seen as a deliberate provocation.

"They sure believe that they can take us, and when the time is right, they will."

Insights gained from remote viewing, perhaps?

If this is the case, one wonders what they're waiting for.

-- Tom Carey (tomcarey@mindspring.com), January 21, 2000.

Mr Carey,

What would you suggest that we do then, since 1) The Russians are paranoid and building a defense might provoke them, and 2) if we build no defense, we invite attack.

The Russians HAVE a defense, even if it isn't perfect. We have NONE.

We could start to deploy a defense, and invite them to have observers to keep an eye on us. We could also give them info about it, so they aren't so damn paranoid. Given the ease with which they get our defense secrets anyways, why not?

Sorry, but if I was a reliable remote viewer, I'd be rather rich by now. Are you?

We've given them lots of foreign aid and money to help dismantle their obselete systems, and they turn around and build nice new ones with the money and claim that they can't afford to dismantle the old ones. We have complied with the terms of the Start II treaty, even though, as I recall, it was NEVER ratified. What else can we do to show good faith? Sheeze.

Seems to me that if you can't calm a paranoid down, and you've gone to great lenghts to placate him, and he still insists on threatening you, you take him out.

Unfortunately, we can't do that either, since we have insufficient firepower, no defenses, and no civil defense. We'd lose terribly. Lose - lose situation.

-- Bill (billclo@msgbox.com), January 21, 2000.

"Lose - lose situation."

And equally so for them. Neither party is willing to commit suicide.

There have been -- and no doubt still are -- individuals on both sides who recommend a preemptive strike, regardless of consequences. Curtis LeMay, for one. So far these people have not prevailed.

-- Tom Carey (tomcarey@mindspring.com), January 22, 2000.

Mr Carey,

If neither side had ABM defenses, nor civil defense, I'd agree with you that the Russians would lose as badly as we would. However, that is not the case.

The Russians have invested billions of dollars equivalent in building massive underground shelters in and around most cities. Most city buildings are required to have blast/fallout shelters under them, or are hardened enough to be shelters. Industry has been decentralized and in some cases, moved underground. Industry that can't be moved has been hardened. The people are required to go through civil defense training.

The Russians have also been storing tremendous quantities of food, enough for most of them to live 3 years underground. Alot of it has been either supplied by us directly, or we've given them the money to buy it.

Do we have comparable preparations for war? Hardly. We can't even get public shelters built and stocked. These preparations, coupled with a ABM system will allow most the Russian population to survive a nuclear strike. I recall reading of a study done back in the 80's by a govt contractor that estimated that in an exchange, the Soviets might lose 5 million people, and the US would lose 150+ million. By a govt contractor now, not some anti-nuke group. The Russians are also not so terribly concerned about losing a few million people; they're expendable.

I don't know why they haven't attacked us yet, as we are quite vulnerable here. I imagine that they want to take us more or less intact, and are waiting til the Chinese are set up to provide more pressure on us, as they are rapidly progressing on.

-- Bill (billclo@msgbox.com), January 22, 2000.