In Monday’s test, the interceptor missile was to target a mock ICBM fired from Kodiak Island, Alaska. The target missile launched at 1:22 a.m. ET Monday without any problems, but the interceptor did not launch.
The previous test, on Dec. 15, failed under almost identical circumstances. The target missile launched, but the interceptor did not. Military officials later blamed that failure on fault-tolerance software that was oversensitive to small errors in the flow of data between the missile and a flight computer. The software shut down the launch; officials said they would decrease the sensitivity in future launches.
You'd think they would have recalibrated the damned software after the first time. But hell, it ain't like it's their money.
Even when the interceptor and target missiles launch properly, and even when the interceptor hits its target, it's a rigged test anyway. The interceptor is programmed with the target's trajectory to begin with. The target doesn't have decoys or aluminum chaff to foil the interceptor's tracking radar, like real missiles have. Because decoys and chaff are such an intractable problem, current NMD technology has focused on boost-phase interception, detecting the missile as it's launched and getting to it before it gets up to speed and into the atmosphere.
But, as we wrote six weeks ago, the Russians may have made our current system obsolete. Here is the Scott Ritter assessment originally linked in that post.
After studying the SS-25 missile for years, the US military believed it finally had a solution in the form of a multitiered antiballistic missile system that focused on boost-phase intercept (firing antimissile missiles that would home in on an ICBM shortly after launch), space-based laser systems designed to knock out a missile in flight, and terminal missile intercept systems, which would destroy a missile as it reentered the earth's atmosphere.
The NMD system being fielded to counter the SS-25, and any similar or less sophisticated threats that may emerge from China, Iran, North Korea, and elsewhere, will probably have cumulative costs between $800 billion and $1.2 trillion by the time it reaches completion in 2015.
However, the Bush administration's dream of a viable NMD has been rendered fantasy by the Russian test of the SS-27 Topol-M. According to the Russians, the Topol-M has high-speed solid-fuel boosters that rapidly lift the missile into the atmosphere, making boost-phase interception impossible unless one is located practically next door to the launcher. The SS-27 has been hardened against laser weapons and has a highly maneuverable post-boost vehicle that can defeat any intercept capability as it dispenses up to three warheads and four sophisticated decoys.
Any bets as to whether our faith-based leadership will take Ritter's ministrations into consideration, or is just full steam ahead because God likes us bestest?
Second verse, same as the first.
No comments:
Post a Comment