Iran Building Missle Launch Facilities in Venezuela

[piece-itpete]

Heck the Pres of Iran is just a theocrats tool anyway. I enjoy internal discord there.

Getting Osama yo Momma was a great thing, Obama deserves the credit, but it's hardly a foriegn policy coup! Now getting Assad to step down peacefully, or a Palestinian solution...

Pete

[flacaltenn]

If anyone thinks that those 2 kooks will do the "mutual assured destruction" math correctly, and be deterred by our retaliation.. Forgitaboutit. Amadinajob, doesn't even care about Jordan and Syria being "collateral damage" from a strike on Israel..

The ground-based system concept for BMD was much better in handling the threat of "multiple warhead" vehicles and decoys. The Navy Aegis stuff is good in tactical theatre against simple single warheads on Intermed. and Short Range missiles. That's where it's been really tested. Any real shield for ICBMs needs multiple radars and a lot more resources than those cruisers probably have.

For ICBMs in a real nuclear conflict -- The US still has close to zero defense capability -even with Aegis - even with warning. Lefties should keep that in mind when they're putting their kids to sleep. It's DEFENSE that we SHOULD spend our money on. Not Offense. Any true Liberal would tell you that..
{I worked on stuff related to this for about 5 years in my "spookier days"}

BTW: FinnBow -- The Reagan Star Wars concept called for laser and even nuclear weapons as intercept vehicles, but the wieny winers only let us throw rocks at the incoming NUCLEAR weapons.. You pack a WARHEAD on those kinetic kill vehicles and see what the intercept scores would be.... Whiners like that remind of the British tut-tutting about us shooting at them from the trees..

[BlueStreak]

Originally Posted by whell

I saw that. I don't know what weirds me out more: Having Ahmadinejad as Prez of Iran, or the theocrats re-asserting themselves.

Heck of a task, trying to determine who is the lesser evil there aint it?

Dave

[finnbow]

Originally Posted by flacaltenn

The ground-based system concept for BMD was much better in handling the threat of "multiple warhead" vehicles and decoys. The Navy Aegis stuff is good in tactical theatre against simple single warheads on Intermed. and Short Range missiles. That's where it's been really tested. Any real shield for ICBMs needs multiple radars and a lot more resources than those cruisers probably have.

And therein lies the problem. Star Wars has had very limited success in testing against known, predictable launches of single dummy warheads. It has no demonstrated capacity against MIRV's. It has alway been (and will remain) easier to trick or overwhelm Star Wars than it will be to develop and field a fool-proof system.

As for the Aegis, while it is indeed designed to defend against short and intermediate range missiles, it has been (relatively) successful by virtue of honing in on said missiles in the launch phase, not while they're in space traveling at several thousand MPH.

Hitting an ICBM in space has been likened to hitting a bullet with a bullet. Perhaps possible, on occasion if you're talking about hitting one incoming bullet with many bullets heading the other direction. It's pretty much impossible to hit every bullet spewed out from a machine gun (i.e., multiple MIRV's).

Keep in mind, this thread applies to Venezuela's potential missile threat. The article says that these are short/intermediate range missiles in a country with a coastline on the Carribean. It seems to me to be exactly what Aegis is designed to counter.

[piece-itpete]

Regarding testing, if it was say a cell phone it would've been tested a million times before release. A couple intercept failures and it's impossible

If you can hit a RPG with a bullet you can hit an ICBM with a rock. Haven't you guys seen RED?

Pete

[finnbow]

I suppose, in a nutshell, is Star Wars worth its expense (hundreds of billions) and its destabilizing effects when it can never be relied upon to shoot down multiple inbound MIRV's with 100% efficiency?

[piece-itpete]

100% efficiency is the baseline??

Pete

[finnbow]

Originally Posted by piece-itpete

100% efficiency is the baseline??

Pete

When dealing with incoming nukes, yes. A 10 megaton warhead can ruin your day.

Worse yet, ten MIRV's with 5 warheads apiece. I doubt seriously if our success ratio would even be 20%, particularly if numerous dummy warheads were deployed. 40 warheads could ruin lots of peoples' days.

[piece-itpete]

So, if we can't get 100%, 0% works just fine

Pete

[whell]

Originally Posted by piece-itpete

Heck the Pres of Iran is just a tool anyway.

Fixed it for you!