Star Wars and GPS

[Guest Paul Lamble]

Did you see the news that the first successful test of the Star Wars anti-missle system was rigged with a GPS beacon in the target to lead the killer missle to it?

 

http://www.salon.com/news/col/cona/2001/07/31/test/index.html

 

Doesn't say much for the missle defense system if you have to fudge the test, but it sure makes GPS look useful.

 

PL

[Guest k2dave]

I read the artical and would like to know what is a gps beacon? It doesn't state what it is. Our missles are designed to use gps for guidence for parts of their trip (remember the US military developed & deployed the thing and have far better gps equipment)

 

it sounds like the missle acted like a satalite but then wouldn't others be able to pick up the missle on their receiver? If the missle was activally broadcasting it's location/speed to the kill missle then I would think the artical would point that out directly (which it doesn't) I don't think the author has the full story and is speculating. We need more info.

[Guest PneumaticDeath]

It wouldn't surprise me at all if they had a GPSR in the "warhead", hooked up to the telemetry so that they could gauge how well radar was tracking the object, and if there had been a miss, to help diagnose the problem. Unless the kill vehicle was actually using the GPSR to help home in, I don't think it invalidates the test at all.

 

Having said that, I don't believe that the missle defense system will ever be effective enough to be relied upon. A half a dozen articles in Science, Scientific American, and Aviation Week detail all the probelms, and why it would be easy to bypass this defense.

 

-- Mitch

[Guest k2dave]

quote:

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I don't believe that the missle defense system will ever be effective enough to be relied upon.

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but if it saves just one life...

 

I believe it is needed and with advancing technology it will approach 100% effectivness (long term). Also I think that there will be other benefits provided by persuing this technology (not the least of them is not having to worry about stray nukes).

 

But that's just my humble O

[Guest Jebediah]

It does seem to be problematic. However, the same thing was vociferously reported by erudite scientists and politicians about the military value of the cannon and the airplane. It's really embarrassing to be on the wrong end of one of those arguments (remember the pre-Gulf War Patriot missile critics?) as you tend to be remembered forever in history as a shortsighted clown.

 

However I do disagree with Dave's arguments that it is worthwhile if it saves just ONE life. (This one's frequently used to support well-intentioned but wildly impractical schemes - you can justify almost ANYTHING by using it). We may dislike the moral ambiguity of cost-benefit analyses in human life, but that's the name of the game when resources are finite. You can't buy everything. It better save a lot more than just one more life with the system if we're to allocate resources also badly needed elsewhere (readiness training, retention of personnel, parts stockpiles etc., etc.)

[Guest navdog]

I guess we shouldn't complain about our GPS units accuracy or ability to keep a signal lock if the military can't use GPS to hit a missle.

[Guest PneumaticDeath]

quote:

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It's really embarrassing to be on the wrong end of one of those arguments (remember the pre-Gulf War Patriot missile critics?) as you tend to be remembered forever in history as a shortsighted clown.[/b]

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Remember the reports that came out about 6 months after the war the said the patriot missile system was far less effective that reports during the war made it seem. Turns out that the patriot "theater missle defence system" scored a kill less than half the time, but the incoming missles were so inaccurate that most people didn't notice. It made good television, but not a good defense.

 

In response to other points, stray nukes aren't the ones that the NMD will protect you from. The strays the US is worried about are mostly the "backpack" tactical devices that have been leaking out of the former soviet republics for about a decade. There were no good records to begin with, they were under the direct control of low-paid junior officers, and it's very had to tell how many are missing, but most people who study the problem estimate that at least several hundred are missing. NMD will only protect against ICBM's, and only a handful of countries have those. Even if you make it 100% effective (which is almost impossible to do), there are a lot of other delivery mechanisms that will not be cover (depressed trajectory sea-lauched missles, cruise missles, some guy driving a car in from mexico or canada..)

 

I'm sure some very interesting technology will come out of the research, but we make just start a whole new arms race.

 

-- Mitch

 

[This message has been edited by PneumaticDeath (edited 01 August 2001).]

[Guest Jebediah]

I do remember those reports, but I view them in their proper context. Like the Monday morning quarterbacking of elevated Gulf War casualties, revision of figures makes NO difference to analysis of the final result - a resounding military success. There is always someone, usually a journalist, willing to make an unfounded conclusion based on new information. Makes for good copy, but when you think about it critically, the premise falls apart.

 

Even if we accept less than 50% kills (and this lump sum figure conveniently fails to note the Patriot's increasing accuracy over the course of the battle as its effective envelope became known), the weapon saved quite a few lives. Scuds were more than accurate enough to hit populated areas, like Israeli cities. Imagine what a single warhead that wasn't destroyed could do, detonating in a massively populated urban area. Naturally, the weapons have been improved since then. Technology stands still for no one.

 

I note the IDF, not known for enthusiastic reception of complex weapons that don't work has not changed their positive view of the Patriot one bit. If the Israelis think they're good, they're good. And most of the congresspeople who voted against the Patriot aren't around anymore.

 

[This message has been edited by Jebediah (edited 02 August 2001).]

[Guest Rubberhead]

The missle defense system doesn't need to work or work well. The world just has to think it works.

[Guest k2dave]

Jebediah when I said "if it saves just one life..." I was speaking toung and cheek - I like to use this because people who are against missile def. often use that saying to justify other gov't expenditures (as well as taking away our civil rights) no matter the cost (or cost analysis).

 

But I do believe we should have a missile def. and the tech. is approaching the point where we can.

[Guest PneumaticDeath]

>quote:

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Even if we accept less than 50% kills (and this lump sum figure conveniently fails to note the Patriot's increasing accuracy over the course of the battle as its effective envelope became known), the weapon saved quite a few lives. Scuds were more than accurate enough to hit populated areas, like Israeli cities.

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Sure, scuds could hit cities, which were militarily irrelivant (an action designed to draw Israel into the war in hopes that the coalition would fall apart.)

 

But scuds hit relatively few military targets, not because of the patriots effectiveness, but because they were lousy at hitting targets less than a mile across. Once of the few sucessful kills actually ended up killing people (in Haifa I believe) as the wreckage rained down on the city. The missle most likely would have missed populated areas had it not been shot down.

 

quote:

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Imagine what a single warhead that wasn't destroyed could do, detonating in a massively populated urban area. Naturally, the weapons have been improved since then. Technology stands still for no one.

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I know what such a warhead could do. It's the family business. My father has been helping design them since before I was born, and although he can't tell me any details, it's been a subject of some facination for me since my childhood and I've studied it a fair amount. The physics is realtively straigtforard, even though my formal training was in astrophysics, the physics of stars and the physics of fusion devices are very similar (one prominent weapons designer said that the only difference was dealing with solids in the magnetohydrodynamics modeling code.)

 

The proposed NMD (or SDI resurected), deals almost exclusively with ICBMs because they are the backbone of the MAD policy. However, none of the programs I've seen (brilliant pebbles, fusion pumped Xray lasers, high velocity intercept, etc.) will deal with other delivery mechanisms, which are the ones likely to be used by "rouge nations".

 

If you read NFS (national federation of scientists) bullitens from 8 or 9 years ago, they went over a handful of ways that the high velocity intercept system could be defeated, and none of them is high-tech or difficult to implement. And it won't stop a sub-lauched missle, or a cruise missle, or any of the likely terrorist senarios.

 

The only good defense I've heard against ICBMs was one proposed by one the weapons designers that I know through my father. It's cheap, easy to implent, and 100% effective. Put about 20 dump trucks full of sand into low earth orbit in various orbital inclinations. Anything leaving or entering the atmosphere would be sanded away to nothing almost immediately. Of course, the down side is that it means no more satellite communications, or space probes, etc.

 

quote:

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I note the IDF, not known for enthusiastic reception of complex weapons that don't work has not changed their positive view of the Patriot one bit. If the Israelis think they're good, they're good. And most of the congresspeople who voted against the Patriot aren't around anymore.

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I'll admit that the patriot was (is) very popular, but that doesn't make it effective... it makes it well marketed.

 

-- Mitch

 

[This message has been edited by PneumaticDeath (edited 02 August 2001).]

[Guest Jebediah]

I haven't made my mind up yet on the strategic anti-missile system. It is problematic as I mentioned. But I keep hearing the echoes of those learned men from the past who also spoke of the impracticality and enormous costs of the airplane, the repeating rifle, or the breechloading fieldpiece. If you're right and it's another Sgt. York, you'll have satisfaction. If you're wrong, well..

 

The original news story on Patriot revised target statistics was broken as many other pop news stories are today, a shallow hit piece that glossed over the Patriot's improved performance curve and sought, like the 'revised Gulf casualty' stories, to over-dramatize events by shaking a previously held popular opinion. Standard-issue journalism. Too many of the learned scientists quoted on the news or in articles have too many ties to think tanks and hidden agendas to suit me. There is a distinct lack of military experience in many of the authors, and I don't mean has-been admirals who got turned down for promotion and now seek revenge.

 

As to the inference that the Patriot was a missile whose only merit is good marketing, I think that defies credulity in the face of its overall performance. Cities and civilian populations are not militarily irrelevant; since Roman times, soldiers have acknowledged the political nature of war, and even a cursory glance at Gulf War history showed the importance of the Patriot batteries in Israel. Wars start over civilian casualties - how can avoidance of war or limiting expansion of a violent conflict be 'irrelevant'? Would we go back to 1950's theories of massive theater atomic warfare on the theory that enemy civilian casualties and the impact on alliances, power alignments, etc. are 'irrelevant'?

 

When you can show me an IDF colonel that assigns badly needed men and materiel to Patriot batteries based solely on whizbang marketing, I'll listen.