Was talking to a friend who follows missile defense closely about it just now. He recalls that THAAD suffered something like seven straight failures back in the 1990s. Clinton defense official John Hamre was going around Capitol Hill telling people the program was going to be cancelled. A bunch of Republican senators pushed back and the program stayed alive, achieving its first intercept in June 1999. It’s been onwards and upwards from there as the interceptor has gotten smaller, more reproducible, and more technologically sophisticated. Impressively, THAAD can operate both inside and outside the atmosphere.
Hello Kim? This THAAD’s for you!
Stand by for incoming rhetoric about how how one test does not prove the Star Wars defence works but one failed attempt (that’s why they call it a test, eh) means the whole Star Wars program won’t work.
NEVER underestimate the resolve and inginuity of Uncle Sam.
THAAD’ll make for some head turning in the ME and NK.
This is an engineering problem and with enough time, minds and money the problem gets solved.
Americans are VERY good at solving engineering problems.
Just a matter of time. And if it is a difficult thing to solve then all the better. It means when they do it will take someone, like China, time and money to do it.
Now just because you have good armour it doesnt make you invulnerable.
Texas Canuck:
I think I would rather have THAAD than the space based or 747 based lasers any day of the week.
I like stuff that has a hope of working in my lifetime!!
Given the NK and Iranian proclivity for launching wildly into oblivion this stuff will likely get fast tracked for functional deployment ASAP.
I gather that is why the US defence budget went from 296 billion under Clinton to 512 billion as recently approved by Bush.
Watch for the AEGIS system to get a ‘push’ which will be deployable on Navy ships thereby expanding the missile defence to anywhere the Navy can sail.
it will make heads turn in the ME but it wouldnt make CBCpravda unless debris fell on a midwife or they could relate it to global warming.
lets hope they never install one around CBC headquarters.
I don’t believe it.
Jack Layton said missile defense wouldn’t work.
“Jack Layton said missile defense wouldn’t work.”
—Jack Layton is an unapologetic idiot. He’ll say the stupidest things to get moonbat votes… which is why pretty much only moonbats vote NDP, which is why the NDP cannot ever win power… thank goodness!
Now, what do the opponents of BMD have to say now that it’s been proven to work and the bugs are being worked out, as I knew they would?
Hey, leftists: it works! Now why not have it? Do y’all want Klappin’ Kimmy of Korea to lob a nuke onto your little moonbat neighborhood and wipe y’all out? Or wouldn’t it be nice to keep the nasty nukes away?
CS,
pssssst….there’s no leftists at this blog
It can only be a matter of time before a columnist from the NYT breaks a story that the whole thing was faked – sort of like the moonwalks, you know. Or, if they’re really on their game, disclosure of the launch locations and info required to jam the THAAD!
Hans : “I think I would rather have THAAD than the space based or 747 based lasers any day of the week.”
Actually, I was thinking more of sharks with frickin’ laser beams attached to their heads. {with applogies to dr. Evil}
Seriously, I’d feel safer with several different modes of defence as in backchecking forwards, defencemen and a goalie.
“Jack Layton said missile defense wouldn’t work”.
With missile defense looking like it just might work, I am wondering how we’ll do with Jack Layton defense?
That photo is obviously a fake.
More than likely a coffee stain or something.
Right Neutral?
Now if only the Harper government would get off it’s lazy, fence sitting ass and start building political support for joining ABM.
Yes but Jack! and Olivia had solar panels attached to their house just recently. It was all over the Toronto dinner-time news – how it cost a lot [of our money] and how it would take them years to pay it off.
I sat there and thought “those two have been on the public teat for eons, screeching about the environment all the while, and they’re only just now getting solar panels?”
I’ve had working solar panels for almost 20 years now…50% funded by the Federal gov’t. The 50% I forked out still doesn’t have a ROI.
More novelty than practicality.
I wouldn’t get too excited about being able to intercept SCUD-like missiles. It’s a start, but there’s still a long way to go before such a system can help against smarter, more modern missiles.
Lew – Wasn’t the original justification for ABM to counter attacks by rogue states like Iran and North Korea. ‘Scud-like’ missiles would fit that threat profile. In the longer run however need to consider the Chinese threat.
We? The last time I checked White Sands was in New Mexico and I thought you were in Saskatchewan.
Texas Canuck:
Backchecking forwards. What are you, some kind of freak?
Stageleft,
Note the crooked thingies around the phrase and then click on the link and do a find on “smash.”
Re: Stageleft
Did you miss the day in Grade 5 English class when they explained the significance of quotation marks?
Seems the guy, Robert M. Bowman the former Director of Advanced Space Programs Development for the U.S. Air Force in the Ford and Carter administrations, and a former United States Air Force Lieutenant Colonel with 101 combat missions. He holds a Ph.D. in Aeronautics and Nuclear Engineering from the California Institute of Technology. is a memebr of Scholars for 9/11 Truth. LOL
http://www.rmbowman.com/ssn/SW2.htm
So why would all these people want something made by tinfoil hat wearing idiots to protect them from attack?
http://www.scholarsfor911truth.org/WhoAreWe.html
LOL
David Brown:
Look at the bright side, the North Koreans want to bring a whole lot more sunshine to our lives!
2 Suns are better than one!
Can’t get too much of a good thing. Think of all the radiation those solar panels will be soaking up.
In every mushroom cloud there is a bright future; on the other side of heaven.
Hey, I wanna go to heaven, but I’m in no hurry. BTW, thanks Kim Jong Il, but we don’t need any ‘assistance’ in getting there. Oh hang it all, Kim Jong Il is an atheist stalinist so he doesn’t believe in heaven. Dr. Ahmahdinejad does believe in heaven but needs atheists help to get there.
I’m confused, go figure. 🙂
This is an “Il” defined problem, because “Mah-mood” has been suppressed of late. We’ve been “Putin” up with a lot of nonsense, because we don’t know “Hu” or “Wen” it will happen. But I firmly believe if I “Harper” or grouse a lot, that eventually the pheasantasy will be flushed from the “Bush”. I find it rather re”Merkel”ble to find over the “Blair” of the media, that they don’t know “Jacques”.
Did they just vaporize another leftists scoundrel?
LOL indeed.
There’s probably a good reason why he’s “former” this and that.
Uhhhhhhhhh THAAD’s, the way, Uh-Huh Uh-Huh.
I liiike it, Uh-Huh Uh-Huh!
They should make the next test off the coast of N. Korea, shooting down Kim Jon Illminds next missile test! I’d give my eye teeth to hear Kimmies reaction to the US swatting his test missiles.
Richfisher
You rock! Get down fun-key white boy!
Now that’s what I call some well spent tax dollars.
“Jack Layton said missile defense wouldn’t work”.
That’s why the North Koreans have reportedly named their missiles “Jack Laytons”. Just a rumour. Could be wrong.
HMMMM!
“Jack Layton said missile defense wouldn’t work”.
“That’s why the North Koreans have reportedly named their missiles “Jack Laytons”. Just a rumour. Could be wrong.”
Jack Layton = Type – O – Dong !!!
Yep …that works
We had better hope that the missle defense
works against more sophisticated stuff than
scuds because anyone who thinks we’re gonna
be attacked by scuds is living in a dream world.
It works against scuds, now lets see how it
works on a Chinese or Russian type ICBM…I hope
it will work as well.
Keep at it and don’t let the hangwringing Liberals
get in your way.
A shame they can’t send a few of these things over to Israel. Good live-fire testing range and I am sure the citizens of Haifa and other cities would appreciate the help.
Just a scud? Don’t forget Moore’s Law. Once the basic technology is achieved, then the engineers will improve by orders of magnitude in a short time.
Far out! Now, all they have to do, is smuggle a scud into North Amerika,(!), set it up, and launch it. Duh! Ya gotta be kidding……..Right?
(Jack Layton could not find his own asshole with both hands and a flashlight- he does not have to- so what?)
Ya got my sympathies, Jack- the Glibs have already cornered the ‘wetback’ vote, (vote for us, and you can bring in your second cousins and next door neighbours- ansd if you are here illegally, we can fix that- at taxpayers’ expense)
I mean……….really………any of these people able to face themselves in the mirror in the morning.
Im still kinda curious whut your precious thaad will do in the scenario I described in the n korean missile launch thread:
the offensive missiles are launched at nite so there is no visual to see that they are in close clusters. they only give the tell-tale heat signature. then at the last moment their on-board radar decides to tell the guidance systems that some will cleave off from the cluster. maybe new clusters of 2 or 3.
now the outgoing thaad has to make a decision and goes for the ‘biggest target’ meaning some of the incoming attacking missiles get through. isnt that the idea? or maybe knowing this possibility, the us of a launches a dozen thaads at each incoming missile ‘just to make sure’ and the cost of the program is now ‘out of the atmosphere’ (pun intended).
anybody thought of this?
here’s another scenario:
the terrorists look at commercial airline schedules or say fed ex airplane schedules and ship ‘scientific equipment’ from some innocuous location. they then arrange to get on the plane, book tickets to rendezvous on THAT particular flight.
then they stick hypodermics into the flight attendants to silence them and then come forward claiming the pilot has asked them to take care of the passengers because of some mystery ailment that has befallen all the flight attendants. or some such lie.
then they fool the pilot and get into the cockpit and do the same thing.
all calm and cool. nobody running down the aisle yelling unintelligible arabic with an ak47. none of that.
any air marshalls getting suspicious and demanding to see the pilot are obliged and they too get a needle. and a knife across the throat. as do ALL the flight crew to dispatch them for the duration of the flight.
that flight is chosen because the path takes it right over an ideal target. nothing out of the norm to raise alarms.
some of the group in the mean time have got themselves into the baggage compartment and armed The Bomb.
at the last moment the plane dips to the ideal altitude to do the most damage and The Bomb is detonated, vaporizing the plane, hijacking terrorists, dead crew and all the unknowing passengers and anyone on the ground for a 3 mile radius, just like the old days.
how is your precious thaad going to stop this?
even if it works 100% always right from the start for the type of attack it is designed to defend, there are umpteen other ways of plopping a nuke onto a major city.
what about a 1 time submarine getting close enough to either surface at the last possible moment to detonate 500 feet from shore, or launching a missile that never gets more than 10,000 or 15,000 feet altitude? well under the atmosphere and flight time of about 7 or 8 minutes. again with onboard or remote control that looks for incoming missile or jet and detonates just before the defensive missile hits, ie still explodes just not perfectly on target.
how does thaad handle this?
Stephen
When it comes to difficult technological problems,China will not invest time and money to find a solution.They will employ industrial espionage which will enable them to achieve parity using our dimes.
China and Russia have always been industrial leeches of the worst type.There are not many workable original ideas that have had a genesis on a Chinese draft table.
For all they crow about the geniuses that they produce it must be stated that they (like the Russians..) are masters at reverse engineering..
Hell,the Russians are still selling to failed states technology captured by the trainload courtesy of the third reich…
moore’s law.
uuuhuh….
what about murphy’s law ???
this just in:
the most expensive road building project ‘big dig’ in any city in the united states ever …. has now started to fall apart and claimed its first victim.
14 billion ‘with a b’, using a LOT of already tried and tested road engineering, and they STILL screwed it up.
thaad has to work 100%, 100% of the time to be worth it, ie, cost *less* than the value of a single city it defends. otherwise questions will arise regarding the now absent los angeles, miami, whatever.
the good news is the possibility exists that downtown detroit faces obliteration. LOL !!!
during warmer times betwixt usa and the soviets, they would send their reps over to various plant tours.
the russian visitors had photographic memories and when the got back to the hotel would draw everything they saw that day and duplicate the machinery or whatever it was they were looking at.
true story.
E-V-E-R-Y weapon system ever devised and redesigned has a failure rate.
some mathematic function or something.
what makes you people think the most sophisticated expensive complex one ever invented is going to be immune from this law of nature ???
what will you crow about when it does fail ??? or if it is never deployed, what about the trillions spent on it that could have gone into something else relieving international tensions or even huge standing bounties on the bad guys ???
NOTHING devised by man has EVER worked perfectly right from the start, especially on this scope, so what in blazes makes you people think a staged choreographed ‘test’ proves otherwise ???
Go to Google maps, find Detroit, switch over to satellite photo mode, and zoom in if you want to see entire blocks of major US city downtown real estate given over to weeds and wreckage – large amounts of worthless land at the center of a major US city!
so who is going to win the prize for posting # 3,000,000 ??
how about a no-prize-involved guessing game when it will occur ??
Just another reason why I love America. Those guys perceive a problem and put their money and horsepower to work and eventually pull out a solution.
Mr. Harper: it’s always good to be friends with the Americans. Always.
Robert J BA BSc, no one ever claimed the system would eliminate any and all terrorist risks. I suppose your postings here–made with the benefit of years of exponential improvement under Moore’s Law, is in the end subject to Murphy’s Law. It reminds me about Wilde’s quip about the invention of the telephone.
hmph. that one disappeared. ok, here it is again.
texas c:
george dubya is after all in the news of late.
re: ‘seasoned citizens’:
Im 54.
Ive watched the geopolitical landscape for some 40 years now as it has sustained ‘earthquakes’ ‘tsunamis’.
I remember when the berlin wall went up.
george dubya is the WORST president in my lifetime and also back as far as FDR, whose life and times I have studied extensively. before that, I dont know much about herbert hoover’s generation. but they at least did not have the capacity to cause damage and alienation all over the world to the scope dubya has/is doing.
come on, look at the hatred aimed at them. you think their hands are lily white?
THE ONUS IS ON THE GUY WITH THE UPPER HAND TO SHOW MORE RESTRAINT AND ESPECIALLY MORE FAIR PLAY THAN THE REST.
dubya doesnt have the mental capacity to grasp the concept and instead sends in the troops.
Gwynn Dyer predicts the present occupation of afghanistan will end like 3 previous dating back to mid 1800s. a new coalition of influential interest groups will rise, eclipsing the taliban.
the vacuum has been created with their ouster; politics hates a vacuum.
foreign troop will HAVE TO leave at some point, and the locals will have long set up their strong points and influence in the countryside.
I admire respect and feel great gratitude to the american taxpayer that paid for the squelching of most of the tyranny of the 20th century.
dubya gives lip service to their OWN supreme court’s decision that guanotanemo bay breeches constitutional rights. a new form of tyranny.
regardless of where the Chinese get their missile technology, they have shown they can orbit astronauts. and have announced plans to go to the moon by 2020 or so. I think they will, it is after all possible (unless you are a ‘moon’bat(pun intended) believing apollo 11 was faked).
so, clearly they got the smarts about missiles or will acquire it parallel to thaad. maybe enough to breech it.
it is after all, a HELLUVA LOT EASIER to fire a bullet than intercept one.
Gwynn Dyer needs a new leather jacket. And a shave.
Mark
Ottawa
even if it works 100% always right from the start for the type of attack it is designed to defend, there are umpteen other ways of plopping a nuke onto a major city.
Wow, you’ve sure convinced me. I guess we should give up THAAD’s altogether. And while we’re at it, since there are dozens and dozens of ways of killing soldiers other than shooting them, we should stop giving body armor to our soldiers in Iraq.
What passes for logic amongst liberal Bush-haters never ceases to amaze me.
-Michael McCullough
Stingray: a blog for salty Christians
Robert,
You’re really a ‘no-can-do’ kinda guy! You and
Gwynn Dyer, bless your pessimistic little anti-American hearts, deserve each other.