Rick C wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@googlegroups.com:
There are no spaced based weapon platforms... That any of 'them' tell any of us about.
It is against international policy ('law'?).
The big deal is not doing it mechanically, it is about breaking the rule, and then everyone that puts up satellites wants to put up spaced based "defenses".
Satellites are hundreds of millions each. ICBMs are single use... likely $10M for the booster and depending on warhead configurations, tens of millions per endpoint device. Then there is the geopositioning, altitude maintaining, weapon pointing, payload releasing, hardware and control costs. Then there is the who has the button and where is the button kept thingy.
We agreed to the space weapon ban because no one could do it at the time an d there was no real need given the MAD balance. If we lose that balance an d space based weapons are the best/only defense... yep, we will abrogate th at treaty/agreement/handshake in an instant. Especially with the present l eader we have. Heck, he has set Tehran on a path to nuclear weapons capabi lity for no good reason because *he* didn't like the treaty.
M-X missile, "The project had already cost around $20 billion up to 1998 an d produced 114 missiles, at $400 million for each operational missile."
No, not so cheap.
Do we have any better technology now that would make Star-Wars defense more practical? Sure, we have lots of computing resources, but what about the inherent limitations of stabilizing the platform, etc?
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and there was no real need given the MAD balance. If we lose that balance and space based weapons are the best/only defense... yep, we will abrogate that treaty/agreement/handshake in an instant. Especially with the present leader we have. Heck, he has set Tehran on a path to nuclear weapons capa bility for no good reason because *he* didn't like the treaty.
Don't forget that back then we were dealing with what we believed were govts with more than one person, that they were stable and rational. MAD m ay not apply when dealing with the likes of KJU. Also, there is the real possibility of accidental launch, where either through misinterpretation of information or some rogue actors, weapons get launched. In that case, having a system that has a good chance of interception seems like a good thing. Speaking of accidental or rogue launch, anyone have any confidence in NK having robust controls on their stuff?
BTW, did you see the latest assessment of NK from Japan? They say they now believe it's likely that NK has made nukes small enough to fit on missiles. Meanwhile, NK continues to test missiles with ranges of hundreds of miles, missiles that are nuke capable if they have a warhead that they can carry. Those could reach Seoul, the US troops in SK, etc. And while SK, Japan and anyone with any brains sees that as really, really bad, Trump keeps saying telling KJU that what he's doing is A-OK, that he doesn't care about those kinds of missiles. Simply brilliant.
and produced 114 missiles, at $400 million for each operational missile."
re practical? Sure, we have lots of computing resources, but what about th e inherent limitations of stabilizing the platform, etc?
IDK, but we surely should have. One failure of both Obama and Trump that is still ongoing is that with NK rapidly advancing, we should have been pouring a lot of money into this for the last decade. Instead we have a hodgepodge collection of prototypes. The stuff based in Alaska for example, it's not even all the same, or mostly the same. It's various stages of development. I guess it would have been cheaper and easier for someone to put a decisive end to NK's program, but with all the rockets and artillery they have aimed at Seoul, that wasn't a particularly attractive option either. So, we waited and hoped and here we are. But no worries, KJU is Trump's good buddy, I'm sure we're safe, Trump said so.
Rick C wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@googlegroups.com:
The cost of the entire project is dominated by actual payload delivery capacity.
Nothing simple at all.
An ICBM puts a mass (even if MIRV) to a spot in low earth orbit to enable a targetted re-entry point for a gravity fall delivery of the payload(s).
THAT is fairly easy.
Placing a heavy bird into a space orbit and then essentially 'firing' projectiles from that to an atmospheric entry point that allows a gravity fall delivery to the target.
OR it 'fires' a powered projectile (missile) to pierce the atmosphere with and then 'drops' a gravity fall delivery device.
Note too that the device must be able to withstand entry into the atmosphere at a pretty good speed.
And here was I thinking that an ICBM puts its payload into and elliptical o rbit around the centre of mass of the. Admittedly, most of the the ellipse would go through the earth - emerging at the launch point and reentering at the target - but it is all part of a satellite orbit, depending on the mat hs worked out by Kepler, and explained by Newton.
You might do a fine correction burn at the apogee of the orbit to improve t argetting, but that shouldn't impart much of a momentum change.
There's not a lot point in that. Stuff in low orbit is visible from the gro und, and launching stuff back to earth from there just give everybody more time to shoot down the heavy bird and the projectiles it might eventually f ire.
It's got to change the momentum of anything it wants to move to a different orbit. Orbits that intercept the surface of the earth included.
Even ICBM payloads have to do that.
Star Wars type satellites are up there because you can target laser beams a nd particle beams a lot more accurately when they are propagating outside t he atmosphere. It's a different kind of battle ground, and everything up th ere is visible and vulnerable.
If you can state it in a single sentence, it sounds simple to me. The deta ils of constructing a rocket are not overly simple, just like the details o f making silicon processors are not simple, but we've been down the road en ough before so they are not "rocket science" anymore. Likewise flying rock ets are not the cutting edge of technology anymore other than the ongoing c ost reduction efforts. We have the technology. ICBM vs. satellite, it's p retty much the same.
Yep, just like putting a satellite into orbit is. We do this very often, e verything from low earth orbit to geosynchronous. How high up are the Spac e X comms sats? That's all that is needed for a space weapon. They launch many at one time.
"SpaceX has plans to deploy nearly 12,000 satellites in three orbital shell s by the mid-2020s: initially placing approximately 1600 in a 550-kilometer (340 mi)-altitude shell, subsequently placing ~2800 Ku- and Ka-band spectr um satellites at 1,150 km (710 mi) and ~7500 V-band satellites at 340 km (2
10 mi).[7] The total cost of the decade-long project to design, build and d eploy such a network was estimated by SpaceX in May 2018 to be on the order of US$10 billion."
12,000 sats for $20 billion. Not a bad price at all.
Fallacy one, a projectile does not need to be large to "pierce" the atmosph ere. Meteoroids the size of a marble can make it all the way to the ground . That's the minimum size. I expect you are thinking of the large objects like space capsules that need large, heavy heat shields to protect them fr om the heat of reentry.
Perhaps I missed something, but I was under the impression we were talking about defending against missiles that flew essentially in low earth orbit, above the dense atmosphere. So why is entering the atmosphere an issue for a space based defensive weapon?
Are we talking about two different things?
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Rick C.
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How will that help fight a war. The war you are talking about will be a re latively small number of nuclear weapons landing on key areas that devastat e a country. They can be launched three ways, one of which is not very eas y to prevent. Putin's nuclear rocket adds one more which may or may not be easy to shoot down.
If a country attacks the defensive sats, that alone with start the war and the attacker has better be ready to stop how many thousands of war heads?
The real defensive weapon is MAD. No one cares how you deliver it.
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Rick C wrote in news:bb707cf6-52bd- snipped-for-privacy@googlegroups.com:
That has to be one of the most stupid things you have said yet.
Communications and recon are most vital in a war and especially a tech based war with over-the-horizon target tracking and destruction capabilities, etc.
There are plenty of reasons it would be one of the first infrastructure elements targetted.
You seem to be much worse off thinking it matters if those sats are shot down. As soon as the first one it targeted, not even shot, it would be a declaration of war and MAD kicks in. Game over, we're all dead.
That war won't need any further intelligence or surveillance. We won't be targeting scud missiles in the dessert or trying to find troops in the woods.
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relatively small number of nuclear weapons landing on key areas that devast ate a country. They can be launched three ways, one of which is not very e asy to prevent. Putin's nuclear rocket adds one more which may or may not be easy to shoot down.
d the attacker has better be ready to stop how many thousands of war heads?
The remaining question is if MAD works with the likes of KJU. And even if it works with him, it's only a matter of time until we come across some bad actor that comes to power, where it doesn't matter. Saddam for example, clearly wasn't rational. Even after the first Gulf War where he got crushed badly, he still wouldn't behave and chose another war that was certain to end badly for him and the country over just cooperating with the UN weapons inspectors. Especially nuts when he didn't have any WMDs or WMD programs. Eventually some Saddam type will have nukes. Is it KJU? Or some muslim nuts could take over Pakistan and not give a damn. Looking at history, it's just a matter of time, which is why Reagan's SDI type defense makes more sense each passing day. It wouldn't be perfect, but could offer some protection to limit the consequences.
a relatively small number of nuclear weapons landing on key areas that deva state a country. They can be launched three ways, one of which is not very easy to prevent. Putin's nuclear rocket adds one more which may or may no t be easy to shoot down.
and the attacker has better be ready to stop how many thousands of war head s?
The bad actors don't come to power without having some kind of support in t he organisations that exercise that power.
ar
He was cooperating, but Dubbya needed an excuse to snatch the oil fields.
Saddam wasn't that crazy. His judgement wasn't great, but neither was Dubby a's.
n
Reagan's SDI defenses wouldn't have worked when he proposed them, and the k iller argument is that it is relatively cheap to saturate that kind of defe nse.
From time to time people argue that it would be worth having to deter the l ikes of Kim Jong-Il, on the grounds that he hasn't the economic capacity to build enough nuclear-armed ballistic missiles to saturate such a defense, but it seems to be more the US defense industry begging for another pork-ba rrel project than any kind of well-reasoned argument.
The mad dictator argument doesn't really wash. The dictator might be mad, b ut the organisation that translates his wishes into deeds has to be tolerab ly sane to be effective.
You can clearly persuade them to kill off lots of other people, but getting them to kill themselves is more difficult. Jonestown may look like a count er example, but Jim Jones wasn't running the kind of organisation that could build nucl ear bombs and ballistic missiles.
So, you think the US would launch a full out nuclear strike, just because Russia or China targeted a US defense satellite? Or Russia would launch on us if we targeted one of theirs? That seems very illogical.
Sure, if it went from zero to full out nuclear war in one step. That seems very unlikely. Far more likely would be some gradual escalation, that starts with conventional engagement. Say for example, the things heat up in the South China Sea, over those islands and waterways. China shoots down a US plane, we shoot down a couple of theirs. More tit for tat. China launches some space weapon that takes out one of our satellites that we're using in the military ops with China. Your expected response would be a full nuclear strike on China?
You don't seem to have worked out the logic of mutual assured destruction.
Any act that would diminish your capacity to wipe them out tips the balance their way. You'd have to react, and react in way that would tip the balance back your way by a significantly greater amount. Inaction wouldn't be an option.
Trying to predict that sort of thing is a full time military intelligence. If you want to do it, apply for a job in that area - but I wouldn't like your chances.
Rick C wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@googlegroups.com:
I was the one posted the quote dipshit. Maybe now *you* get it, but I have serious doubts.
Also, they attributed the machine with AI. "it understood".
No, ding dong. IT concluded.
Also, it was a movie.
We would not start a war, but an aggressive enemy might get trigger happy about one thing or other, and then we would kick in, and there would be no MAD as they would not stand a chance of getting anything in and would soon be destroyed themselves if they even tried.
You're just a stupid, argumentative troll. Notably absent is you disagreeing that if Russia or China targeted one of our satellites, we would not launch nuclear weapons in response.
Oh, BS and more BS. To start with, he said "targeted'. Targeting a satellite doesn't render the satellite unable to operate. And of course there are a whole range of options, including doing nothing.
I didn't address the question to you, stupid. And interesting how you say I'm not qualified to comment on these matters, but you're here shooting your fool mouth off. So very typical for a lib.
a relatively small number of nuclear weapons landing on key areas that deva state a country. They can be launched three ways, one of which is not very easy to prevent. Putin's nuclear rocket adds one more which may or may no t be easy to shoot down.
and the attacker has better be ready to stop how many thousands of war head s?
n
If you oversimplify everything, you can't reach the correct conclusions. S addam miscalculated. He thought he could play a shell game of making us th ink (along with anyone else who mattered) he actually had WMD and that woul d keep him safe. He didn't and we didn't care enough that it was protectio n for him.
The reality is this is a poor example for you to bring up since it was clea r having WMD was not enough to stop us from destroying him and that he wasn 't anywhere near having WMDs of any consequence to us.
You idea of a left field player suddenly developing the potential to get pa st our nuclear defenses and at the same time not caring about MAD and his p ersonal well being is just prima facie absurd.
The threat from the left field players is a dirty bomb having nothing to do with SDI or anti-missile weapons.
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Rick C.
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