One of the things that struck me, reading the comments on the recent thread about the casualty toll in Iraq, the North Korean bomb test, and the ongoing debate about what to do about Islamist terror, is what are countries doing to defend against missile attacks, including nuclear ones? When George Bush was first elected in 2000 (whatever Michael Moore might claim), he made a great deal of play about missile defence and the ABM Treaty. Now I may have missed something, but anti-missile defence, as a topic, seems to have gone a bit quiet. But surely, if North Korea has the bomb, with Iran not far behind, then anti-missile defence ought to be one of the top priorities for defence planners.
Even if you are a paleo-libertarian who thinks defence policy rules out any form of pre-emption, you presumably – unless you are a pacifist – embrace technologies to ward off attacks. So it seems to me to be a bit strange that we have not had more discussion about what countries should be doing in this area, and the pros and cons of the technologies involved. (There may have course have been a lot of discussion, but it has been out of the media spotlight, for various reasons).
Some old thoughts of mine about the merits and perils of pre-emption. Here is a book about what a defence policy that is really about self-defence might look like, via the Independent Institute.
Jonathan makes an excellent point.
Personally, I think the Americans have been using the last 6 years to dramatically bolster missile defence, as well as to re-arm. They have made huge strides in anti-missile defence technology and plan to share it with key allies. France is not one of them.
Interestingly the most recent reports indicate that Kimchee’s little test the other day was not nuclear. The evidence is a lack of radioactive samples in the atmosphere, as would be expected. At the same time the Yanks are being obstructed at the UN by Putin and, surprise surprise, China. IF – and I emphasise if – the Yanks are convinced that the test was a fake, they should annihilate the Norks as a warning to Iran.
Anti-missile defence is very hard to do, and there’s no-one with missiles that can threaten us, who is likely to use them.
It’s probably cheaper and more reliable to work on preventing the lunatic states from getting the missiles, and preventing states from becoming lunatic.
The fact is, it’s really really unlikely that anyone is going to attack us in the conventional sense for a long, long time. There’s no point in spending vast sums on defenses that will be obsolete long before they are really necessary.
Don’t forget the star wars…defense against a strike aimed at orbiting satellites, which, unlike two tall buildings, will grind our economy to a halt.
Actually there is quite a lot going on in missile defense. There is the Navy system which is for short range or close in work, eg off the coast of NK; and then there is the hit to kill system which is quietly being handed off to operational people while the engineers continue with the very sensible test-a-little, build-a-little approach.
The 747 laser ship is still in the wings too. It has not gone away, it has just gone quiet.
The latest I’ve heard was that one of the samples collected on Wednesday off of the coast of NK contained material consistent with a nuclear device.
People keep saying how small it was, that it was a dud, but it seem to me if you can trigger fission, why does size matter in a test? Isn’t bigger just a waste of material or am I overlooking something?
Airborne laser:
LINK(Link)
and the anti-missle program:
LINK(Link)
More missle defense news from Reuters(Link)
OOPS, got the ATL and ABL confused.
Most recent Boeing press rellease on ABL(Link)
You guys need to read Westhawk more often. Some excellent views and analysis there, including this piece on the latest US anti-missile test, which was extremely successful.
Europe’s efforts at the same are also discussed briefly here.
It’s George Bush’s fault. More specifically, it’s the BDS people *reacting* to George Bush. One cannot grant the point that the subject of your little 2 minute hates has a point on a topic, otherwise you would be a normal political opponent, not someone in the grips of a derangement syndrome.
It’s become perfectly obvious that some sort of missile defense is needed so the only reason left to delay is because one cannot tolerate the idea of giving George Bush a victory and you’re willing to be “late to the party” when somebody actually lofts a missile or hijacks a private suborbital rocket to aim at a building and you’re caught without a functioning system covering your own national territory.
The lack of sensible discussion on deploying a “thin skin” missile defense that can take out one or two ICBMs is a proxy for how badly the entire political sphere has been warped by unreasoning hatred of GWB. It’s somewhat shocking.
Actually on deeper reflection there is one certain law I would love to break – that of Sod’s Law. Why can’t we have a law (Taylor’s Law?) where ‘what should go right WILL go right’.
An example in particular: if I am re-installing Windows XPSP2 I want to know that I can leave it alone for an hour after doing all the necessary serial numbers, regional settings bits in the sure knowledge that when I come back the computer has rebooted and all I now see is the XP welcome screen, not a frozen screen, BSOD or ‘installation failure’ message.
Lockheed has also developed a laser battle station capable of being orbited. Folks I know there worked on it. In fact, if you look at the history of SDI projects, the failures are actually few and far between. Tellers warhead powered X-Ray lasers being one of the few duds, the rest have pretty much met expectations.
The real problem is political willpower to pay for and deploy operational systems. The powers that be fear an America where the taxpayer has nothing to fear from foreign nuclear boogeymen. No need of an ICBM deterrent, no need of nuclear missile subs running deep and hot and full of seamen, the loss of phallic reinforcement for the alpha personalities inside the beltway is a positively castrating idea.
Much less justification for invading thugocracies to a populace increasingly infiltrated by moonbat leftist notions in an age when the market was thought to have beaten socialism.
Face it, all those women getting hot for a powerful leader care more that he has a big spear than a big shield…
Smaller is a lot harder to do. The chances of the NKs having a sophisticated enough arsenal to produce a bomb of that yield are extremely low, which is why most folks are assuming it was a dud.