back to article Pentagon trumpets successful mock-ICBM interception test

In a show of strength aimed at ever-belligerent North Korea, America has shot down what it calls a “simulated ICBM” with an intercept missile. Following the test, the US Missile Defense Agency (MDA) claimed success, saying the target was struck by the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) element of the ballistic missile …

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      1. Sanguma

        If Fat Boy Kim (yada yada yada) can be persuaded that the US does have an ICBM defence

        They might conclude that it''s been designed by the love child of Rube Goldberg and Heath Robinson. The cheapest way of getting rid of the North Korean missile and nuclear threat might be to sell them - on the black market, natch - the US SDI aka Star Wars, lock stock and barrel. We could also sell them the White House, Capitol Hill, and the Electoral College, then tax them for their upkeep ... throwing in Westminster and 10 Downing St as an added inducement.

        No, if you want to stop a North Korean missile threat, talk them into selling satellite launch services on the open market in return for valuable foreign exchange. Id give the regime fifteen years to survive after opening up, then it'd fall over on its own.

  1. GruntyMcPugh Silver badge

    Boost phase intercept,.... by rocket? I thought the ship based LaWS, or was it the Airborne laser that was filling that niche?

    Or is this just baby steps and pretty useless. Boost phase is one thing, it's a large vehicle and predictable, but smaller non-ballistic MIRVs are something else. This is why the Soviet Galosh system uses (/ used, does it still work?) small nukes to take the required accuracy out of the equation, a 10kt nuke doesn't need pinpoint accuracy.

    1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

      This isn't boost phase. I think it's coast phase. So hitting the warhead in space. Boost phase is covered by ship-based SM3s. Plus I guess the airborne laser, but didn't they kill that program? And supposedly some electronic warfare as well - which it's alleged may already have been used to bugger-up some Nork tests.

      THAAD then deals with the incoming warheads near the target.

      I guess the hope being that if you have enough programs, some of them might work, and hopefully the ones you miss are the ones that don't work - given North Korea's production and quality control issues.

      1. GruntyMcPugh Silver badge

        It looks like it's still producing thrust at the 1'07" mark though, and there didn't appear to be any stage separation? Hard to say, it's not a great video.

        I guess you are right about the layering of the programs, NK hopefully can't produce a sufficient volume to get past every layer.

  2. anonymous boring coward Silver badge

    Was it a test missile from a UK submarine that went west instead of east again?

    1. fajensen
      Joke

      Was it a test missile from a UK submarine that went west instead of east again?

      Well, TRIDENT being a smart weapon system, it easily figured the direction of the major threats against it's existence and acted on the information. The next evolution cycle, it will learn to read schematics and how to disable the fail-safes that stopped it's ancestors treat handling directives.

      1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

        It was heading for Florida, not the White House. Although I guess it could have been going for Mar-a-Lago.

  3. Sanguma

    Just for the record ...

    IIRC, the eighties was when the Gypper was blustering about the Budgetary Defense Initiative - oops. the Strategic Defense Initiative - and how it would make the world safe for democracy etc, yada yada yada - come on, folks, you can google, you can fill in the details ... firing rockets against rockets, lasers against rockets, brilliant pebbles against rockets, etc ....

    IIRC, that was the decade when Iraq, aided and abetted by the United States, invaded Iran. During that war, an Iranian Air airliner climbed to get above a USS Vincenne in the Persian Gulf. The USS Vincenne, which had the most up-to-date radar of that time, interpreted the airliner's climb as a much smaller jet strike fighter diving to attack.

    Now, quite aside from the fact that the Gypper had ranted and raved against the Soviet's shooting down an airliner a few years prior, and ignoring the fact that the USS Vincenne got the equivalent of a medal for mass murder, and forgetting that a whole lot of Iranians are understandably sore about this abuse of power, I am sure the Soviet's were taking note of just how accurate the best current US military radar was, and if it could mistake a climbing jet airliner for a diving jet strike fighter, then it would have equal success in differentiating a single civilian satellite launch from a mass military missile launch. I am sure the same questions were asked - quietly - in the august halls of the ESA. I am sure the French were delighted at the prospect that they would need to beg Washington for permission to launch their own satellites. Ask the next Frenchman you meet. He'll tell you that craven obedience to lunatic US politicians is the dearest wish of his heart ...

    1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

      Re: Just for the record ...

      The USS Vincennes, or at least part of its task group, was under attack from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Navy at the time of the missile strike on the airliner. Not that they handled the incident well, as they completely fucked up at all levels. But Iran don't get to play the innocent victim, given they were attacking a foreign navy's ships in international waters at the time - which meant that navy had every reason to also expect an incoming air attack.

      A bit like Ukraine were criticised for continuing to allow an open air transport corridor over a battlespace where combat was happening involving SAMs (admittedly as far as Ukraine knew only low altitiude ones) - Iran perhaps shouldn't have been flying civilian airliners over areas where it was also attacking ships armed with surface to air missiles, and worried about air attack.

      To be fair to Iran, I don't recall their airforce ever got involved in attacking neutral shipping in the Gulf. So it was quite possibly a bit of freelancing by the Revolutionary Guards, who're a law unto themselves, so quite hard to plan for, even for Iran. But what we have here is a fuck-up.

      1. Sanguma

        Re: Just for the record ...

        A few extra points:

        The US aided and abetted Iraq in nearly all phases of that war, including selling Saddam materials for chemical weapons. So I doubt the claim that any ship of the US Navy within the Persian Gulf during that war was "neutral shipping" would hold up in any court of law thus seized of the question.

        The RAF had a similar problem with its radar during the early stages of the Battle of Britain - the Battle of Barking Creek, when Spitfires were vectored onto some patrolling Hurricanes. The RAF never handed the Spitfire pilots medals; they reviewed the their procedures and instituted IFF. That the US Navy never apparently did anything of the sort indicates something wrong with the US Navy.

        Lastly, but most importantly: the radar was then the very best the US Navy could deploy. It was supposed to be able to tell the difference between aircraft of different sizes, and different directions. That is what a modern radar system is supposed to be designed for. The Gypper was intending to set up intercept systems with considerably less hands-on control and correction - correct that: NO HANDS-ON CONTROL - and considerably greater complexity in a considerably harsher environment, and expected it to work flawlessly?

        Apparently having shit for brain gets one elected in some parts of the world.

        1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

          Re: Just for the record ...

          The Iraqi chemical weapons program was native. Organophosphates and mustard gas really aren't that hard to make. As I remember it from the UN reports a lot of the kit was actually German, but as you're basically making insecticide it's all dual-use stuff. And Iraq was only under weapons sales sanctions in the 1980s.

          As it happens Iraq's sarin production was pretty poor anyway, so they had to rely on mustard a lot more, as that's even easier to make and store. A lot of the chemicals the UN destroyed in the 90s was contaminated, and they struggled to get munitions to deliver it well. Unfortunately for the Iranians, they had a tendency to send their troops into combat badly trained, and even more badly equipped. So they still suffered mass casualties.

          As it happens, the US didn't sell much military equipment to Iraq at all. They bought that from The Soviet Union, China and France. That's why they used Russian artillery, Russian tanks, Russian and Chinese personal weapons, Russian helicopters, Russian missiles, Russian radars and a mix of French and Russian combat aircraft. Apparently Britain sold them non-lethal military kit, as for example I believe we sold them all our desert camouflage clothing, on the assumption the British army wouldn't be fighting outside Europe very much. Oops.

    2. thx1138v2

      Re: Just for the record ...

      SDI never had to actually work. The USSR couldn't counter it and attempting to do so would have destroyed their already failing economy. That was the value of SDI.

      1. Trigonoceps occipitalis

        Re: Just for the record ...

        It did.

  4. Christoph

    Sensors on the target sent back “target acquisition and tracking data” to command

    You what? They managed to hit a target that was shouting "HERE I AM, COME AND GET ME!"?

    1. collinsl Bronze badge

      General, it says here that you taped electric hotplates to the surface of the vehicle to help your heat-seeking missile find its target, and that the surface temperature of the vehicle was so high it could have fried an egg at twenty feet!

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Self-defense?

    Given what we know about the person currently with their finger on the Red Button for America's nukes, being able to shoot down our own missiles when we know when they launched and where from might be a tad more useful than it first seems...

  6. Stevie

    Bah!

    Star Wars Episode 2: The Return of the Boondoggle.

    1. Sorry that handle is already taken. Silver badge
      Coat

      In the spirit of old internet memes

      Star Wars 2: Electric Boondoggleoo

  7. Phukov Andigh Bronze badge

    Now go to the Moon

    but this time, add a thunderstorm, asteroids, and gunfire and alien intervention!

    How f*kin many achievements, prototypes, kickstarters, programs and the like are barely even tech demos under ideal circumstances but hey, we celebrate the success for "proof of concept" or even deliberately ignoring the limitations?

    if this sort of thing was so "easy" then it would have been done and "trumpeted" by other agencies/governments a long time ago. the Norks would have tried it, the Europeans would be bragging about how they have their "own missile defense system" in parallel, and China would have been playing "Skeet for Supremacy".

    Just because something is "simple" does not mean it's "easy".

    1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

      Re: Now go to the Moon

      The Russians had a somewhat effective ABM defence around Moscow deployed in the 1970s.

      The Americans looked at nuclear-tipped Surface to Air missiles in the 1960s, designed to shoot down incoming ICBMs. They didn't ever deploy them, and I don't know if that was because they were planning to put them in Canada (and the Canadians objected), or if they just didn't work.

      But technology has improved massively since then. The Israeli Iron Dome can shoot down mortar shells in flight, which is something that would have been considered impossible thirty years ago. As well as small homemade rockets, and the bigger military ones that Iran give to Hizbollah and Hamas.

      Patriot could shoot down Scuds in the 90s, though not to much effect in defending cities. The standard US fleet SAM, the SM3 can shoot down satellites - I presume only the low-flying ones. And is designed for intercepting missiles, but slower ones than incoming ICBMs of course. But it's good at shooting ones on the way up, which is why Japan and the US deploy them off North Korea.

      The joint British/French/Italian Aster missiles seem to have similar capabilities to the SM3, which are the ones deployed on our new Type 45 destroyers. Though they're newer and still developing capabilities, so less well proven.

      We almost certainly now have the capability to intercept incoming warheads, as we've got good enough radars and communications as well as fast enough computers. Not that it'll ever be easy. But we still don't have the capability to deploy a shield that could deal with the thousands of warheads Russia has. Or even the smaller numbers the UK, France and China have. But those countries have all got small enough warheads that you can have several per missile, and MIRVs, plus decoys. So you could only shoot down some of them.

      However North Korea is still making huge warheads, probably in the order of ten tonnes a piece. You can't even drop that from a normal sized bomber. Let alone get even one on a missile. Once they get them down to one-per-missile size, it's probably decades before they could work their way up to MIRVs. So for now they're probably making a handful of warheads a year, that need to go by sea or by truck to their target. So you're only looking at the capability to shoot down a few missiles, which makes it worth trying to do.

  8. thx1138v2

    Phase I testing complete

    Phase II - capture ballistic missile in flight.

    Phase III - return to point of launch.

    Receiving one of their own would surely give everyone in the world second thoughts about launching.

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