Obama’s Missile Defense Madness
There are currently three different types of interceptor missiles that are deployed or under development by the U.S. Department of Defense: the SM-3 Block I-A, I-B, and II-A. Block I-A is already in limited use by the U.S. and Japanese navies. Block I-B, the next step in the evolution of the SM-3 missile — which many defense experts believe will provide the first line of defense against a long-range Iranian attack on the continental United States — is slated to go into production in 2013. The third variant, Block II-A, could be deployed by 2018.
The Obama administration, on the other hand, wants to take resources away from these missiles and devote them to something that today is only a concept. Known as Block II-B, it would be the most ambitious missile in the SM-3 family. And according to best estimates it would not be ready for deployment until 2020.
It is something of a mystery as to why the Obama budget, over the objections of Congress, has shifted half the funding for the Block I-B design — which could protect the U.S. against Iran by 2015 — to the Block II-B, which is still just an idea that would not be ready, at best, for another eight years.
The threat, as DOD has amply demonstrated, is very real. Congress has recognized this and in previous years has tried to put the anti-ballistic missile development funding where it will do the most good — not necessarily towards the “best” missile but into programs where it will do the most good and provide the protection the country needs.
The Obama administration, in its budget document, has headed in the other direction, letting the perfect be the enemy of the good and leaving the nation undefended against a threat we can see coming: Iranian missiles in Venezuela would be just as bad as Soviet missiles in Cuba.
Sorry, but what Clinton had done and Obama is now contemplating, they would have been convicted of treason decades ago. What am I to think of a party that trades away our strategic advantages? What am I to think of presidents that take money from our enemies?
There is a complete and utter disconnect folks from reality with these psychopaths. They are trading away the sovereignty of our nation. That is directly treasonous. It is NOT an opinion, it is a fact. They are systemically placing a higher governance over our heads, that is TREASON!
There is NO excuse. They are doing it without our agreement and without a vote. They are NOT our rulers, they are are representatives. By everything our Constitution and our rule of law stands for, they have NO RIGHT!
They are implementing global beliefs before our beliefs. They are using our labor for the benefit of others. They are stealing from us, to give to other countries. That is treason. Period. When do we say enough is enough?
While I loath to appear to agree with the socialist in chief, Missile Defense systems are just a massive boondoggle. The actual test press releases from the military-industrial companies building the various systems are hilarious as pretty much even the military admits current anti-missile systems only marginally work with a tracking device on the target missile (with the trajectory and launch already known) broadcasting away.
Even if the system did work, destroying any currently available long range missile systems in flight, it would take a team of dedicated engineers at most four months to put into place counter measures completely defeating the system. Simple decoy warheads, decoy missiles, internally cooled warheads, chaff dispensing systems…it would be pretty easy, once the US deploys a system to defeat it. This whole thing is a scale to take tax money and give a false sense of security. I’m actually confused as to why the Kenyan in Chief isn’t all for this.
Sorry…not quite awake this morning…”scam” vice “scale”.
Not true. All of the tests show that the system works. As with any complex military system there is a certain learning curve involved, and if you look carefully many of the test failures weren’t due to the system per se but to test-specific systems. Part of engineering is that you learn from failures and improve things as you go along.
See also http://www.mda.mil/
Six years enlisted in the Navy and four years working as an engineer for the Army Test and Evaluation Command gives me a bit of insight into the terminology of contractors and military researchers. For example, “failure due to test specific systems” means the weapons system failed miserably and the test needs to be re-structured to ensure it passes. This could mean moving milestones so that the failed test technically becomes a pass or going so far as scrapping a test completely and making a new one that ignores the issues that the previous test revealed. Also, you ain’t going to see anything close to the actual performance of the system on anything less than the SIPRNET. You may as well go to the White House website for economic data.
I agree with you that sort of like building a better mouse trap, any issue can be addressed with enough brain power and investment. The problem is that on the other end, the mouse is creating anti-mouse trap systems to defeat our mouse trap. We are literally throwing billions of dollars into a system that even if magically tomorrow defeats every current missile system threat (something the MDA isn’t even attempting to claim to shoot for), at best in six months, enemy nations will be able to defeat it and the damn system is going to worth more than scrap metal.
We are basically talking about a system that requires the precision of stopping a bullet, with another bullet. And while we can do that (it took us years just to be able to down our own satellites and we know their locations, speed, and trajectory), the other dude just fires a shot gun instead of a single shot and guess what, our little bullet is pointless. Or he could literally any countless things to make our system useless.
The biggest problem is that this gives us a false sense of security. All MDA is selling is just that…a false sense of security.
So how do you, with your clear lack of confidence in these interception systems, suggest that we deal with possible, I hesitate to ask you to commit to a word as strong as ‘probable’, ballistic missle attacks by hostile nations?
Remember that in the meantime “professional” politicians, ever in search of issues that might enhance their careers, will continue to attack these systems supporters and to cut funding for further development based on analyses like yours. So it is clearly urgent that smart, perceptive, experienced and effective persons such as yourself forward your recommendations to congress so that they will be able to continue their valiant defense of our nation, our constitution and our culture.
So your answer is to continue to funnel more and more money into a system that has no realistic prospect of working, subsidizing a parasitic program, in the hope that even an bogus system will somehow save us.
I can’t find a problem with that logic.
Many years sleeping in a Holiday Inn Express so I know a thing or two about this topic.
Been done. More than moderately successful. Even the older Patriot system knocked down several SCUDS. We’ve even taken out a satellite in a decaying orbit and hit its fuel cell.
1) SCUDS are not even close to the same as intercontinental missiles. Its akin to comparing the performance of a row boat and an aircraft carrier. SUDS are low orbit, slow, and only have one warhead. Intercontinental ballistic missiles are a completely different beast all together.
2) Taking out a satellite, where the location, speed, and trajectory of the target is known at the time of the intercept launch is completely different than rapid response and taking out of an enemy missile(s).
@diablo – It is unlikely that any of the “rogue powers” such as Iran or NoKor will have a true ICBM for a very long time; they both probably have nuclear weapons right now. It took us and the Soviets a very long time to develope what we thought were reliable ICBMs and fortunately never had to test them in a real threat situation. A reliable ABM capable of intercepting a missile launched by a first tier military power is a mega-project and only a first tier economic power could build one. Maybe the post Soviet World is safe enough that we don’t need one, but that doesn’t mean we should stop working on it; things change, quickly sometimes.
Only we in Alaska, maybe Hawaii too, have any realistic reason to fear a NorKor missle. The most realistic threat is most any old short range missle including a SCUD or one of its progeny that can chunk a nuke at most a few hundred miles. Even an old SCUD or two or three mounted on some rust bucket tanker or cantainer ship off the US coasts could really mess up our day, and even a successful interception might well just give us one Helluva dose of radiation and massive EMP damage. But even if a Patriot or an Aegis can pop a SCUD or a Shabab on the rise or cause the warhead to detonate 50 or 100 miles from the target rather than dead overhead, that would be money well spent and there’d be a whole lot less funerals in the US.
So what’s your solution the this threat? Or do you, as our esteemed prexy seems to do, simply deny that the threat is either immediate or even real?
Israel’s Iron Dome has already successfully intercepted short-range rockets fired from Gaza, and they included no “tracking devices”. Israel’s Arrow system – jointly developed with the US – is already deployed to deal with MRBMs from Syria and Iran, though like any system they can be overwhelmed by sheer numbers of missiles. The David’s Sling system is still in development.
Progressives are opposed to missile defense for the same reason they favor unilateral nuclear disarmament. They believe the United States is an evil influence in the world (except when they’re in charge) and must be “held hostage” by other more enlightened entities (like Russia, China, and… Iran) to prevent us from conquering the world in the name of evil capitalism.
When confronted by such a rant from a progressive (and it has happened), I tend to gently point out that if we wanted to conquer the world, we could have simply told everyone else in it “You are ours, now” in September of 1945. Most of them are so ignorant of modern history that they don’t get it.
This maneuver by Obama is simply another iteration of the Democrats’ standard maneuver on any and all defense projects, called “bait and switch”. The idea is that when a system is ready for use, they say, “No! Let’s not spend money on this now-already-obsolete technology! Let’s put it into newer, better, even cooler and sexier technology- that we can deploy twenty years from now!”
And when THAT system gets close to IOC, they do the same thing all over again. The intent being to prevent anything from ever being deployed, at all.
Coupled with their standard “If we started right now, it wouldn’t be ready for twenty years, so let’s not bother” ploy (so often seen in energy projects), this con has been used to stonewall any number of defense projects for the last fifty years. Ask the Army and Marine Corps how long they’ve wanted a serious Forward Area Air Defense system, as opposed to the Rube Goldberg M247 Sergeant York system that Carter and Harold Brown came up with, and Reagan and Weinberger pulled the plug on, or Humvees with Stingers and Ma Deuce .50s. (For what a real FAAD looks like, look up the Russian TS30M Tunguska, or the old West German Gepard and Roland systems. BTW, Roland nearly entered US service- only to be killed by Carter and Brown in favor of Sgt. York.)
Obama and the Democrats do not want any missile defense, ever, period. Their dream world is one in which only the people they like have missiles, and that does not include us. So why would they want us shielded from the righteous wrath of the truly enlightened?
Yes, theirs is a nihilistic creed that will end in destruction. But they are certain that only the parts of America they loathe will get it in the neck. They, being perfect, will survive to rule over the Brave New World.
And then they’ll REALLY get to work…
clear ether
eon
Or the ZSU-23-4; now there’s a really nasty system. One even got an F117 a while back (admittedly it flew directly overhead, but still).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZSU-23-4
This reply is mostly to eon. We presently are running an annual trillion dollar budget deficit in D.C. It’s real easy to lob accusations at Obama, Democrats, progressives, as you are doing. What is necessary in these fiscally austere times is to prioritize what we spend in defense. You’re not doing that.
And what is the threat potential for Iran to lob rockets at the U.S.? Do Iranians really want their country to be turned into a nuclear wasteland? That may be appropriate for a few of the real religious nutcases in Iran who would see nuclear war as preparing the way for arrival of the Mahdi; or the 13th Iman. But probably most would not go that route.
Worth noting is that the Islamic bomb has been in existence for around 15-20 years; in Pakistan. But nothing has happened.
For Paul, I don’t have time today to wade through the military web site that you’ve cited. I would prefer, however, to read independent confirmation, of the kind provided here: http://www.cdi.org .
Unfortunately, CDI hasn’t updated their missile defense reporting in three years.
“what is the threat potential for Iran to lob rockets at the U.S.?”
Very high. 1) they may not care about retaliation, even if 2) they believe that Obama will retaliate in the first place (remember, he holds the launch codes; the military will not launch a retaliation without his approval, unless he’s taken out), and 3) they can launch from somewhere else so that we’re not sure that they originated the missile. You do realize that Iran has been putting missile bases in Venezuela, don’t you?
“For Paul, I don’t have time today to wade through the military web site that you’ve cited.” Then don’t comment on systems that you know nothing about.
Excuse me, Paul. Don’t try to tell me that I can’t have an opinion. Maybe you also need to do some personal reflection on what our defense priorities should be. In these fiscally challenged times, we can’t afford the types & amounts of entitlements that we have; nor can we afford every defense project dreamed up by military contractors.
A Holocaust survivor was asked what he had learned from his experience. He answered “When someone says he plans to kill you, believe him.” The Iranian government is (by its own public, endlessly repeated statements) fanatically hostil to the United States. They gather their supporters to chant “Death to America!”
Yes, it would be extremely foolish of the Iranian government to launch a nuclear attack on the United States. But such foolishness has ample precedent. A few days before Pearl Harbor, the commander of the US Pacific battleship force, Admiral Pye, told his staff Japan would never be so foolish as to attack the United States. (Note to nitpickers: Pye was commander of the battleships only – Kimmel was commander of the fleet.)
Further note: I refer to the Iranian government. The Iranian people are different. It appears that most of them hate their government.
But what if Iran does not actually attack the US, only poses the threat of such an attack if the US interferes with Iranian domination of its neighbors? In 1965, LBJ rejected the solemn advice of the Joint Chiefs of Staff about how to fight the Vietnam war. See http://hnn.us/node/34024. His excuse was that their recommendations risked atomic war with the USSR. If the Iranian government can pose a similar threat, the US will face similar constraints.
And it won’t just be in the Middle East. The Iranian government is allied with anti-American Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez and thus with Cuba. The Soviet nuclear umbrella protected Castro in the 1960s, enabling immense mischief over the next 50 years. An Iranian umbrella would be at least as bad.
Leaving aside the Iranian nuclear threat, Iranian missiles with explosive, biological, or chemical warheads would be a serious threat to US forces in the theater and to any country which resists Iranian hegemony.
The complacent may say “Who cares what happens ‘over there’?” As noted above, ‘over there’ extends to our back yard. Furthermore, when bad actors are allowed complete license, the result is humanitarian disaster and floods of refugees.
Shall the US accept these refugees (some of whom will be bad actors themselves), or ruthlessly block their escape from murder and tyranny?
At the very least, the US should take steps to blunt the Iranian government’s threats to our country, our forces, and our allies. Deploying missile defenses is an obvious step.
First, no weapon system has ever called me a honky mutherf**ker, so I like them better than a lot of the people we spend money on.
Second, worrying about deficits and such is at best disingenuous from anyone on the Left; we simply don’t believe any of you when you say your concern for US finances is the basis of your opposition to military spending. Lefties are opposed to military spending because the want the US weakened so that it cannot act unilaterally and has to say mother may I to the more enlightened and consciousness raised nations, like Iran and Venezuela.
Art: there’s one “small” problem with your analysis. I’m a traditional conservative Republican, not a leftist. Suggest you do a little research on what conservative Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) proposed last year for solving the budget deficit.
You can call yourself a “traditional, conservative Republican,” and I’ll call you either very self-deceived or a troll. Most everything I’ve seen you write here was somewhere between crazy-a**ed Ronulan and outright lefty.
If Obama were worried about the deficit, he would have canceled the program, not just kicked it down the road. (If he was serious about deficits, we wouldn’t have GM, TARP, “stimulus”, and Solyndra, either.)
As it is, the same amount or more will be spent on a new R&D program, rather than production and deployment. Thus violating the first rule of procurement; sooner or later, you have to fire the design team and start the assembly line.
The only reason to handle it this way is to prevent anything from being built, at all, ever, while projecting a false image of being defense-conscious in an election year. Privately, I am quite sure Obama is assuring his friends on the far left that after he wins re-election, he will quietly kill the project. But the money will still be spent, on something he really likes, anyway.
This is the same rope-a-dope that progressives have used on defense projects since the Sixties. The One isn’t even original.
As for the Iranians being willing to risk obliteration, the imams running the country see Paradise by martyrdom as a feature, not a bug. You cannot use the threat of destruction to deter someone who sees dying in glorious jihad as a one-way ticket to Heaven.
Like Obama, you are assuming that the Iranian government is run by practical secularists. It is not. The bureaucracy may be run by reasonable sensible (if ruthless) people, but the decisions at the top are made by religious true believers with their own eschatological worldview. And who are perfectly willing to “martyr” the entire population of Iran, plus themselves, to achieve their religiously-motivated goals.
Especially if they get to take a lot of “infidels” with them.
clear ether
eon
It’s the same rope-a-dope he used on the space program too. He does it to circumvent the debate.
Why not use the Israeli Arrow-3 system? We already paid for a good part of the development cost and the components are made here by Boeing.
The Arrow-2 is already tested and operational. In has been modified to overcome countermeasures in Iranian missiles such as split warheads. The new model is already in the testing stage. It can intercept at longer range. The Arrow-3 can be mounted on ships and will be effective against a broader range of missiles including cruise missiles.
Production costs would be far less than starting from scratch and would be cost effective for both Israel and the US.
Seems more sensible to piggyback on a proven workable system which we could start deploying now.
Because the Arrow is a tactical anti-missile system, not an strategic defense system. The difference is one of range: tactical missiles have ranges of 1000 miles or less, and may carry 1 nuke or conventional warheads; (strategic) ICBM’s have ranges of over 10,000 miles and can carry multiple warheads. The GBM and S3 systems are designed to intercept ICBM’s well over the ocean so that the warheads don’t come near the U.S. at all. The Arrow is designed to protect cities.
“There are currently three different types of interceptor missiles that are deployed or under development by the U.S. Department of Defense: the SM-3 Block I-A, I-B, and II-A.”
These are one component of the system – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_missile_defense#Current_NMD_program. There are also the GMD interceptors based in Alaska. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground-Based_Midcourse_Defense
The biggest issue with missile-defense is that the GMD missiles aren’t being deployed in Europe, as planned, where they are in the best position to intercept Iranian missiles.
I heard that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will offer Barack Obama the position of Secretary of State of Iran after his fourth presidential term is over.
It all boils down to Obama don’t care what happens as long as it destroys America . If we are attacked it simply makes it easier to completely take over and create his dictatorship and instill Communism here in America . This has been his great love since at least his Harvard days and was probably a part of ‘The Schemes Of His Father .’ If indeed the British East African was indeed his father . One has to look no farther than his complete malice towards the Constitution to see his plan .
If the US. is targeted and attacked he and is minions assume that Americans will willingly comply with their mandates as they look for protection . It is a devious scheme the Liberal Left is hatching to insure they get their agenda and rule
For those of you who are not involved in the design and development of military systems (I am involved in Army systems) a note on how military systems are developed and fielded may be appropriate. For at least the past 50 years, and probably indeed going back to the Roman Empire, no complex system has been fielded without bugs in it. This is true of any weapons system, from rifles on up, but is especially true of the massive systems-of-systems that have come into being since WWI, such as aircraft carriers, strategic bombers, and missile-defense systems.
This is mostly due to engineering reality, and the scale of these systems. There is also a significant political component. it is impossible to shake out all of the bugs in any complex system in the lab; sometimes you have to put it out in the field and work with it to find all of the possible interactions. One famous example is the B1-B bomber. The B1-B is stuffed to the ailerons with RF equipment: radios, radars, jammers, and other electronic-warfare equipment. All of the equipment worked fine separately in the lab; it was only when they combined all of them on the aircraft that they found all of the interferences. It took 10 years to shake out all of the bugs on that plane. In the meantime, of course, you have a bomber, into which you have sunk several billion dollars, that works most of the time; to scrap it and try again would be to not only waste all of that money – and wreck careers, but require risking it happen again on the next one. So, you fly with what you have and work the bugs out. This sort of thing happens all of the time. Even the best computer simulations can only get you so far. Eventually you have to simply build the thing and shake it out.
With regards to missile defense: the systems are fielded and operational. The testing continues, and if you look closely at the tests, many failures have been in work-arounds that the contractors put in place so that they could test parts of the system while others were under development. For instance, in one test a second-hand booster, originally intended for another project, was used in a test of a kinetic-kill interceptor. The booster failed. The interceptor worked fine, as far as it could, and data was received. I’m sure that the contractor was rather severely chastised and penalized for messing up, and then they moved on to the next test.
That’s how it works, folks. Sometimes it’s ugly, and if you’re not involved in the nitty-gritty it’s easy to throw stones. Occasionally – as with the Sgt. York – things are so screwed up as to be unrecoverable. However, most of the time we end up with pretty good systems.
Wasn’t the B1-B itself a bastard child of the Carter Era, heavily modified from the original design and with its mission changed by politics?
If I were an Iranian Muslim psychopath, I’d get my hands on a few rust bucket tankers or container ships, there’s hundreds, maybe thousands, of them at sea on a given day, and I’d equip them to launch the relatively short range missiles I have in hand. Then the second I had nuclear warheads to attach to them, I’d send them out there to just get lost in the traffic until the day they showed up off the US coasts and either wiped out NYC, DC, and LA, maybe SEA to get Boeing, maybe throw a couple up into the atmosphere to see if that EMP stuff really does shut everything down. Then, the Left could start screaming about how it had to be an “inside job” or an attempted military coup, or how we don’t know who really did it and how unfair it would be to off millions of Iranians, and as long as there is a Democrat in power, we wouldn’t do a thing. There is really less risk to them from nuking the US than from nuking Israel, because Israel will kill them all and let God sort it out. Then with us off the board, they can mop up Israel by conventional means. Fundamentally, Isreal isn’t an existential threat to re-establishing the Caliphate, we are. Not even the Israelis would launch an attack on several Muslim capitals and Isreal has only a limited ability to stand up to a large scale conventional attack, at least not without our logistic assistance and re-supply of lost or damaged equipment.
As an expert, Paul, what’s your point? Shred the DOD and increase wasteful money spent on green boondoggles; waste more money on zero-gain welfare recipients; or how about spending more money on education with the great results it has shown over the past 30 years; or say the EPA and help it crush our industry even more… So where is your fiscally prudent budgetary spending cut going to come from.
At least with the military we ARE defending ourselves while pushing the envelope on the development of new research…It is not a zero sum gain as is most other government spending. And since when did you progressives become so fiscally prudent???
If anybody’s interested in the technical aspects for the SM-3 (RIM-161):
http://www.designation-systems.net/dusrm/m-161.html
http://www.raytheon.com/capabilities/products/standard_missile/sm-3/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIM-161_Standard_Missile_3
See also the SM-2 (RIM-66)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIM-66_Standard
The biggest difference between the SM-3 and the SM-2 is that the SM-3, specifically designed for missile interception, uses a kinetic-kill warhead similar to that of the GMD (simply put: fragmentation warheads can’t guarantee a kill against a target moving as fast as an ICBM warhead).
Re the IIB upgrade specifically:
http://weapons.technology.youngester.com/2011/04/standard-missile-3-sm-3-block-iib.html
http://defense-update.com/20111004_sm-3block2b_ngam.html
http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Boeing_Receives_Contract_for_SM3_IIB_Concept_Design_999.html
This appears to be a “money saving” move on the part of the president, who isn’t worried about incremental improvements to current systems.
When will you understand that BHO is an Alinskyite and tool of G. Soros. His goal is to diminish this country and make it subserviant to the UN.
WHAT???? WHO’S SURPRISED AT THIS? Everything Obama has done, is doing, or will continue to do is to undermine every foundational or remaining strength that America has. While he gives lip service to his “concerns”, he is actively engaged in dismantling our security, our economy, our military, our justice system, our character, and our confidence!!
He is slowly creating chaos and sewing doubt and distrust among all of us!! And importing thousands of mooslims and sharia law as well!
All this talk about missile this and missile that gives me a headache. What happened to the good old bayonet, and the gun-butt smash? A bunch of pansies with high-highfaluting techno gabble are running the roost. And ruining the roost, too, I might say.
Obama Generosity, Muslim Cancellation
Two recent developments involving the president and his favorite religion:
No one has ever suggested our commander-in-chief was stingy.
Well, before he launched his presidential bid in 2007, his charitable contributions were comparable to pre-conversion Ebeneezer Scrooge’s but since then he has opened his wallet somewhat. Now, his good-hearted generosity almost rivals that of Winnie the Pooh.
The president is so giving that he is considering sharing “limited classified data” on our proposed European anti-missile shield with our good buddies and former sworn enemies in Moscow.
Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Brad Roberts explained that the adminstration is merely continuing an initiative begun by Obama’s favorite whipping-boy, George W. Bush, although Bush never followed through with the harebrained idea of providing strategic information to a potential foe.
You see, the always paranoid Russians are fearful that the missile shield could somehow be deployed against them, without clarifying how a shield could miraculously become an offensive weapon. In fact, it would serve in a defensive capacity against the rapacious and truculent Ruskies and other crazies, so they don’t like it.
Reflecting the peculiar nature of Russian thought processes, Vladimir Putin has indicated that, should the shield become operational, he would deploy missiles as a defense since shields are notoriously threatening.
Fortunately, saner heads may prevail. Republican Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Michael Turner, has said he will “vigorously resist such compromises of U.S. missile defense capabilities.”
That, of course, assumes Rep. Turner will be re-elected in November. If the president isn’t re-elected, the matter becomes moot. If Obama is re-elected, Americans will have far more to worry about than protecting Europe.
Something not moot and no longer worrisome is the fate of TLC’s reality show, “All-American Muslim,” which didn’t depict reality and certainly didn’t demonstrate that Muslims living in Dearborn, Michigan were all or mostly American.
TLC spokeswoman Laurie Goldberg announced last week that, “We decided not to renew it for a second season” because of a collapse in viewership and a loss of more than half its audience between its first and eighth, final episode.
Left unmentioned by Ms. Goldberg . . . (Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=16835.)