[aldo_14]

The only chance of Canada being nuked is if someone misses the US.

[Corsair]

Who's gonna nuke us? North Korea? I laugh at them? China? No. Russia? No. France?

well, maybe...

[01010]

Originally posted by Corsair
Who's gonna nuke us? North Korea? I laugh at them? China? No. Russia? No. France?

well, maybe...

*Hides ICBM's*

*Whistles*

Not me.

[Vanguard]

In 2002 the missile shield had a 5/8 success rate.  And that was when the tests were rigged in favor of the defense system.  I guess we can all be greatful that if eight thousand nuclear weapons are launched, at least five thousand will never reach American soil.  Yaaays, anybody?

[Kosh]

American paranoia strikes again.

[Blitzerland]

Just because most countries do not CURRENTLY have the means to manufacture and deploy ICBMs, doesn't mean they WON'T one day. Better safe than sorry.

And, if by some (I support the missle interceptor plan, even though it is likely to be somewhat unreliable) miracle it does work as planned, we won't have anything to fear from North Korea and Iran, and such.

With that kind of threat out of the way, perhaps we can more easily reason with these countries...preventing war.

Far fetched? Maybe. But it could be worth it.

[Bobboau]

I want one of these, but it's years away from _posably_ working, this is BS.

[Liberator]

They've been working on it for almost 30 years, it's probably much closer completion than we realize.  Remember, we went to the moon in less than 10 years when they said we couldn't and shouldn't.  I do realize that this is not Jack Kennedy's United States.

[Bobboau]

there are major technical problems with this, it's like sooting a bullet out of the air with another bullet without haveing any forwarnment about it, it's an insanely complicated and dificult problem that makes landing on the moon look like takeing a bus to the corner market. it's an incredably hard thing to do, but I do think we should try it, but I'm realistic about it, it's years and years away from being useable.

[Rictor]

good, now I don't want to hear either of you ever complain about taxes ever again. You support this sort of frivilous spending, well, it aint cheap and if you're so keen to have it, you better believe its comming out of your pocket.

funny how you think that building a missle defense system costing several hundred billion dollars to maybe intercept a missle which chances are will never come is top priority, and yet paying for an old lady's  athritis medicine would be a crime against nature.

Next time I find myself doubting the power of propaganda, I'll think back the Star Wars and reaffirm my belief in the capacity of otherwise normal people to act like tinfoil-hatted nutters under the right circumstances.

[Bobboau]

governments job is to  stop other governments from killing us, not to keep us fed, you think diferently, that's why you live in Canada.

you know liveing within the blast radius of a military base on everyones MUST-NUKE-FIRST list might have skewed my priorities, but that's why I get one vote.

[ionia23]

I hope folks get the point that I'm not so much worried about someone else arbitrarily starting armageddon, I'm VERY concerned about the way this administration is going about it, and if re-elected, what they'll do with it.

The Iranians are NOT wimps by any stretch, and Georgie Porgie is just stupid enough to try to strongarm them.

"Star Wars", at it's greatest hype, claimed a potential 90% kill rate.  Great.  Even in a small exchange of 1000 warheads (ho ho ho), that's 100 reaching their targets.  More than enough to take care of the missle fields, a few capital cities near military targets, and six EMP devices in the atmosphere, effectively destroying 75-90% of the electronics in North and Central America.

This is the **** that scares me because it starts with the **** we're seeing now.

[Zarax]

A little historical data on the thing:
1) There are working systems, but they aren't made to intercept ICBM, but IRBM which are smaller scale, much slower versions.
Do you remember Gulf War1 and the Patriot missiles? It's pretty much an version finally capable of intercepting SCUD missiles (based, OMG on the old german V2)... It's not that they're going to hit US territory anytime soon... maybe they can be deployed by carrier groups and US bases near hot zones...

2) The whole star wars thing and missiles shield were designed when ICBMs were much simpler and the task was feasible.
After ICBMs capable of carrying multiple warheads to multiple targets were created (up to 25 IIRC), the whole tech and project became useless and unfeasible.
There are theoretical systems capable of countering the threat, but they still requires decades of R&D and are pretty unflexible.
Given the number of WORKING (estimated at around one quarter of the total deployed systems, if Russia launches today it will probabily nuke itself) ICBMs the thing will never get serious priorities...
And about early warning stations... WTF? NORAD is already capable to monitor launches around the world in near real time...

3) Do you know what are the speeds playing when you talk about ICBMs?
If you make a ton of C4 exploding in the exact moment an ICBM passes it's not going to near hit it, as it's 8 times faster than the explosion propagation speed.

[Vanguard]

Originally posted by ionia23
I hope folks get the point that I'm not so much worried about someone else arbitrarily starting armageddon, I'm VERY concerned about the way this administration is going about it, and if re-elected, what they'll do with it.

The Iranians are NOT wimps by any stretch, and Georgie Porgie is just stupid enough to try to strongarm them.

"Star Wars", at it's greatest hype, claimed a potential 90% kill rate.  Great.  Even in a small exchange of 1000 warheads (ho ho ho), that's 100 reaching their targets.  More than enough to take care of the missle fields, a few capital cities near military targets, and six EMP devices in the atmosphere, effectively destroying 75-90% of the electronics in North and Central America.

This is the **** that scares me because it starts with the **** we're seeing now.

True, and the detonating of EMP devices isn't anything to be taken lightly.  If enough weapons were deployed over an industralized state, said country would get to relive the 18th or 19th century all over again.  The more technological a country was, the more suspectible it would be to such an attack.

Then again, I've always wondered what a world without cars and computers might be like.

*thinks for a moment*

No no no no no no no no NO.  They can take the car, but NOT THE COMPUTER!  I can always learn to ride a horse.

[Ghostavo]

Zarax, go check your sources, NORAD doesn't do that kind of sh*t by itself. If this was supposed to work, there would need to be early radar systems to follow the missile so that other types of radar could identify the warhead from any decoys so that any kind of interception could be made.

Any idiot can see that the problem with this is that if someone REALLY wants to nuke the USA (which is laughable), one would simply nuke the early radar stuff one after the other only to blow up the USA next in a syncronised blow.

[Zarax]

Ghostavo, they use satellites, not radars...
And please pay attention to the fact i said monitor launches, not track missiles...
NORAD is actually capable of telling when an ICBM is launched and the approximate target area.
About RADARS, US already have such installations (see Cobra Dane), so unless they thinks France or UK is going to nuke them any extra installation is pretty much useless...

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by Zarax
Ghostavo, they use satellites, not radars...
And please pay attention to the fact i said monitor launches, not track missiles...
NORAD is actually capable of telling when an ICBM is launched and the approximate target area.
About RADARS, US already have such installations (see Cobra Dane), so unless they thinks France or UK is going to nuke them any extra installation is pretty much useless...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/2658861.stm

It's required for early warning, IIRC RADAR doesn;t have an infinite range.

I think the difficulties of knocking down an ICBM correctly with a missile are about the same as hitting a bullet with another bullet when firing from positions a mile apart.

[Zarax]

RADAR has a limited range based on power and line of sight.
In simple terms, the problem with an ICBM is trying to hit something moving at MACH11 with a MACH4/5 missile, and have the missile detonating at the right time, which requires it to detonate before contact, otherwise the ICBM won't be harmed.

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by Zarax
RADAR has a limited range based on power and line of sight.
In simple terms, the problem with an ICBM is trying to hit something moving at MACH11 with a MACH4/5 missile, and have the missile detonating at the right time, which requires it to detonate before contact, otherwise the ICBM won't be harmed.

So the natural curvature of the Earth would require early warning stations spread about the place.  Which presumably would not be covered by the missile shield, and thus be the prime target for a proper attack (because you'd need a lot of good, early info to model the incoming ICBM and fire at it).

[Clave]

I never thought I would be discussing my speciality after leaving the Air Force (Radar and Missiles)

The range of radar (and other radio waves) depends on frequency, power, and atmospheric conditions.  You can send a radio signal half way round the world, but the frequency has to be so low that it is unusable for radar.  The problem is accuracy:  Radar at airports for example is moderately high frequency, around 10GHz, which gives good positional information, but a short range.  Now you can drop down to 1 - 3GHz which will hugely increase your range, but it decreases your ability to track stuff.  

So, if you are chasing a high-flying, fast-moving target, then you need to up the power of each pulse to punch through the air, but you also need a lot of pulses because the target is moving quickly, and you need a reasonable frequency to pass on good positional info to the interceptor.  

You may not know this, but radar signals travel down a rectangular pipe, and if it is sealed, then you can transmit something like 50,000,000 Watts in short bursts, but, even with that amount of power, you are still only looking at a range of 300 miles max on a normal search radar.  

My guess, and it is a guess, is that the radars used in this system are a much lower frequency than normal search radar, so they can get the range, but I would be very dubious about the accuracy...

If, however, they link the whole system together with satellite tracking, then they may have some sort of hope of making it work.

But, I have to point out that all of this new technology becomes irrelevant in the event of an airburst nuke.  Most of the satellites, radars, comms etc. etc. will be wiped out by the EMP and rendered useless.  

So... is it a waste of time?  Yes, I think so.  If I was planning any sort of strike, the first thing I would do is deprive the enemy of 90% of thier technological advantage.....