Posted on 04/19/2017 12:15:37 PM PDT by lowbridge
Top generals have been insisting for years that if North Korea launched a missile at the United States, the U.S military would be able to shoot it down.
But that is a highly questionable assertion, according to independent scientists and government investigators.
In making it, the generals fail to acknowledge huge questions about the effectiveness of the $40 billion missile defense system they rely on to stop a potential nuclear-armed ballistic missile fired by North Korean or Iran, according to a series of outside reviews.
"They are leading political leaders to believe that they have a military capability that they don't, in fact, have," says physicist David Wright, who has studied the program for years as co-director of the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
(Excerpt) Read more at nbcnews.com ...
If the “experts” are mistaken, then the story ought not to have been printed because its wrong. On the other hand, if the “experts” are right, than the story ought not have been printed for a more serious reason. The gripping hand is that these “experts” should inform the military about vulnerabilities not the press and by extension our enemies.
The Union of Concerned Scientists, hmmm...
That's if they could be able to launch 20 at a time and be fairly certain that they would all actually launch. Their percentage chances of success would appear to be pretty low and it falls within the realm of probability that one or both of the nuke warheads would be on missiles that failed to launch or fly once launched.
It is a little simpler to locate and pinpoint a liquid-fueled rocket launch, given that much activity associated with the launch takes place prior to ignition, and this increased activity may be seen through surveillance techniques.
Solid fuel rockets are supposed to be much more quickly launched, with a minimum of other activity prior to actual ignition. But there is still activity of actually moving the missile into position, and though the warning period is much shorter, it is still finite.
But until the launch is rising from the pad, its direction still cannot be determined before it has begun its climb, at which point the probable paths become known, and with the high degree of sophisticated coordination of the tracking technology and the launch of a counter-missile, the kill approaches the inevitable.
And of course, given the successes the North Koreans have had in many of their attempts, a good many of them simply blow up on the launch. For all their supposed sophistication, they are still a Third World country or maybe even worse. And they do NOT have infinite resources.
“They are leading political leaders to believe that they have a military capability that they don’t, in fact, have,” says physicist David Wright, who has studied the program for years as co-director of the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists”.
Yep, the same people who were so against the Strategic Defense Initiative-”Star Wars”. They don’t want any American missile defenses to work.
A horror scenario eluded to in a book I read is a typical container ship off NYC that elevates a missile container and launches away. The Norks and Iranitards have the ability to do this. Nothing stops this but intelligence and inspection before such a terror ship gets within range of a major American port.
We have stuff ‘up there’ that will do the job.
No worries.
I hope is isn't the left's much vaunted "scientists" that have been making decades wrong predicitions on globull warming.
I didn't see bill nye's name mentioned though.
I know something about radars. I think that if a competent missile interceptor specifically designed and paired with its complement radar can track and launch, and can beam switch (e.g., AESA, ESA, etc.) track and hit the missile, then it will work. That requires a very expensive high frequency agile radar, like a THAAD variant.
The fault lays in the misconception an integrated system of L and S-band radars in the SPY-1 genre can co-register tracking positions and somehow boil all that into a target solution for an X or K-band radar/missile system is optimistic at best in my opinion.
Well...as long as they are experts. We are up to our butts with “experts.”
Israel shoots down missiles regularly. It works.
I’m more worried they’ll sail one into port on a civilian yacht.
It works well - that’s the one that shot down a wayward satellite a few years ago - uses the same launcher as Tomahawk.
What if the experts are communist subversives?
Don’t shoot it down.
Send it home.
I think people are making a lot of assumptions about the Norks range capabilities.
Scuds can’t even go 500 miles...and I’d bet their speed and trajectory makes it obvious they are Scuds.
Nork nukes and their range? The best info is they have a range of 2,500 miles...way short of even hitting Alaska.
I don’t know why we are getting worked up about the Norks nuking the US mainland. Much more likely, they would aim for a US military installation in the region - in Japan or South Korea. It would be a twofer, and it would be terrible. But it wouldn’t even give our missile defense system an opportunity to work or fail - they just don’t have the range to hit us here.
NBC is a crock.
They keep exploding right after launch.
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