From: owner-skunk-works-digest@netwrx1.com (skunk-works-digest) To: skunk-works-digest@netwrx1.com Subject: skunk-works-digest V9 #42 Reply-To: skunk-works@netwrx1.com Sender: owner-skunk-works-digest@netwrx1.com Errors-To: owner-skunk-works-digest@netwrx1.com Precedence: bulk skunk-works-digest Wednesday, June 14 2000 Volume 09 : Number 042 Index of this digest by subject: *************************************************** Re: RCS reduction of radar antennas Re: Boeing E-3 Sentry Re: Boeing E-3 Sentry FWD (FT) Re: SDI debate [was - eeyore and tigger] FWD (EXT) Re: National Missile Defense [was - eeyore and tigger][[Part 1 of 2]] *************************************************** ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2000 08:49:49 -0700 From: Timothy Toth Subject: Re: RCS reduction of radar antennas >Just an aside.... why would you want radar on a stealth? Switch it on and you turn a stealth into a plain old airplane. Emittingh powerful radar emmisions is a no-no when you're trying not to be detected. That's why you try and make these emisions as discreet as possible. For the moment Radar is still the best way to get the most accurate data at the longest range in all weather. Advances in this field have made possible Efficient LPI (Low Probability of intercept) techniques, an example of an LPI technique is found at the end of the original message. All this was apparently not possible when the F-117 was conceived, but you will notice that lot's of aircraft (newer models included) rely on radar, and this includes bombers, fighters, reconnaissance aircraft etc... An aircraft in operation, will of course limit the time it uses radar to a minimum. The B-2 for example almost certainly uses correlation techniques to track it's targets which means it will take a brief shot with it's radar, then computers will be used to calculate the position of targets. They probably don't use radar to fly at low level like other less stealthy aircraft do (B-1B for eg.), same goes for navigation update etc.... You also have to remember that there will not be just one emitter (brief emision from stealth aircraft) but lot's of radars operating (fighter, attack aircraft, air defence, search etc...) The detectors themelves have to be sensitive enough (or close enough) to pick low power emissions, and then keep track of it long enough to know what is happening and where. All in all it is the same as stealth, it is not a matter of really detectable aircraft VS invisible aircraft. You have several degrees of 'stealthiness'. Timothy ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2000 18:30:54 +0100 From: "Gavin Payne" Subject: Re: Boeing E-3 Sentry >E-3D (seven British aircraft > with CFM56 engines and improved electronic support measures due to enter > service from 1991 as Sentry AEW.Mk 1s) I noticed when they came into service that we put the Yellowstone ESM pods on (the same pods we added to the Nimrod MR2 as they went to war in the Falklands). Anyone know why the RAF wasn't happy with the default ESM kit and added more? (the standard kit is still there; the RAF have just added a pod to each wing) All I can think of is that maybe the RAF sorties used to take them closer to Eastern borders and in range of threats the E3 isn't normally used to. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2000 17:09:11 -0700 From: Timothy Toth Subject: Re: Boeing E-3 Sentry Gavin Payne wrote: > I noticed when they came into service that we put the Yellowstone ESM pods on (the same pods we added to the Nimrod MR2 as they went to war in the Falklands). >Anyone know why the RAF wasn't happy with the default ESM kit and added more?(the standard kit is still there; the RAF have just added a pod to each wing) >All I can think of is that maybe the RAF sorties used to take them closer to Eastern borders and in range of threats the E3 isn't normally used to. In fact the E-3D does not have the 'default ESM kit', because there was no such thing at the time. The E-3D where the first of the E-3 series aircraft to have an ESM system. The first USAF aircraft was fitted with the AYR-1 in oct. 95 as part of the Block 30/35 upgrade (retrofit on other aircraft ongoing until 2001). French E-3Fs and NATO aircraft are also receiving the equipment. Aircraft with the AN/AYR-1 are easily recognisable because it's sensors are housed in the big canoe-like bulges on the forward fuselage and in smaller bulges on the nose and tail. It is capable of detecting fighter radars more than 550km away. An improvement program for the system is also planned. The Loral 1017 Yellowgate has it's sensors in the wingtip pods, and covers the C- through J-band. In April 1999 Racal-Thorn Defence was awarded a contract worth about £5m to upgrade Yellowgate. These improvements will enhance the aircrew's threat warning and surveillance data, as well as reducing the system's weight and increasing its reliability. And in related news; China has recently started marketing the FT-2000 system (based on the Russian S-300PMU-1/SA-10). This system can also use an indigenously developed anti-radar homing missile which is capable of engaging AWACS type targets and stand off-jammers. Timothy ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2000 22:11:50 -0700 From: "Terry W. Colvin" Subject: FWD (FT) Re: SDI debate [was - eeyore and tigger] << I think it's a screwy idea. It would never work against a massive attack because defense will always be more expensive than offence, if it takes 10 dollars to shoot down 10 cents of hardware the other side will just overwhelm you. As for a small attack, well if I were an insane dictator of some little jerkwater country I wouldn't use ICBM's to deliver my bombs, they're harder to make than nukes and much more expensive; I'd use FedEx or UPS to deliver my H Bomb, the transportation would only cost a few dollars not a few billion. It has other advantages too, a rocket can be tracked so everyone would know who was responsible for having Manhattan vaporized, America might be irritated at me. Better if things just go boom and nobody knows why. I could even send a letter of condolence afterwards. >> All of the above is good sense. The present plan is to stop a small attack or protect a given area. The sea based system is the one being pushed forward at the moment. There is no attempt underway to do a full blown SDI multiple layered defense. ( Be nice guys, my ships will be the launch platforms for these.) Puca - ---------- >I thought the conspiracy was to get the military to pay for a >permanent manned presence in space. No, it was to pay for the development of a SSTO (single stage to orbit) spaceplane for the USAF, successfully completed in the late 80s according to Aviation Leak. - - as well as to bankrupt the USSR. Rob what, me theorise? - ------------- << But is it worth abrogating an arms-control treaty, pissing of the Russians and Chinese and re-starting the COld War for? >> That treaty allows defense of two cities as the Russians have done. That treaty was with the USSR and while the Russians may like to think so, They Ain't the CCCP. The Chinese are very much a part of the problem and a limited defense would spike their wheels for decades. A Cold War with whom? The Russians? The Chinese? Who has the money and isn't spending it already? Cold War indeed! See this is the proper debate; not is it possible. Puca:) - ------------- >That treaty allows defense of two cities as the Russians have done. That >treaty was with the USSR and while the Russians may like to think so, They >Ain't the CCCP. Erm, for the purposes of international law they are: after the break-up of the USSR, Russia accepted responsibility for the USSR's treaty obligations, and was recognised by the UN as the USSR's successor in matters such as the Security Council permanent seat. Roy - -------------- >>Yep. The only people who have used this successfully against the late >>unlamented Sovs are the Finns, who renounced the Treaty on Friendship >>and Mutual Cooperation when the Communists fell from power. Even >>they would probably have had to back down if Yeltsin had made an issue >>of it, but the Russians presumably decided that they would just as soon >>*not* have Finns with guns called up to defend Russia's western border >>in a time of crisis, heh. > >I hadn't realised they'd denounced that treaty. Good for them! Yes, in 1991 IIRC. Esko Aho, in his best Finnish deadpan, announced that the YYA-sopimus had been signed with the USSR, which no longer existed, so the treaty was void. It was very low key, and I'm sure they advised Yeltsin ahead of time that the announcement was coming. The reasoning was illegitimate, as you noted earlier, but I think all parties concerned had already decided that the treaty was offensive and should be quietly nullified with all deliberate speed (the Russians hardly uttered a peep). Soon afterward, a replacement treaty was signed that was peer-to-peer, similar to agreements Russia has with Germany. >Now, next they need to get Karelia back... To tell the truth, nobody wants it back except a few revanchists. Of course, if Russia would take back all the people Stalin "resettled" there it might be a different matter; but very few Finns would take eastern Karelia back even if it was offered to them free and clear, if absorbing the Russians who live there was part of the deal. Petsamo might be a different matter, but presumably that's not in the cards. >Roy, a fennophile from an early age I have sometimes wondered about kalevala.org. :-) john k - -- Terry W. Colvin, Sierra Vista, Arizona (USA) < fortean1@frontiernet.net > Home Page: < http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Stargate/8958/index.html > Sites: Fortean Times * Northwest Mysteries * Mystic's Cyberpage * TLCB * U.S. Message Text Formatting (USMTF) Program - ------------ Member: Thailand-Laos-Cambodia Brotherhood (TLCB) Mailing List TLCB Web Site: < http://www.tlc-brotherhood.org >[Allies, CIA/NSA, and Vietnam veterans welcome] Southeast Asia (SEA) service: Vietnam - Theater Telecommunications Center/HHC, 1st Aviation Brigade (Jan 71 - Aug 72) Thailand/Laos - Telecommunications Center/U.S. Army Support Thailand (USARSUPTHAI), Camp Samae San (Jan 73 - Aug 73) - Special Security/Strategic Communications - Thailand (STRATCOM - Thailand), Phu Mu (Pig Mountain) Signal Site (Aug 73 - Jan 74) ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2000 22:26:33 -0700 From: "Terry W. Colvin" Subject: FWD (EXT) Re: National Missile Defense [was - eeyore and tigger][[Part 1 of 2]] Spike Jones wrote: > > You may have heard by now about how the national missile defense > is all a big reaganesque fantasy, etc. I was just wondering if anyone > here has any strong opinions in this regard. > > The local paper, the San Jose Mercury News, decided to cash in > its credibility thus: they ran an article with a column on the front page > and the entiiiiirrrre baaack paaaage, going on and on about how the > concept is flawed, would neeeeever work, how it was all a big boon- > doggle, how 4 out of 5 defense scientists surveyed agreed it would > never work, etc. That was in Wednesday's paper. The entire back > page. > > In all that verbiage, there was not one word in there, not a single word, > about the last two THAAD missile firings, both successful. I suppose > there was some bizarre line of reasoning that lead to the decision that the > > fact that a feat has already been accomplished is irrelevant to the > arguement of whether or not it is possible. > > The saaaammme daaaaay that the huge negative article was running, the > defense scientists at Sandia used a ground base laser to destroy an > incoming missile. Think about that for a minute. That story was > reported in the Merc, on page 10A, twoooo seeennnntences, one of > which was totally irrelevant to the event, having to do with Israelis > vs Lebanese or something. So. One sentence. Vs the back page. > > I would have let it drop, but today they ran ANOTHER eeyore > article. you remember Eeyore, the donkey? Dismal, droopy > character, not extropian at all: "It'll never wooork, oh deeear, > woooe is meeee...", whereas Tigger is more my style, bouncing > around on his tail, always having fun and enjoying life: Woo hoo! > Wooo hooo! > > So I fired off a letter to the editor, scolding him, asking if they > had anyone there at that paper who was responsible for *balance*. > In the Eeyore article, there was no actual news. All of it was > merely political commentary. When an actual news item happened, > they gave it two sentences. Was this the Mercury *News*, or was > it the San Jose Mercury Propaganda Sheet? Could they manage > to mix a little Tigger with the Eeyore? > > I know some say the National Missile Defense could be made > to work but shouldnt. I guess we need to wait until a city > is actually nuked off the face of the earth to start developing > such a thing? > > What say ye, extropians? spike Funny thing was the other night, Gen. Al Haig and an Air Force General were interviewed on the Putin summit and SDI, and when asked directly if lasers have been used to shoot down ballistic missiles, they both pulled the 'can't confirm or deny' act.... Scientists for Social Responsibility admitted back in '87, and I quote from one of their directors,"The debate is no longer scientific, its economic." (See "Mutual Assured Survival") They have been trying to argue that if the enemy can build its offensive capability for less money that it costs you to build your defensive capability, then you've already lost. They pointedly ignored a) the fact that the economic capaiblities of the offense and the defense might be different, and b) the fact that the cost of the defense is less expensive than the cost of allowing your infrastructure and economy to be destroyed in an attack. I can guarrantee that the dems will wait until someone gets nuked before they pull their heads out of their asses. The only reason Clinton is even supporting this is because the generals are about ready to munity or retire en mass in protest against the way Clinton has emasculated the military across the board while at the same time exhausted it with more deployments in peacetime than under any other president. Mike Lorrey - ---------- John Clark wrote: > A few years ago they claimed to have solved the > problem and had a successful test, but much later it turned out that they'd > installed a electric heater on the mock warhead so it gave off a much > stronger infrared signal. Right. That test, the Homing Overlay Experiment, was a test of the kill vehicle, not the seeker. The seeker technology was not advanced enough at that time, so they, the customer and the contractors, decided not to risk the kill vehicle test by combining it with a seeker test. Later a reporter without a clearance felt he had uncovered some kind of scandal or cover-up upon learning of the "hidden electric heater". > The latest round of testing is no more honest a inside > informant told the New York Times on Friday. Inside informant. How would the Times know if they had a *real* inside informant? If the inside informant had a clearance, they would risk going to prison for leaking info. Why would that inside informant do that? What if the informant had a clearance, but not in that particular area? This is an inherent problem with reporter digging up a scoop within the cutting edge of defense: those who know do not tell. Therefore those who tell ________. Fill in the blank. > With realistic decoys the > system had absolutely no luck finding the warhead so they just dumbed down the > testing. So goes the story. In fact I would not expect they would combine a test of decoy discrimination with a kill vehicle test. Reason: decoy discrimination can be tested on the deck, in an anechoic chamber. If they felt it necessary to do such a test in space, the results would be highly secret, for obvious reasons, and there might even be intentional misinformation leaked to the press. The customer would never want such a test to be combined with a test that cannot be kept secret, such as a hit-to-kill intercept, which cannot be kept secret. A space- based decoy test can be launched from a sounding rocket out in Nevada somewhere, where no one is watching. Keep in mind that the results of these tests have convinced those who pay the bills that this technology is worth pursuing. > I think it's a screwy idea. It would never work against a massive attack because > defense will always be more expensive than offence, Roger that. I agree. However, the comparison is irrelevant. For instance, the cost of the lock on your car is much higher than the cost of the tool used to defeat it, yet still we lock our cars. The cost of the lock on our houses is very high with respect to the cost of the brick thrown thru a window. The costs that should be compared is the cost of the defense compared to the cost of... Seattle. Or Los Angeles, or New York. Name a city, and please help me estimate its value. How would you do it? Assume the value of all the real estate, then add the number of people times their average annual salary times the average remaining years of their career? Then add a few bucks apiece for the children? John, what is the *value* of the city you live in? > well if I were an insane dictator of some little jerkwater country I wouldn't > use ICBM's to deliver my bombs, they're harder to make than nukes and much more > expensive; I'd use FedEx or UPS to deliver my H Bomb, Roger that. But before this becomes much greater of a risk, we need the technology to determine if any given package contains fissionable material, which is actually now doable, with thermal neutron detectors and other technology. > a rocket can be tracked > so everyone would know who was responsible for having Manhattan vaporized, > America might be irritated at me. That they would. In fact, if some Dr. Evil fired a missile at the U.S. he would likely never get the satisfaction of knowing whether or not it made it thru the defenses, since an advanced adversary has countermeasures aboard submarines, which are likely closer to him than he is to the U.S. > Better if things just go boom and nobody knows why. > I could even send a letter of condolence afterwards. Well, yes, do that. Now of course, you have raised an issue that leads directly back to our favorite old topic: universal surveillance. I want someone to explain to me how we can possibly go another 100 years without some form of national missile defense and eventually some form of unisurv, one that cares not if it sees you scratching your fanny but rather is focussed on those who try to make nukes, bioagents or nanoweapons. spike - ---------- >If the inside informant had a clearance, they would risk going >to prison for leaking info. And I'll bet that's why he insisted the newspaper not use his name. >Why would that inside informant do that? Probably because he was ashamed of himself for having any part in such a sham and was trying to make amends. >those who know do not tell. If so then don't expect me to support the project, I'm not going to buy a pig in a poke. >In fact I would not expect they would combine a test of decoy >discrimination with a kill vehicle test. Reason: decoy >discrimination can be tested on the deck, in an anechoic chamber. Do you really think that's a reasonable position to take? Don't test it even one time, just assure yourself that theoretically it would work in a anechoic chamber sitting in a lab and start spending hundreds of billions of dollars of other people's money. >If they felt it necessary to do such a test in space, the results would be >highly secret, for obvious reasons The obvious reason is that it doesn't work worth a damn. If there really was a magic gadget that would, in the words of a past dimwitted president "render nuclear weapons obsolete" and if you really wanted to be sure that these bombs would never be used then obviously both sides should know all about it, there should be no secrecy everything should be public knowledge. >Keep in mind that the results of these tests have convinced those who pay >the bills that this technology is worth pursuing. What are you talking about, the taxpayer is paying the bills. >>Me: >>defense will always be more expensive than offence, > Roger that. I agree. However, the comparison is irrelevant. You spend 100 billion on a ABM defense, I spend one billion on more rockets, warheads, and decoys and we're both right back where we started. You call that irrelevant? >Name a city, and please help me estimate its value. Why would I want to do that? If defense cost far more than offence, and it does and always will, then a ABM system can't save it and it doesn't matter if the city's value is zero or infinity. Don't misunderstand me, I'm not happy with this situation but that's the way things are. >For instance, the cost of the lock on your car is much higher than >the cost of the tool used to defeat it Not if you count the knowledge and skill on how to use that tool, it takes almost no knowledge or skill for me to use the lock. >>Me: >>I'd use FedEx or UPS to deliver my H Bomb, >Roger that. But before this becomes much greater of a risk, we >need the technology to determine if any given package contains >fissionable material, which is actually now doable, with thermal >neutron detectors and other technology. Very hard to do, neutrons are not as easy to detect as protons or electrons and they can be shielded. If somebody put a H Bomb inside a small oil tank you'd never find it. Billions of tons of goods are traded worldwide every year, plenty of opportunity for things to slip through. I don't want to sound too gloom and doom, I was very encouraged when Russia and the USA recently agreed that each would destroy 35 tons of Plutonium. There is still far too much of that crappy element on this small planet but at least now there's 70 tons less. You only need a little over 9 pounds of Plutonium to make a crude nuclear bomb, less if you're clever. John K Clark - ---------- >You may have heard by now about how the national missile defense >is all a big reaganesque fantasy, etc. I was just wondering if anyone >here has any strong opinions in this regard. I really don't trust the government on the validity of their testing. I remember when the Sgt. York gun was being tested and they said it passed a test. The target even though it was rated as "killed" kept flying and had to be shot down after it left the gunnery range. On the other hand, if China or N. Korea nukes Los Angeles, I don't think there will be a city left standing in the agressor country, and the people of the United States will demand a defense system, and we will end up with one that works or heads will roll. James Zuchelli - ---------- John Clark apparently said (in part); >If defense cost far more than offence, and >it does and always will, then a ABM system can't save it and it doesn't >matter if the city's value is zero or infinity. Don't misunderstand me, I'm >not happy with this situation but that's the way things are. Not being too much of a student of history nonetheless I've been lead to beleive that it has ALWAYS been an "arms race" between precisely defense vs offense. In some eras of history defense (the age of castles) is paramount...in others offense reigns.....the pendelum swings..... At this time it would seem to the uniformed but curious layman (me) that groundbased or airborne kinetic energy weapons (railguns), and/or laser weapons would be more than a match for incoming ballistic weapons...... For example....a hypothetical laser weapon. Imagine a generator about the size of a heifer (several hundred pounds) turning at high speeds designed in such a way that when the "juice" is put to the primary windings (secondary?....I forget the terms...) it stops in nanoseconds (ok....milliseconds....or even great big fractions of seconds....).....thereby converting all that rotational inertia into heat and electricity....which is then used to fire off a laser "round".... I have it on (kinda) good authority that G.E. was (is) working on such a thingie....they "gave" it to the kids at Texas A&M and told em to "break" it.....(test it to destruction....Texas boys is GOOD at "testing things to destruction) Now imagine a whole array of such generators....mounted on a 747 say.....and "spun-up" by the slip stream of the aircraft or some jet engine exhaust arrangement..... What you then have is a multiple shot hi-energy, transportable missle killer.....if coupled with the appropriate targeting data I would assume...... How far can a (many) kilo(mega?) watt "lazer-burst" reach when fired from an aircraft at hi altitude? The above being only one scenario......no matter how fast a reentry vehickle is it ain't lightspeed.....and given multiple laser shots don't worry about the decoys.... Kill em alllllllllllll (re-entry vehickles that is....) EvMick San Antonio Tx....(remember the Alamo!!!!) - ---------- >How far can a (many) kilo(mega?) watt "lazer-burst" reach when fired from >an aircraft at hi altitude? I think the 747 borne Laser tested in the 80's had an effective range of around 13 miles (maybe way off, it was a while ago). The laser was dispersed by atmosperic particals so the Star Wars project was born which wouldnt be effected by the atmosphere. I'm sure someone on the list will know an equation for calculating laser ranges in air for varying power levels. I have been thinking along the same lines about an anti ICBM Rail gun. The problem is not the weapon, its the targeting. So I would go for the shotgun "Big Spread" approach firing muliple rounds once. Very similar to a shotgun round. Im sure that these type of rounds are already being developed as anti infantry or aircraft ammo for rail gun tanks. Alex. - ---------- > I have been thinking along the same lines about an anti ICBM Rail gun. > The problem is not the weapon, its the targeting. So I would go for the > shotgun "Big Spread" approach firing muliple rounds once. Very similar to a > shotgun round. Im sure that these type of rounds are already being developed > as anti infantry or aircraft ammo for rail gun tanks. A cloud of decoys/warheads can be widely dispersed. Kinetical kill means tiny, fast projectiles. You'll need a direct hit with a lot of energy to take out a hardened warhead. Sorry, don't see it happen, even if you use nuke shotgunning (and think of the NEMP it would cause). Also, this doesn't address high-stealth slow delivery. - ---------- > The problem is not the weapon, its the targeting. So I would go for the > shotgun "Big Spread" approach firing muliple rounds once. Very similar to a > shotgun round. Im sure that these type of rounds are already being developed > as anti infantry or aircraft ammo for rail gun tanks. A variant of the Phalanx gun was developed for terminal interception, basically 20k to 80k feet, as I recall, that would put up a wall of steel in the path of a warhead. It was meant to be sited within several hundred yards of the warhead's target, typically missile silos or military bases. I wonder why larger guns have not been made with more intelligent guided munitions. You can't beat the acceleration, probably better than THAAD, and if the shell has its own upper stage and maneuvering thrusters with a guidance system and a fragmentation warhead, ..... ought to be more reliable and less expensive than a missile system. - ---------- John Clark wrote: > Do you really think that's a reasonable position to take? Don't test it even > one time, just assure yourself that theoretically it would work in a anechoic > chamber sitting in a lab and start spending hundreds of billions of dollars of > other people's money. They will test it all-up, after they have acheived a calculated system reliability of a certain minimum number. It isnt there yet. It will get there. >The obvious reason is that it doesn't work worth a damn. This sounds too much like a physics teacher arguing that heavier-than- air flight is impossible as the Wright Flier passes overhead. Without missing a beat, he observes "No stewardesses, no in-flight movie, hell, we dont even have AIRPORTS! This will never go anywhere." Lets give it a chance, shall we John? You know, tho, this whole thing puts me in a dilemma of sorts. The whole issue is that the pentagon wants to buy something that they cannot talk about and cannot reveal how well it works. As an information freedom advocate, you can see where I am in a tight spot. {8-] This is the nature of warfare, and this is why war must be stopped. It is wasteful beyond imagination, unspeakably tragically wasteful. It must be stopped. For the first time in history, we may be able to do just that. spike Heres a coupla stories that came over the news wire today that pretty nicely sum up our debate: SCIENTISTS TO TELL CONGRESS CLINTON MISSILE DEFENSE PLAN IS FAULTY: An array of scientists will tell Congress Monday that the Clinton administration's proposed antimissile shield is flawed and should be shelved until the Pentagon can prove it works. Organized by the Union of Concerned Scientists, about 40 physicists and engineers will join a growing number of experts who say the $60 billion defense system is incapable of defending the U.S. from even a limited missile attack by countries such as North Korea or Iran. "What's on the books at this point is simply not adequate, and never will be," said Lawrence Jones, a physicist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Critics say the Pentagon has intentionally simplified tests to disguise the system's inability to tell an incoming warhead from a decoy. Air Force Lt. Col. Rick Lehner, spokesman for the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, said the critics lack the information needed to understand the system. (Wall Street Journal) COCHRAN REBUTS SCIENTIST's CLAIMS ON NMD PERFORMANCE: Sen. Thad Cochran on Friday criticized reports from a Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientist that the national missile defense (NMD) systems now being tested could be easily defeated by simple coutermeasures. Ted Postol, an MIT scientist and one of the leading critics of the Pentagon's missile defense program and Raytheon's Patriot missile's performance in the Gulf War, also recently alleged that the Pentagon's Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO) altered the NMD flight test program to cover up problems. Cochran, who chairs the Senate subcommittee on international security and proliferation, took on Postol on several accounts in a Senate floor speech. For example, Cochran said that Postol said he found the fatal weakness in the BMD system after studying BMDO data from the NMD Flight Test 1A conducted in June 1997. But, Cochran said, Postol never mentioned that test was not intended as a warhead intercept test or that the kill vehicle now being used for the program is built by a different contractor. And, Postol also claimed to have discovered in the data from Flight Test 1A that the vehicle will be defeated by the simplest of balloon decoys, Cochran noted. "The fact is that in Flight Test-3, on Oct. 2, 1999, exactly the opposite happened, when the EKV disregarded a balloon decoy and successfully destroyed its target" Cochran said. Cochran also said Postol made similar disparaging remarks in the past, all of which were proven false, about Lockheed Martin's Theater High Altitude Area Defense system and Patriot. (Defense Daily) - ---------- >I've been lead to beleive that it has ALWAYS been an "arms race" >between precisely defense vs offense. That's true but the race is over now and offence won, 4 reasons why. 1) The target of an ICBM, large population centers, is stationary and several thousand square miles in area; the target of an ABM is moving at 12 thousand miles an hour and is several thousand square feet in area. Advantage offence. 2) The target of an ABM is worth several million dollars, the target of an ICBM is worth several trillion dollars. Advantage offence. 3) In a age of H bombs and massive overkill, a high failure rate in my fleet of offensive ICBM's is perfectly acceptable. Your anti-missile system must be virtually 100% effective or it's not worth building. At the peak of the cold war each side had about 50,000 warheads, even if you shoot down 99.9% (a ridiculously optimistic figure) that means 50 H Bombs would explode over American cities. In a matter of minutes far more people would die than in all our wars put together and the country would no longer be a superpower, it would no longer even be a country. Advantage offence. 4) Your astronomically complex defensive system can never be tested in the real world conditions it's supposed to operate in to see if it really does what you hope it will. It's as if you looked up the hardware specifications of a computer in a book and then, never actually seeing the machine, wrote an entire operating system for it and expect it to work perfectly the very first time you ran it. On the other hand I can be pretty confident that my offensive ICBM fleet will work as expected because I can test the parts and coordination among the parts of the system is not nearly as important as it is with your ABM. Advantage offence. John K Clark - -- Terry W. Colvin, Sierra Vista, Arizona (USA) < fortean1@frontiernet.net > Home Page: < http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Stargate/8958/index.html > Sites: Fortean Times * Northwest Mysteries * Mystic's Cyberpage * TLCB * U.S. Message Text Formatting (USMTF) Program - ------------ Member: Thailand-Laos-Cambodia Brotherhood (TLCB) Mailing List TLCB Web Site: < http://www.tlc-brotherhood.org >[Allies, CIA/NSA, and Vietnam veterans welcome] Southeast Asia (SEA) service: Vietnam - Theater Telecommunications Center/HHC, 1st Aviation Brigade (Jan 71 - Aug 72) Thailand/Laos - Telecommunications Center/U.S. Army Support Thailand (USARSUPTHAI), Camp Samae San (Jan 73 - Aug 73) - Special Security/Strategic Communications - Thailand (STRATCOM - Thailand), Phu Mu (Pig Mountain) Signal Site (Aug 73 - Jan 74) ------------------------------ End of skunk-works-digest V9 #42 ******************************** To subscribe to skunk-works-digest, send the command: subscribe in the body of a message to "majordomo@netwrx1.com". 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