Centerfield

Caveats On The New Ballistic Missile Defense System

The big problem is that we can't get overconfident in this thing. It has a real potential to save many lives, but in war, it absolutely will let a few through, even once it's mature (see below), Like other modern missile defense systems, probably somewhere between a tenth and two tenths would get through even if everything goes right. If we go to war with Russia or China, we need to be ready to see several cities hit. I hope we won't be so stupid.

Sec'y Gates and newspapers have been far too optimistic about it, calling it a working BMD system. It is a good step, but there's a big difference between a stable satellite with a well-known orbit and a ground-launched missile launched by a hostile power in a spot and time of their choosing.

It's really in what we engineers call beta test, tests in deployment stage. It's going to take a few years before we can ACTUALLY rely on shots on ballistic missiles actually completely doing their jobs.

Whether or not the project managers and were aware, every big project ever done and ever in the future faces engineering constraints in terms of low reliability until long test periods - first a very limited alpha test, then a deployed beta, are behind us. If they ever work - the bigger the project, the lower the odds of success, the longer it takes to work out bugs.

At that, there's another constraint that HAS been obeyed: be incremental. Tacking on a series of increasing abilities, like to an existing missile system (Standard), is much likelier to work than building something from scratch. That's why this is on board faster and cheaper than the special-purposes ballistic defense systems also being worked on.

Alot of infrastructure is needed to pull this off, not much less than was used around MAD. For it to work, more launching systems than the enemy nation has must be permanently stationed and alert near the suspect nation. It's only going to work well in conjunction with a largely circumvallating ballistic radar net. I see plans for such a thing, but it seems very much work in progress yet. And its decision time is crazily low. That'll make it hard to be sure it'll work to catch surprise launches, and there'll be several false launches, hopefully not on aircraft.

UPDATE: Only forgot the most important caveat. Updated appropriately.