"And
politicians can ladle all the money they like into defensive weapon systems,
in fact they substantially do, but it will never be possible to reliably guarantee
that a single trunk sized object cannot be delivered inside a particular mile
wide circle. Weapon companies don't make a lot of money proclaiming this,
but there it is."
(11/14/06)- Back when I worked for the space program one of the things I did was figure out how to get object A to point B. Of course it was always a friendly object A going to a happy point B. But it didn't have to be.
First and foremost, it's important to understand that the primary mission of an Antiballistic Missile (ABM) system is to make money, and great heaping piles of it, for all the companies involved in designing, building, testing, deploying, refurbishing, painting, polishing, or otherwise somehow profitably connected with the thing. In this vital sense any ABM system becomes a success the moment it's funded. Other measures of success, such as for instance the ability of an ABM system to safeguard the US against nuclear attack, are more problematic.
Much is made of American technical prowess, the standard cliche being that we put men on the moon. The moon, however, wasn't trying not to be landed on. It would have been a lot harder otherwise. And too, a failure didn't involve all our major cities being destroyed. So that's another difference.
As Tolstoy might have put it had he ever written about this subject, all successful ABM systems are successful in the same way; all unsuccessful ones, which is to say all of them ever deployed, are unsuccessful differently. The Buddha might have made some enigmatic observation about various paths. Anyway, the point is that there are very many more ways for an ABM system to not work than work. Let's explore a few of them .....
There've been a number of ABM systems which have successfully attracted many billions of dollars over the years, but we will for our present analysis deal with the one currently deployed by the US against N. Korea. The analysis can be readily adapted to other systems by changing the acronyms.
Ways to defeat the current US ABM system-
1. One way for the North Koreans to defeat the US ABM system would be to launch retrograde instead of posigrade (fly the long way around the world). I haven't read where anybody's suggested this, perhaps because nobody on this side is getting paid to point out the possibility, and the other side isn't big on publishing. Such a strategy could be pursued with an existing launch vehicle by using strap-on solids. They would increase the initial launch mass maybe a third.
2. For the traditionalist, there are penetration aids (not making that up), for instance decoys with blow down thrusters (not making that up either).
3. Depending on how dispersed and hardened the ABM system is, there's always the possibility of denying the defensive asset by targeting it with a depressed trajectory. Which is to say you blow it up.
4. Since the US ABM system uses exoatmospheric intercept, it might be possible to defeat it by dipping the warhead trajectory to high endoatmospheric through the intercept zone. Don't tell anybody that.
5. Should the North Koreans have a mind to, I suppose they could always put their missiles on boats, maybe even ones that go under the water. They would need to make sure they launched from an area that wouldn't put their missiles in the intercept corridor. This launch area is probably, oh ... maybe 99% of the Earth.
6. Probably the most Asian way of defeating an ABM system
is to not use ballistic missiles against it. This introduces a whole tub
of worms. I'm personally partial to defensive system saturation with low
cost air breathing delivery vehicles, maybe with some kind of distributed
collective tactical autonomy. And call me old fashioned but I don't see
why you couldn't do it with a cheap and easy turboprop. Or maybe go with
a high bypass turbofan. Either way, I think it needs to take off with a
whoooosh! kind of sound.
