Journal nizo's Journal: Missile defense shield 10
Couldn't a missile defense shield be built in Israel, if missiles from Iran really are the primary concern?
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Missile defense shield
The absent ones are always at fault.
It's a fake make work program for defence (Score:1)
And quite frankly, Obama will kill the program within his first 90 days, during negotiations with Russia.
Which, from my ex-military perspective, is a good thing (the program dying, that is).
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Well put. The whole US->Israel relation is just State Department welfare anyway.
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AFAIK the only part of national missile defense that is worth a bucket of warm spit is the aegis based theater system and even that is only of limited capability.
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AEGIS is ok, but actually the only program I worked on that even had a SLIM chance of being viable in battlefield conditions in the real world was Hot Rocks (where you scattergun from "dead" satellites that explode towards the target) - and even that was pretty expensive and way too inaccurate.
Sooner they kill the whole thing the better.
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Agreed, National Missile Defense is a black hole for money.
The SDI component of AEGIS was relatively cheap IIRC as it mostly used existing hardware or evolutions thereof. I suppose the PATRIOT missile system falls into the same category.
Both are also the only missile defense systems other countries seem to be willing to pay for with their own money.
Maybe some day, ... (Score:1)
...when the SDI technology mostly works. If ever. (It may not be sufficiently funded, or the technology hurdles may never be overcome.)
Unfortunately I don't think we're just talking about missiles from Iran. We're worried about *nuclear* missles from Iran. I don't even know if it's safe to blow up an ICBM with nuclear payload out in space, but a short range missile with nuclear payload over the skies of Israel?
Sometimes offense makes a better a defense.
ICBM launch tracks (Score:2)
ICBMs are launched on great circle routes, which from Iran to the continental US probably means a northerly launch. I haven't looked at the geography, but Iran being south of Russia and still in the northern hemisphere would imply that they would launch over that country. Might not be such a good idea to shoot down nuclear missiles over Russia. It's not hard to see why they would be peeved with that scenario.
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http://gc.kls2.com/ [kls2.com]
The great circle from Tehran to Washington DC goes over Georgia, Ukraine, Poland & Denmark.
Regardless, Nizo is correct. Iran does not have ICBMs. Their best missiles might reach Israel though.
And even if they could reach the USA, they wouldn't be so stupid as to do a public launch from Iranian soil, because I expect we would turn every square inch of that soil into blast glass.
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Thanks for the link. Interesting to play with. It looks to me like that route passes over a slice of Russia between Georgia and Ukraine. Targets on the west coast of the US would have a flight path to the east of Moscow. Denver might take it over both Moscow and St. Petersburg.
This page [wikipedia.org] references IRBMs with a range of up to 3000km, and an orbital launch vehicle. That would put most of eastern and central Europe in range. Hard to say whether or not the orbital vehicle could double as an ICBM. They ma