Wrong. There are 44 interceptors in the Ground-Based Missile Defense (GMD) system, portioned between Alaska and California (vs. polar and oceanic threats).
The 44 missiles (and there are only 44) in the GMD have a very bad effectiveness rating of around 40%. North Korea and Russia combined have over 2,000 warheads ready for launch from silos or untraceable submarines at any time. The GMD is barely any protection at all against a real attack.
Our enemies could annihilate the U.S. in about 45 minutes if they decided to. The only deterrent is the fact that we are ready to do the same.
So, you were wrong on your original claim and now you are pettifogging over what constitutes an "adequate" defense. In the last 14 test flights from 2008 onward, only the last one was not a success, and they are working a corrective design to deal with that. The official estimate of single-shot kill is 56%, but a 4-on-1 engagement would be 97%. Our situation could be far better than this, but the SDI program (which I worked on) was denigrated and only grudgingly supported by Congress. No real popular support, so the paltry system we have is not a surprise.
Nuclear war strategy has long been against enemy military capability. Mutual Assured Destruction no longer is based on mutual genocide. North Korea's capability is next to zero. They have not demonstrated the ability to fuze a weapon at altitude, nor develop the required accuracy on target at operational range. They are exceedingly vulnerable to deterrence. Russia has no interest in attacking with ICBMs, unless attacked in kind. If tactical nuclear weapons are used in theater, that will be a signal to back off and not escalate any farther. Only a complete idiot would double down on nuclear combat. (But, hey, we have Joe Biden and his puppeteers...)
Are you actually arguing that 44 defensive missiles (each with, at best, a dubious 56% success rate) serves are any sort of defense against enemies with thousands of such weapons? I didn’t invent math, don’t take it out on me.
My points stands - we don’t have any real defense if our enemies wanted to annihilate us.
We don’t have any systems to protect the continental US from ICBMs or hypersonic missiles, interestingly
Wrong. There are 44 interceptors in the Ground-Based Missile Defense (GMD) system, portioned between Alaska and California (vs. polar and oceanic threats).
The 44 missiles (and there are only 44) in the GMD have a very bad effectiveness rating of around 40%. North Korea and Russia combined have over 2,000 warheads ready for launch from silos or untraceable submarines at any time. The GMD is barely any protection at all against a real attack.
Our enemies could annihilate the U.S. in about 45 minutes if they decided to. The only deterrent is the fact that we are ready to do the same.
So, you were wrong on your original claim and now you are pettifogging over what constitutes an "adequate" defense. In the last 14 test flights from 2008 onward, only the last one was not a success, and they are working a corrective design to deal with that. The official estimate of single-shot kill is 56%, but a 4-on-1 engagement would be 97%. Our situation could be far better than this, but the SDI program (which I worked on) was denigrated and only grudgingly supported by Congress. No real popular support, so the paltry system we have is not a surprise.
Nuclear war strategy has long been against enemy military capability. Mutual Assured Destruction no longer is based on mutual genocide. North Korea's capability is next to zero. They have not demonstrated the ability to fuze a weapon at altitude, nor develop the required accuracy on target at operational range. They are exceedingly vulnerable to deterrence. Russia has no interest in attacking with ICBMs, unless attacked in kind. If tactical nuclear weapons are used in theater, that will be a signal to back off and not escalate any farther. Only a complete idiot would double down on nuclear combat. (But, hey, we have Joe Biden and his puppeteers...)
Are you actually arguing that 44 defensive missiles (each with, at best, a dubious 56% success rate) serves are any sort of defense against enemies with thousands of such weapons? I didn’t invent math, don’t take it out on me.
My points stands - we don’t have any real defense if our enemies wanted to annihilate us.