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.
Well, your claim was that we had no defense. You were simply wrong. And then I observed that you were pettifogging over how good it was, which is substantially a subjective view. I said quite plainly that it was paltry, so we could have parted in agreement. But if it could have intercepted a warhead targeting your city, would you be the first to curse its existence?
Your mission requirement ("if our enemies wanted to annihilate us") is total fantasy. The critics of ANY strategic defense usually come up with a threat that nothing could defeat, so you are simply carping because your ignorance was exposed. First, there is no way that total annihilation is possible even with the existing inventories. I've read the analysis by the experts. Secondly, those with the largest and most capable inventories are not interested in our annihilation. They are substantially deterred by our counterstrike capability. I don't personally think that is good enough, but what you want is a magic defense that doesn't cost any time or money to develop or implement, and which ensures we don't even get bruised. I worked on a system concept under SDI that had a good prospect of negating 90% of a full-scale attack for a price tag that would seem cheap by today's budgets. We even developed and static tested a prototype interceptor. No takers. (We didn't then have the cheap transport to orbit that we have now, and now we have demonstrated operation and control of much larger constellations.)
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.
Well, your claim was that we had no defense. You were simply wrong. And then I observed that you were pettifogging over how good it was, which is substantially a subjective view. I said quite plainly that it was paltry, so we could have parted in agreement. But if it could have intercepted a warhead targeting your city, would you be the first to curse its existence?
Your mission requirement ("if our enemies wanted to annihilate us") is total fantasy. The critics of ANY strategic defense usually come up with a threat that nothing could defeat, so you are simply carping because your ignorance was exposed. First, there is no way that total annihilation is possible even with the existing inventories. I've read the analysis by the experts. Secondly, those with the largest and most capable inventories are not interested in our annihilation. They are substantially deterred by our counterstrike capability. I don't personally think that is good enough, but what you want is a magic defense that doesn't cost any time or money to develop or implement, and which ensures we don't even get bruised. I worked on a system concept under SDI that had a good prospect of negating 90% of a full-scale attack for a price tag that would seem cheap by today's budgets. We even developed and static tested a prototype interceptor. No takers. (We didn't then have the cheap transport to orbit that we have now, and now we have demonstrated operation and control of much larger constellations.)