Missile Defense

**~~Roman~~** · 05-05-07, 03:15 PM

Any nation capable of firing a rocket to US soil will be able to launch far more than just one rocket.
So, how many missiles can the missile defense system shoot down at once?

10, 20, 100?

**Kittamaru** · 05-05-07, 03:44 PM

Well, if we loaded up Ice Fortress, we could take out 2-300 per minisat.

Basicly, it's a nuke that detonates inside an array of x-ray tubes, shooting roughly 300 lasers out at once. Detonate this in a swarm of MIRV ICBM warheads and you'll take a fuckton out at once

**Billy T** · 05-05-07, 03:57 PM

Originally Posted by Roman

Any nation capable of firing a rocket to US soil will be able to launch far more than just one rocket. So, how many missiles can the missile defense system shoot down at once?...

The real problem is that it is so much cheaper to make decoys than anti missels - perhaps 50 times less expensive. The real warhead can easily simulate a decoy, so you must shoot every decoy down, even if you can recognize the incoming as "decoys."

**Kittamaru** · 05-05-07, 03:59 PM

Hence Ice Fortress.

I personally think we need to focus more on ionic shielding and then gradually ElectroMagnetic particle shields. Once we have those, who gives a shit how many missiles they launch? They can't harm us anyway

**Billy T** · 05-05-07, 04:02 PM

Originally Posted by Kittamaru

....Detonate this in a swarm of MIRV ICBM warheads and you'll take a fuckton out at once

Laser not vey likely to hit even one (how do you aim the lasers?) Also the reflectivity of even thin evaporated metal film (essentially zero weight) is >90% so most of any laser beam that does hit will just be reflected, unless a longer duration laser beam is used to burn it off.

**Kittamaru** · 05-05-07, 04:04 PM

Not these lasers mate. They're in the x-ray spectrum. They superheat the insides of the missile, frying the delicate electronic and the secondary gyroscopic guidance systems. And when you have a few thousand warheads and decoys in space, a good percentage of those lasers will hit.

The other option is a powerful EMP blast to short them out, but most ICBM's are hardened anyway

**Billy T** · 05-05-07, 04:57 PM

Originally Posted by Kittamaru

Not these lasers mate. They're in the x-ray spectrum. ...

If that is true, then scratch my comment about reflecting off metal film, but still you have the aiming problem. With any reasonable spacing between the decoys (one of which is the real bomb, pretending to be a decoy) the solid angle of the targets (decoys) is less than 0.000,01 of the total solid angle (4pi ster radians) when seen from the X-ray source. I.e. very small change of hitting even one decoy by randomly directed lasers.

So again I ask:

How do you aim the lasers, which are produced by a nucear blast? That nuclear blast surely destroys any aiming device you can imagine.

Summary: If there are nine real decoys and one bomb pretending to be a decoy, your chance of hitting it is about 1 in 10,000 tries!

The EMP has a better chance, but as you noted, that can be hardened against.

**Oli** · 05-08-07, 07:28 AM

How about aiming before you set off the nuke? The schematics I've seen had a porcupine-like array of director tubes (some sort of X-Ray optical fibre?) covering 360 deg spherically, and the aiming was to be done against a swarm of missiles. Then the detonation would go off and take out tens to hundreds at once. In the concept video, of course, real life might have been different.

Multiple kamikaze one-shot firing platforms were "planned".

**Kittamaru** · 05-08-07, 08:54 AM

That was the idea mate.

Thing is, Ice Fortress is just the launch platform and can hold, I think, ten of these little nuclear bundles of joy.

Don't forget ground based lasers, plane based lasers, etc.

The best bet is EM Shielding or Particle Shielding

Particle Shielding would be easier- highly magnetize a bunch of shit, then use a very strong magnetic field to shape it around whatever you wish to protect. The mag field stabilizers have to be made of "buckytubes" to withstand the heat buildup and reduce the chance of electrical migration, but it's physically feasable to cover a small area (say a house) with a strong shield today. Just... it would take a lot of electricity

**Oli** · 05-08-07, 08:55 AM

And if its that strong a magnetic field it'll probably rip out every red blood cell in your body.

**Kittamaru** · 05-08-07, 09:24 AM

It's a shaped field mate. I'm not 100% sure how they do it, but I've seen it done. And you would be fine- you can walk past a Particle Accelerator and have no adverse affects so unless you have an assload of Iron in your blood (and I mean like, 50x more than normal) you should be fine

Remember, you have your own magnetic field (aura) protecting you. It comes with being a bio-electric being.

**~~phlogistician~~** · 05-08-07, 10:23 AM

Originally Posted by Roman

Any nation capable of firing a rocket to US soil will be able to launch far more than just one rocket.
So, how many missiles can the missile defense system shoot down at once?

10, 20, 100?

Maybe one, maybe not. Currently the US ABM solution is far from reliable against one ballistic inbound.

Against steerable MIRVs it's less than useless.

**~~phlogistician~~** · 05-08-07, 10:24 AM

Originally Posted by Kittamaru

. you can walk past a Particle Accelerator and have no adverse ... Remember, you have your own magnetic field (aura) protecting you. It comes with being a bio-electric being.

WooWoo alert!

What a load of bollocks.

**Gently Passing** · 05-08-07, 10:37 AM

None.

Missile defense is a logistically impossible psuedo-scientific pipe dream of US Republicans late in the cold war.

Missiles are not a threat anyway. A 60's-era Russian nuke in the trunk of a car driven into the middle of New York City...that's a threat.

**~~Roman~~** · 05-08-07, 11:02 AM

Originally Posted by Oli

And if its that strong a magnetic field it'll probably rip out every red blood cell in your body.

Iron in its ionized form is not ferromagnetic.

**~~Roman~~** · 05-08-07, 11:04 AM

Originally Posted by phlogistician

WooWoo alert!

What a load of bollocks.

It's been known for a long time that living cells create electricomagnetic fields.

**Gently Passing** · 05-08-07, 11:40 AM

Why are we concerned with stopping ICBM's?

It would be pretty destructive if the Romans launched a wave of feces-laden arrows toward Chicago, too, but we don't build anti-Roman shit arrow defense systems for a simple reason -

There is no more Roman Empire and there is not going to be a shit-arrow attack any time soon.

Likewise there is no USSR and no one is going to launch ICBMs at us...ever. Their construction cannot be accomplished in secret. Iran is enriching Uranium probably to construct a tactical nuke capable of threatening Israel, which already has them. Same as the Cold War arms race only on a smaller scale.

If they developed the facilities to build strategic MIRVs it is unlikely - indeed inconceivably unlikely - that there would not be a worldwide military response.

We're not talking Bush rattling his cage here. We're talking China, Japan, France, Spain, etc. They'd be fucked.

**~~Roman~~** · 05-08-07, 12:27 PM

Rogue states.

**nietzschefan** · 05-08-07, 12:29 PM

Originally Posted by Roman

Any nation capable of firing a rocket to US soil will be able to launch far more than just one rocket.
So, how many missiles can the missile defense system shoot down at once?

10, 20, 100?

Well that's nice to know, however that's not really the current threat(briefcase nuke) to America.