I see subby has been sufficiently shamed for his ignorance. We had less complex Patriot Missiles shooting shiat down like this 20 years ago, and it's gotten even more impressive. But it's a giant leap from this to shooting down ICBMs.

My grandfather was an aeronautical engineer and project manager in the space industry from the 1950s into the late 1980s. He was on the Cape and at Vandenberg. His opinion was that the Star Wars and other anti-ICBM "shooting a bullet with a bullet" projects were foolish and would never work. That's one engineer's opinion, so take it with a grain of salt. But even if we pull it off, there are ways for our opponents to fool the system. It is a very expensive "arms race" to be engaged in, over something that may never work.

CygnusDarius: Let's say this happens: They start doing massive rocket attacks, like, 100/200 rockets per minute, like if they were using dozens of Katyusha rocket launchers . How many would enter Israeli space?.

Depends. Since Gaza is technically IN Israel, the correct answer would be "all of them."

I see subby has been mocked for being the drooling retard he really is.

Star Wars didn't work, and he was crazy.

Even today, there's only about a 90% success rate on anti-missile weapons, and that's when we know exactly when they're going to be fired, what their vector will be, what size they will be, and we have all our anti-missile weapons powered up and waiting.

There are 13,000 nuclear warheads in Russia.

Let's assume 50% are pointed at the US, 50% are pointed at other targets: 6,500 pointed at us.

Out of that 6,500, let's assume 50% actually work, and 50% fail to fire correctly: 3,250

Out of that 3,250, let's assume that, despite the history of testing and results, star wars works with never-before-achieved accuracy and gets 99% of the incoming warheads: 3, 217.

3,250 - 3, 217 = 33.

So: even if only 1/2 of Russia's warheads are pointed at us (it's likely 2/3 or more), and only 1/2 of those work (likely more than 90% will work), and star wars somehow gets 99% of them (a more realistic rate would be 50%), we will still be hit by 33 warheads.

If the average yield of a warhead is ~1500 kT (for comparison, the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs were in the ~12 - 20 kT range), that means that the US is going to be hit by 2,475 times as much nuclear force as that which brought the largest war in human history to an abrupt halt.

But it gets scarier.

Let's assume only 50% of those weapons are aimed at cities (many will be aimed at non-urban targets like King's Bay, and let's also assume there's a 50% overlap, so some cities get hit twice. That's still enough to rip the guts out of:

- New York (major population and financial center, port)
- LA (ditto)
- Chicago (ditto)
- DC (seat of government)
- Philly (see NYC)
- Houston (nation's biggest oil port)
- New Orleans (nation's biggest grain port, oil a close second)
- San Diego (home of the West Coast navy)
- Norfolk/Va Beach (home of the East Coast navy)

And that's at a bare bones minimum. Other cities highly likely to be destroyed even under this absurdly unlikely 'successful' defensive scenario: San Francisco, Seattle, San Jose/silicon valley, Denver, St. Louis, Boston, Dallas-Fort Worth, and Miami.

So: even in a best-case scenario, we lose pretty much every major city in the country (think, 'if it has a MLB/NFL/NBA/NHL franchise, it's dead), along with all of our financial centers, seats of federal administration, a good chunk of our command and control, most of our ports, most of our fuel, and we have a poisoned breadbasket. But we could win. Honest.

Star Wars doesn't work. It can't. Simple math won't allow it.

Kanemano: Shooting down these?

With this? Seems a waste

Wouldn't this work better?

Too high and fast, if you have a small area, like the green zone, those work. Iron dome does have a system to try to avoid shooting down rockets heading towards open areas.

With iron dome, magic wand and the arrow system Israel will be the first nation with a total missile shield

Or put more simply:



/ stolen from a survivalist crazy website
// they may be crazy, but they do know the realities of nuclear strategy

whistleridge: Star Wars didn't work, and he was crazy.

Even today, there's only about a 90% success rate on anti-missile weapons, and that's when we know exactly when they're going to be fired, what their vector will be, what size they will be, and we have all our anti-missile weapons powered up and waiting.

There are 13,000 nuclear warheads in Russia.

Let's assume 50% are pointed at the US, 50% are pointed at other targets: 6,500 pointed at us.

Out of that 6,500, let's assume 50% actually work, and 50% fail to fire correctly: 3,250

Out of that 3,250, let's assume that, despite the history of testing and results, star wars works with never-before-achieved accuracy and gets 99% of the incoming warheads: 3, 217.

3,250 - 3, 217 = 33.

So: even if only 1/2 of Russia's warheads are pointed at us (it's likely 2/3 or more), and only 1/2 of those work (likely more than 90% will work), and star wars somehow gets 99% of them (a more realistic rate would be 50%), we will still be hit by 33 warheads.

If the average yield of a warhead is ~1500 kT (for comparison, the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs were in the ~12 - 20 kT range), that means that the US is going to be hit by 2,475 times as much nuclear force as that which brought the largest war in human history to an abrupt halt.

But it gets scarier.

Let's assume only 50% of those weapons are aimed at cities (many will be aimed at non-urban targets like King's Bay, and let's also assume there's a 50% overlap, so some cities get hit twice. That's still enough to rip the guts out of:

- New York (major population and financial center, port)
- LA (ditto)
- Chicago (ditto)
- DC (seat of government)
- Philly (see NYC)
- Houston (nation's biggest oil port)
- New Orleans (nation's biggest grain port, oil a close second)
- San Diego (home of the West Coast navy)
- Norfolk/Va Beach (home of the East Coast navy)

And that's at a bare bones minimum. Other cities highly likely to be destroyed even under this absurdly unlikely 'successful' defensive ...

Nobody wanted to know that back in the 50's when they were still plotting Mutually Assured Destruction and still coming up with "the United States will win" scenarios. And nobody really wants to know it now. The whole global-warfare thing is still to this day predicated on the idea that not only is it survivable, the US will be the one who a) wins and b) wins with our population and infrastructure essentially intact.

And that's just a nuclear scenario. Throw in chemical or biowarfare weapons, and survivability becomes pretty much zero under any circumstances; and yet the planners will STILL insist we (meaning the US) will a) win and b) win with our population and infrastructure intact. It's all b/s of course. Society will probably survive (cf. the Black Death in Europe) but it won't be pretty and it won't be the US we know today. But nobody wants to hear that either.

Lsherm: theknuckler_33: Lsherm: FlashHarry: yeah, that's not star wars. more like better-working patriot missiles.

The Patriot missile program was developed as part of the Ground Based Programs - Extended Range Interceptor section of the Strategic Defense Initiative, otherwise known as "Star Wars". It is very much part of that initiative, people just forget that it had other components besides space based interception.

Hi Subby1

Not subby - I was just pointing out that Patriot missiles were born out of that initiative. Since most of Fark is apparently too young to remember SDI, most seem to think it was only about space lasers.

Well, hopefully you are reasonable enough to recognize that referencing Star Wars in the headline was pretty stupid considering the program being talked about is a massively scaled down theatre system vs the massive global/continental ground-based system envisioned by Reagan (not to mention ignoring the space-based aspect of Reagan's idea).

whistleridge: Star Wars didn't work, and he was crazy.

Other than firing missiles from the ground to take out incoming bomb systems there is virtually nothing in common with Reagan's vision. He described some sort of global system of ground and space based missile defense. No such thing exists or is even remotely close to even coming close to existing. The fact that there are local, theatre-based systems that can counter incoming missiles can possibly be attributed to Reagan's vision, but calling it 'star wars' as if it was Reagan's invention is farking moranic.

relcec: Marcus Aurelius: Theater level missile defense is not the same as shooting down a real ICBM, subby.

sure, when you criticized star wars, you weren't criticizing all missile defense, you weren't attacking missile defense, just intercontinental, right? and when intercontinental becomes effective at shooting down ICBMs, you'll really just have been criticizing the pictures with lasers in space.
sure, I'll buy that.
no, you idiots were saying everything was impossible, even the shiat that was working in the 1960s. it was part of the everything Reagan does is stupid and evil because he kicked our ass plan, including the shiat that works effectively and you'd support if a democrat did it.

Obviously you missed my later post re block 1b. Search the thread for "block 1b", watch the video, and then tell me that's not the coolest multi-vehicle space interceptor in the history of mankind.

Gyrfalcon: Nobody wanted to know that back in the 50's when they were still plotting Mutually Assured Destruction and still coming up with "the United States will win" scenarios. And nobody really wants to know it now. The whole global-warfare thing is still to this day predicated on the idea that not only is it survivable, the US will be the one who a) wins and b) wins with our population and infrastructure essentially intact.

And that's just a nuclear scenario. Throw in chemical or biowarfare weapons, and survivability becomes pretty much zero under any circumstances; and yet the planners will STILL insist we (meaning the US) will a) win and b) win with our population and infrastructure intact. It's all b/s of course. Society will probably survive (cf. the Black Death in Europe) but it won't be pretty and it won't be the US we know today. But nobody wants to hear that either.

Yeah, general discussion is that the 'minimum' scenario would be 500 warheads, the 'likely' would be 2000, and the 'worst possible' would be 5000 - 10000.That pretty much turns every civilized part of the country into a self-illuminating glass parking lot, and the parts that don't die fast will die slow over the next few months. If we didn't shoot back, the rest of the world could probably survive, but...we would.

GAT_00: I've lived now in three places that were probably very high on Soviet target lists and would therefore now be high on Russian target lists. New London, CT at the end of the Cold War for the base at Groton, Huntsville, AL for the massive agglomeration of aerospace companies not seen anywhere else except around Seattle and Washington DC, plus the Redstone Arsenal, and now Knoxville, TN for ORNL/Y-12.

The bright side for you being that you would at least die fast. In fact, your warheads probably wouldn't even be ICBMs, but low-trajectory sub-launched missiles. Given how people at ground zero kind of wink out of existence, you might literally be dead before you even time to think 'what's that bright lig--'

relcec: Marcus Aurelius: Theater level missile defense is not the same as shooting down a real ICBM, subby.

sure, when you criticized star wars, you weren't criticizing all missile defense, you weren't attacking missile defense, just intercontinental, right? and when intercontinental becomes effective at shooting down ICBMs, you'll really just have been criticizing the pictures with lasers in space.
sure, I'll buy that.
no, you idiots were saying everything was impossible, even the shiat that was working in the 1960s. it was part of the everything Reagan does is stupid and evil because he kicked our ass plan, including the shiat that works effectively and you'd support if a democrat did it.

I was focusing on the space based laser systems which is where all money went and was an impractical and stupid idea.

I was always a fan of land based systems although I question how well they work since the fiasco with the Patriot.

theknuckler_33: Lsherm: theknuckler_33: Lsherm: FlashHarry: yeah, that's not star wars. more like better-working patriot missiles.

The Patriot missile program was developed as part of the Ground Based Programs - Extended Range Interceptor section of the Strategic Defense Initiative, otherwise known as "Star Wars". It is very much part of that initiative, people just forget that it had other components besides space based interception.

Hi Subby1

Not subby - I was just pointing out that Patriot missiles were born out of that initiative. Since most of Fark is apparently too young to remember SDI, most seem to think it was only about space lasers.

Well, hopefully you are reasonable enough to recognize that referencing Star Wars in the headline was pretty stupid considering the program being talked about is a massively scaled down theatre system vs the massive global/continental ground-based system envisioned by Reagan (not to mention ignoring the space-based aspect of Reagan's idea).

It WAS pretty stupid, but quite frankly there's a lot of selective history going on in this thread, none of it particularly intelligent. Subby may be an idiot, but so are a lot of other people posting here.

And I'll do you a solid for reasonableness: The ground-based portion of SDI that the Patriot program grew out of didn't really hit its stride until the Clinton administration when they renamed SDI to BMDO and explicitly changed the goal of the initiative from national defense to theater defense. Clinton took what looked like it might work and refocused missile defense on that.

Honestly, the only reason I even knew the Patriot program was borne out of the SDI is because it's all they were reporting during the first Gulf War in 1991. It's not like it was a controversial claim 20 years ago.

In defense of the "Star Wars" supporters: I think the goal of similar programs now is not to defeat a massive nuclear attack by a major power like Russia, but to defend against a smaller "rogue state" attack from North Korea, Iran, etc. where there might be a handful of missiles launched, vs. thousands.