GBI NMD IFT-11A: interceptor forgets to launch

[Stokes Pennwalt]

http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/12/15/mis....ap/index.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- An interceptor missile failed to launch early Wednesday in what was to have been the first full flight test of the U.S. national missile defense system in nearly two years.

...

A target missile carrying a mock warhead was successfully launched as scheduled from Kodiak, Alaska, at 12:45 a.m. EST, in the first launch of a target missile from Kodiak in support of a full flight test of the system.

However, the agency said the ground-based interceptor "experienced an anomaly shortly before it was to be launched" from the Ronald Reagan Test Site at Kwajalein Atoll in the central Pacific Ocean 16 minutes after the target missile left Alaska.

Goddamnit. Integrated flight test 11 was going to test the new booster assembly that the interceptors themselves are being deployed with right now. Tests up until now have used a different one, that's been used to launch low-weight payloads into LEO (like recon satellites), and is unsuitable for long-term inert silo storage. IFT-11 was also to test drive the flight corridor from the south Pacific toward North America (although in a reverse direction this time) which is more relevant to the real world in terms of ballistic plotting, since NMD is intended to address ICBM threats from the Asian theater, like North Korea and later Iran. ICBMs are essentially unguided once their engines cut as they leave the atmosphere, so the small variations in the earth's gravity thanks to mineral deposits and ocean depth can affect their CEP by hundreds of miles if not calculated beforehand.

So they're going to have to run this one again rather than pack the stuff that wasn't conducted into the next test. This really sucks, because we've had a lot of success in the past several tests (more than anybody realistically expected given the condensed timeframes) and our winning streak is over.

The good news is that this was probably something simple and that won't necessitate a huge redesign anywhere. Missing the target is much more significant from an engineering standpoint because it is usually diagnostic of a hardware shortcoming rather than a few lines of code that need editing or a connector that came unplugged. While not even leaving the ground looks pretty stupid, it's not that bad in the big scheme of things. All we lost this time was a target vehicle, which, thanks to a healthy surplus of ICBM airframes decom'd IAW START II, are plentiful.

I dunno if they have yet but somebody, somewhere, was supposed to declare GBI NMD operational this month. If that seems unrealistic then it's because it's mostly a bone to the public. Nobody I know realistically expects it to be operational until 2006-07 or so.

Stokes Pennwalt is an engineering nerd who works for Raytheon BMD at MIT Lincoln Lab and loves his job.

[erik_kosberg]

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the billions thrown down the well for missile defense does nothing to prevent the real threats: a nuke brought aboard a container ship into the port of Los Angeles or across the Mexican border in the trunk of a ’59 Chevy.

Not that I have a brilliant plan up my sleeve to prevent those disasters...

[Stokes Pennwalt]

erik_kosberg said

Not that I have a brilliant plan up my sleeve to prevent those disasters...

Me neither but that doesn't strike me as a good reason to ignore the other means of delivery.

[brian_igo]

Stokes, do all possibilities have equal probabilities? If not, is it smart to invest the most resources in the least-likely possibility? Because that's what we're doing. (And its another example of faulty reasoning by the crowd that said to go after a possible terrorist connection to Iraq instead of the probable ties to other nations.)

I think you can make a case that if you really want to deter North Korea (or any other second or third world state) from attacking us with a nuclear weapon, the most effective way to do it would be to make building an ICBM the most attractive method of delivery. If we force them to play MAD with us using ICBM's they can't win and they have to spend an incredible amount of money just to compete.

Even if North Korea has plans to develop an ICBM that can reach the US and a nuclear weapon small enough to be carried as a payload, the end result of SDI if it works will be to encourage them to find other methods of delivering a weapon.

I think we would be much safer and our potential enemies would be much less powerful if we put the billions being spent on SDI into nuclear material containment, better intelligence and shipping inspection, and next-generation detection devises to pick up the possibility of a BNC weapon at a port or border before it gets to the US. We shouldn't encourage anyone to develop an ICBM program, of course, and we should continue to make it as difficult as possible. But I think its clearly in our best interests to make ICBM's the most attractive method of delivering a WMD payload to the US.




Brian

[Stokes Pennwalt]

For the record I'm not as enthusiastic about NMD as I am about the other stuff encompassed under the MDA*:

• THAAD (2007)
• PAC-3 Patriot (1999, shot down 9 TBMs in Iraq in 2003)
• MEADS (2012 - follow on to Patriot)
• AEGIS BMD (2007, maritime variant of THAAD)
• Airborne laser (2006)
• MTHEL (2006 - click my sig)

...because the utility of a static defense like NMD in the presence of the mobile countermeasures listed above is questionable. Besides, all of those are less technically audacious and more strategically and tactically flexible than a fixed system is. General Patton called fixed fortifications monuments to human stupidity, and it's no coincidence that our military does poorly on the defense when they can't maneuver with speed and confuse the living hell out of an enemy. In this vein, the stuff I listed above can all be deployed to contain a threat within the bounds of its country of origin, thereby protecting everybody from the threat rather than just us.

That said, it only makes sense to address the threat before it emerges, however we choose to do it. Back in 1998 when the PRK snapshotted a Taepo Dong 1 over Japan it was huge news because nobody really expected them to be capable even of what amounted to nothing more than strapping a bunch of old Scud engines together with paint and rubber bands and pointing them to an azimuth somewhere within 40 degrees of Japan with crossed fingers. Immediately, people were assuming that we (the west) had a credible countermeasure to IRBMs and, later, ICBMs. We didn't, and that surprised a lot of people, who demanded to know why the government had allowed our national security to lapse. So then you had all kinds of finger pointing and stuff, which resulted in the Rumsfeld Commission to assess the threats of ballistic missile proliferation, whose final verdict was that we had a decade, at best, to figure out how to counter a limited ICBM threat to the continent. North Korea has since (09/1999) agreed to a flight test moratorium that remains effective, but that is self-imposed and can therefore be lifted at their own discretion with no consequences. While their ballistic missile program's mission isn't clear, it is widely suspected that it wouldn't be hard for them to get something working within a year of embarking with an intent. When that happens, if it happens, we'll be glad to have a countermeasure in place both for security and for diplomatic leverage.

As for the hopes of another MAD stalemate like the kind that served us well for 40 years, I would trust North Korea or Iran about as far as I could throw them. North Korea and Iran have little or nothing to lose. If they're already in bad situation then they really won't wind up a lot worse off if they do escalate to an ICBM strike, potentialy involving a nuclear release. Also, authoritarian nations won't have the type of safeguards in place that the current powers have. The US president can't launch nukes on his own. Ayatollah Khamenei or Kim Jong Il on the other hand could very well order a launch (or attack of some kind) without any additional failsafe measures because of the nature of their regimes.


*SDI was renamed BMDO in 1993 under Clinton, and MDA in 2001 under Bush

[erik_kosberg]

Low-cost option:

Since Pyongyang does not currently have any missile capable of reaching the U.S. right now, chill. When they start to build one, it’ll show up on spy sattelites. Drop a MOAB on Ye Olde North Korean missile-under-construction. What’s the point of trying to shoot it down when it’s coming in at 15,000 MPH when you can instead blast it when it’s moving at 0 MPH?

[Stokes Pennwalt]

erik_kosberg said

Low-cost option:

:thumbs:

[erik_kosberg]

Or maybe just muddle along and never bother declaring that it’s operational.

Is it just me, or does that approach sound like something from The Onion?

[poseidon]

Since Pyongyang does not currently have any missile capable of reaching the U.S. right now, chill. When they start to build one, it’ll show up on spy sattelites. Drop a MOAB on Ye Olde North Korean missile-under-construction. What’s the point of trying to shoot it down when it’s coming in at 15,000 MPH when you can instead blast it when it’s moving at 0 MPH?

Mmmmm. But, what's going to stop you from Monday Morning quarterbacking that decision, too?

[erik_kosberg]

It’ll happen on a Tuesday.

[poseidon]

erik_kosberg said

Low-cost option:

Since Pyongyang does not currently have any missile capable of reaching the U.S. right now, chill. When they start to build one, it’ll show up on spy sattelites. Drop a MOAB on Ye Olde North Korean missile-under-construction. What’s the point of trying to shoot it down when it’s coming in at 15,000 MPH when you can instead blast it when it’s moving at 0 MPH?

Hahaha. Seriously, Erik. If North Korea was making missiles capable of delivery to the US (or US interests, which they do have, don't forget we've a lot of men and women in South Korea), and Bush sent in planes to violate their airspace and drop bombs on them when they've not attacked us, do you seriously expect us to believe that you'd not be attacking Bush for doing just what you're suggesting?

My guess is that you'd be the second one in line (only because I don't think you could post it fast enough) to start complaining about it here.

[erik_kosberg]

Oh, how little you know me. Kim Jong-il is at the top of my list of People I’d Most Like To See Without A Pulse.

The big drawback is that Seoul would be at risk. And, yeah, that’s a HUGE risk.

[pippadaisy[$]]

Um... hi. Can you translate that into English for the rest of us who didn't do so hot in the rocket science department?

[poseidon]

Oh, how little you know me. Kim Jong-il is at the top of my list of People I’d Most Like To See Without A Pulse.

So you liked Saddam?

[erik_kosberg]

Not that a potential MOAB drop on a missile site readying a nuclear attack on the U.S. that might fortuitously happen when the Dear Leader was making a visit has anything to do with sending in 100,000+ plus troops to take out the leader of a country that posed no imminent threat.

[poseidon]

But most of the world believed he did pose a threat. Most of the world believed he had WMD. Nearly every intelligence agency believed that, his neighbors feared him, and he did not comply with UN inspections.

I still believe his WMD is sitting in Syria. I also believe that it is no coincidence that Syria is desperately trying to cozy up to us so that they can work on their own WMD program.

There is more to posing a threat to the US than being able to lob a missile at the 50 states, Erik. It is called protecting our interests and assets around the world.

[erik_kosberg]

poseidon said

But most of the world believed he did pose a threat. Most of the world believed he had WMD.

http://www.roadtosurfdom.com/surfdomarchives/002994.php

The pro-war types love to say, in regard to the WMD, that "everyone thought he had them" as some sort of (lame and pathetic and irrelevant) mitigation for the fact that he didn't, but they have no such crutch to fall back on here.

All we've got is the rude truth staring us in the face and as praktike notes, it seems to be the case that "everybody but George Bush and the deluded Arthur Chrenkoff knows it."

This outcome, that an invaded Iraq, especially one that wasn't quickly stabilised, would become a terrorist breeding ground, that it would increase, not decrease, the threat of terrorism, was warned about long and loud by many people before the invasion and dutifully mocked and ignored by those who just wanted to get their war on. A point they should never be allowed to forget.

[drmomentum[$]]

Well, everybody who believed Colin Powell (back before he spent all his credibility) and the info coming out of the Bush administration, perhaps.

No Nukes!

[Stokes Pennwalt]

pippadaisy said

Um... hi. Can you translate that into English for the rest of us who didn't do so hot in the rocket science department?

http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/01/12/m....ap/index.html

[pippadaisy[$]]

Thank you.

[erik_kosberg]

Another test, another failure.

[Stokes Pennwalt]

So far it looks like the failure was in the communication bus between the interceptor silo and the control shed. Basically the same thing that happened in the last test. Don't ask me why it was allowed to happen again.

The connection is done by radio, and therefore it is susceptible to interference. In my opinion they should have gone to fiber long ago, but that's not my line of work. I design radar antennas.

To take this interference into account they've thus far employed a rather elaborate set of redundancy checks, all of which must be satisfied in or else the connection is ruled unfit for duty and the interceptor spins down. Essentially, it sends and re-sends the same thing both ways several times and checks it each time in case there is a variation induced by degradation of the radio link's signal integrity. If there is, it aborts the procedure so as to not waste a snazzy interceptor.

This being a prototype, the amount of redundancy used is extreme. So much so that it ends up causing problems rather than preempting them. When you re-send something a bajillion times, it will inevitably end up being a little different each time, but not catastrophically so. If they just relax the filters a little bit it'll launch no problem. This is not diagnostic of a flaw in the interceptor, the ground contr