Trump’s ‘Golden Dome’ plan has a major obstacle: Physics
Trump’s ‘Golden Dome’ plan has a major obstacle: Physics
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Trump’s ‘Golden Dome’ plan has a major obstacle: Physics
9 comments
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The purpose of the golden dome system isn't to intercept all ICBMs, just to intercept enough to make a first-use heavy doctrine feasible. The US relies on the ability to threaten nuclear strikes frequently, and as traditional combat effectiveness decreases (the US military is currently losing to guys in speedboats and the Houthis almost shot down the US wunderwaffe that's supposed to have a radar signature of a bee ^[citation needed]), the US will rely increasingly on nuclear saber rattling as a means of imperialism. This is very similar to the Star Wars program, and Michael Parenti was much more eloquent on the matter than I am ^[https://youtube.com/watch?v=xP8CzlFhc14 at around 48 minutes].
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I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
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9 comments
Honestly not sure I put stock in these types of objections. I remember these same types of people saying in the 2000s that the physics of missile interceptors just wouldn't work, that hitting a bullet with a bullet wasn't something you could reliably do and yet here we are, we've done it, the Russians have done it, the Chinese I assume have. Is it bad from the point of view of not liking militarism or how it breaks MAD and encourages the idea of a nuclear war? Yes obviously. Is it as impossible as they like to present it? Not at all.
Not demonstrated to you and your group of civilian scientist nerd friends because that shit is highly classified to prevent other nations from figuring out how to do the same thing. This is weasel words way of casting doubt by saying "uh I haven't personally seen the system or proof of it therefore I doubt it".
I mean some of Russia's intercepts of things like Storm Shadow and ATACMs missiles show the idea has pretty good validity for some phases of ballistic missile course. Particularly launch and during boost and early mid-phase when you can hit them with a shower of interceptors from above before they begin maneuvering towards their target in earnest which is what this system proposes.
There's criticism for the success rate of the US mid-course system and it's true but that's because the US is behind compared to Russia, meaning it can be done, they just haven't completely smoothed over the problems in the way Russia has.
Terminal intercepts are I think unreliable at any scale due to the possibility of releasing dummy warheads, debris, all kinds of things at the last moment to trick systems. The amount of effort you have to put in at the last mile scales very favorably for attackers though I wouldn't say they're useless either if in high enough concentrations (I think a dozen batteries of the Russian s-500/600 system could definitely defend a military base again a couple warheads headed their way even with countermeasures). It just doesn't work for full nuclear exchange defense.
I believe they use uncharitable numbers of interceptors for example based on unclassified data and hostile assumptions of very low rates of success based off that old study of 60% success as well as things like range not that it will do them any good.
The problem is not in the physics. The problem is in the militarization of space and the arms races and the attempts to undo MAD and give the US nuclear supremacy to strike but not be struck back.
Nor is the problem cost as they like to nit-pick here without understanding the US is an empire with reserve currency status on the back-foot losing its hegemony and desperate to maintain it. A trillion dollars is not an impediment nor is several trillion especially if there's this idea the system can be used to allow us to hit China and destroy them for another century of plunder and dominance without reaping retaliation. I doubt they get to that point without Chinese counter-measures but it all ends with the US in terminal decline, back further against the wall having even more reasons to press the big button and send the rest of the world to hell while shielding Montana or NZ where the bunkers are from strikes but allowing everything else through.
At this point I think it's a foregone conclusion, the US is going to militarize space as they were about to in the 90s before the cold war ended with their victory. They're going to place interceptors up there and they're going to place nuclear weapons up there and argue they have to place the nukes up there because China could intercept them especially if they copied the US and put up their own space intercept system. Then other powers have to do the same and soon space is crowded with spies and missiles and kinetic kill systems and it's all just a powder keg and a nightmare. But that has nothing to do with the actual physics of it.
But you can't make a winning argument in America to Americans about the necessity of maintaining MAD for mutual security and deterrence because it necessitates depicting other actors as rational and once you start doing that you start undermining all the militarism and jingoism and propaganda about how dangerous and deranged and evil they are. So instead they resort to these "I haven't personally seen the data which is classified so there's no evidence of it" type weak sauce arguments which don't convince the politicians, don't convince the arms lobby, don't convince the military, all they do is convince a bunch of crunchy hippy protestors who weren't going to be listened to anyways. It's an evasion of our responsibility to push back against imperialism and war-mongering to use arguments like these and a sign of how bad things are and always have been in the west for expressing opinions against military build-up.
Definitely agree with the physics thing. There are plenty of programs doing this, that have already demonstrated these capabilities. They are not even classified anymore. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exoatmospheric_Kill_Vehicle and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground-Based_Interceptor#Next_generation_interceptor_(NGI). There was also one that was supposed to replace ekv.
My... admittedly mild... counter point is that with conventional warheads intercepters can fail and the worst that happens is a small area is damaged.
Fail to stop a nuke, even a small percentage of the time, and its going to be a complete loss.
The attacker only has to succeed once, the defender has to succeed every time.
Ah. But that is a false assumption. You assume one nuke getting through is a game-over when it is not at all the case. Watch Dr Strangelove, it's not talked about in polite company but nuclear war game theory has always played with acceptable losses. It's the case only if you supremely value all human life or all human life within your borders which is not the case for a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie like the US.
To win the US only has to be in a much better position than their enemy once the dust settles. If they through sheer size of their arsenal can completely destroy China, all its manufacturing, contaminate its foods, devastate its population, destroy its military while only a few Chinese nuclear weapons get through then though millions of American workers will die, the US will still have some sort of manufacturing base and ability, will still have uncontained food production, will still have a massive population spared first-hand experience being on the receiving end of nuclear weapons and will still have a massive intact military. It will thus be a winner, it will be able to seize and build the new American century. The dead and those injured will be swept under the carpet of what follows which will be an invasion and imposition of rule on a fragmented China via local corrupt compradors propped up by foreign force there ostensibly to "help the Chinese people". Meanwhile the US and European vassals are free to go hog wild on the rest of the world, to subjugate Africa and the rest of Asia, to intimidate them because they're just shown they're serious and will use nukes into a neo-colonial arrangement. And to rebuild more means of production for a new round of profit and prolonging of capitalism against its contradictions.
In this case (nuclear game theory) we should say the attacker (used only in relative terms as China would not be attacking first but defending itself via a nuclear counter-attack) has to succeed to a degree that renders the defender incapacitated and as badly off as they are or worse to deter them. That is that deterrent requires that you can inflict on your adversary conditions that are bad enough that they wouldn't be in a meaningful position of strength over you or the world at the end of it and thus would not rationally choose to attack you because they would not in any sense "win". And they have to believe this, they have to know you can do it and be convinced of it in order to be deterred.
I fully expect the signs of an approaching nuclear war would be either so obvious the bourgeoisie on their own would flee to their bunkers or so planned that they'd be informed to a few hours ahead of time and with the coming of automation, AI, they fully believe they will soon have large amounts of unneeded and hungry mouths who are a danger to their rule. Throwing even a few tens of millions into the fire of nuclear war that also kills off their main enemy and problem would be seen as a win-win by some of these.