More On The Satelite Shoot Down
James Lewis takes a look at what it means strategically and the message it sends to rogue regimes like the NoKos and Iran. It was an international show of our missile defense system and how well it works, this is really very cool.
So this is a crucial time to demonstrate to the rogues that the West can defend itself. That is why the administration chose this time to show off our anti-missile defense capability.
The brilliance of our anti-missile systems is that they can move and fast and stealthily from place to place. Aegis cruisers like the one that just shot down the spy satellite can be sent to any navigable sea in the world, very close to North Korea, Iran, and Syria. If Chavez ever buys missiles from his friends in Tehran, or if Castro's successor does, the US Navy can be in range the next day. Once we get laser weapons mounted on aircraft, we will have even faster and more flexible defenses. That technology is not far away.
A couple good writeups at the Daily Standard, here and here.
Perfunction has more from a man in the missile defense industry.
3 comments:
The technology of this operation was supberb. When we consider that both objects were traveling about 18,000 mph and the distances,
"All that needs to be transmitted to the cruiser are three solid points on the satellite's trajectory (you can accurately define an arc with just three points); and the on-board computers on the cruiser will do the math and calculations on their own to figure out the ballistic trajectory of the satellite. Then it's just a matter of some more calculations to figure out when to launch the SM-3 so it's in the same point of space that the satellite is at the same time. Splat." And this was a kinetic
warhead (no explosives) which required dead-on terminal ballistics...the ultimate trap shoot!
Yea pretty awesome, BB, vector trig I actually enjoyed and did quite well in but pulling all those factors together was the ticket and we did it. The math is easy the doing is what's hard.
Wasn't only a few years ago that the libs were saying it couldn't be done and we were wasting money?
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