Ballistic Missile Defense, AKA Nuclear Missile Defense, AKA Son of Star Wars.

In the December 3, 2004 Globe and Mail the following letter to the editor appeared, I quote the letter in its entirety.

Well that’s some pretty damning stuff, makes me want to run out and buy a personal BMD system of my very own, heck I think I’ll buy four, one for me, one for my wife and one for each of the cats cause you never know when those scary terrorists are gonna come after us!

Okay, less sarcasm more analysis of Mr. Margueratt’s letter is clearly called for. To start with “how many Canadians actually know what BMD is intended to do.” Well I am going out on a limb, but I am guessing that the number is not very big, chiefly because most Canadians have much more pressing concerns than what BMD is intended to do. First of all why should we care, chances are the thing is never going to work as advertised, and even if it does, I personally am more worried about paying next month’s rent cheque than a $60 billion (if – unlikely as this sounds – the BMD program stays on budget) pie in the sky boondoggle.(1)

“BMD is a ground-based system (not spaced-based)” well its certainly nice to know that in the 23’rd century when Captain Pickard abord the Starship Enterprise encounters some nasty Borg he can use his ground based weapons because in the 21’st century humans finally stopped weaponizing damned everything we come across. Really, in an age when the US Navy uses dolphins to plant mines at sea I have no idea how Mr. Margueratt can persuade himself that a system which uses space based detectors to launch ground based weapons to hit incoming suborbital nuclear weapons, will not lead to the weaponization of space. BMD is just a tentative first step up a long ladder to the stars, M-16s blazing away as we go.

My personal favorite: ”should a rogue nation or terrorist group decide to attack North America with a limited number of ballistic missiles”, we can sleep soundly at night now! Holy smokes, Mr. Margueratt, where were you on September 11, 2001? I was in an office tower getting scared shitless, thank you. Maybe Margueratt did not notice, al-Qaeda used box cutters, not multimillion dollar nuclear weapons heaped on hundred million dollar missiles. Why on Earth would al-Qaeda use a nuclear missile that can easily be traced back to its launch point and invite massive retaliation from the largest nuclear arsenal in the World, when a minivan parked near Times Square could reap the same havoc without the complex delivery system. For that matter, why use nuclear weapons at all, box cutters did a good job last time, imagine what al-Qaeda could have done with a machete!

“The United States has, with BMD, at least the option of intercepting and destroying the incoming missile harmlessly in space.” Would be a nice feature, but sad to say untrue. I said this before, I’ll say it again, BMD is $60 billion pie in the sky boondoggle.(1) It is not going to work, not for a damned long time, the complexity of spotting an incoming missile moving at up to 25 thousand kilometers an hour. Launching a ‘kill vehicle’ (from the ground because we will not weaponize space). Having the kill vehicle smash into the weapon (note that neither object would be any larger than perhaps a bar fridge at this point). Of course, the weapon might have scores, even hundreds of cheap decoys flying along side and you have less than 30 minutes to make a kill,(2) but do not worry, its like in the movies, where at that critical point everything moves really slowly, particularly the weapon and kill vehicle, they are only coming towards each other at about 50 thousand kilometers an hour, or about 14 kilometers a second. Of course modern technology has advanced a lot in this respect, now tests of the BMD system enjoy a success rate of, wait for it, 0%, yes that’s right, to the best of my limited knowledge no major component of the BMD system works! But what do I know, I’m just an engineer.

Yes nuclear tipped missiles represent a threat, my ex-girlfriend from my days as a lifeguard at Earlscourt outdoor pool represents a threat. A meteor falling from the sky and bopping me on the head is a threat, but consider the following. According to the NTSB in 2002 some 43 thousand American’s lost their lives in motor vehicle accidents. Assuming that number has been about the same for the past four years this would suggest that in the three and a half years since September 11 2001, some 150 thousand Americans have died on Americas highways and driveways. About 3300 people died on September 11. Put another way, since September 11, an American (who dies on US soil) is about 45.6 times more likely to die from some drunken idiot driving recklessly in his oversized gas guzzling Ford Extravaganza than from a maniac Muslim terrorist. Quick, lets all run out and buy a new Dodge pickup truck with a V24, 750 horse power engine so when the terrorists strike again we can run ‘em all down!

I guess we should not be expecting our leaders to take proactive action against the real threat, after all the President used to be CEO of a big oil company, his VP used to be CEO of an Oil exploration company, his close friend, advisor and soon Secretary of State was not only a CEO of big Oil, she even had a super tanker named after her!

“Liberty as we know, cannot survive in a nation that is on a war footing or even a near war footing, permanent crisis justifies permanent control by the agencies of the central government.”

   – Aldous Huxley in Brave New World Revisited.

The system the Bush administration plans to deploy by 2004 will have essentially no defense capability. The technology needed for an effective missile defense system still doesn't exist. All the systems being developed are in early stages of research and development, and will have undergone only rudimentary testing by the time they will be fielded in 2004-2006. Operational testing will not have begun and test conditions will remain far from realistic.

Actually there is a lot less than 30 minutes to make a kill. As I recall, it would take a Soviet launched ICBM going from the Siberian Steppe to, say, Washington about 28 minutes from liftoff to ka-boom over congress.

In fact the window of time to make the kill for such a flight might be perhaps five minutes in duration. Now five minutes may sound like a fairly long time, but when you consider it takes about ten minutes to climb from a launch pad to kill altitude (100 miles) five minutes really is not that much time.

These numbers assume:

• you climb at an average of 700 miles an hour,
• you probably are going to want to maneuver towards your target as you climb.

Of course you also need to detect the incoming weapon and plot a trajectory and decide which anti missile to fire, all of that eats away at your time and then you are pretty much too late once the weapon enters the atmosphere, so that five minute window really is awful tight.