They've been watching "Real Genius."

Yea and too bad that we do not have anything like that these days!

I used the word "cannot" which means thou shall not.

Lots of press, Avionics Leak Magazine, can speculate all they want to, but the people with definitive answers, cannot and should not answer any questions. What can be said is that the naysayers are fos.

I also think that anyone who actually has worked on one of these projects in the last 20 years, and posts, anything, on a forum like this, should be fired.

I guess that means Dubya is 100% wrong too, since he said essentially the same thing:

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"A Reasonable Chance of Shooting It Down":

At a press conference earlier today, President Bush was asked several questions about the North Korean missile tests. Among his responses were the following comments about the United States' anti-ballistic missile capabilities:

Our missile systems are modest, our anti-ballistic missile systems are modest. They're new. It's new research. We've gotten -- testing them. And so I can't -- it's hard for me to give you a probability of success. But, nevertheless, the fact that a nontransparent society would be willing to tee up a rocket and fire it without identifying where it's going or what was on it means we need a ballistic missile system.

While existing systems may be "modest," the President further indicated that the military could well have intercepted a missile aimed toward North America. Specifically, Bush said "I think we had a reasonable chance of shooting it down. At least that's what the military commanders told me."

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He is just careful about "overselling" anything because the media will try to make him look like a liar no matter what he says...just as you are.

Clearly it is not in the best interest of the country to disclose exactly how effective our defenses are.

I heard today that the program manager said this system successfully passed testing just last week. Coincidence?

Bush often talks for historical context.

The Democrats realize that Bush cannot disclose certain aspects of our defenses, and so they beat him over the head with what they realize is all but impossible for him to explain without showing his cards to the enemy...The DemocRATs are playing politics with our national security, they are giving aid and comfort to the enemy in the process, and they are feeding the world with false suspicion to further their goals of power reacquisition.

Has anybody else noticed Sandy Bergler's conspicious absense on the talk shows?...You would think Clinton's top dog of national security would be rolled out to blame Bush for North Korea...(in case you missed it, there is a full court press blaming Bush to take the attention off Clinton).

I thought the 'put food on your family' speech was pretty good -- in historical context, of course.

don't act like a loser and you won't be treated like one.

I think that's good advice of any president.

"Man, I wish we had one of them doomsday machines..."

Amazingly, I am in the rare position of defending the accuracy of Dubya's assessment against the usual collection of jock-sniffers and armchair generals:

From Media Matters:

" the ship-based Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense (ABMD) system successfully tested on June 22 is not designed to intercept ICBMs, such as North Korea's Taepodong-2. Rather, it is the GMD system that is designed to intercept such missiles. ...the GMD system has not been successfully flight-tested in at least three years.

As the Missile Defense Agency's (MDA) Ballistic Missile Defense System booklet notes, while ABMD-capable destroyers are able to "provide early warning" and "transmit track data to the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense command center" in the event of an ICBM launch, the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense 3.0 weapon system and Standard Missile-3 Block I [SM-3] currently deployed aboard the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense Cruisers are only "capable of intercepting short- and medium-range ballistic missiles."

...In a [televised] panel discussion ... [John] Fund stated that if North Korea does test fire an ICBM missile, "we have to try to shoot it down" and "we have a better than 50-50 chance of doing it." He later added that to date, "half our tests have worked," ...so even our willingness to take it [the North Korean missile] down would send a message."

Although the GMD system has been successful in five out of 10 intercept tests conducted so far, Fund omitted the fact that the "successful" tests of the GMD system have been conducted under highly artificial conditions, and the system's ability to function as an integrated system has not yet been tested. ...previous tests of the GMD system included "artificialities" in the test conditions, such as mounting a transponder on the target warhead (effectively telling the interceptor missile its current location) to simulate a radar system that has the accuracy needed for a successful intercept, according to a February 2004 GAO report.

Additionally, a March 2006 GAO report stated that despite having "conducted five successful intercept attempts ... the [GMD] program has been unable to verify that the integrated system, using production-representative components, will work in an end-to-end operation." "Until further testing is done," the GAO report continued, the MDA "will not know for sure that the integrated system using operational interceptors and fire control radars will perform as expected, or that technical problems with the kill vehicle and its booster have been fixed." The first flight test that might verify this capability, according to the report, is scheduled for November 2006.

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Even a 50/50 chance of a shootdown is a big deal, because of the physics involved. All-in-all, it's probably a risk the US should not take -- better to let NK think we can do it.

I agree. Of course, I currently work on these programs (currently support three of them and used to work on GMD), but would not risk my job (or security clearance) making any statements that would even come close to divulging any info that isn't readily available.

What I can say (and will defend) is that the general public does not really know what goes on behind the scenes on these programs. The technology is impressive and the people working to develop the technology are truly some brilliant individuals.

As an engineer in the trenches - so to speak - this is some really cool stuff.

Mike

How fortunate we are here on Pelican to have experts who know more about weapons systems than the GAO or the president.

Some of my programs have been reviewed by the GAO...a bigger bunch of hacks and pumpkin heads you are not likely to collect if you had a 'Hack and Pumpkin Head' computer program.

And they LIKED my programs.

GAO, phhfffttt.

Make the pie higher!

remember STAR WARS??????????? ie. prez. reagan..............the entire idea of shooting down a missile with a missile is exactly the same as shooting a bullet with a bullet! think about this concept and how far we have come to reality since the reagan era. the patriot does not actually hit a SCUD. it gets within lethal range and explodes, the effect is the same as a shotgun blast only bigger as shrapnel hits target missile. we are now actually hitting the missile with a missile! this is HUGE as far as defensive purposes for us!

now did we shoot the missile aimed at hawaii down????
I REALLY HOPE SO! funny how 2 AEGIS cruisers were stationed down range and lord knows how many subs and aircraft and eyes in the sky focused on these launches. if those rat bastards screw up hawaii..............im gonna be pissed off like a MO-FO and im gonna kill that little puke tin dictator myself!

We really do NOT know what our true national capabilities are, nor should we. I may or may not have worked on such a program many years ago. I am retired and no longer need any security clearence, Yet I will not state for certain that I ever worked on such a program. Anyone who is acutally working on such programs is taking a big risk to even state that they are doing so, let alone what they are doing.

My point is that the people in the KNOW, cannot and will not make statements as to what our capabilities are. Nor should we expect them to do so.

Bottom line, read the news, take the latest greatest thing that they claim we can do, and add twenty to thirty years of progress to that, and you might be close to reality. Or not.

Ambiguous, yes, but it has to be so.

Wall Street Journal
Missile Defense Test
Time to shoot back at Kim Jong Il's latest provocation.

Wednesday, June 21, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

As we went to press in the U.S. last night, morning was breaking at the Musudan-ri launch facility in the remote northeast of North Korea. It's possible we'll wake up to the news that Pyongyang has tested the long-range ballistic missile that is fully fueled and which U.S. satellites have monitored for more than a month.

If so, we hope we'll also learn that the U.S. responded by testing its newly operational missile defense system and blowing the Korean provocation out of the sky. What better way to discourage would-be nuclear proliferators than to demonstrate that the U.S. is able to destroy their missiles before they hit our allies, or the U.S. homeland. Even a miss would be a useful learning experience all around.

Consider what's at stake. We've known for years that North Korea has several nuclear weapons at the very least and is developing the missile technology to threaten America. Pyongyang's test missile is believed to be a Taepodong-2. A two-stage version could reach Alaska, Hawaii or the West Coast, according to a study in March by the Center for Nonproliferation at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, while a three-stage model could reach all of the continental U.S.

North Korea may not yet have the ability to miniaturize a nuclear warhead--but then again it may. In any event, it's small comfort that the Taepodong-2 is probably inaccurate. If it misses Seattle, that's not necessarily good news for Tacoma or Portland.

The last time North Korea launched a missile that caught the world's attention was in August 1998, when it shot a Taepodong-1 over Japan and into the Pacific. Pyongyang has since tested shorter-range missiles many times, including as recently as March. Its inventory of ballistic missiles totals about 800, including 100-200 Nodongs and Taepodong-1s capable of reaching Japan. North Korea is also developing a land-based mobile missile known as the Taepodong-X, with a range of 4,000 kilometers that could land anywhere in Japan.
Missile exports have also long been a major source of foreign exchange for Pyongyang, with customers in Pakistan (whose "Ghauri" missile is a renamed Nodong) and throughout the Middle East. Its longtime best customer is Iran, which last year was reported to have purchased technology that allowed it to extend the range of its Shahab-3 missile to 3,500 kilometers from 1,500. In the blunt words of the German daily Bild last December, "this means that the 'madmen of Iran' could reach targets in the whole of Germany."

All of which demonstrates once again the need for the missile defenses that the Bush Administration has steadily been developing. The objective of the integrated system--which U.S. officials stress is "limited" and still under development--is to provide a "layered" defense, with multiple opportunities to take shots at an incoming missile. The highly complex system depends on swift coordination among elements based on land, at sea, and in the air or space.

On the ground, a key element are the interceptor missiles newly deployed at Fort Greeley, Alaska, and Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. There are also interceptors aboard the Navy's Aegis cruisers, two of which are currently patrolling near North Korea. Sensors are located aboard ships, in space, and at several sophisticated radar stations world-wide.

North Korea clearly intends any launch as an act of intimidation, part of its long-held belief that nuclear threats give it political leverage. Knocking the missile out of the sky, or even trying to, would tell the North that it can't succeed with such tactics. It would also reassure Japan and other U.S. allies that we have the will to protect them from rogue madmen. The demonstration effect would be useful around the world, not least in Iran.

As North Korea weighs a launch, it's a useful moment to recall how we got to this pass: Amid the arms-control era of the Cold War, the U.S. chose to defend itself against attack by plane or ship or ground but not by missile. One reason North Korea--and Iran--decided to invest scarce resources into developing nuclear weapons and ballistic-missiles is simply this: The U.S. was vulnerable.
The emerging missile defense system is making that less true, and a North Korean test launch is an ideal time to demonstrate that we are willing and able to defend ourselves.