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| Critics Say US Antimissile Defense Flawed, Dangerous
|
| from the bullet-with-a-bullet dept.
|
| posted by kdawson on Wednesday May 19, @08:10 (The Military)
|
|
https://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/05/18/2317249/Critics-Say-US-Antimissile-Defense-Flawed-|
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[0]Hugh Pickens writes "The New York Times reports that President Obama's
plans for reducing America's nuclear arsenal and defeating Iran's
missiles rely heavily on a new generation of antimissile defenses which
last year he called 'proven and effective.' Now a new analysis being
published by two antimissile critics at MIT and Cornell [1]casts doubt on
the reliability of the SM-3 rocket-powered interceptor. The Pentagon
asserts that the [2]SM-3, or Standard Missile 3, had intercepted 84
percent of incoming targets in tests. But a re-examination of results
from 10 of those apparently successful tests by Theodore A. Postol and
George N. Lewis [3]finds only one or two successful intercepts, for a
success rate of 10 to 20 percent. Most of the approaching warheads, they
say, would have been knocked off course but not destroyed, and while that
might work against a conventionally armed missile, it suggests that a
nuclear warhead might still detonate. 'The system is highly fragile and
brittle and will intercept warheads only by accident, if ever,' says Dr.
Postol, a former Pentagon science adviser who forcefully criticized the
performance of the Patriot antimissile system in the 1991 Persian Gulf
war. Dr. Postol says the SM-3 interceptor must shatter the warhead
directly, and public statements of the Pentagon agency seem to suggest
that it agrees. In combat, the scientists added, 'the warhead would have
not been destroyed, but would have continued toward the target.'"
Discuss this story at:
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=10/05/18/2317249
Links:
0. http://hughpickens.com/
1. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/18/world/18missile.html
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIM-161_Standard_Missile_3
3. http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2010_05/Lewis-Postol
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