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Two Failures In One Day - Missile Defense Is An Embarrassment - It Won't Work
25
March, 2018
Within
the new $700 billion defense budget the U.S. Congress allocated more
money for
U.S. missile defense:
The Pentagon would spend an additional $1 billion on two of Lockheed’s missile defense systems, bringing total appropriations for the Missile Defense Agency to $11.5 billion.
Congress has dramatically increased its budget for the Israeli missile defense programs by $148 million to include ongoing Iron Dome and Arrow 3 development.
“I am pleased and excited to announce that the US Congress has approved a record sum for Israel’s missile defense program: $705m. in 2018!” Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman announced on Monday.
Two
incidents last night provide again that missile defense is a waste of
money. It hardly ever works. Strategic missile defense, which the
U.S. builds to take down intercontinental missiles, will not protect
against the new weapons Russia and others are now pursuing. The U.S.
military acknowledges
this.
After Putin announced
the new weapon systems the
Trump administration raised
the white flag and
suddenly asked for new
arms control talks.
Last
night the Yemeni army launched (vid)
seven ballistic missiles against Saudi Arabia. Three of those
targeted the capital Riyadh, four were aimed at military and
infrastructure targets. In Riyadh the Saudi forces fired a a number
of Patriot surface-to-air missiles and claimed that those
successfully intercepted the Yemeni missiles. The Saudis Patriot
Advanced Capabilities-2 system (PAC-2) are made by the U.S. company
Raytheon which also hires former
U.S. soldiers as 'Patriot Battery Systems Technician Field Engineers'
to man
and maintain the
Saudi systems.
Earlier
Saudi claims of successful intercepts turned
out to be false.
The small warheads of the Yemeni missiles separate from the larger
missile body and are difficult to detect. The U.S. provided systems
inevitably aims at the bigger empty missile body.
This
time various videos from Riyadh
show that at least seven interceptors were fired against the three
incoming missiles. At least two of the interceptors failed
catastrophically. The other five seem to have self-destruct at
height. There is no sign of any real interception.
One
of the Patriot interceptors prematurely exploded during its boost
phase. Its burning debris showered the ground with hot parts.
Another
Patriot interceptor made
a u-turn and
struck the ground some hundred meters away from random onlookers:
Jeffrey Lewis @ArmsControlWonk
When your PAC2 gets radicalized and turns on you ...
---
Haykal Bafana @BaFana3
Even #Saudi Patriot missiles know who the real enemy is: They boomerang back to earth and bomb Saudi Arabia.
---
agitpapa @agitpapa
How a real Patriot should function, killing the guys who did 9/11 instead of serving them.
---
The
other defense missiles seem to have self-destruct presumably after
they lost contact with the target. Each of these Patriot MIM-104C
missiles cost some $2-3 million.
The
Saudis say that one man was killed and two were wounded in the Yemeni
attack. It is more likely that these people were victims of the
missile defense fire than of the attacking missiles.
In
another late night missile defense incident Israel fired some
twenty of its U.S.
paid Iron
Dome interceptors against presumed missiles coming from the Gaza
strip:
Israel's Iron Dome anti-missile shield intercepted a number of rockets fired from the Gaza Strip on Sunday, Israeli media reported, after warning sirens sounded around the Hamas-controlled Palestinian territory.
That
first report turned out to be fake news. Several videos show
the defense missiles explode in a flash high up in the air. Such
explosions are often interpreted as successful intercept but are
usually just the programmed self-destruction which prevents that
whole missile carcasses fall down on the people below. Indeed none of
a missiles the Israeli army fired destroyed any targets as none
were there:
Multiple Code Red false alarms were blasted in the Hof Ashkelon and Sha'ar HaNegev Regional Councils and in the southern city of Sderot Sunday evening as the Iron Dome missile-defense mistook bullets from the Gaza Strip for a fusillade of rockets.
The regional councils originally reported that the Iron Dome anti-missile system was said to have intercepted every rocket rocket. However, the IDF later confirmed that no salvo had been fired at Israel.
“No salvo was fired at territory in the State of Israel. The situation in the Gaza region is usual. The interceptions by the Iron Dome system were activated because of the firing of bullets from the strip. Nothing fell in Israeli territory. It is being checked whether mortars or rockets were even fired at all,” the statement read.
Before the IDF clarification, the regional councils instructed the southern residents to remain in sheltered rooms.
Each
Iron Dome missile costs at least $50,000. The IDF just spent
$1,000,000 of U.S. taxpayer money because some 'oversensitive'
system mistook random gun fire not aimed at Israel for incoming
missiles.
The
U.S. strategic missile defense is against incoming long range
missiles. The Patriot systems in Saudi Arabia are supposed to defend
against medium range ballistic missiles. The Israeli Iron Dome
systems should defend against short range missile attacks.
All
three systems are obviously incapable of fulfilling their task. All
three demonstrate that missile defense is prohibitively costly. The
cost of each missile defense interceptor is a multitude of the costs
of the attacking missile. The number of interceptors is limited and
the systems can be exhausted and overwhelmed by swarm attacks of
cheap dummies followed by a real attack.
Last
year the Saudis were pushed by
the Trump administration to buy the new Terminal High Altitude Area
Defense (THAAD) missile defense system:
The package that cleared Friday would include 44 THAAD launchers, 360 interceptors, 16 THAAD Fire Control and Communications Mobile Tactical Station Groups and seven AN/TPY-2 THAAD radars, along with associated support equipment and training.
This
new system is supposed to defend Saudi Arabia against Iranian
ballistic missiles. But according to a South-Korean analysis the
THAAD missile defense system has the same problem the Patriot system
has. It can easily be deceived by cheap decoys and it tends to hit
the incoming missile body while missing the separate warhead which
simply continues its attack on the target.
When
the Saudi clown prince visited Washington last week The U.S.
president made
an embarrassing show (vid)
out of such sales. The Saudis will have to pay some $15 billion for
the basically useless THAAD system. "That’s peanuts to you,"
said Trump. But Saudi citizens may not agree with such banter. The
clown prince was, apparently, not amused.
But
what can he do? If he stops buying useless U.S. weapons the borg in
Washington will 'regime change' him in no time.
Current
missile defense is economically not viable. The limits of physics
make it easy to overcome. But the systems still have their purpose.
For
U.S. politicians they are a salable way to move taxpayer money
towards the owners of the defense industry. For the Israeli
government they are a (U.S. paid) psychological tool to prevent its
people from protesting against the consequences of Zionist land
robbery. The Saudis see them as inevitable ransom payment.
Yesterday's
public failures of missile defense endanger those purposes. If the
general public comes to believe that missile defense can not work the
whole scam falls apart. Any future sale should thus be conditioned on
a promise to never use the acquired system.
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