Get Ready, Russia and China: American Missile Defense Is Going 'Star Wars'

[McDeloud]

Seems like the americans e-peens grows a little bit with every supertony51's thread. Good work, grunt!

[Kuntantee]

What will keep Russia/Chia going up in the orbit and shooting down your "kill vehicle" (what a terrible name)? When you put something to orbit, you need to make sure it is well-defended.

[xChurch]

What will keep Russia/Chia going up in the orbit and shooting down your "kill vehicle" (what a terrible name)? When you put something to orbit, you need to make sure it is well-defended.

Mutually assured destruction. Has worked for the past 70 years.

[Kellhound]

What will keep Russia/Chia going up in the orbit and shooting down your "kill vehicle" (what a terrible name)? When you put something to orbit, you need to make sure it is well-defended.

Generally, things parked above LEO are not easily killed.

[shadowmouse]

Jeebus! That title! As penance you must now go and watch the Land of Confusion video a thousand or so times.

Thank you, I was part of the damned tripwire in Europe the last time we did this, so color me triggered.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strate...nse_Initiative
http://science.howstuffworks.com/star-wars-program.htm

From the folks who brought us the Maginot Line: "plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose".

[Skroe]

Do you really think we are that far out on developing these kind of counter-measures? We are already looking to mount Lasers on ships and AC-130's. We already have the tracking technology, seems like we just need to configure the two toghter

It's mostly a procurement decision.

Let's talk the state of modern American technology. If the United States really wanted to, it could do some crazy things. It could put a nuclear powered space laser into orbit. It could build a nuclear powered bomber fleet. It could retrofit the entire navy with rail guns. It could even, if it really put its mind to it, manufacture engines that allow us to travel ~10-12% the Speed of Light and enable a 40 year trip to Alpha centauri.

It can do all these things, but there are at least two questions at play
(1) Is the technology mature enough to take out of the lab and into the mass manufacturing stage?
(2) Is it cost effective to do so? Will it continue to be cost effective?

The US has had extremely powerful chemical lasers for decades. They've mounted them on planes over the years. THey have extremely powerful lasers from a decade ago (THEL / M-THEL). But the US decided that from a practical perspective mass deployment of chemical lasers was both uneconomical and impracticle (very volatile chemicals are required, and a lot of them), so the technology turned to solid state lasers, but that was basically back at square one.

I think if you want something instructive, let's look at Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense. In technical terms, Aegis BMD is a very defived fork of the older, Aegis Combat System. It supercedes it. It is based on the Aegis Combat System, impliments what it does, but is a generation evolved beyond it, approaches different problems than Aegis does. Aegis BMD has been worked on for about 20 years (and Aegis Combat for about 45 now, maybe 55 depending how you count the programmic start). But Aegis BMD didn't enter the fleet until the last decade and change, and of the entire DDG-51 fleet, only a subset, about 30, impliment Aegis BMD. The earlier ships won't get the BMD refit (generally), but about half to 2/3rds the future DDG-51s will be based around it (why not all? cost reasons).

Only when Aegis BMD was mature enough, did the Pentagon feel competent to start superceding the Aegis Combat System on ships with it.

The Miltary sometimes does "one offs", but likes to avoid doing "three offs". The Total Ship Integrating Environment, for example, is the "Aegis Combat System" of the DDG-1000 family. It is more advanced than the ACS as an integrated combat environment (though less effective for air defense), but is also not combatible with Aegis (it cannot share targets between ships). It'll never be implimented again.

So whats this have to do with wide deployment of lasers (and rail guns?) Well consider the examples above. THe Navy has an operational rail gun. It has powerful and even more powerful lasers.

But at what point will they be retrofitted onto most ships (or new ships) and there be an operational laser defense platform or something? As soon as the technology is mature enough to be economical and "ready". For anything that will be as common as a Tomahawk missile, that's easily 10 years. Probably 15. They will need to settle on a final design that is sufficiently powerful , test the hell out of it, and then replicate it. That least step is usually the easiest: Aegis Ashore for example has been sprouting up all over the place. But whatever the Pentagon chooses, it will be the solution for 10-15 years minimum, so it better be the right one.

As a matter of power generation on ships though, the Ford class carrier, the DDG-1000 and the Flight III Burkes all have sufficient power generating capacity (by design) for powerful electricity-devouring weapons. The older Flight II burkes don't though. Land based obviously, there isn't a size limit.

Basically yeah, it'll take that long, because the Pentagon will take all the technology development programs and go with a bottom-up design that integrates all the lessons of the "one offs" and "three offs" that will likely to show up.

- - - Updated - - -

Oh and I think it's worth messaging re: the original post - "Subminitions", of which this is a sort of (by concept) are going to be ever more the thing. Don't be surprised when next generation air to air missiles, ground attack missiles, and even rockets all have sub-munitions.

[caervek]

Watch them Russians developing Phasers to counter that.

They actually launched an orbital laser platform in the 80's for taking out anti-ICBM satellites but it never made it into orbit lol.

Ironically the design was re-engineered into the main block of the ISS, kind of sad that things these days seem to be going in the opposite direction

[Skroe]

They actually launched an orbital laser platform in the 80's for taking out anti-ICBM satellites but it never made it into orbit lol.

Ironically the design was re-engineered into the main block of the ISS, kind of sad that things these days seem to be going in the opposite direction

I never heard about the ISS reengineering. Source?

The X-Ray laser by the way (Excalibur), was powered by a pumped nuclear explosion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Excalibur

Interestingly despite bieng canceled, it was one of the most mature parts of the Strategic Defense Initiative.

I would not be surprised if we see this again some day, using Solid State lasers.

[caervek]

I never heard about the ISS reengineering. Source?

Really sorry but I cannot for the life of me remember the name of the laser platform the Soviets built, I know the base design was reused for multiple Mir modules and the Russian ISS core but cannot remember it's name

[Skroe]

Really sorry but I cannot for the life of me remember the name of the laser platform the Soviets built, I know the base design was reused for multiple Mir modules and the Russian ISS core but cannot remember it's name

Oh the Russian segment.

ISS is mostly Space Sation Freedom with the Russian Mir-2 modules on it.

I thought you meant from Project Excalibur.

[Shibito]

I demand lightsabers!

[Cybran]

Annnnnnd there ya have it, the expert has spoken. Scooped and served

Expert on what? Copy pasting walls of texts with no value? Parroting promotional materials for military firms that embezzle billions of US tax dollars? Regarding warmongers and scum like Ronald Regan as heroes?

[Annoying]

Do you really think we are that far out on developing these kind of counter-measures? We are already looking to mount Lasers on ships and AC-130's. We already have the tracking technology, seems like we just need to configure the two toghter

We're way past "configure the two together", though. In 2014, we had a 30-kilowatt laser mounted on a ship that was fully capable of tracking and destroying things. Realistically, we're at the "miniaturize and put on everything we can" phase. Laser weapons are quite cheap to fire.

[Deleted]

We're way past "configure the two together", though. In 2014, we had a 30-kilowatt laser mounted on a ship that was fully capable of tracking and destroying things. Realistically, we're at the "miniaturize and put on everything we can" phase. Laser weapons are quite cheap to fire.

They'll just put mirrors on their ships to deflect it back at the attacker, lol.

[Shibito]

Expert on what? Copy pasting walls of texts with no value? Parroting promotional materials for military firms that embezzle billions of US tax dollars? Regarding warmongers and scum like Ronald Regan as heroes?

Oh its you again.