Why Isn't Everyone In the U.S. clamoring for the U.S. to deploy more ABMs?

The so called "Star Wars" system never had actual hardware.

 

What "tests"?

There really were not any tests of "Star Wars" when Reagan was in office. Just a lot of R&D, that was intended to lay the ground work. The actual "tests" did not happen until the 1990s, long after he left office.

Want to know what the first real "test" were? PATRIOT missiles in the Gulf War, and the GPS system. Both were part of the first wave of real technology to be deployed on the research that SDI funded. We know that the kinetic kill vehicle worked, because we have many systems based on that, from PATRIOT and THAAD, to SM-2, SM-3, and SM-6 missiles and GBI. All that was done when Reagan was in office was what they wanted people to see. A big smoke screen, to confuse people as to what it really was all about.

Look even 3 decades and more later, and you see the exact same thing. A few tests with LASERs that some crow about, while the real research is still all about kinetic kill. Not a single LASER system has been deployed, but we have multiple kinetic kill systems in active operation.

But no, those that know the various systems know the difference. The problem there is with uninformed civilians, who do not even know what "theater" means in military speak. Theater is about fairly local systems (PATRIOT, THAAD, the Navy AEGIS ABM systems) are intended to operate in the terminal phase. SDI and the systems based more directly on achieving those goals (GBI) target the missiles at the mid-course phase of flight.

Of course, a great many civilians also confuse the difference between "casualties" and "deaths" on a battlefield, and think that a "combat kill" of equipment like a tank means it was destroyed and not rendered combat ineffective (like having the tracks and road wheels shot off of a tank). Doing so means it can no longer move, rendering it a "combat kill" as it is no longer useful in combat. But it can still be repaired, just as a combat casualty can be treated and return to active combat.

 

Not for about a decade.

I have long believed that SDI was one of the largest long-term R&D projects in US history. We knew even then that it would be decades in the making, as so much of what was proposed was so far beyond what we were capable of at the time.

A great many today were born later, so do not understand the world we lived in then. There was no GPS, the best anybody had was inertial navigation. Even instant broadcast via satellite was less than two decades old, as was "brought to you in Living Color!". SDI was the umbrella that a lot of R&D went into, some of which became real and much did not.

Now the pinpoint accuracy of tracking and locating objects is real, we know of it today as GPS. But go back 40 years, and it would have seemed like "Buck Rogers fantasy" science fiction. What, pull out a device the size of a pack of cigarettes, and it will tell you where you are within a meter?



As early as 1987 Raytheon was working on the software to allow missiles to hard hit other missiles in flight. In 1990 they were conducting the first live fire tests at White Sands with the only system available for them to test it on, the PATRIOT missile. It worked, but even then they knew the missile was not up to the task. But there was a need, so they rushed out an early test program after Iraq invaded Kuwait.

But it took several more years for that to become the system we have today. With several generations of missiles that actually could shoot down a ballistic missile. But the problem in 1990 was not in the software or system, but simply the missile they had at the time. The original PATRIOT was never designed or intended to shoot down missiles, so the hardware was not up to the task. But today it is, and we have THAAD. If Congress ever gets off it's ass and actually fully funds the damned thing.

 

Probably because our conventional capabilities preclude needing to resort to city killing mass destruction from nukes. I think people have a very exaggerated idea of what the size of the Russians military is and what it would take to shut down their offensive capabilities.

 

I'm talking about protecting OUR cities from a possible Russian nuclear attack.

 

What protects our cities is our offensive response capabilities, and always has been. All the 'Iron Dome' fantasies are great, if your country is only about 20 miles wide and 60 miles long, but on a continental scale that is never going to happen. If you're going to take out the U.S., you have take out a lot of overseas assets, not just our domestic assets. Nobody as that capability, yet another reason the isolationists are more dangerous than our enemies; they want to close all that down and hide under their beds.

 

They were replaced with ABL [air-born LASER] systems over a decade ago.

 

No they were not. The ABL was never more than a prototype. And never meant for use as an ABM system anyway.

 

And if it goes black they would tell you all about it. LOL!

Anything you know is at least 30 years out of date. I work in the defense industry.

 

Did you know we've had the Rods from God since THE 70's?

 

For perspective: Stealth is 60 years old.

I know how to defeat stealth in two different ways. I know how to defeat those systems. And I am probably a decade behind.

 

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That would be great. Prove your claim please.

 

That would be great. Prove your claim please.

 

People that work in the defense industry and its sub-contractors all are under non-disclosure agreements, and many of them never expire, no matter how old they are or whether or not the companies themselves have publicly disclosed the systems or technology; there is a lot of proprietary stuff even in older stuff, so don't hold your breath on people feeling like they need to prove anything about their work.

 

I figured. But I had to ask.

 

No, it is just a prototype.

And as an actual ABM system, it is damned near worthless. What, are we going to have fleets of hundreds of them in the air at all times? Because that is literally what it would take.

Sorry, not gonna happen. We never even had that many B52 bombers operating like that during the height of the Cold War.

 

Was never real, and is banned by the Outer Space Treaty of 1967.

You really need to stop living in a Flash Gordon fantasy, and come to reality.