16 ms·

Did American Missile Defense Fail in Saudi Arabia?

159 points by Jerry2 9y ago

DanielBMarkham 9y ago
This article skirts dangerously close to helping one side in this war kill folks from the other side. It also has little redeeming social value aside from poking at the current president and missile defense, all of which can happen in other ways. For those reasons, I consider it irresponsible journalism. I like the general subject, and I'd love to hear more about it, but this is not good. It's just going to encourage more launches -- and perhaps more deaths.
- kingkawn 9y ago
  It is very important that we know from real life examples that the missile defense systems they are claiming will protect us are not functional, and that the resource allocation and strategic planning being made around these false promises be re-evaluated.
  - skj 9y ago
    What is most important is that we avoid death and destruction from these missiles. Part of that is understanding the weaknesses of the existing systems and working to improve them. Another part of that may be convincing the attackers that the missiles are ineffective. Unfortunately life is not a linear program and we often don't find maxima at the extremes.
    - kingkawn 9y ago
      If these systems have been deployed and are meant to stop missile attacks but the only way they work is if people believe that they work, then they are worse than useless and need to be exposed before our dependence on them grows any further.
    - Bartweiss 9y ago
      > Another part of that may be convincing the attackers that the missiles are ineffective. This raises an interesting question: is there evidence that anti-missile systems have actually deterred missile attacks? The Iron Dome system has a (disputed) success rate vastly higher than the Patriot system, but I can't find evidence that missile attacks against Israel have substantially declined in response to its deployment. Perhaps better organized entities like national militaries would react more thoroughly, but that also raises the specter of a displacement effect that fails to save lives. I definitely agree with you that "improving defenses" and "promoting defenses as deterrents" may be conflicting aims, but I'm curious why the original poster here is so confident anti-missile systems have a deterrent effect in the first place.
      - DanielBMarkham 9y ago
        "...I'm curious why the original poster here is so confident anti-missile systems have a deterrent effect in the first place..." I find it fascinating this HN thing we do where we skim over a comment, decide whether author agrees with us or not politically, and then pile on. I didn't say anti-missile systems have a deterrent effect. The topic was not part of my comment. At all. My only point was a simple and pragmatic one: if you have a stockpile of missiles, and you shoot one? Having somebody give you a moment-by-moment account of what happened on that missile's journey is a quite valuable thing that you will use the next time you shoot one of your missiles. My comment had zero to do with missile defense (aside from noting my interest in the subject). It was just pointing out that in general it's a really bad idea to give critiques to people shooting missiles at you. I'm not going to comment on missile defense. Not relevant to the point I was making.
        CalChris 9y ago
        > This article skirts dangerously close to helping one side in this war kill folks from the other side. You said this but then failed to cite anything from the article remotely supporting your claim. > in general it's a really bad idea to give critiques to people shooting missiles at you. Saudi Arabia is not us. Hell, I don't even like KSA, an autocratic regime with a value system completely antithetical to ours but yeah, with a boatload of oil.
    - ssijak 9y ago
      What is the most important is that USA stops causing and going into wars all around the globe. After that nobody will threaten to nuke you. Double win.
  - DanielBMarkham 9y ago
    It is important. It's just not important enough to kill a bunch of people when they didn't have to die. Like I said, I like the topic and would love to hear more on it. I keep seeing the role of editor missing in mainstream news. This is the kind of article that could have been published with judicious editing without ending up a bomb damage assessment for terrorists. I don't think you get to point out how important the topic is and get a free pass regarding impact. Articles like this have consequences.
  - ufmace 9y ago
    That's quite a conclusion to draw from one article about one test about an early-generation system deployed in a developing country. How does that lead to believing that no such system currently works or could ever work?
- QAPereo 9y ago
  Missile security through obscurity... oy.
- ovi256 9y ago
  I do not think NYT reporters have magic sources, access or analytic ability. They seem to have used public sources of information as sources. The Houthis, or their allies, should have enough analysts to piece the same sources together and arrive at the same conclusion.
- timthelion 9y ago
  "It's just going to encourage more launches" - no it won't. The current missile defense systems do not have a deterrent effect. They are expensive to launch and the 3rd world missiles that they intercept are much cheaper. Even a successful interception is a victory for the agressor.
  - dsfyu404ed 9y ago
    On some level it's a statistics game. Even in the absence of a defense system X/Y missiles will hit the target depending on the details. A defense system reduces that number further. Better to get the system refined when the stakes are low. When the Houthis miss the airport and they're a lot more likely to hit sand than city. When NK misses some city in SK (not necessarily Seoul because they can hit that with conventional artillery) they're much more likely to hit something we don't want them to hit. Now, the latter situation may not be relevant within the lifetime of this system but having the system be "battle tested" serves to make it even less likely. This sort of scaled to all defensive and deterrent systems. The more successful they are the more the generals in the war room will say "We can't just do $offensive_thing because it's not likely enough to be effective in the face of $defensive_thing"
- rhapsodic 9y ago
  I disagree with you, but since your comment appears to be thought-out and made in good faith, I upvoted it to counteract the downvotes it's getting.
sailfast 9y ago
Are we really expecting Patriot batteries to work now? Have they changed fundamentally since the 1991 Gulf War? I know they hit a few SCUDs but I don't recall any sort of expectation that it would keep a major population center safe from attack, especially from a smaller warhead.
- kevin_thibedeau 9y ago
  > Have they changed fundamentally since the 1991 Gulf War? Yes they have. The PAC-3 missile is completely different from the hack job PAC-2/GEM they rushed into the field in '91.
- icegreentea2 9y ago
  The Patriot system actually has seen substantial changes since the first Gulf War. The first Gulf War used what are called 'PAC-2' systems. They've since developed and deployed PAC-3 systems. The list of changes is comprehensive. If nothing else, it uses a new missile that was designed from scratch to act in an anti-ballistic missile role (the PAC-2 used a missile designed for aircraft intercept - the two roles have really different end-game requirements). The radar, the intercept software on the missile itself, mission management software have all been modified. The PAC-2 missile relied on its ground based radar to guide it onto the target, and relied on an explosive warhead to damage the target. The PAC-3 has an integrated radar to guide itself onto target and is capable of hit to kill intercept. Now, those are all the claims anyways. We'll have to see how useful all these changes actually were.
  - CalChris 9y ago
    To quote Buck Turgidson in Dr. Strangelove, Well, I don't think it's quite fair to condemn the whole program because of a single slip up. The PAC-3 is based on the SDI ERINT, a missile which itself failed several tests and then finally passed a rigged test. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Defense_Initiative#Extended_Range_Interceptor_(ERINT) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Defense_Initiative#E...
    - 9y ago
JepZ 9y ago
Why is it so hard to shoot down a missle? I always thought that ballistic missles travel with a very predictable speed and direction. So hitting them should be an easy task for a guided missle as long as it got enough time to reach it at all (which I think is not the problem here). So the only problem I can see is to disarm the missle during flight but am not sure if that is what is meant here. Does anybody know why it should be hard to shoot down a ballistic missle?
- Symmetry 9y ago
  They're going very fast and even small errors in the estimate of their position and velocity will be enough to miss. Also, the motion is less predictable if they're in the atmosphere.
  - agumonkey 9y ago
    Sure if you try to catch a bullet with a bullet you're making your life harder. Anyway to increase the interception surface/volume ?
    - trisimix 9y ago
      Explode the interceptor?
      - olympus 9y ago
        This doesn't work well for ballistic missiles. A few ounces of shrapnel doesn't knock the missile very far from it's trajectory. You'd have to get lucky to break the fuse, and even then you'd have a big hunk of explosives heading toward the target and making a big crater. Plus a lot of old missiles have such simple fusing systems that you probably won't break them with just a bit of shrapnel anyway.
        Bartweiss 9y ago
        As I understand it, the only serious "explode the interceptor" proposal was to use nuclear interceptors against ICBMs. That provides a modest radius of non-projectile destruction, and more importantly provides a large radius of fuse/control-disrupting radiation. So when it comes to "shooting down a Scud near the ground over a city", you're exactly right. Blowing up your interceptor only works when you've got a high-tech target and are willing to make quite a mess yourself to stop the thing.
golergka 9y ago
All the more reason to replace it with David's Sling.
- olympus 9y ago
  Saudi Arabia buying weapons from Israel? That could start a war between KSA and every other Arab country.
  - solatic 9y ago
    You'd be surprised; that KSA and Israel are strongly co-operating along an anti-Iranian axis is a fairly open secret these days. With that said, if anybody's going to block a sale like that, it's Israel, not KSA. The Israelis don't trust KSA anywhere nearly enough to trust KSA with domestically developed systems.
  - ars 9y ago
    You should follow the news, because it looks like it's happening right now. And you are wrong about the war including every other Arab country. It would only include Iran. SA is trying to counter Iran, and they want that badly enough to work with Israel to accomplish it. Other Arab countries aren't going to get involved.
  - golergka 9y ago
    Have you been following the Middle East news lately at all? Israel is clearly allied with Saudi camp, and there already have been plenty of almost official visits.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
petesake 9y ago
Cant v just catch missiles mid air in a device that can contain explosion and launch it far away into space and let it explode thr or if possible dismantle.
- AndrewGaspar 9y ago
  Nope
- nkrisc 9y ago
  If your question starts with "Can't you just..." the answer is probably "no" because if the answer was "yes" somebody would probably have thought of that already and implemented it.
stats300 9y ago
> missed their target ... A kilometer is a pretty normal miss rate for a Scud Assume a target of 0.1km x 0.1km, but the missile may hit anywhere in an area of 1km x 1km around the target. That means the area of the target is 1/100 the size of the overall area. They'd have to launch at least 50 Scuds to have even a 50/50 chance of hitting the target. Can someone tell me if that calculation is way off? It sounds like this attack, other than spreading fear and panic, was very unlikely to work.
- matt4077 9y ago
  I did a rough outline of what I guessed to be the "valuable target area" of the airport, and it came to 0.15m^2: https://imgur.com/a/t7vhd https://imgur.com/a/t7vhd. Such a target would only need 5 Scuds for even odds. But, yes: The Scud is terribly (wonderfully) inaccurate.
  - stats300 9y ago
    I think you meant 0.15km^2, not m^2. Really good point you make; the "valuable target area" is quite a bit larger than I assumed.
- virtualized 9y ago
  The chance of a hit is even lower: 1 - (0.99^50) ~= 40%
  - gregshap 9y ago
    Assuming the chance of each hit is independent, why do you think they wouldn't be additive?
    - lostmsu 9y ago
      And potentially add to >100%?
      - chroem- 9y ago
Amorymeltzer 9y ago
This is sort of beside the point, but I wanted to point out how great a piece of journalism this is. The integration of maps, video, and pictures is exactly what old print-media organizations can provide online and take advantage of. This is a really compelling narrative that shows real, honest reporting. That's worth noting.
- classicsnoot 9y ago
  This is not intended to be a brigade, but i have to agree with the other poster in saying that this is not necessarily good journalism, per se, but it is definitely a great presentation. In terms of good journalism, it may be time to start setting up bots that build articles, as it is getting so hard to trust that people are actually A) reporting all facts relevant and available and B) capable of providing worthwhile analysis.
- samat 9y ago
  That’s some researchers sharing their analysis with NYT.
  - beefman 9y ago
    In particular, Union of Concerned Scientists researchers. But they're not really researchers, because they'll never report results that don't support UCS political positions. Also, "analysts" from Middlebury Institute of International Studies — apparently another nonproliferation shop.[1] And finally, anonymous "U.S. officials". [1] http://www.miis.edu/about/newsroom/experts/jlewis http://www.miis.edu/about/newsroom/experts/jlewis
    - wavefunction 9y ago
      Do you make the same distinction with researchers who work for petroleum firms that hid their findings on anthropogenic climate change or tobacco firms that concealed their findings on the health risks of tobacco consumption? If so, I applaud your sense of equity.
myth_drannon 9y ago
That was all over the Russian media about a month ago when it happened. Not sure if it's coincidence or not if the decision to buy Russian defense systems was influenced by this event.
- riku_iki 9y ago
  Saudis are currently working on two transactions: - buying S-400 from Russia for 3 billions - buying THAAD from USA for 15 billions S-400 is totally unproven system.
  - Havoc 9y ago
    Well given that they aren't poor a "the more the merrier" approach seems like a good bet
  - Gustomaximus 9y ago
    For $18 billion you could probably hire the Yemen rebels to work jobs for many years and distract them from war.
jandrewrogers 9y ago
The core design problem with using the Patriot missile system for ABM applications is that its terminal guidance system fundamentally isn't designed for it. It uses radar for terminal guidance because it was adapted from anti-aircraft applications. That this works at all is impressive, in a "dancing bear" sense, you wouldn't expect the discrimination to be good enough for the purpose. All purpose-built ABM systems use infrared imagers for terminal guidance with classifiers that pick out both the target and desired point of impact on the target. These are vastly more effective but we also don't sell them to foreign countries AFAIK.
- zkms 9y ago
  > purpose-built ABM systems use infrared imagers for terminal guidance What kind of optical window for the IR imager gets used for this application?
  - jandrewrogers 9y ago
    The materials tech is pretty amazing, and they've been building it since the early 90s. At least in the past, they were using sapphire crystals and diamond films that have tiny cooling conduits drilled through them with lasers so that you can run (IIRC) liquid helium through the crystals as a coolant. Even in this configuration, the ablation and thermal loading due to hypersonic transit through the atmosphere has proven to be so high that the optical window is covered in ablative shielding for the first part of the flight, where the terminal guidance package is not much use anyway. Once the missile is within terminal range, the ablative shield is removed and it switches to homing mode. Early tests didn't have the ablation shield, and the damage to the optical window was sufficiently high that the imager lost effectiveness. The performance envelope within atmosphere of the rocket motors they use for ABM is high enough that it really pushes materials engineering to the breaking point.
    - killjoywashere 9y ago
      > sapphire crystals and diamond films that have tiny cooling conduits drilled through them with lasers so that you can run (IIRC) liquid helium through the crystals Citations, pleeeeassse! I neeeeed it!
sandworm101 9y ago
Lol. When I saw the headline I though this was a rehash of the Gulf War "intercepts" that did fail. If 20+ years later Patriot is still failing at the same task ... much is wrong with the procurement system. As a kid I was on the ground during the first gulf war. We thought these things were working. They put pieces of them in hotel lobbies on plinths. Only years later did we learn that all those explosions in the sky were meaningless, that the scuds were not being intercepted but rather simply missed their targets. The article has issues. The plume is irrelevant. The cited pic from syria looks similar but that has more to do with wind and temperature than similarities in warhead. Conclusions based on the launch angle of the patriots may also be incorrect as there the outbound patriots need not follow a strait line. The best intercept for their warhead might not be a head-on approach. We don't know if they turned mid-flight to intercept, which they can do. And don't criticize patriot for firing five times. This thing was coming down as several objects on very similar trajectories. Each missile might have been targeting a different inbound part, any one of which might be the warhead. If 4/5ths of the inbound objects were intercepted, but the one that wasn't turned out to be the warhead, it wasn't a total failure.
SapphireSun 9y ago
O.o The NYT is framing this as Saudi being attacked? The Saudi forces are executing a genocide in Yemen backed by US military targeting, weapons, and mid-air refueling (some of this was stopped but not all of it). This is on the back of Thomas Friedman's laughable piece on MBS (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/23/opinion/saudi-prince-mbs-arab-spring.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/23/opinion/saudi-prince-mbs-...). Is the Times executing a propaganda campaign? Sickening.
- lakechfoma 9y ago
  When is launching missiles at another country ever _not_ attacking them?
  - everdev 9y ago
    I think it's a semantic difference between "attacking" and "defending". For some, attacking means the first party to engage in violence. Regardless, this was an act of violence even if it was preceded by other acts of violence.
    - EthanHeilman 9y ago
      At the strategic level offensive and defense refers to the side which has positive war aims. That is, Attackers are trying to change the current state in their favor (e.g. seizing territory or regime change) whereas defenders are attempting to resist this change (i.e. maintaining the status quo). This can sometimes be complex as both sides in a war may have positive strategic aims.
- ztratar 9y ago
  Saudi is both attacking and being attacked. Both are true, and talking about either side is still good journalism.
  - blackoil 9y ago
    Talking about only one particularly stronger side, is propaganda.
40acres 9y ago
I've read a few stories about the lack of confidence in America's missile defense systems. We have THAAD missile [0] in Asia as a counter punch to North Korea but from what I've read confidence in the system is pretty low. Israel's Iron Dome [1] system seems to be effective but I would assume there are differences in the system and proximity of Palestine to Israel and the missiles fired that allow it to be so effective. As a further point, the fact that our missile defense systems are so poor just emphasizes how reckless our approach to North Korea is, their missile technology is getting better and better while our defense system is unproven and yet top Trump administration officials talk about war as if it's not a big deal. Truly scary stuff. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_High_Altitude_Area_Defense https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_High_Altitude_Area_De... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Dome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Dome
- grkvlt 9y ago
  I think Iron Dome has a high success rate due to the type of missile. Mostly 80mm unguided 'Katyusha' and 122mm 'Qassam' unguided rockets, which are destroyed by multiple interceptor missiles with proximity fuzed explosive warheads. I was in Tel Aviv in 2012, when larger Fajr-5 330mm rockets were fired at the city and I saw several of them being successfully intercepted, a few thousand meters out from their targets. Sadly there was one rocket that hit Tel Aviv, killing several people, and another 'failure' of sorts when debris from an intercepted Fajr-5 landed in a Tel Aviv street, however the warhead did not explode and it was simply falling at terminal velocity... Iron Dome also has an interesting optimisation mode where it tracks the impact point and will not waste a salvo against the incoming threat if it will land somewhere harmless like the sea or open countryside.
  - smacktoward 9y ago
    Yes, this was my thought too. Rockets fired at Israel are generally cheap, short-range subsonic jobs, not substantially harder to shoot down than a World War 2-era V-1 buzz bomb. Medium-range and intercontinental ballistic missiles reach speeds of many thousands of miles per hour, making them much harder targets to intercept.
davidf18 9y ago
The Saudis have the resources to purchase 3 different jointly Israeli-USA developed missile systems: 1. Iron Dome for near range. 2. David's Sling (or Magic Wand) for Medium Range 3. Arrow for long range. All 3 systems have been demonstrated to work in demonstrations. Iron dome has worked many times in combat. Since the missile attacking Saudi Arabia was a ballistic missile, Iron Dome wouldn't apply. https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/17/north-korean-missiles-what-south-korea-can-learn-from-israel.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/17/north-korean-missiles-what-s...
gaius 9y ago
Patriot doesn't work, Thaad doesn't work. The only ABMs worth a damn are the Israeli Arrow, Russian S500, and perhaps Aster 30 BMD when that enters service. The Americans have always relied on fighters for strategic air defence, and now those chickens are coming home to roost.
- jhayward 9y ago
  Aegis and SM-3 seem to be working for some forms of missile defense, including some BMDs. It's a hard problem space and a lot of the apparent success/failure is really a matter of choices and tradeoffs made by the 'customers' who specify the design constraints.
  - gaius 9y ago
    Aegis + Aegis Ashore definitely seems to have potential. Assuming a Nork threat you would want to intercept mid-trajectory if you could, and that means pre-positioning your platform in the mid-Pacific. If you are intercepting on the terminal phase then things are pretty desperate...
- exabrial 9y ago
  THAAD doesn't work? I actually thought it had been largely a success.
  - Gustomaximus 9y ago
    I read somewhere it has a ~50% success rate. So it seems if the logic is this simple, it works, you just need to launch 3 missiles at the target to be confident about getting an intercept.
    - mlindner 9y ago
      You mean some internet blog told you it had a 50% success rate? The actual tests are 100% successful. Do some basic research please. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_High_Altitude_Area_Defense https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_High_Altitude_Area_De...
exabrial 9y ago
Anyone know what generation missiles were fired? The PAC2 can really only hit aircraft... sometimes. PAC3 was a massive upgrade and does hit-to-kill instead blast fragmentation
trhway 9y ago
given that warhead in those Iranian designs does separate on re-entry and given the state of the engine block, specifically 1. the lower half seems to have been broken into a number of pieces while still in the air as the spread of the pieces indicates and 2. the upper part only deformed as result of hitting the ground - it seems that the Patriot directly hit the engine block into the lower half. Basically the engine block played the decoy role, or may be the Patriot was going for the warhead and missed, and with the engine block flying at some distance behind and slightly off course it just was hit accidentally.
rurban 9y ago
I remember when the conspiracy folks at Reddit claimed the Saudis shot the missile by themselves from the airport to justify or silence the crackdown on the family. So it looks like they were wrong, again.

159 points by Jerry2 9y ago

This article skirts dangerously close to helping one side in this war kill folks from the other side. It also has little redeeming social value aside from poking at the current president and missile defense, all of which can happen in other ways. For those reasons, I consider it irresponsible journalism. I like the general subject, and I'd love to hear more about it, but this is not good. It's just going to encourage more launches -- and perhaps more deaths.

kingkawn 9y ago
It is very important that we know from real life examples that the missile defense systems they are claiming will protect us are not functional, and that the resource allocation and strategic planning being made around these false promises be re-evaluated.
- skj 9y ago
  What is most important is that we avoid death and destruction from these missiles. Part of that is understanding the weaknesses of the existing systems and working to improve them. Another part of that may be convincing the attackers that the missiles are ineffective. Unfortunately life is not a linear program and we often don't find maxima at the extremes.
  - kingkawn 9y ago
    If these systems have been deployed and are meant to stop missile attacks but the only way they work is if people believe that they work, then they are worse than useless and need to be exposed before our dependence on them grows any further.
  - Bartweiss 9y ago
    > Another part of that may be convincing the attackers that the missiles are ineffective. This raises an interesting question: is there evidence that anti-missile systems have actually deterred missile attacks? The Iron Dome system has a (disputed) success rate vastly higher than the Patriot system, but I can't find evidence that missile attacks against Israel have substantially declined in response to its deployment. Perhaps better organized entities like national militaries would react more thoroughly, but that also raises the specter of a displacement effect that fails to save lives. I definitely agree with you that "improving defenses" and "promoting defenses as deterrents" may be conflicting aims, but I'm curious why the original poster here is so confident anti-missile systems have a deterrent effect in the first place.
    - DanielBMarkham 9y ago
      "...I'm curious why the original poster here is so confident anti-missile systems have a deterrent effect in the first place..." I find it fascinating this HN thing we do where we skim over a comment, decide whether author agrees with us or not politically, and then pile on. I didn't say anti-missile systems have a deterrent effect. The topic was not part of my comment. At all. My only point was a simple and pragmatic one: if you have a stockpile of missiles, and you shoot one? Having somebody give you a moment-by-moment account of what happened on that missile's journey is a quite valuable thing that you will use the next time you shoot one of your missiles. My comment had zero to do with missile defense (aside from noting my interest in the subject). It was just pointing out that in general it's a really bad idea to give critiques to people shooting missiles at you. I'm not going to comment on missile defense. Not relevant to the point I was making.
      - CalChris 9y ago
        > This article skirts dangerously close to helping one side in this war kill folks from the other side. You said this but then failed to cite anything from the article remotely supporting your claim. > in general it's a really bad idea to give critiques to people shooting missiles at you. Saudi Arabia is not us. Hell, I don't even like KSA, an autocratic regime with a value system completely antithetical to ours but yeah, with a boatload of oil.
  - ssijak 9y ago
    What is the most important is that USA stops causing and going into wars all around the globe. After that nobody will threaten to nuke you. Double win.
- DanielBMarkham 9y ago
  It is important. It's just not important enough to kill a bunch of people when they didn't have to die. Like I said, I like the topic and would love to hear more on it. I keep seeing the role of editor missing in mainstream news. This is the kind of article that could have been published with judicious editing without ending up a bomb damage assessment for terrorists. I don't think you get to point out how important the topic is and get a free pass regarding impact. Articles like this have consequences.
- ufmace 9y ago
  That's quite a conclusion to draw from one article about one test about an early-generation system deployed in a developing country. How does that lead to believing that no such system currently works or could ever work?
QAPereo 9y ago
Missile security through obscurity... oy.
ovi256 9y ago
I do not think NYT reporters have magic sources, access or analytic ability. They seem to have used public sources of information as sources. The Houthis, or their allies, should have enough analysts to piece the same sources together and arrive at the same conclusion.
timthelion 9y ago
"It's just going to encourage more launches" - no it won't. The current missile defense systems do not have a deterrent effect. They are expensive to launch and the 3rd world missiles that they intercept are much cheaper. Even a successful interception is a victory for the agressor.
- dsfyu404ed 9y ago
  On some level it's a statistics game. Even in the absence of a defense system X/Y missiles will hit the target depending on the details. A defense system reduces that number further. Better to get the system refined when the stakes are low. When the Houthis miss the airport and they're a lot more likely to hit sand than city. When NK misses some city in SK (not necessarily Seoul because they can hit that with conventional artillery) they're much more likely to hit something we don't want them to hit. Now, the latter situation may not be relevant within the lifetime of this system but having the system be "battle tested" serves to make it even less likely. This sort of scaled to all defensive and deterrent systems. The more successful they are the more the generals in the war room will say "We can't just do $offensive_thing because it's not likely enough to be effective in the face of $defensive_thing"
rhapsodic 9y ago
I disagree with you, but since your comment appears to be thought-out and made in good faith, I upvoted it to counteract the downvotes it's getting.

sailfast 9y ago

Are we really expecting Patriot batteries to work now? Have they changed fundamentally since the 1991 Gulf War? I know they hit a few SCUDs but I don't recall any sort of expectation that it would keep a major population center safe from attack, especially from a smaller warhead.

kevin_thibedeau 9y ago
> Have they changed fundamentally since the 1991 Gulf War? Yes they have. The PAC-3 missile is completely different from the hack job PAC-2/GEM they rushed into the field in '91.
icegreentea2 9y ago
The Patriot system actually has seen substantial changes since the first Gulf War. The first Gulf War used what are called 'PAC-2' systems. They've since developed and deployed PAC-3 systems. The list of changes is comprehensive. If nothing else, it uses a new missile that was designed from scratch to act in an anti-ballistic missile role (the PAC-2 used a missile designed for aircraft intercept - the two roles have really different end-game requirements). The radar, the intercept software on the missile itself, mission management software have all been modified. The PAC-2 missile relied on its ground based radar to guide it onto the target, and relied on an explosive warhead to damage the target. The PAC-3 has an integrated radar to guide itself onto target and is capable of hit to kill intercept. Now, those are all the claims anyways. We'll have to see how useful all these changes actually were.
- CalChris 9y ago
  To quote Buck Turgidson in Dr. Strangelove, Well, I don't think it's quite fair to condemn the whole program because of a single slip up. The PAC-3 is based on the SDI ERINT, a missile which itself failed several tests and then finally passed a rigged test. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Defense_Initiative#Extended_Range_Interceptor_(ERINT) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Defense_Initiative#E...
  - 9y ago

JepZ 9y ago

Why is it so hard to shoot down a missle? I always thought that ballistic missles travel with a very predictable speed and direction. So hitting them should be an easy task for a guided missle as long as it got enough time to reach it at all (which I think is not the problem here). So the only problem I can see is to disarm the missle during flight but am not sure if that is what is meant here. Does anybody know why it should be hard to shoot down a ballistic missle?

Symmetry 9y ago
They're going very fast and even small errors in the estimate of their position and velocity will be enough to miss. Also, the motion is less predictable if they're in the atmosphere.
- agumonkey 9y ago
  Sure if you try to catch a bullet with a bullet you're making your life harder. Anyway to increase the interception surface/volume ?
  - trisimix 9y ago
    Explode the interceptor?
    - olympus 9y ago
      This doesn't work well for ballistic missiles. A few ounces of shrapnel doesn't knock the missile very far from it's trajectory. You'd have to get lucky to break the fuse, and even then you'd have a big hunk of explosives heading toward the target and making a big crater. Plus a lot of old missiles have such simple fusing systems that you probably won't break them with just a bit of shrapnel anyway.
      - Bartweiss 9y ago
        As I understand it, the only serious "explode the interceptor" proposal was to use nuclear interceptors against ICBMs. That provides a modest radius of non-projectile destruction, and more importantly provides a large radius of fuse/control-disrupting radiation. So when it comes to "shooting down a Scud near the ground over a city", you're exactly right. Blowing up your interceptor only works when you've got a high-tech target and are willing to make quite a mess yourself to stop the thing.

golergka 9y ago

All the more reason to replace it with David's Sling.

olympus 9y ago
Saudi Arabia buying weapons from Israel? That could start a war between KSA and every other Arab country.
- solatic 9y ago
  You'd be surprised; that KSA and Israel are strongly co-operating along an anti-Iranian axis is a fairly open secret these days. With that said, if anybody's going to block a sale like that, it's Israel, not KSA. The Israelis don't trust KSA anywhere nearly enough to trust KSA with domestically developed systems.
- ars 9y ago
  You should follow the news, because it looks like it's happening right now. And you are wrong about the war including every other Arab country. It would only include Iran. SA is trying to counter Iran, and they want that badly enough to work with Israel to accomplish it. Other Arab countries aren't going to get involved.
- golergka 9y ago
  Have you been following the Middle East news lately at all? Israel is clearly allied with Saudi camp, and there already have been plenty of almost official visits.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]

petesake 9y ago

Cant v just catch missiles mid air in a device that can contain explosion and launch it far away into space and let it explode thr or if possible dismantle.

AndrewGaspar 9y ago
Nope
nkrisc 9y ago
If your question starts with "Can't you just..." the answer is probably "no" because if the answer was "yes" somebody would probably have thought of that already and implemented it.

stats300 9y ago

> missed their target ... A kilometer is a pretty normal miss rate for a Scud Assume a target of 0.1km x 0.1km, but the missile may hit anywhere in an area of 1km x 1km around the target. That means the area of the target is 1/100 the size of the overall area. They'd have to launch at least 50 Scuds to have even a 50/50 chance of hitting the target. Can someone tell me if that calculation is way off? It sounds like this attack, other than spreading fear and panic, was very unlikely to work.

matt4077 9y ago
I did a rough outline of what I guessed to be the "valuable target area" of the airport, and it came to 0.15m^2: https://imgur.com/a/t7vhd https://imgur.com/a/t7vhd. Such a target would only need 5 Scuds for even odds. But, yes: The Scud is terribly (wonderfully) inaccurate.
- stats300 9y ago
  I think you meant 0.15km^2, not m^2. Really good point you make; the "valuable target area" is quite a bit larger than I assumed.
virtualized 9y ago
The chance of a hit is even lower: 1 - (0.99^50) ~= 40%
- gregshap 9y ago
  Assuming the chance of each hit is independent, why do you think they wouldn't be additive?
  - lostmsu 9y ago
    And potentially add to >100%?
    - chroem- 9y ago

Amorymeltzer 9y ago

This is sort of beside the point, but I wanted to point out how great a piece of journalism this is. The integration of maps, video, and pictures is exactly what old print-media organizations can provide online and take advantage of. This is a really compelling narrative that shows real, honest reporting. That's worth noting.

classicsnoot 9y ago
This is not intended to be a brigade, but i have to agree with the other poster in saying that this is not necessarily good journalism, per se, but it is definitely a great presentation. In terms of good journalism, it may be time to start setting up bots that build articles, as it is getting so hard to trust that people are actually A) reporting all facts relevant and available and B) capable of providing worthwhile analysis.
samat 9y ago
That’s some researchers sharing their analysis with NYT.
- beefman 9y ago
  In particular, Union of Concerned Scientists researchers. But they're not really researchers, because they'll never report results that don't support UCS political positions. Also, "analysts" from Middlebury Institute of International Studies — apparently another nonproliferation shop.[1] And finally, anonymous "U.S. officials". [1] http://www.miis.edu/about/newsroom/experts/jlewis http://www.miis.edu/about/newsroom/experts/jlewis
  - wavefunction 9y ago
    Do you make the same distinction with researchers who work for petroleum firms that hid their findings on anthropogenic climate change or tobacco firms that concealed their findings on the health risks of tobacco consumption? If so, I applaud your sense of equity.

myth_drannon 9y ago

That was all over the Russian media about a month ago when it happened. Not sure if it's coincidence or not if the decision to buy Russian defense systems was influenced by this event.

riku_iki 9y ago
Saudis are currently working on two transactions: - buying S-400 from Russia for 3 billions - buying THAAD from USA for 15 billions S-400 is totally unproven system.
- Havoc 9y ago
  Well given that they aren't poor a "the more the merrier" approach seems like a good bet
- Gustomaximus 9y ago
  For $18 billion you could probably hire the Yemen rebels to work jobs for many years and distract them from war.

jandrewrogers 9y ago

The core design problem with using the Patriot missile system for ABM applications is that its terminal guidance system fundamentally isn't designed for it. It uses radar for terminal guidance because it was adapted from anti-aircraft applications. That this works at all is impressive, in a "dancing bear" sense, you wouldn't expect the discrimination to be good enough for the purpose. All purpose-built ABM systems use infrared imagers for terminal guidance with classifiers that pick out both the target and desired point of impact on the target. These are vastly more effective but we also don't sell them to foreign countries AFAIK.

zkms 9y ago
> purpose-built ABM systems use infrared imagers for terminal guidance What kind of optical window for the IR imager gets used for this application?
- jandrewrogers 9y ago
  The materials tech is pretty amazing, and they've been building it since the early 90s. At least in the past, they were using sapphire crystals and diamond films that have tiny cooling conduits drilled through them with lasers so that you can run (IIRC) liquid helium through the crystals as a coolant. Even in this configuration, the ablation and thermal loading due to hypersonic transit through the atmosphere has proven to be so high that the optical window is covered in ablative shielding for the first part of the flight, where the terminal guidance package is not much use anyway. Once the missile is within terminal range, the ablative shield is removed and it switches to homing mode. Early tests didn't have the ablation shield, and the damage to the optical window was sufficiently high that the imager lost effectiveness. The performance envelope within atmosphere of the rocket motors they use for ABM is high enough that it really pushes materials engineering to the breaking point.
  - killjoywashere 9y ago
    > sapphire crystals and diamond films that have tiny cooling conduits drilled through them with lasers so that you can run (IIRC) liquid helium through the crystals Citations, pleeeeassse! I neeeeed it!

sandworm101 9y ago

Lol. When I saw the headline I though this was a rehash of the Gulf War "intercepts" that did fail. If 20+ years later Patriot is still failing at the same task ... much is wrong with the procurement system. As a kid I was on the ground during the first gulf war. We thought these things were working. They put pieces of them in hotel lobbies on plinths. Only years later did we learn that all those explosions in the sky were meaningless, that the scuds were not being intercepted but rather simply missed their targets. The article has issues. The plume is irrelevant. The cited pic from syria looks similar but that has more to do with wind and temperature than similarities in warhead. Conclusions based on the launch angle of the patriots may also be incorrect as there the outbound patriots need not follow a strait line. The best intercept for their warhead might not be a head-on approach. We don't know if they turned mid-flight to intercept, which they can do. And don't criticize patriot for firing five times. This thing was coming down as several objects on very similar trajectories. Each missile might have been targeting a different inbound part, any one of which might be the warhead. If 4/5ths of the inbound objects were intercepted, but the one that wasn't turned out to be the warhead, it wasn't a total failure.

SapphireSun 9y ago

O.o The NYT is framing this as Saudi being attacked? The Saudi forces are executing a genocide in Yemen backed by US military targeting, weapons, and mid-air refueling (some of this was stopped but not all of it). This is on the back of Thomas Friedman's laughable piece on MBS (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/23/opinion/saudi-prince-mbs-arab-spring.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/23/opinion/saudi-prince-mbs-...). Is the Times executing a propaganda campaign? Sickening.

lakechfoma 9y ago
When is launching missiles at another country ever _not_ attacking them?
- everdev 9y ago
  I think it's a semantic difference between "attacking" and "defending". For some, attacking means the first party to engage in violence. Regardless, this was an act of violence even if it was preceded by other acts of violence.
  - EthanHeilman 9y ago
    At the strategic level offensive and defense refers to the side which has positive war aims. That is, Attackers are trying to change the current state in their favor (e.g. seizing territory or regime change) whereas defenders are attempting to resist this change (i.e. maintaining the status quo). This can sometimes be complex as both sides in a war may have positive strategic aims.
ztratar 9y ago
Saudi is both attacking and being attacked. Both are true, and talking about either side is still good journalism.
- blackoil 9y ago
  Talking about only one particularly stronger side, is propaganda.

40acres 9y ago

I've read a few stories about the lack of confidence in America's missile defense systems. We have THAAD missile [0] in Asia as a counter punch to North Korea but from what I've read confidence in the system is pretty low. Israel's Iron Dome [1] system seems to be effective but I would assume there are differences in the system and proximity of Palestine to Israel and the missiles fired that allow it to be so effective. As a further point, the fact that our missile defense systems are so poor just emphasizes how reckless our approach to North Korea is, their missile technology is getting better and better while our defense system is unproven and yet top Trump administration officials talk about war as if it's not a big deal. Truly scary stuff. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_High_Altitude_Area_Defense https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_High_Altitude_Area_De... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Dome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Dome

grkvlt 9y ago
I think Iron Dome has a high success rate due to the type of missile. Mostly 80mm unguided 'Katyusha' and 122mm 'Qassam' unguided rockets, which are destroyed by multiple interceptor missiles with proximity fuzed explosive warheads. I was in Tel Aviv in 2012, when larger Fajr-5 330mm rockets were fired at the city and I saw several of them being successfully intercepted, a few thousand meters out from their targets. Sadly there was one rocket that hit Tel Aviv, killing several people, and another 'failure' of sorts when debris from an intercepted Fajr-5 landed in a Tel Aviv street, however the warhead did not explode and it was simply falling at terminal velocity... Iron Dome also has an interesting optimisation mode where it tracks the impact point and will not waste a salvo against the incoming threat if it will land somewhere harmless like the sea or open countryside.
- smacktoward 9y ago
  Yes, this was my thought too. Rockets fired at Israel are generally cheap, short-range subsonic jobs, not substantially harder to shoot down than a World War 2-era V-1 buzz bomb. Medium-range and intercontinental ballistic missiles reach speeds of many thousands of miles per hour, making them much harder targets to intercept.

davidf18 9y ago

The Saudis have the resources to purchase 3 different jointly Israeli-USA developed missile systems: 1. Iron Dome for near range. 2. David's Sling (or Magic Wand) for Medium Range 3. Arrow for long range. All 3 systems have been demonstrated to work in demonstrations. Iron dome has worked many times in combat. Since the missile attacking Saudi Arabia was a ballistic missile, Iron Dome wouldn't apply. https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/17/north-korean-missiles-what-south-korea-can-learn-from-israel.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/17/north-korean-missiles-what-s...

gaius 9y ago

Patriot doesn't work, Thaad doesn't work. The only ABMs worth a damn are the Israeli Arrow, Russian S500, and perhaps Aster 30 BMD when that enters service. The Americans have always relied on fighters for strategic air defence, and now those chickens are coming home to roost.

jhayward 9y ago
Aegis and SM-3 seem to be working for some forms of missile defense, including some BMDs. It's a hard problem space and a lot of the apparent success/failure is really a matter of choices and tradeoffs made by the 'customers' who specify the design constraints.
- gaius 9y ago
  Aegis + Aegis Ashore definitely seems to have potential. Assuming a Nork threat you would want to intercept mid-trajectory if you could, and that means pre-positioning your platform in the mid-Pacific. If you are intercepting on the terminal phase then things are pretty desperate...
exabrial 9y ago
THAAD doesn't work? I actually thought it had been largely a success.
- Gustomaximus 9y ago
  I read somewhere it has a ~50% success rate. So it seems if the logic is this simple, it works, you just need to launch 3 missiles at the target to be confident about getting an intercept.
  - mlindner 9y ago
    You mean some internet blog told you it had a 50% success rate? The actual tests are 100% successful. Do some basic research please. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_High_Altitude_Area_Defense https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_High_Altitude_Area_De...

exabrial 9y ago

Anyone know what generation missiles were fired? The PAC2 can really only hit aircraft... sometimes. PAC3 was a massive upgrade and does hit-to-kill instead blast fragmentation

trhway 9y ago

given that warhead in those Iranian designs does separate on re-entry and given the state of the engine block, specifically 1. the lower half seems to have been broken into a number of pieces while still in the air as the spread of the pieces indicates and 2. the upper part only deformed as result of hitting the ground - it seems that the Patriot directly hit the engine block into the lower half. Basically the engine block played the decoy role, or may be the Patriot was going for the warhead and missed, and with the engine block flying at some distance behind and slightly off course it just was hit accidentally.

rurban 9y ago

I remember when the conspiracy folks at Reddit claimed the Saudis shot the missile by themselves from the airport to justify or silence the crackdown on the family. So it looks like they were wrong, again.