14 ms·

So 1/6 success rate under optimal conditions where you are prepared for an ICMB. Seems worth spending the entire GDP of Hawaii on.

alexpotato 6y ago
With a 1/6 chance of success, you can deploy multiple destroyers with ICMB intercept capabilities to defend a key target and get much better odds. e.g. Having just three raises your odds to 50/50. (1-((1-1/6)^3) = .51 That essentially halves your opponents nuclear strike capability (at least for that target).
- alacritas0 6y ago
  Your math is off. The actual chance assuming they're each independent is 42.1%. I'm usure how much the assumption they're independent holds up in this case.
- SEJeff 6y ago
  Modern nuclear missiles (from the US, Russia, and China at least) are all MIRV[1] designs. Each missile might contain, as an example, 10 independent micro-warheads each capable of mass casualties. That means for every single offensive missile fired, the defender has to be 100% effective at countering 10 separate threats. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_independently_targetable_reentry_vehicle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_independently_targeta...
- inglor_cz 6y ago
  This calculation only holds if the failures are random, not if the missiles exploit some weakness in the system to get through.
Raphmedia 6y ago
It's not as if they shot 6 missiles at once and it only caught one. They did 6 tests, likely tuning the system every time and the current configuration is able to catch shoot down the missile.
- Retric 6y ago
  When adjusting for an improving system it’s best to ignore the first success. As in they shot down one, now how soon can they hit the next one. The issue is if they has a 1 in 1,000 shot they could have still hit the on the 6th test it just doesn’t provide much info.
  - ghayes 6y ago
    The article states one of the earlier tests failed because the ICBM was inadvertently marked as a friendly by a sailor. So, I'm mostly agreeing that 1/6 is meaningless at this point, not showing if it's highly precise or not at all.
JoshuaDavid 6y ago
Unironically, it does seem worth spending the entire GDP of Hawaii on a 1 / 6 chance of intercepting an ICBM, if there's a nontrivial chance that you're likely to have a small number of ICBMs incoming towards cities. Other than second-order effects where anything which breaks MAD increases the risk of nuclear war, but I hope a 1/6 chance of interception of one missile wouldn't be significant enough to change the balance of power enough to make nuclear war more likely.
- door99 6y ago
  There's a better solution that's free, and in fact saves money: complete nuclear disarmament, which the United States is the primary obstacle to.
  - JoshuaDavid 6y ago
    Unilateral nuclear disarmament seems like possibly not the best idea from the standpoint of minimizing the risk of nuclear strikes.
    - door99 6y ago
      I didn't say unilateral, although I support that as well. The United States is the only country ever to use nuclear weapons, and is also one that I reside in. If I lived in Russia or China, I would advocate for unilateral disarmament in those countries as well. Nuclear weapons are an absolute horror and should be completely eliminated from this planet. The United States (unlike China) does not even have a "No first use" policy -- it reserves the ability to use nuclear weapons aggressively or pre-emptively.
  - meddlepal 6y ago
    So we can return to a world of conventional warfare amongst powerful counties? Worked out great for WWI and WWII. Ill take nuclear deterrence any day over that hell.
    - randmeerkat 6y ago
laverya 6y ago
If they ever actually use it, then YES it will have been worth it, and many times over. Because we'll still have Hawaii. (Hawaii's GDP is just a very ironic choice as one of the major reasons for AEGIS ballistic missile defense is for defending it)
echelon 6y ago
We're going to sell this to everyone in league against China. It's well worth the investment.
- nabla9 6y ago
  The US anti-ballistic missile defence system is not designed or intended to work against China or Russia. It's not adequate. The goal is to shoot down handful missiles from rogue states like North Korea or Iran.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - echelon 6y ago
    You're probably correct, but do you think it's outright impossible to develop such a defense? What if we increase the stockpile of anti-ballistic missiles or continue to fund R&D? As a sibling post to yours points out, effective anti-ballistic missile defense against a state such as Russia or China ruins the MAD strategy and might lead to interesting game play.
    - SEJeff 6y ago
      Eventually it is a numbers game. It is likely cheaper to make large numbers of relatively fast offensive missiles than it is to make an equal number of fast AND exceptionally accurate defensive missiles. This is why the US Department of Defense is going in so heavily on microwave and laser technologies. By layering multiple overlapping technologies like this (along with upgraded satellites to pinpoint launches as they happen and help determine the target), you have a much higher likelihood of success. However, if it was just missiles vs missiles, the aggressive side always has a better chance. They just need to have 1-2 successes to cause mayhem. The defender has to have 100% success to prevent mayhem.
    - jjk166 6y ago
      It's not impossible, just not economical. Terminal intercept ABM systems like Aegis only protect a small area (10s to 100s of km radius) around the missile system - perfectly adequate for the defense of a carrier group which is their primary purpose. The missiles they are defending against have a range of many thousands of kilometers, or in the case of ICBMs can hit anywhere in the world, and thus one missile might threaten many thousands of potential targets. If your adversary is a poor pariah state only interested in a limited region, then making 10 interceptors for every one of their missiles might be viable, but if your adversary is a major power with a strong industrial base, they can easily build more missiles than you can build interceptors to defend against. For a truly effective ballistic missile defense, you need a theater-level interceptor. The US is also actively working on this in the form of its Ground Based Mid-Course Defense (GMD). Nominally such a system can defend large sections of a continent and thus the cost of defense would be comparable to the cost of offense, but in practice mid-course intercept is much harder - you need a much more powerful missile and the adversary can use decoys and other counter measures. The current GMD program is only aimed at defeating rogue states like North Korea because their countermeasure capabilities are presumed to lag substantially behind the major powers. While it is not inconceivable that GMD's technical hurdles will one day be overcome, this system would not defend against hypersonic glide vehicles already under development by the major powers. The history of warfare is a constant race between advancements in weapons and defenses. It is reasonably safe to assume that in the 40 some odd years it would take to develop an effective defense against any new delivery system, a further new delivery system can also be developed. Even if defense catches up for a bit, it will be momentary.
skee0083 6y ago
Same thing with maned space missions. completely pointless waste of money. if we colonize a planet we will need machines to do it for us. if not completely automated then remotely controlled. no point in doing it any other way. I'm not even sure what the point of the ISS even is anymore.
- ericd 6y ago
  There's a big emotional difference between sending a robot and a human to explore. The latter is clearly much more relatable and inspiring to people. So whether it's a pointless waste of money depends on what you're trying to achieve. But I'd argue that the inspiration and unifying aspects are two of the biggest payoffs of space exploration, and robots don't quite cut it there. Also, humans are much more flexible than the robots we can currently create, which is pretty useful.
- dylan604 6y ago
  Is it really colonizing if it's not humans?
  - skee0083 6y ago
    sure. if we plan to go there someday. but it doesn't need to be humans that does all the manual labor when machines can do it faster and more efficiently.
- ineedasername 6y ago
  Then you may not be aware of the medical applications of low/zero gravity environments. It's a fascinating topic. It's very early days on this stuff since the costs are so high, but the potential is there: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exomedicine https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exomedicine
happytoexplain 6y ago
I'm fiercely against the stupendous military bias in our budget, but in this case, yes, this is without a doubt worth the price.
x87678r 6y ago
Not really, if an enemy knows you can shoot down 1/6th of their missiles, the'll just send more missiles.
- ineedasername 6y ago
  If they have them more to send. At least for a while, North Korea's supply will be heavily constrained. Iran even more so. Another major world power would be a problem though.
- chipsa 6y ago
  ABMs should be much cheaper than ICBMs, so if you get another ICBM, I can just buy more to match. This is because the command and control associated with an ABM is much simpler. I don't need to worry so much about operating after nuclear weapons have already gone off. I don't have to worry about making sure that the fire order comes from the president. See target, be sure it is a target, shoot the target. This doesn't get into virtual attrition. You may have previously targeted 1-2 nukes at different places. But now you don't know which ones will actually get intercepted. So you have to send enough warheads to make sure one gets through, or give up on the target.
willyg123 6y ago
Assuming the success rate never improves, which is unlikely.
chiph 6y ago
If you're a resident of any large city living under the threat of nuclear annihilation, you'll take a 16.6% chance of living over 0% any day of the week. Not to pick on Detroit, but a SS-25 would do something like this: https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?&kt=800&lat=42.3487&lng=-83.0567&hob_psi=5&hob_ft=9511&casualties=1&fallout=1&ff=50&psi=20,5,1&zm=11 https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?&kt=800&lat=42.3487&lng=...
yeetman21 6y ago
China is doing to the US what the US did to the soviet Union, bankruption through military expenditure.
- throwawayffffas 6y ago
  Military expenditure doesn't magically evaporate, it's used to pay people, predominantly in the US. It contributes to the economy just as other government spending does.
Iv 6y ago
I remember the first interception tests of missiles had terrible success rate, but it got better. That's why you test them. Now Iron Dome has around 90% success rate at interceptions in real conditions. And it is hard to get the precise info but it looks like a lot of the failures happened at a time were a malfunction put the system offline. It is worth doing R&D on these if an attack is likely. If it is not, getting rid of MAD without having a replacement mechanism is scary, but in this crazy world and the current proliferation, MAD is becoming an increasingly dangerous bet.
totalZero 6y ago
1) The success rate goes way up if you launch two dozen of these at the same target. 2) If they're demonstrating this technology now, that indicates that they've had it for a long time.
mulmen 6y ago
Yeah who would ever attack Hawaii?

alexpotato 6y ago

With a 1/6 chance of success, you can deploy multiple destroyers with ICMB intercept capabilities to defend a key target and get much better odds. e.g. Having just three raises your odds to 50/50. (1-((1-1/6)^3) = .51 That essentially halves your opponents nuclear strike capability (at least for that target).

alacritas0 6y ago
Your math is off. The actual chance assuming they're each independent is 42.1%. I'm usure how much the assumption they're independent holds up in this case.
SEJeff 6y ago
Modern nuclear missiles (from the US, Russia, and China at least) are all MIRV[1] designs. Each missile might contain, as an example, 10 independent micro-warheads each capable of mass casualties. That means for every single offensive missile fired, the defender has to be 100% effective at countering 10 separate threats. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_independently_targetable_reentry_vehicle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_independently_targeta...
inglor_cz 6y ago
This calculation only holds if the failures are random, not if the missiles exploit some weakness in the system to get through.

Raphmedia 6y ago

It's not as if they shot 6 missiles at once and it only caught one. They did 6 tests, likely tuning the system every time and the current configuration is able to catch shoot down the missile.

Retric 6y ago
When adjusting for an improving system it’s best to ignore the first success. As in they shot down one, now how soon can they hit the next one. The issue is if they has a 1 in 1,000 shot they could have still hit the on the 6th test it just doesn’t provide much info.
- ghayes 6y ago
  The article states one of the earlier tests failed because the ICBM was inadvertently marked as a friendly by a sailor. So, I'm mostly agreeing that 1/6 is meaningless at this point, not showing if it's highly precise or not at all.

JoshuaDavid 6y ago

Unironically, it does seem worth spending the entire GDP of Hawaii on a 1 / 6 chance of intercepting an ICBM, if there's a nontrivial chance that you're likely to have a small number of ICBMs incoming towards cities. Other than second-order effects where anything which breaks MAD increases the risk of nuclear war, but I hope a 1/6 chance of interception of one missile wouldn't be significant enough to change the balance of power enough to make nuclear war more likely.

door99 6y ago
There's a better solution that's free, and in fact saves money: complete nuclear disarmament, which the United States is the primary obstacle to.
- JoshuaDavid 6y ago
  Unilateral nuclear disarmament seems like possibly not the best idea from the standpoint of minimizing the risk of nuclear strikes.
  - door99 6y ago
    I didn't say unilateral, although I support that as well. The United States is the only country ever to use nuclear weapons, and is also one that I reside in. If I lived in Russia or China, I would advocate for unilateral disarmament in those countries as well. Nuclear weapons are an absolute horror and should be completely eliminated from this planet. The United States (unlike China) does not even have a "No first use" policy -- it reserves the ability to use nuclear weapons aggressively or pre-emptively.
- meddlepal 6y ago
  So we can return to a world of conventional warfare amongst powerful counties? Worked out great for WWI and WWII. Ill take nuclear deterrence any day over that hell.
  - randmeerkat 6y ago

laverya 6y ago

If they ever actually use it, then YES it will have been worth it, and many times over. Because we'll still have Hawaii. (Hawaii's GDP is just a very ironic choice as one of the major reasons for AEGIS ballistic missile defense is for defending it)

echelon 6y ago

We're going to sell this to everyone in league against China. It's well worth the investment.

nabla9 6y ago
The US anti-ballistic missile defence system is not designed or intended to work against China or Russia. It's not adequate. The goal is to shoot down handful missiles from rogue states like North Korea or Iran.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- echelon 6y ago
  You're probably correct, but do you think it's outright impossible to develop such a defense? What if we increase the stockpile of anti-ballistic missiles or continue to fund R&D? As a sibling post to yours points out, effective anti-ballistic missile defense against a state such as Russia or China ruins the MAD strategy and might lead to interesting game play.
  - SEJeff 6y ago
    Eventually it is a numbers game. It is likely cheaper to make large numbers of relatively fast offensive missiles than it is to make an equal number of fast AND exceptionally accurate defensive missiles. This is why the US Department of Defense is going in so heavily on microwave and laser technologies. By layering multiple overlapping technologies like this (along with upgraded satellites to pinpoint launches as they happen and help determine the target), you have a much higher likelihood of success. However, if it was just missiles vs missiles, the aggressive side always has a better chance. They just need to have 1-2 successes to cause mayhem. The defender has to have 100% success to prevent mayhem.
  - jjk166 6y ago
    It's not impossible, just not economical. Terminal intercept ABM systems like Aegis only protect a small area (10s to 100s of km radius) around the missile system - perfectly adequate for the defense of a carrier group which is their primary purpose. The missiles they are defending against have a range of many thousands of kilometers, or in the case of ICBMs can hit anywhere in the world, and thus one missile might threaten many thousands of potential targets. If your adversary is a poor pariah state only interested in a limited region, then making 10 interceptors for every one of their missiles might be viable, but if your adversary is a major power with a strong industrial base, they can easily build more missiles than you can build interceptors to defend against. For a truly effective ballistic missile defense, you need a theater-level interceptor. The US is also actively working on this in the form of its Ground Based Mid-Course Defense (GMD). Nominally such a system can defend large sections of a continent and thus the cost of defense would be comparable to the cost of offense, but in practice mid-course intercept is much harder - you need a much more powerful missile and the adversary can use decoys and other counter measures. The current GMD program is only aimed at defeating rogue states like North Korea because their countermeasure capabilities are presumed to lag substantially behind the major powers. While it is not inconceivable that GMD's technical hurdles will one day be overcome, this system would not defend against hypersonic glide vehicles already under development by the major powers. The history of warfare is a constant race between advancements in weapons and defenses. It is reasonably safe to assume that in the 40 some odd years it would take to develop an effective defense against any new delivery system, a further new delivery system can also be developed. Even if defense catches up for a bit, it will be momentary.

skee0083 6y ago

Same thing with maned space missions. completely pointless waste of money. if we colonize a planet we will need machines to do it for us. if not completely automated then remotely controlled. no point in doing it any other way. I'm not even sure what the point of the ISS even is anymore.

ericd 6y ago
There's a big emotional difference between sending a robot and a human to explore. The latter is clearly much more relatable and inspiring to people. So whether it's a pointless waste of money depends on what you're trying to achieve. But I'd argue that the inspiration and unifying aspects are two of the biggest payoffs of space exploration, and robots don't quite cut it there. Also, humans are much more flexible than the robots we can currently create, which is pretty useful.
dylan604 6y ago
Is it really colonizing if it's not humans?
- skee0083 6y ago
  sure. if we plan to go there someday. but it doesn't need to be humans that does all the manual labor when machines can do it faster and more efficiently.
ineedasername 6y ago
Then you may not be aware of the medical applications of low/zero gravity environments. It's a fascinating topic. It's very early days on this stuff since the costs are so high, but the potential is there: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exomedicine https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exomedicine

happytoexplain 6y ago

I'm fiercely against the stupendous military bias in our budget, but in this case, yes, this is without a doubt worth the price.

x87678r 6y ago

Not really, if an enemy knows you can shoot down 1/6th of their missiles, the'll just send more missiles.

ineedasername 6y ago
If they have them more to send. At least for a while, North Korea's supply will be heavily constrained. Iran even more so. Another major world power would be a problem though.
chipsa 6y ago
ABMs should be much cheaper than ICBMs, so if you get another ICBM, I can just buy more to match. This is because the command and control associated with an ABM is much simpler. I don't need to worry so much about operating after nuclear weapons have already gone off. I don't have to worry about making sure that the fire order comes from the president. See target, be sure it is a target, shoot the target. This doesn't get into virtual attrition. You may have previously targeted 1-2 nukes at different places. But now you don't know which ones will actually get intercepted. So you have to send enough warheads to make sure one gets through, or give up on the target.

willyg123 6y ago

Assuming the success rate never improves, which is unlikely.

chiph 6y ago

If you're a resident of any large city living under the threat of nuclear annihilation, you'll take a 16.6% chance of living over 0% any day of the week. Not to pick on Detroit, but a SS-25 would do something like this: https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?&kt=800&lat=42.3487&lng=-83.0567&hob_psi=5&hob_ft=9511&casualties=1&fallout=1&ff=50&psi=20,5,1&zm=11 https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?&kt=800&lat=42.3487&lng=...

yeetman21 6y ago

China is doing to the US what the US did to the soviet Union, bankruption through military expenditure.

throwawayffffas 6y ago
Military expenditure doesn't magically evaporate, it's used to pay people, predominantly in the US. It contributes to the economy just as other government spending does.

Iv 6y ago

I remember the first interception tests of missiles had terrible success rate, but it got better. That's why you test them. Now Iron Dome has around 90% success rate at interceptions in real conditions. And it is hard to get the precise info but it looks like a lot of the failures happened at a time were a malfunction put the system offline. It is worth doing R&D on these if an attack is likely. If it is not, getting rid of MAD without having a replacement mechanism is scary, but in this crazy world and the current proliferation, MAD is becoming an increasingly dangerous bet.

totalZero 6y ago

1) The success rate goes way up if you launch two dozen of these at the same target. 2) If they're demonstrating this technology now, that indicates that they've had it for a long time.

mulmen 6y ago

Yeah who would ever attack Hawaii?