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It’s not really a good early warning system if regular daily aircraft traffic that’s been around since before radar was invented can interfere with it. If this

It’s not really a good early warning system if regular daily aircraft traffic that’s been around since before radar was invented can interfere with it. If this was the case, the system would be unfieldable.

dragontamer 5y ago
An ICBM travels at Mach 10 to Mach 20, while your typical SAM travels at Mach 1 to Mach 5. The fact of the matter is: missile-defense is significantly harder than missile-offense. Especially at the ICBM levels. There's almost no certainty that we can stop an ICBM. We have untested systems and untested warning systems that the Soviet Union never even bothered to test. But now there's a rogue nation trying to play tough guy sitting across the Pacific Ocean with nuclear weapons and an experimental ICBM platform. If an ICBM gets launched, the USA is probably going to throw everything we got to try to stop the missile. Then we'll probably fail, and the city will get nuked anyway. But we gotta do everything within our power to make the probability of success as high as possible. ----- San Francisco, Los Angeles, etc. etc. Any of those cities could be lost within a few minutes under these scenarios. If people are saying that this airplane stop-order was over a nuke, I think its actually 100% reasonable to have done these stop-flying orders.
- jonathankoren 5y ago
  An ICBM also comes in on well known great circle paths from suborbital altitudes. Not 30,000 feet or less. These aren’t secrets. They’re well publicized facts that haven’t changed since the 1950s.
  - dragontamer 5y ago
    The "secrets" are how good our radar systems are at tracking a Mach 20 object in space. That sort of stuff is classified and no one seems to be speaking about that. Yes, we know what path it probably will take, but to actually _HIT_ such a target requires extremely precise tracking and positioning. What we do know, is that they ground the entire West Coast's airplanes when an ICBM from North Korea is launched. My guess is that those radars probably work better when there's fewer airplanes in the sky. Hard to know for sure, the spooks don't seem to be talking about the details. But I'm working backwards here with Occam's razor.
    - jonathankoren 5y ago
      No we don’t know that they ground airplanes during a publicized DPRK ICBM test. This isn’t the first test, yet this is the first temporary grounding. Occam’s Razor suggests someone in the west coast ATC fucked up.
      - dragontamer 5y ago
        Every other DPRK ICBM test has crashed into the ocean. This one also crashed into the ocean, but it got further along. In particular, there seems to be confirmations that this DPRK ICBM test did in fact reach Mach 10. If this is the first ICBM to reach hypersonic speeds and had something that looked like an intercontinental launch cycle, it would make sense to take it seriously.
        jonathankoren 5y ago
        > If this is the first ICBM to reach hypersonic speeds *EVERY* ICBM hits hypersonic speeds.
        dragontamer 5y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hwasong-12 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hwasong-12 The Hwasong-12 (EDIT: Hwasong-8 I mean) missile test only reached Mach 3, which is slower than hypersonic. If this is the first successful hypersonic missile from North Korea, that's big news, and possibly warranting the severe response that our nuclear defense forces (probably) gave to the FAA.
        jonathankoren 5y ago
        Again. You are simply wrong on the facts and your interpretation. I suggest you read any commentary from an arms control expert. Nothing you’ve been asserting makes any sense at all.
  - Jon_Lowtek 5y ago
    The projectile traveled more than 435 miles (700 km) at a maximum speed of around Mach 10, reaching an apogee of 37.3 miles (60 km). https://www.nknews.org/2022/01/north-korea-fires-unidentified-projectile-towards-the-east-sea-jcs https://www.nknews.org/2022/01/north-korea-fires-unidentifie... For scale: Hawaii is not only ten times as far away, that missile landed in the sea west of japan.
    - post_from_work 5y ago
      ^This. The hysteria displayed both by the FAA and in this thread is kinda shocking. I work with the military in Japan. Every time a North Korean missile flies into/over Japanese territory we get a warning about it...and then go about our business as usual. We can usually see their flight trajectories on our Common Operational Picture. This one was not significantly different from the dozen or so previous incidents. No idea why people in the States shat a brick and grounded civilian aircraft, especially if NORAD didn't concur with such an action.

dragontamer 5y ago

An ICBM travels at Mach 10 to Mach 20, while your typical SAM travels at Mach 1 to Mach 5. The fact of the matter is: missile-defense is significantly harder than missile-offense. Especially at the ICBM levels. There's almost no certainty that we can stop an ICBM. We have untested systems and untested warning systems that the Soviet Union never even bothered to test. But now there's a rogue nation trying to play tough guy sitting across the Pacific Ocean with nuclear weapons and an experimental ICBM platform. If an ICBM gets launched, the USA is probably going to throw everything we got to try to stop the missile. Then we'll probably fail, and the city will get nuked anyway. But we gotta do everything within our power to make the probability of success as high as possible. ----- San Francisco, Los Angeles, etc. etc. Any of those cities could be lost within a few minutes under these scenarios. If people are saying that this airplane stop-order was over a nuke, I think its actually 100% reasonable to have done these stop-flying orders.

jonathankoren 5y ago
An ICBM also comes in on well known great circle paths from suborbital altitudes. Not 30,000 feet or less. These aren’t secrets. They’re well publicized facts that haven’t changed since the 1950s.
- dragontamer 5y ago
  The "secrets" are how good our radar systems are at tracking a Mach 20 object in space. That sort of stuff is classified and no one seems to be speaking about that. Yes, we know what path it probably will take, but to actually _HIT_ such a target requires extremely precise tracking and positioning. What we do know, is that they ground the entire West Coast's airplanes when an ICBM from North Korea is launched. My guess is that those radars probably work better when there's fewer airplanes in the sky. Hard to know for sure, the spooks don't seem to be talking about the details. But I'm working backwards here with Occam's razor.
  - jonathankoren 5y ago
    No we don’t know that they ground airplanes during a publicized DPRK ICBM test. This isn’t the first test, yet this is the first temporary grounding. Occam’s Razor suggests someone in the west coast ATC fucked up.
    - dragontamer 5y ago
      Every other DPRK ICBM test has crashed into the ocean. This one also crashed into the ocean, but it got further along. In particular, there seems to be confirmations that this DPRK ICBM test did in fact reach Mach 10. If this is the first ICBM to reach hypersonic speeds and had something that looked like an intercontinental launch cycle, it would make sense to take it seriously.
      - jonathankoren 5y ago
        > If this is the first ICBM to reach hypersonic speeds *EVERY* ICBM hits hypersonic speeds.
        dragontamer 5y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hwasong-12 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hwasong-12 The Hwasong-12 (EDIT: Hwasong-8 I mean) missile test only reached Mach 3, which is slower than hypersonic. If this is the first successful hypersonic missile from North Korea, that's big news, and possibly warranting the severe response that our nuclear defense forces (probably) gave to the FAA.
        jonathankoren 5y ago
        Again. You are simply wrong on the facts and your interpretation. I suggest you read any commentary from an arms control expert. Nothing you’ve been asserting makes any sense at all.
- Jon_Lowtek 5y ago
  The projectile traveled more than 435 miles (700 km) at a maximum speed of around Mach 10, reaching an apogee of 37.3 miles (60 km). https://www.nknews.org/2022/01/north-korea-fires-unidentified-projectile-towards-the-east-sea-jcs https://www.nknews.org/2022/01/north-korea-fires-unidentifie... For scale: Hawaii is not only ten times as far away, that missile landed in the sea west of japan.
  - post_from_work 5y ago
    ^This. The hysteria displayed both by the FAA and in this thread is kinda shocking. I work with the military in Japan. Every time a North Korean missile flies into/over Japanese territory we get a warning about it...and then go about our business as usual. We can usually see their flight trajectories on our Common Operational Picture. This one was not significantly different from the dozen or so previous incidents. No idea why people in the States shat a brick and grounded civilian aircraft, especially if NORAD didn't concur with such an action.