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How is this particular system so accurate but our ICBM missile defense systems are so bad in spite of billions spent? Is it a different set of problems? Are th

• dataangel 4y ago
  Iron Dome shoots down home made slow moving rockets literally powered by sugar. the difference is almost as large shooting down an ICBM vs a paper airplane.
  • cyanydeez 4y ago
    Probably more to do with short range vs long range. Even compensating accurately for physics, chaos theory itself is amplified by distance beyond reasonable. The type of projectile isn't the issue.
    • pipodeclown 4y ago
      No, intercept missiles are not ballistic but are guided, which negates the distance factor as you can simply make course corrections while homing into the target. ICBMs travel at Mach 23 (28.000km/h), that is what makes it a hard target to hit. It's like trying to hit a speeding bullet,but actually, it's travelling 30 times faster than a bullet.
• sudosysgen 4y ago
  ICBMs are multiple orders of magnitude faster. It is basically impossible to intercept an ICBM in the terminal phase, except with nuclear interceptors, and even then. So you need high altitude interception. The problem is that it's really easy for ICBMs to decoy themselves when they are out of the atmosphere. For example, simply wrapping the warheads in a much larger Mylar balloon and then packing a few hundred identical balloons that are empty makes interception basically impossible - you're going have perhaps a few hundred thousand targets to intercept in case of a nuclear strike, which is simply impossible. By the time the balloons pop or slow down enough in the atmosphere, it's essentially too late. The other alternative is early interception, but the only relatively credible design for that is hundreds of nuclear powered laser satellites. Which poses the issue of those satellites themselves being overheated by lasers and disabled in seconds.