Sure, except the author keeps on trying to sound like he has spotted a flaw that the top US brass haven't even thought of yet: "Ships have no defence against ba

Sure, except the author keeps on trying to sound like he has spotted a flaw that the top US brass haven't even thought of yet: "Ships have no defence against ballistic missiles!" Except of course, AEGIS has been under development for years, and is now actually deployed in the field. What's the full name for AEGIS? Oh, that's right, Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System. It's deployed on what platform? Cruisers... In other words, the author's central point is a load of bollocks, ships do indeed now have a defence against ballistic missiles. Getting back to the main topic, well done to the Chinese if they have indeed managed to implement a high-velocity, low-trajectory heavy missile capable of taking out a carrier. Now the arms race begins. Can the US make an incremental improvement to AEGIS to defend against this new threat? This ties in nicely to yesterday's discussion on HN, kicked off by Gruber's comments on complexity. If the US military had to design a defence system against ballistic missiles from scratch today, there is every reason to think that they'd stuff it up. But instead, they have gradually built up the missile-intercept capability, starting with the relatively simple Nike-Zeus, moving up to systems such as Patriot, and then building on that success to create AEGIS and Ground-based Midcourse Defense systems. Each step is simply an evolution on what has come before, and a defence against this new attack will also just be an evolution on what has come before...