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I've often wondered where our current air defense systems are now. It seems the government must spend a lot of money hiding them in plain sight or I'm not look

• rhino369 11y ago
  The airforce is testing a cruise missile defense balloon in Maryland. It's a blimp tied to the ground. I'd imagine most of US civil air defense is just sending up fighter jets. But on 9-11, US air defense got caught with their pants down. I wouldn't expect much.
  • smeyer 11y ago
    >I'd imagine most of US civil air defense is just sending up fighter jets. The US has developed a lot of missiles, including those used to shoot down other missiles. Do you have a reason to believe that their IADS is so dependent on fighters? I'm not particularly well-informed on the issue so I'd be interested to read more.
    • rhino369 11y ago
      Just guessing based on lack of obvious military installations around cities.
      • nostrademons 11y ago
        Miniaturization technology has advanced enough that they don't need fixed installations. Low altitude anti-air defense is probably a bunch of Stingers stored in a locker in key target buildings. High-altitude ABM defense would be Patriots and THAADs, both of which are mounted on mobile trucks which presumably are housed in U.S. military bases and in secret garages or other locations. It's to your advantage to not let your enemies know where your defenses are; pretty much all missiles since the 1980s have been mounted on trucks that let them be stationed anywhere a road goes to.
        • rdl 11y ago
          The White House has NASAMS on nearby buildings, which is a pretty decent upgrade in capability over Stingers. http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/americas-capitol-is-guarded-by-norwegian-surface-to-ai-1556894733 http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/americas-capitol-is-guarded...
  • justizin 11y ago
    > But on 9-11, US air defense got caught with their pants down. I wouldn't expect much. I'm not sure it's US air defense who got caught with their pants down, the entire notion of the 9/11 attack would have been to get around the effectiveness of US air defense at keeping foreign aircraft out of US airspace. The time needed to scramble F-16s is not based on a jet flying from Boston to DC or whatever. That's already the end zone.
    • ecdavis 11y ago
      The FAA and NORAD did indeed have protocols to deal with hijackings in US airspace requiring a military response. Those protocols broke down somewhat on 9/11. A lack of communication between the FAA and the military slowed down the military response to the hijackings. The 9/11 Commission Report is well worth a read.
• AndrewKemendo 11y ago
  Depends on what level you are talking about. For ICBMs there are naval vessels like the Aegis, as well as land based systems surrounding the CONUS. Within CONUS however they are largely relegated to military installations. For example there are batteries on military installations in the D.C. area, but not outside of those reservations. [1]http://theweek.com/articles/549964/futuristic-air-defense-system-washington-dc-defeated-by-postman http://theweek.com/articles/549964/futuristic-air-defense-sy...
• c0nsumer 11y ago
  The Nike system was a last line of defense against bomber formations. The main idea near the end of the program was to set off a surface-to-air nuke in the middle of a formation and take it out. (Yes, that means near the population centers which the Nike sites were situated around. ICBMs nullified the usefulness of the Nikes and they were all decommissioned around 1974.) Modern air defenses are the anti-ballistic missile stuff, interceptors located at the borders, etc.
  • angersock 11y ago
    That gives you insight into the sort of absolute war they were prepared to fight. The world is, in some ways, a better place today.
    • pkaeding 11y ago
      The world is better now than it ever was, in many ways: http://sploid.gizmodo.com/the-world-is-now-safer-and-better-than-ever-and-heres-t-1651264457 http://sploid.gizmodo.com/the-world-is-now-safer-and-better-...
      • m_mueller 11y ago
        while that's nice, we're also running head on into a climate catastrophy, so it's sadly not for long.
    • sandworm101 11y ago
      Agreed that there is less of a death by nuclear war. But today there is a far greater chance of being shot by a an armed squad of uniformed men driving armoured vehicles. It's really apples and oranges, but people still die at the hands of violence today as they did in the past.
  • dsfyu404ed 11y ago
    That's kind of misleading, it went more like: "it appears as though our missile attacks the center of mass of tight formations, downing none of the aircraft" "let's put a nuke on it and call it a feature"
• sandworm101 11y ago
  There is no general air defence these days. There are point installations protecting military targets, on military land, but there aren't batteries of missiles to defend large cities. If needed they launch intercept aircraft. (imho those military point defence installations are turned off most all of the time. See below.) Recently in Vancouver we hosted the woman's world cup. Joe Biden was in town. And so was this (http://i.imgur.com/pvxYN49.jpg http://i.imgur.com/pvxYN49.jpg). That's the USS Stockdale entering Vancouver port to provide him cover. It left port the day after he left town. All very quiet. Local news didn't speak of this big thing coming in unescorted. I only noticed after one of our boats went screaming by the dog beach (http://i.imgur.com/G7lY9s4.jpg http://i.imgur.com/G7lY9s4.jpg) about half an hour before. It was probably leaving to make room at the dock. When the Stockdale left it was followed by a tug and a rib from the local cops... they probably learned about it at the same time I did. Stockdale's itinerary listing it docking in North Vancouver. http://www.uscarriers.net/ddg106history.htm http://www.uscarriers.net/ddg106history.htm The lack of air defence is probably a good thing. The error rate, the risk of shooting down something by accident, would be unacceptable.
  • jwiley 11y ago
    My 1.5 cents: probably coincidence. It would be difficult to get naval vessels to follow him around the world, for example during his trip to land-locked Mongolia: https://www.whitehouse.gov/photos-and-video/photogallery/vice-president-joe-biden-visits-mongolia https://www.whitehouse.gov/photos-and-video/photogallery/vic...
    • giarc 11y ago
      Just because the ship followed him to one event/location, doesn't mean it needs to follow him to every. Their thinking probably is "We can get good protection at this location through USS whatever, let's do it."
      • sandworm101 11y ago
        It might also be based on very practical things. The prez/vice always have a quick exit plan. The stockdale has a pair of helos that could have picked him up from anywhere in the city. That might mean they didn't have to lay on as many ground assets.
• jandrewrogers 11y ago
  Air defense batteries have limited use if you have excellent global surveillance capabilities -- they will know about an impending air attack long before it happens. Consequently, they are really only used to protect critical "first strike" targets. With ample warning, there are many ways to protect areas from air attack, including combat air patrol. Also, air defense and ballistic missile defense have largely converged. The newer systems are designed to intercept just about everything that moves from sea level to low-earth orbit. It is one of the reasons the ABM treaty had to be scrapped -- limiting missile defense was tantamount to limiting air defense.
• cameldrv 11y ago
  It's basically minimal at this point. Most of it comes down to cold war history. In the 50s, the threat was Russian bombers coming over the pole, so the U.S. built a big air defense system, including SAGE, Nike, BOMARC, and F-102s and F-106s. By the 60s, the Russians were concentrating on ballistic missiles, and not much more work was put into air defense in the U.S. By the 70s, a lot of the original 50s system was removed for obsolescence with no full replacement. The Russians kept improving their system though, and it remains quite powerful. Some of this comes down to geography though. There are multiple lines of radars across Canada, and so the U.S. would have had much more warning time of a Russian attack. By the 80s, a smaller group of F-15s were presumably adequate to defend the U.S., nevermind the missiles.
  • spiritplumber 11y ago
    And yet they managed to sink the Avro Arrow :(
  • WalterGR 11y ago
    By the 60s, the Russians were concentrating on ballistic missiles, and not much more work was put into air defense in the U.S. How does one defend against ICBMs? Is that not considered "air defense"? By the 80s, a smaller group of F-15s were presumably adequate to defend the U.S., nevermind the missiles. "Nevermind the missiles"? Do you mean: a smaller group of F-15s was adequate to defend the US if by "defend the US" we mean completely ignoring the missiles? The Russians kept improving their system though, and it remains quite powerful. Where can one learn more, or what web search keywords are good?
    • mikeash 11y ago
      Ballistic missile defense is a pretty different problem from defending against aircraft. While both involve defending from stuff above you, they take radically different paths at radically different speeds. An aircraft is moving at roughly the speed of sound (a bit under for most stuff, or maybe somewhat over for some of the fancier bombers) on an unpredictable path at an altitude between maybe 40,000ft and 100ft. An ICBM warhead is traveling at maybe mach 25, is coming down on a near vertical trajectory from a couple thousand miles up, and is on an entirely predictable trajectory. The differences make for extremely different requirements. To shoot aircraft down, you want a missile that can travel somewhat faster than the aircraft. By not going too fast, they can stay maneuverable, to counter the aircraft's own maneuverability. You can use a proximity fuze so that once you get somewhat close to the target, the missile explodes and destroys the aircraft with shrapnel. You typically have some hours of warning to get the missile into position. To shoot down an ICBM warhead, you need a much faster missile in order to perform the intercept at a useful altitude. You have maybe 20 minutes of warning at best, and probably no more than 5-10 minutes knowing the exact target. The target doesn't maneuver so the missile doesn't need to counter that. The target is maneuvering so fast, however, that a proximity fuze does you no good if you're using chemical explosives. The target is moving much faster than your explosives explode, so timing the explosion to hit the target with your shrapnel field is too hard. One option is to hit the target directly (kinetic kill), which means hitting something with a cross section of a couple of square feet while your closing velocity is several miles per second. This is hard. Another option is to use nuclear warheads on the interceptor. The detonation won't physically destroy the incoming warheads, but the radiation flux can destroy their electronics. The answer to "how do you defend against ICBMs?" is more or less: you don't. No practical system to defend against a large-scale ICBM attack has ever been developed, or even planned. Defending a few targets at great expense is possible. The Soviets had their Galosh missiles defending Moscow, which are still in place. The Americans built the Safeguard system to defend ICBM silos around North Dakota, but it was decommissioned quickly because it just cost too much. The Americans now have the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense in Alaska and California. This can defend much of the country against ICBMs, but only a small number of them, so the intent is to prevent e.g. North Korea from carrying out a small strike, not stopping a full-scale Soviet/Russian/Chinese strike. Some Aegis destroyers operated by the US Navy also have the ability to shoot down ICBMs, but again the numbers are limited. In general it's cheaper to build an ICBM than to build something that can intercept an ICBM (especially since one ICBM can carry 10 or more warheads, all of which need to be shot down separately unless you can somehow destroy the missile while it's still launching), so unless you have great economic superiority over your adversary, they can always out-build your defenses.