When I was growing up in England in the 1970s and throughout the 80s in
particular, there was an almost palpable fear that a nuclear exchange could break
out between the superpowers at almost any time. It caused me and many others
around at the time to wonder if there was a way to stop a missile attack but
to be honest it was very literally you could do. If you lived in a big city or
near a military base there was nothing to stop an ICBM on intercontinental
ballistic missile once it was on its way and with the four-minute warning we had
here in the UK you might as well just have one last game of Missile Command
and hope for a quick end. Roll around 35 plus years and although we now live in a
time where the threat from nuclear attack is much less it's still present
even if it may have moved to a different area of the globe. So with the
advancement of technology can we stop a missile attack them now once it's
started. Ever since the first missiles were developed by the Germans in the
latter part of the Second World War they have struck fear into the heart and many,
certainly those in the vicinity of a receiving end. The primary reason for
this is the way they deliver their payload, unlike planes or cruise missiles
which by comparison are quite slow and travel
normally at subsonic speed leaving them susceptible to anti-aircraft fire or
surface-to-air missiles an ICBM is usually launched - but the atmosphere
into space where the warhead bit separates from a main body and it falls
back to earth. Because of the ballistic trajectory the speed of these warheads
even when they come through the denser atmosphere is still in a region of
15-20,000 mph, 31,000 km/h
up to five miles or 8.6 kilometers per second around mach 25!. It's
this speed which makes them so difficult to stop because everything happens so
fast. The detection of an attack, the coordination of countermeasures and the
launch of any defensive options has to happen within minutes and is one of the
most difficult technical and engineering challenges around and that's without the
attackers countermeasures which we'll come to later. In order to look at
stopping a missile we have to find its vulnerabilities and for that we have to
understand its trajectory phrase which is made up of three parts the first part
is the boost phase this is when it's launching and accelerating up to space
that lasts around four minutes taking the missile to a height of around 90 to
125 miles around 150 to 200 kilometers. Then there is the second mid-course
phase this is where the Boost engines burn out and it travels through space
through the highest point of its trajectory this is also the longest
phase taking around 20 minutes the third and final phase is the terminal phase
this is where the warhead re-enters the atmosphere force towards its target this
is also the shortest and lasts around 30 seconds to one a minute.
Before anything can be done you have to detect when a long has happened today we
have satellites with infrared sensors these are constantly on the lookout for
the tell-tale heat plume from the rocket engines. Before the advent of the
detection satellites the only way to know along to the curd or some early
warning radar posts detecting that an object had risen quickly above a certain
altitude it's this first boost frames when the missiles are at their most
vulnerable and ironically their most difficult to get at the Rodeway are
quite slow moving to start with they accelerate extremely rapidly to shoot
down the missile you need another even faster missile the problem here is that
they could be deep within enemy territory on one of our launchers or
even at sea long some ships or submarines or too far away from abms
other types of weapons such as high-power airborne lasers can
down missiles but they have to be relatively close because the atmosphere
accuses the laser beam over longer distances making ineffective you also
have to have these airborne lasers in the air all the time or cruising close
to land known launch positions or national borders something which was
raised functions even more if you can't get the missile when it's in space then
the second mid-course phase when it's in space is the next best place to attack
this is the longest phase lasts up to 20 minutes but it's here that the ICBM can
fight back with countermeasures many ICBMs can hold more than one warhead
international treaties limited to 10 yes 10 separately targeted warheads but
that's not all to confuse the defenders detection and tracking systems a missile
will also carry decoys mylar balloons which will inflate when warheads attach
these float along with the missile debris and the warheads and often are
shaped and painted to look like warheads to the defenders radar systems these all
look like potential targets but which ones do you go for with a limited number
of ABMS available pick the wrong ones and you will be letting the real
warheads through there have been several attempts to make systems that try to
destroy the missiles repairing space the most famous was Reagan's Star Wars or
the Strategic Defense Initiative this was to build a space-based defense
system using high-powered lasers to disable multiple targets before they
fell back to earth the technology on the other hand was not capable of delivering
this during the 80s and be honest it only really started young practical now
the method which has been proven to work although on a limited scale and against
a limited number of targets just normally one at a time so far is the
kinetic impact or kill vehicle these are small non explosive devices away around
four kilos or ten pounds that are launched into space on an ABM to
intercept the incoming targets these are released once in space and have onboard
navigation thrusters so they can be guided to crash into people coming
warheads or decoys in the mid 2000 this idea was expanded with the MK V of
Moscow kill with the defenders carrier missiles
with old a number of these maybe a dozen or so and once released they would
effectively form a cloud that in theory would target all the potential targets
both real and decoy but this is still an extremely difficult operation to pull
off as the missile detection systems have to use high-resolution x-band radar
and advanced image recognition to be able to identify all the potential
targets and weed out the warheads from the missile debris and the decoys it
then sends what it thinks are the real target coordinates to the MK V's own
tracking system for the final Rock all whilst the MK V and the target have a
closing speed of more than 30,000 kilometers or 18,000 miles an hour the
other problem here is the number of potato targets it's extremely unlikely
that just one ICBM will be launched in a real attack dozens of ICBMs will be
launched and arrived in ways from different launch locations each with
multiple warheads and decoys this will just simply overwhelm any defense system
even if it was a limited attack the attacker has probably could get only 20%
of rewards through but the defender shoot out 100% something that in real
life with current technology would be virtually impossible if this fails then
there is just the final terminal phase but this is very short typically under a
minute and the velocity of the warheads is going on five miles or eight
kilometers per second range early defense systems use nuclear-tipped
missiles which would explode near the approaching war in an attempt to knock
out their guidance and arming itright with an electromagnetic pulse but with
newer radiation hardened control electronics and the side effects of
dozens of Hiroshima site high-altitude air burst
about your own territory the idea was dropped this means that the area being
targeted the city command center missile silo or even a flotilla of ships must
have a BMS and very close for undefended areas there would be simply too little
time for an ABM to intercept of a warhead before it detonated again these
systems are even kinetic weapons which have to hit the target or have proximity
fuses and detonate close to the target current systems can launch over multiple
targets and in tests have worked but none have been proven in a real-world
attack in the end we just still cannot defend against an all-out attack so we
have to fall back on the 60-year old policies of the appropriately named mad
M ad mutually assured destruction in order to
keep the peace by making nuclear war just not worth the consequences for
Peter sighs as Churchill said meeting to George oo is better than war so as
always thanks for watching but before I go I would just like to remind you of
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