Warfare is often like a game of rock-paper-scissors.
For every new weapon developed, a counter weapon follows; each player needs to carefully
balance and ensure their opponent do not develop a power play which has no counter.
But with the start of the cold war, and the invention of the nuclear bomb, this ever-evolving game of rock-paper-scissors
has deteriorated into a game where each player stock piles rocks, and develops new ways to hurl them at their opponent.
Technology has only recently progressed far enough to develop a legitimate countermeasure like the Terminal High Altitude
Area Defense System, aka THAAD, by the US.
Today we're going to investigate how this technology works and how likely it is to stop a nuclear threat against the United States
With North Korea's recent
thermal nuclear hydrogen bomb tests and the continued experimentation of short and long range missiles, the world has been on edge.
South Korea has even deployed both THAAD and Patriot systems despite push back from China. So how do we stop a hypothetical
ICBM incoming from North Korea?
Countermeasures have been developed by many of the world's powers, though they are not as sophisticated as perhaps you would expect, and that's for two
reasons. One, because in 1972 the United States and Soviet Union
signed an Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty which was designed to limit the development and deployment of these
defensive countermeasures, and the US only withdrew from the treaty to protect the US
from nuclear blackmail from rogue states like Iran And North Korea and two,
because IBCMs are really, really, hard to intercept. To counter these threats,
the US has contracted the top Military engineering groups to develop and maintain an integrated Ballistic Missile Defense System, or
BNDS. The system integrates independent short, medium, and long Range Missile defense systems, such as Patriot,
AEGIS, and THAAD into one communication network. They are integrated and supported by a battery of land and sea-based sensors,
such as infrared satellites and X-Band radar. But all have a common communication line to the command center.
This allows new radar systems or mobile Navy vessels with sensors and interceptors to be seamlessly incorporated if they are in the region.
There are three main phases of an ICBM, the boost phase,
Mid-Course phase, and Terminal phase. Each phase have different challenges in terms of interception.
During the boost phase, the US would first detect heat signatures from a launch with infrared satellites, and communicate this to the Command Center.
Regional radar would pick up the missiles and provide accurate tracking. All of this data is processed, and a trajectory
probability map Is built and continuously updated throughout the course of the flight.
Interception at this point is not likely as the target is in enemy airspace, and most
interceptors are not fast enough to reach the target before it enters the Mid-Course phase in the upper atmosphere
in space. With the two or three stage
ICBM the boost phase can last under ten minutes, and propel the vehicle to an altitude of around
1,200 Kilometers above the surface of the Earth,
or three times higher than the orbit of the
International Space Station. At this point the projectile can be traveling as fast as seven kilometers per second, or twenty to twenty-five times the speed
of sound,
meaning a capable missile can travel halfway around the planet in about 45 minutes or less. If AEGIS sea-based or other ground-based
interceptors are in range, short to intermediate range missiles
targeting Japan, South Korea, or Guam can be intercepted by the AEGIS kinetic kill vehicle,
meaning It physically intercepts the warheads with a kinetic impact. It accomplishes this with thrusters which allow it to maneuver in the final phase of engagement.
This is not an easy task as the system must attempt
to discriminate threats within the threat cloud the trek cloud consists of active warheads
Decoys and debris in the case of North Korea it's unlikely multiple warheads would be used due to the size and weight
constraints, but some primitive decoys are more than likely.
The terminal phase is when the warheads begin to re-enter the atmosphere
towards their targets. The Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense or THAAD is a long-range missile
defense system that targets missiles at this stage with installations on the west coast of the United States,
Alaska, Guam, and more recently South Korea.
Similar to the Aegis the THAAD kill vehicle is a kinetic kill vehicle with four miniature boosters to control the projector
During recent tests, this platform has been successful
But an engineer's work is never complete. The US was working on a new interceptor dubbed the MKV or Multiple Kill Vehicle.
incorporating a more advanced version of the Aerojet around a central launcher with Multiple Kill Vehicles that can independently
intercept multiple warheads. It was later replaced by a similar multi-object kill vehicle as a contracted collaboration between
Raytheon, Boeing, and Lockheed Martin.
No system is perfect especially ones with such tight tolerances of success
Considering the lack of active threat stress testing it's likely the BMDS will not have more than a 50/50 success rate per missile
Against a threat like North Korea
multiple interceptors will make an attempt and it's highly probable the US will succeed in taking it out. And if North Korea decided to attack Seoul,
It's much more likely that they would be able to overwhelm their defenses
against the threats such as Russia things don't look so good as hundreds of missiles equipped with ten warheads each
Independently target different cities. The chance of a single warhead making a pass is high. Russian technology is simply superior to North Korea's.
New hypersonic warheads are being developed that can change their direction
mid-flight making predictive tracking almost impossible. Even if the ballistic missile defenses are 100% accurate there are simply more
warheads than interceptors making the BMDS only a limited capability system. Luckily North Korea is a limited capability threat
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