BMD 101

Jeffrey Lewis 0:03

I can't believe the one week I'm gone they talk about my favorite thing. You are listening to the Arms Control Wonk podcast, the leading podcast on arms control, disarmament, and nonproliferation. I'm Jeffrey Lewis, the founding publisher of the Arms Control Wonk blog and a scholar at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.

Aaron Stein 0:30

And I'm Aaron Stein, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council's Repeat Career Center for the Middle East. Aaron! Aaron! How you doing? I'm good.

Jeffrey 0:39

It's sunny and cold in Washington, D.C. We had a little bit of a snowstorm this week. It's just sunny and warm here, and I'm in my office staring at the ocean. I was about to say that. Can you see the humpback whales gathering, you know, for purposes unknown, perhaps nefarious? I have yet to see any whales, although some friends of mine went out to Point Lobos, and they reported excellent whale watching on their hike.

Aaron 1:03

It's a tough life you live out there for us drones out here in California. In Washington, you know, just moving between buildings to the rhythm of the government.

Jeffrey 1:13

It's actually fairly funny. We had a conference and a couple of colleagues from the conference met my family at the beach. And it was a pretty average beach day. And we were kind of feeling like we hadn't really shown the beautiful Carmel Beach to its full effect. And then some dolphins started frolicking in the water. And it was like, oh, yeah, that happens.

Yeah.

Aaron 1:35

Just access to high quality in a plethora of different Monterey County Pinot Noirs is enough to sell me.

Jeffrey 1:44

You know, one of our neighbors turns out is working at a tasting room. So I think we're going to see if we like their wine. Of course, the freedom to enjoy the beautiful California sunshine is only possible... If we can defend against those terrible evil North Korean missile attacks.

Aaron 2:10

That's right. You know, any day missiles can come streaking over the horizon, you know, destined for San Francisco and you guys would be vaporized.

Jeffrey 2:18

Indeed. So I thought you and I could talk about missile defenses in general because we have had a But those conversations are always really about Korea. And to the extent that THAAD matters, it's really a discussion about Korea and China. And I have noticed we have this recurring theme, which is people make missile defense suggestions, which imply that they don't really understand how missile defenses work.

True. And a colleague of mine said I had expert-itis. Which is that I presume a level of familiarity with the function of U.S. missile defenses that normal, right-thinking human beings with other things to do don't have.

Aaron 3:15

That's interesting, you know, because when I lived in Turkey, we had this debate about the functionality and success rate of Patriot because of the Syria crisis and the forward deployment of U.S. missiles. And even before that, the debate about the Tippy-2 radar as part of the European missile defense system. That's right.

Jeffrey 3:31

Before we put those THAAD radars in South Korea, well, I guess they're just going in now. So maybe as of recording, they're just going in. But before Korea, there was Turkey. That was the early deployment.

Aaron 3:45

That's right.

Jeffrey 3:48

There was actually a beautiful picture of the radar on the hillside overlooking, I guess, the rest of Turkey and into Syria. It was really a heck of a view from up there.

Aaron 4:00

Yeah, it's on a little – you can find it on Google Earth. Maybe I'll put the coordinates in the Slack channel. But a little carve out. You're overlooking Gaziantep, the little town – I guess the big city that's about 30 or 40 kilometers from the Syrian border.

Jeffrey 4:16

So I thought for this podcast, what we could do is we could talk about missile defenses in general. Modern American missile defenses and really go through briefly all of the different programs and how they are different and how they interact. Because I sometimes hear people talk about missile defenses as layers. And I know, like I remember when that language started.

But it's interesting to me because I think the way that the Missile Defense Agency started to talk about layered defense Creates a false impression. So when the Missile Defense Agency talks about layers, they're actually talking about separate systems that are capable of intercepting different classes of missiles. And I think people have the idea that all of the different defenses we have Form layers so that they will all have shots at every type of missile.

And I think that's wrong, but that kind of is what the word layer implies, right? Yes, it does. I think that's the ideal, but not the reality. Well, right. So I think this language that got picked up about layers was, I think, poorly chosen from the beginning. So it gives this wrong idea. So I guess the first thing to start by saying is to a first approximation of Each different class of missile has a different missile defense system optimized for it.

Would you say that's a fair way to say that?

Aaron 5:56

Yes, and I think that they're built around how that missile flies.

Jeffrey 6:00

Right, and so each different threat class of missile, and by class I really mean range, has specific properties in terms of how much time it spends in midcourse in space and how quickly it reenters. Expertise there. You have to back up and explain midcourse. Ah, right. Oh, so I thought I was backing up. I didn't back up far enough.

So as missiles travel from their launch site to their intended destination. Right. There is a series of phases of that flight. Right. So there's boost, which is when the missile is firing. There's this phase called ascent, which we've started talking about, which I guess is like early mid course. So basically, you know.

Aaron 6:46

Just as it's leaving the atmosphere the first time.

Jeffrey 6:49

Yeah. And pending on the missile, the stages will have fallen away. There's mid course, which is sort of the period when the warhead or the whole missile body is transiting space. And then there's descent and reentry, which is where the warhead comes streaking down toward its target. And so an ICBM is going to spend a lot of time in midcourse.

In fact, if you have multiple warheads, you're going to have like a little bus that goes through space and, you know, orients itself and can, if they're independently targetable, can put the warheads on different trajectories. Right. And then when it reenters, it's going to be super fast, right? So we have the system in Alaska, the ground-based midcourse defense.

That is designed to shoot at ICBMs in the midcourse phase because the idea is the speed of reentry of those will be so fast that there's no plausible way to intercept them in reentry. And that's called a terminal defense.

Aaron 7:54

Right. And because of that, your own ground-based missiles have to be, I guess, bigger and faster is an easy way to explain it because they have to get up there.

Jeffrey 8:02

Yeah. So if you look at the ground-based mid-course defense uses an interceptor called the ground-based interceptor, the GBI. And that's a giant freaking missile in a silo. I mean, it's really big. I think people have the idea that these are like tiny little things and like they are not. Right.

Aaron 8:22

The GBI is quite large and it's in Vandenberg and in Alaska, correct?

Jeffrey 8:27

Yes, that's right. There are some in Vandenberg. I always forget about the ones in Vandenberg.

Aaron 8:30

Do not. That's a very good wine country that's up and coming.

Jeffrey 8:35

Actually, it's funny. We were down at – we met some friends at Pismo Beach on our way down to LA.

Aaron 8:42

Yeah.

Jeffrey 8:43

And so we took the coast all the way down. Yeah, so we got to drive by those hills and we got to sort of see Vandenberg off in the distance.

Aaron 8:55

Next time, stop at the Wine Grotto. Worth your time.

Jeffrey 8:58

The Wine Grotto? That sounds great. Actually, we tried a bunch of really nice wines from that area when we were at Pismo Beach.

Aaron 9:06

It's like the new Paso Robles. It's still up and coming and so it's still cool.

Jeffrey 9:13

Well, in Paso was five years ago, anyways. Yeah, well, I think this actually, this was a, this was a a wine merchant that had started doing the Paso stuff and concluded that Paso had gotten too expensive, and so they had moved down there. That's exactly what it was. so we won't forget the interceptors at Vandenberg, because honestly, the wine is better than in Alaska.

Aaron 9:35

That is right. Better climate for grape growing.

Jeffrey 9:38

I'm just imagining you're tasting it. Oh, it's slight notes of, what is that? Is that walrus blubber?

Aaron 9:47

The grape is a bit shriveled. The climate, the sun didn't come out too much this year. It's as really sweet as this ice wine. But not to be confused with the GBI.

Jeffrey 9:59

Yes, not to be confused with the GBI. So we have the system in Alaska. It is designed to intercept ICBMs fired really from North Korea at the United States, which is why it's in Alaska instead of North Dakota, which was the original planned location. Would have some capability against ICBMs from other places because we think of Alaska as being like way out west, but it's actually really close to the North Pole and everything's got a transit over the top of the earth.

And so it provides some defense against not just North Korea, but a limited missile launch from China or Russia or even Iran if it were to build an ICBM. That's one type of defense. But that's not what we're really talking about when we're talking about things like THAAD or just missile defenses in the region. And so we used to call that national missile defense and we called everything else theater missile defense.

And then the Bush administration got rid of that distinction, which I think is kind of annoying because I always found it really useful. I don't know about you.

Aaron 11:04

I still call it theater missile defense, even though I know I'm not supposed to. Just because it makes more sense logically to me.

Jeffrey 11:11

Yeah. So the National Academies did this really great study on missile defense architectures because they were supposed to look at boost phase, right? Which is trying to shoot the missile at the – in the ascent or in the boost or the ascent, right? And they ultimately concluded that that was like impossible. What were you going to say?

Because that's when it's the easiest to hit in theory. Right. But – In practice, you got to be real close. And so it's not possible. So what I love about this National Academy study is having answered the mail. Right, like, oh, let's look at boost phase. Nah, nope, boost phase doesn't work. They were like, well, do we just like turn the report in? It's like, no, no, no, we got, you know, like that was week one. We got the rest of the study, so they turned it into this really global look at the missile defense architecture, and they were really critical about.

About the ground-based mid-course system, and they came up with a whole new ground-based mid-course system, right, which is basically a new radar, a new interceptor, and they proposed moving the – at the time, the Bush administration was going to put ground-based interceptors at a third site in Europe in addition to Vandenberg in Alaska, and they suggested moving that back and putting it on the East Coast.

Aaron 12:36

Which is still politically salient to this day.

Jeffrey 12:38

Yeah. I mean, it was a really funny interaction because the whole point of the National Academy study was the ground-based mid-core system sucked and needed to be completely overhauled, right? So, you needed new radars and new interceptors in Alaska and Vandenberg. And you needed to cancel the deployment of those interceptors in Poland, which ended up the Obama administration canceled anyway.

But you needed to put the new interceptors and the new radars at a site on the East Coast. And of course, Congress's reaction was like, oh, yeah, we're not going to do any of the like fixing the defense. But a new site may be near New Hampshire. Then Senator Kelly Ayotte was very excited about that.

Aaron 13:21

That's right. Yeah. They literally just took the pork. Forgetting about testing data and all that fun stuff. But hey, another site out there. Is that still the Northeast Corridor?

Jeffrey 13:35

I don't know what you would call it, right? Yeah, the Acela Corridor is what I call it.

Aaron 13:41

The Acela Corridor, yeah.

Jeffrey 13:42

Although the Acela really slows down between New York and Boston, I discovered. Hey, I'm kind of sore about this. You know why?

Aaron 13:50

Why?

Jeffrey 13:51

Because Al Kamens in the loop sponsored a contest for where to put those interceptors. Because there was a discussion of, you know, would you do it at like, I actually forget the sites, but there was one in New York and there was one in Maine. There were several options that were considered. And so they had a funny or lighthearted contest, you know, nominate the place to put them.

So do you know what I sent in? No, but I'm on the edge of my seat here. My anus Connecticut. Because I just really needed to hear Joe Lieberman talk about the importance of putting an additional 12 ground-based interceptors in my anus.

Aaron 14:40

This is childish humor, but you're going to give us the parental warning on the iTunes.

Jeffrey 14:45

I know, but you know what? Cayman didn't run it. I was robbed! I mean, you know how Lieberman talked, right? You remember. Yeah, yeah. Of course.

Other voice 14:58

The two-stage ground-based interceptor was supposed to be done 2015, maybe 2017 as time went on.

Jeffrey 15:06

Yeah, like some, like, Muppet on downers. With heavy jowls, but yeah.

Aaron 15:14

Yeah.

Jeffrey 15:14

Yeah. So anyway, I couldn't get Joe Lieberman to say he wanted ground-based interceptors in my anus. That's one system. But then you have these other systems that exist in order to intercept missiles in their terminal or reentry phase. Right. And so those systems are going to do a better job against shorter range missiles because an ICBM is just going to be coming in like way too fast.

Aaron 15:50

Too fast. And so shorter range missiles reenter slower.

Jeffrey 15:54

Yes. And so you've got this series of systems. And I think everybody knows the Patriot because that's real famous. Right. Yeah. I mean, it's still real famous, yeah, from the Gulf War, which is now 25 years ago and not even the last Gulf War.

Aaron 16:10

Yeah, forward deployed in Turkey again during the – in 2013 or something.

Jeffrey 16:15

Oh, no. I'm talking about famous from the other Gulf War. Oh, yeah, the original deployment to the Patriot.

Aaron 16:22

Because we put them in Israel. We put them in Israel. That's right.

Jeffrey 16:25

And they either did great or didn't hit anything.

Aaron 16:29

Right, depending on the studies, although I think – Consensus has swung until they didn't do very well.

Jeffrey 16:33

Yeah, I think – yeah, I don't think they did so well. And so there was the Patriot and that led to the PAC-3, right, which is what the Patriot advanced capability I guess.

Aaron 16:45

Yeah, I mean it's the latest iteration of what was the initial deployment in 1991 and it has improved.

Jeffrey 16:51

Yeah. And ultimately you get to these – Interesting systems, which I mean, the way I think about it is this is where THAAD comes from, right? So back in the day, you had this Patriot capability, which was basically a jumped up air defense and had a very limited capability against ballistic missiles.

Aaron 17:12

It started as an air defense system.

Jeffrey 17:13

Right. And you had these programs for national missile defense, which were much bigger and larger and originally had nuclear warheads. Right. Right. Sprint and Spartan and all that.

Aaron 17:27

Yeah.

Jeffrey 17:28

And then in the 1990s, after that first Gulf War, you get this switchover where basically we decide in the United States that we're going to invest in hit to kill systems. So, you know, bullet hitting a bullet asterisk. Some of a few of the systems use use fragmentation, but most of them are just kinetic kill.

Aaron 17:46

It means the missiles just run into the incoming warheads.

Jeffrey 17:49

Right. And so then they reconceive of the system. Originally, it's going to be in North Dakota, but ultimately it ends up in Alaska to shoot at ICBMs in the midcourse. Yes, GBI. Right. And you get these increasingly capable air defense systems. So the Patriot gives way to Pac-3. Right. And then you get these really – Capable they used to be called theater systems, and so FAD was the Theater High Altitude Area Defense, although it's not called that anymore, and there was this thing called Navy Theater Wide.

Which THAAD still is THAAD, although it's Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, I guess. And Navy, theater-wide, is the Aegis system with this series of SM-3s, which have now progressed, right, in blocks. And so they're capable of shooting at medium and intermediate range ballistic missiles in their midcourse. They still can't handle an ICBM, like that's too much. But like a Patriot would have, you know, approximately no capability against a medium or intermediate range ballistic missile.

Aaron 19:12

Right. And so you get these intermediate systems. Yeah.

Jeffrey 19:14

So it's why I kind of don't like this language about layers, right? Because if I shoot a Musudan at full range against a Patriot, I don't think the Patriots can have much chance at it. It's going to be moving too fast.

Aaron 19:34

And people calculate this. You can calculate burnout speed of the missile versus expected velocity of the reentry vehicle.

Jeffrey 19:40

Right. And so I feel like we spent all this time talking about that in Korea. And we talk about what that can do. And then we have to have this other conversation about radars. But I do think that people have this idea that. That is really super awesome, and so it will provide a backstop or maybe a frontstop.

It'll take the first shot at a Scud streaking towards Seoul, and then Patriots in Seoul will take the second shot, but that's not right.

Aaron 20:14

No.

Jeffrey 20:14

The THAAD system is going to defend against medium and intermediate range missiles that are going further than Seoul. And like those little short range ballistic missiles that get fired from North Korea into Seoul like the KNO2, THAAD's not – I mean may not even see them.

Aaron 20:32

Right. Exactly. Because it's not configured to look for that. But I mean then that's the – right. So that's why they're not layered. Is that there are different systems for different incoming systems.

Jeffrey 20:42

Right. And to me, that matters because, you know, sometimes I'll hear, you know, like, oh, North Korea has this missile threat. Right. And people will say like, oh, but we put the THAAD battery in Korea. So doesn't that solve the missile threat? You know, it's like, well, that's good against some nodongs. And it's probably good against the Musudan.

And it's probably good against the new solid fuel ballistic missile.

Aaron 21:06

Although we'll see.

Jeffrey 21:09

But, you know, against like a lofted K-08, I think it would choke. Lofted? When you shoot it right. Oh, yeah. So the North Koreans do this fun thing. They sometimes take their really long range missiles. Instead of firing them to the full range, they shoot them up way, way, way high so that they come down much closer to the launch point.

So you basically get a short range missile that reenters at the speed of a much longer range missile and a really steep angle. So that would be a challenging intercept geometry for a system like that.

Aaron 21:42

Right. And I think what's interesting about that is, again, what you foreshadowed earlier was just the build-off debate about the radars. I wouldn't call it a debate, but about just the radars in general for each system.

Jeffrey 21:53

We often think of a missile defense as the interceptor, the missile that shoots down the missile. But obviously that can't happen unless it can see, right? And the way it's going to see is with a radar. And THAAD is an unusual system in that it has a kind of fancy radar, which is why it was in Turkey.

Not THAAD, but the radar.

Aaron 22:14

Yeah, the radar provides – it would be early warning data.

Jeffrey 22:18

Right. So what's the way to say this? The – Radars work on different frequencies called bands. And you can make different choices about what band you want your radar to operate on. And that band will give you different kinds of... Data, so a higher frequency radar will give you a really precise picture, but a lower frequency radar, you know, is going to work better propagating through the atmosphere, and so you can search big, kind of, you can do like an area search.

At a relatively long range. So like a higher frequency radar is going to be great if you want to track a specific object that you are going to intercept. And a lower frequency radar is going to do a better job of scanning the sky to look for that object. And so we have these different band radars that we use for different purposes.

So like the THAAD system uses an X-band radar.

Aaron 23:44

Which is high up there on the wavelength.

Jeffrey 23:46

Yeah. And it has these two modes. One of which is linked to the interceptor. And so it has this mode that is about like helping the interceptor go do its job. But then it has this other mode, which is where it serves as a forward deployed radar as part of a bigger architecture. So the case in Turkey, right, is where it's in that other mode.

Maybe you want to talk a little bit about that.

Aaron 24:16

Yeah, I mean, it's just forward deployed near a town called Malatya, and it's in the forward deployed mode. Right, but it's supporting, yes. You know, European ballistic missile architecture, so interceptors in Romania and I think Poland, but shorter range.

Jeffrey 24:33

Right. Well, they were, you know, eventually going to build them up to be longer range.

Aaron 24:37

Right, not the GBI's that we discussed earlier, but the SM-3.

Jeffrey 24:40

Although eventually, you know, the SM-3 Block IIB was going to be a hell of a missile, then they canceled it.

Aaron 24:46

Yeah, well, call Russia about extended – about long-term calculations about the blocks of SM-3 and threats to ICBMs.

Jeffrey 24:57

So in theory, the thing the Chinese say is they're less worried about the interceptor than they are the radar. And in particular, they're worried about the – And to be to radar, which is its name, sitting in South Korea as a forward deployed asset of a bigger missile defense architecture, sort of in the same way that it sat in Turkey.

It's still there. Oh, sits in Turkey. Right. And you know, there's this kind of debate about whether that's a realistic concern because there are already two of those radars in Japan and the one in Korea is really going to be linked to the interceptors. So it's going to be doing this other job and it's not exactly pointed in the right direction.

And there are other radars and space-based assets to do that job. And we sort of, we've gone through all of that debate, but I do think it is interesting to keep in mind that there are these radars that are essential parts of these systems that But just like the systems are all different, so are the radars, right?

And so one of the proposals has been that the Chinese have said they would be fine if instead of the fancy THAAD X-band radar, if the South Koreans instead bought a super green pine radar from Israel and installed that, which is an L-band radar, they would be like less annoyed about it. Right. But it doesn't use an L-band radar.

If that uses an X-band radar, you'd probably have to change the software.

Aaron 26:27

You'd have to change the software or it'd have to be, I guess, a bought and sold Israeli system.

Jeffrey 26:33

Right, in which case it wouldn't be that.

Aaron 26:36

It wouldn't be that. It would be Arrow. Right.

Jeffrey 26:40

So, you know, as we kind of have that little discussion about The function of this system in Korea, it strikes me kind of really interesting to sort of step back globally and just look at this whole architecture that we have and kind of break it apart. I guess the last thing we should talk about is we don't shoot at things in boost phase.

Aaron 27:06

No. Because it's hard. Because it's really hard. That's the best place to shoot at a missile, but you have to be so close, it's extremely hard.

Jeffrey 27:15

It's the best place to shoot at the missile, but you need to find a country that's willing to let you station the interceptor relatively close to their launch site.

Aaron 27:24

Maybe we could just sort of park it on an isolated North Korean beach.

Jeffrey 27:28

Yeah, that's right. We're just, we're just gonna rent, we're just gonna rent or lease some space from the North Koreans. Yeah, I mean, we, I think we'll do a separate podcast on this idea of I don't know if I should call it a crazy idea. I do think it is a crazy idea to put an interceptor on a drone and try to get the drone close enough to intercept. it is an interesting crazy idea because there are some details about it, but we'll probably do a separate podcast on that, but.

Aaron 27:52

Yeah, I think Scott will kill us because he's not on the spot if we do that. Totally excited about that.

Jeffrey 27:58

Yeah. But it just strikes me that like if we step back, this is a this is a really important conversation to have, because often we have seen, you know, like Bill Gertz wrote this thing about how we should put that in Australia. Yeah.

Aaron 28:09

It makes no sense.

Jeffrey 28:10

Right. Because for the Chinese to get a missile to Australia, it has to be a missile of such a range that that will have no capability against it. So, you know, if you really, truly cared about defending Australia, you would need to give them GBIs or you probably would have to build this, you know. Probably an SM-3 Block IIB, which doesn't exist at the moment.

You really would have to build a much more capable interceptor. Capable in terms of flying faster, right? Having a higher burnout speed.

Aaron 28:41

It just has to have a higher burnout speed.

Jeffrey 28:43

And I'm not even sure that if you wanted to defend Alaska from a Chinese missile attack that you would put the missile defense interceptor in Alaska. Right. I mean, one of the things I thought was really interesting is once you realize like, oh, the interceptors are sized or designed to the missile class. You know, the putting GBI's in Europe provided no defense of Europe.

The GBI's in Europe shooting at Iranian missiles would have defended the United States. You would have needed an entire different architecture to protect Europe and the GBI's and their radars from an Iranian attack. Probably that. Probably that. And so ultimately, that's why they switched over to this system of increasingly capable SM3s and THAAD systems in Europe. Because, you know, it was a really interesting debate.

The Bush administration is like, oh, we're going to put these GBI's in Poland. And people in Poland were like, yes, we are defended. And it's like, no, you are not. That system cannot. That is a mid-course system. It cannot shoot at the missile. They are going to shoot at the interceptor. It cannot protect itself. It is a mid-course system.

And so, and that, by the way, you could never convince people of this. It was impossible to explain to people that putting a GBI in Poland provides approximately zero defense of Poland. Yeah.

Aaron 30:09

Quickly, let's go back because we didn't talk about this, but this is interesting. Again, I think there's an assumption also that – I'm talking about the salvo barrage versus shoot-look-shoot option. It's one interceptor per incoming missile, which isn't exactly how it's scripted.

Jeffrey 30:30

Yeah, that's exactly right. So there are two pieces there. There is how one handles an incoming missile. And I do think people have this idea that one missile is going to come in and you are going to shoot it.

Aaron 30:42

You hear this a lot. It's inferred in the North Korea debate. It's like, we'll just shoot it down.

Jeffrey 30:47

Right. But we're actually going to salvo fire multiple interceptors in order to get the probabilities up to a reasonable number. And yeah, our back of the envelope calculation is they're assuming a 50-50 chance with every interceptor, which actually I think is their way of saying they don't know what the reliability is.

Aaron 31:07

Never really strain them in sort of robust testing.

Jeffrey 31:10

Yeah. And so they're going to do like a salvo of five and you figure five, 50, 50 shots gets you up into the, you know, two standard deviations of confidence. Yeah. But that assumes the failure modes are independent, which of course they might not be right. If there's a common failure mode, then they either all work or none of them work.

So that's one thing. Yes. Salvo firing. And I do also, I mean, the, the, Countermeasure. The simplest countermeasure to this is for the enemy to salvo fire their missiles, because people, again, you think like, oh, well, you have X number of missiles and I have X number of interceptors, and I just divide them, but you actually have battle management software that has to find everything. You know, the raiders need to find them, track them, you need to discriminate.

And if warheads are separating from missiles, you need to see the warheads. And if there are other countermeasures, all that gets really complicated. But once you have your universe of objects that you have decided are the things you need to shoot down, you need a battle management software to keep track of all that. Right. And say, OK, these interceptors go here and these interceptors go there and these interceptors go here.

And so, you know, you people are often like, well, how can they overwhelm a THAAD system if it has more interceptors than you have missiles? And the answer is, well, I'm not trying to overwhelm the number of interceptors. I'm trying to overwhelm the battle management system's ability to keep everything straight.

Aaron 32:45

It plots firing solutions based on the radar track.

Jeffrey 32:48

Right. So you're just trying to, you know, like you just want the computer to do like the blue screen of death, right? Where it's like, I can't deal with all this data.

Aaron 32:57

When your iPhone, you get like a WhatsApp message, an email and a DM all at the same time while your cell phone's ringing.

Jeffrey 33:04

Right. If your phone freezes, it's not such a big deal. If the battle management software freezes, you die.

Aaron 33:10

Right, because the conceptualization, I think, originally in missile defense back in the 80s, but it's moved on to conventional, has always been that the incoming is WMD-tipped.

Jeffrey 33:21

Yeah, right. And I mean, yeah. I mean, one conversation probably for another time is our expectations for the performance of missile defenses changes radically if we're dealing with conventional or nuclear-armed missiles. Right. There is some value to attriting conventionally armed missiles even if you can't be perfect because attrition is still a useful military thing to do if you're trying to protect an airfield.

But if they're all nuclear armed, then your expectations or your requirement for success are much higher.

Aaron 33:50

Right, and then the purported mission. I mean if you're defending a large US base forward deployed say in the Middle East versus again a WMD attack. So the purpose and sort of scope of missile defenses deployed I think helps inform your metric of success.

Jeffrey 34:08

Yeah. And then there is this other thing which you pointed out, which is for much longer range missiles or cases where you do truly have a system that is actual layers, not the kind of layers the Missile Defense Agency talks about, but layers that normal people would talk about. If you have enough time and you almost never do, the elegant thing to do would be what's called shoot, look, shoot.

Like, it's one thing if two different systems can get a shot to fire at the same time, but that's like a salvo, right? It's just it's a salvo with two different interceptors. What would be really great and what the National Academies was proposing we reorient the missile defense system to do... Was to shoot and then have a moment at which the system could look to assess whether the shot had been successful.

And if it missed, then you could assign another interceptor. And if it hit, then you could assign that interceptor to some other target. And so one of the reasons that they wanted to move the system to the East Coast is they thought that they might be able to do a shoot-look-shoot like... System, particularly if they, oh, geez, this will be really technical, but, you know, not just the radar.

On the ground or in space is watching the target, there's also a kill vehicle on the tip of the interceptor. And they were thinking that if you could fuse all of that data, including data from the kill vehicle, you might have a much better sense of situational awareness. And then you might be able to shoot, look and shoot, which would allow you to assign your interceptors in a much more efficient way.

Which, by the way, we can't do now. Like, one of the big dangers in these discussions is we start talking about what you might do, and then there's slippage, and people think, like, oh, well, we might do that. That means we do do that. Like, no, no, no, we can't do that. Like, right now, North Korean missile comes in, and we salvo fire five GBIs at it, and, you know, hope one hits, and hope the other four that go streaking into Russia don't accidentally trigger a nuclear war.

That's the plan.

Aaron 36:22

That is... Well, on that happy note, I think listeners of the pod will remember that one of our early pods before Scott came on was about the thermopumped X-ray nuclear laser. It go boom. It goes boom. And then they sort of kerfuffle that Obama was leaking Israeli nuclear secrets even though he wasn't. But if you remember back to that report, the problem was computing power.

Other voice 36:49

Yeah.

Aaron 36:49

If you look back now in 2017 – The problem isn't so much that you can't get a missile up close to incoming missiles. It's all of this battle management software. So it's still software-related, but things are moving forward. Is that a positive note?

Jeffrey 37:06

Yeah. I mean we're better at missile defense than we were 30 years ago. We're better at missile defense. That's where I was trying to go. That's good enough for us. Yeah. Did you see I said on Twitter, I said, yes, America, I am your ray of sunshine. And then I added, actually, that's not the sun. You're going to want to duck before the blast wave hits.

Aaron 37:26

That's right. That's right. Hey, Aaron, thanks for joining me. This has been great.

Jeffrey 37:34

Missile Defense 101. Refresher for myself as well. Great, and thanks for listening. If you like the podcast, leave us a review on iTunes. It helps get the word out. And if you really like the podcast, consider becoming a subscriber. We have a ton of great subscriber benefits that normally Scott would be here to tell you about, but he's off studying for comps.

But let me tell you, the Slack channel is cool, and the calligraphy bomb calculations are really awesome. So we have a Patreon page. You can access it through the website. Come over and check it out. So as always, thanks for listening.