SR-72?

[sferrin]

I know it's not popular to mention this but once an ballistic missile is exo-atmospheric it can launch hundreds of decoys (aluminized balloons as there's no air resistance up there) and on the descent phase they've got MIRVs (multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles) - it's a bit like having a gun to shoot down your enemie's buckshot  , but it's damn good business for the defense contractors since it will never be put to the real test.

Radar isn't the only method used to descriminate real from fake.  Also let's not forget MKV that is in the works.  They really ought to have kept working on HEDI but a missile like that would require so many to cover any meaningful amount of territory that they probably axed it more for political reasons than technical.

Likewise, Mach 6 planes are a good excuse to get ahold of American tax dollars and obviously more profitable than providing poor grunts with half decent APCs in Iraq, but I just don't believe there's the politic will (for a working plane, not the dollars of course). I hope you guys are right as a new hyper plane would cool but as they could only keep the X-43 flying for 11 seconds (after getting there thanks to a solid rocket), I'm not holding my breath.

Sorry for the realism, Cheers, Woody

Since when did trolling become "realism"?

[flateric]

OK, I agree, I want it to be built!

[Woody]

Radar isn't the only method used to descriminate real from fake.  Also let's not forget MKV that is in the works.  They really ought to have kept working on HEDI but a missile like that would require so many to cover any meaningful amount of territory that they probably axed it more for political reasons than technical.

Please tell me more. Balloons don't just reflect radar and they're not the only kind of possible decoy.

As for 'trolling', I'm sorry to cloud fluffy bunny world but it doesn't make much sense to run an X-43 program (then cancelled?) if they already had the technology. I want a new hypersonic plane as much as anyone.

Cheers, Woody

[overscan]

Likewise, Mach 6 planes are a good excuse to get ahold of American tax dollars and obviously more profitable than providing poor grunts with half decent APCs in Iraq

Since when did trolling become "realism"?

As for 'trolling', I'm sorry to cloud fluffy bunny world

Woody - provision of APCs in Iraq isn't really relevant to the context of the topic. If you want to raise this topic go post in "The Bar" or a political forum.

Scott - reacting by accusing Woody of "trolling" doesn't help maintain the friendly and largely troll-free atmosphere we've got on the forum so far.

Lets try not to end up like Key Publishing Forums, OK?

[RyanCrierie]

I know it's not popular to mention this but once an ballistic missile is exo-atmospheric it can launch hundreds of decoys (aluminized balloons as there's no air resistance up there) and on the descent phase they've got MIRVs (multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles) - it's a bit like having a gun to shoot down your enemie's buckshot  , but it's damn good business for the defense contractors since it will never be put to the real test.

So Wrong.

On MIRVs:

Multiple Independently-Targeted Re-Entry Vehicles (MIRVs)

Why they exist Although MIRVs are often regarded as a development of MRVs, in fact they come from a totally different logic. In a ballistic missile site, the missile itself represents only a small proportion of the cost of the system (usually 10 - 20 percent). The bulk of that cost is represented by the silo and the command control system that goes with it. That cost is dorectly related to the number of missiles, not the number of warheads on each missile. Therefore, it is much less expensive to built 100 missiles with ten warheads each that 1,000 missiles with one warhead each. All the money saved can be invested in making the silos much harder and thus more difficult to destroy (meaning the enemy must fire more missiles at them to guarantee their destruction).

How it works The missile bus containing the warheads is designed so that it can make changes in its attitude and pitch between discharging warheads. It is then programmed so that, at the appropriate time, it can make those changes before discharging a warhead and can, thus, aim each warhead at a separate target. In theory it can aim all its warheads at different targets, in reality things are much more complex.

The problem is that the system has to discharge its warheads one at a time. It cannot discharge the whole lot at once. This puts a limit on how many it can discharge in the time available. Also, the degree of manoeuvering is strictly limited. So, the targets engaged by a single MIRV missile are limited toa relatively restricted footprint. Also, there are a lot more variable, many random and unpredictable, in aiming and discharging the MIRV bus which mean that MIRV missile-delivered RVs are a LOT less accurate than unitary RVs. So much so that if the launch distance is too far back from the target, the MIRVs are likely to miss by so much that they will be useless. So the distance at which the MIRV can discharge is severely limited. It should also be noted that the MIRV bus is very complex and very sensitive.

Effects on ABM MIRVs are also often promoted as a way of beating an ABM defense by "swamping it", apparently on the assumption that each descending RV would have to be destroyed individually. In fact, this is, again, not the case. Using nuclear-tipped ABMs, the relatively tightly clustered MIRVs would be taken out by a single shot. However, the simplest technique of eliminating MIRVs is, once again, to kill the bus before it discharges its warheads. This needs some extended range - the effect of MIRVs on the Nike-Zeus program was to upgrade the Zeus interceptor so that it had the range necessary to kill the MIRV bus before it discharged its warheads. That's why the range was increased from 250km (more than adequate to kill an MRV bus) to 740km (way more than adequate to kill any projected MIRV bus. Also, as a bonus, it needed only tiny amounts of damage or disturbance to render the MIRV bus ineffective. Far from being a way of beating an ABM defense, MIRVs were only credible in the absence of ABMs of adequate range.

and

Put in a nutshell, decoys don't work. That's about as simple as it gets. There are more than three dozen technologies available to distinguise decoys from real warheads. The decoy question was throughly investigated in the early 1960s and all the practical forms of decoy were discounted. By 1964, the decoy problem was essentially solved. Since that time, decoy developers have been trying to produce better decoys and the counter-decoy people have been devising ways of distinguising between the decoys and the real thing. At the moment, the filtration techniques are so far ahead that decoys have been discounted as a viable technique.

To work, a decoy would have to be exactly the same size, shape, weight, weight distribution, appearance, thermal characteristics and thermal distribution as a real warhead; if one's going to do that, why not just use a real warhead? By the way, before anybody repeats the old line "don't make the decoy look like a warhead, make the warhead look like a decoy", that was one of the earliest ideas that was tested. It doesn't work.

The British based an entire Polaris update around the use of decoys (it was called Chevaline). Chevaline ran years late and was horribly over-cost, the problems with the decoys being the primary and largest single cause of the problems. In fact, those problems were never solved. By the way, even using decoys from a ballistic missile is not as easy as it sounds; there's quite a few problems there that have never been solved either. Mostly because it wasn't worth spending money solving those problems when the decoys wouldn't work anyway.

[flateric]

First, I think that we should stop talking MIRVs here...I myself started this discussing if we can catch 'SR-72' with Giant Gladiators, but guys, stop it. We are discussing if Senior Skunk (c) building/will build this stuff.

I asking myself what for US needs such a costly program. As a recce aircraft, what will she overfly in 2020? Us? China? Does recce aircraft just need to have such a speedmark?

As a strike platform, what use of it if there will be already FALCON HCV - another big fat piece that Lockheed got already, not mention RATTLRS. Does it mean that government will put all high-speed eggs in one backet?

[sferrin]

I know it's not popular to mention this but once an ballistic missile is exo-atmospheric it can launch hundreds of decoys (aluminized balloons as there's no air resistance up there) and on the descent phase they've got MIRVs (multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles) - it's a bit like having a gun to shoot down your enemie's buckshot  , but it's damn good business for the defense contractors since it will never be put to the real test.

So Wrong.

On MIRVs:

Multiple Independently-Targeted Re-Entry Vehicles (MIRVs)

Why they exist Although MIRVs are often regarded. . .

Who is "Stuart Slade"?  Sounds like he's got some interesting things to say.

[sferrin]

First, I think that we should stop talking MIRVs here...I myself started this discussing if we can catch 'SR-72' with Giant Gladiators, but guys, stop it. We are discussing if Senior Skunk (c) building/will build this stuff.

I asking myself what for US needs such a costly program. As a recce aircraft, what will she overfly in 2020? Us? China? Does recce aircraft just need to have such a speedmark?

As a strike platform, what use of it if there will be already FALCON HCV - another big fat piece that Lockheed got already, not mention RATTLRS. Does it mean that government will put all high-speed eggs in one backet?

ATK has quite a few irons in the fire too.  Thing is if Lockheed is showing it can do the job and others haven't why wouldn't you go to Lockheed?

[flateric]

OK, just thought that one must spread butter on a sandvich with equal layer and mantain sense of contest and keep aerospace design school alive in three major players left on the market. Talking hypersonics, Lockheed didn't show them much (at least in open world) - at least their NASP efforts look rather lazy.

Talking about Groom Lake - didn't you ever thought that, having in a pocket half of a dozen (OK, dozen) classified projects, government just trying to show much bigger entertaiment to our spies, building new hangars and imitating weird cover-up activity - while half of Groom stuff just moving shuttle flights from Mojave and sitting there whole week ...say, drinking bear. Imitation of something larger happening, that's what I mean.

If we will build giant hangar in Severodvinsk, this fact itself will not definitely mean that we are building Super Typhoon armed with 100 Bulavas, but will cause deep thoughts at NSA office.

[MihoshiK]

Who is "Stuart Slade"?  Sounds like he's got some interesting things to say.

Stuart Slade is a defense analist for Forecast International.
For some REALLY interesting reading, read his three-part essay "The Nuclear Game" in the following links:

http://p076.ezboard.com/The-Nuclear-Game-One/fhistorypoliticsandcurrentaffairs68862frm2.showMessage?topicID=1.topic
http://p076.ezboard.com/The-Nuclear-Game-Two/fhistorypoliticsandcurrentaffairs68862frm2.showMessage?topicID=23.topic
http://p076.ezboard.com/The-Nuclear-Game-Three/fhistorypoliticsandcurrentaffairs68862frm2.showMessage?topicID=22.topic

And some more on MIRVs, MARVs and MRVs:

http://p076.ezboard.com/MRVs-MIRVs-and-MARVs/fhistorypoliticsandcurrentaffairs68862frm2.showMessage?topicID=122.topic

[RyanCrierie]

I just realized this just now reading the posts:

The fact that MIRV busses deploy their RVs one at a time over a period of time completely defeats the decoys, unless you release them at the same rate!

You can't just spam out 10 decoys at once; that's too obvious, and the ABM system will say "hahaha, who do you think you are fooling?" and reject it as an obvious fake.

[sferrin]

Who is "Stuart Slade"?  Sounds like he's got some interesting things to say.

Stuart Slade is a defense analist for Forecast International.
For some REALLY interesting reading, read his three-part essay "The Nuclear Game" in the following links:

http://p076.ezboard.com/The-Nuclear-Game-One/fhistorypoliticsandcurrentaffairs68862frm2.showMessage?topicID=1.topic
http://p076.ezboard.com/The-Nuclear-Game-Two/fhistorypoliticsandcurrentaffairs68862frm2.showMessage?topicID=23.topic
http://p076.ezboard.com/The-Nuclear-Game-Three/fhistorypoliticsandcurrentaffairs68862frm2.showMessage?topicID=22.topic

And some more on MIRVs, MARVs and MRVs:

http://p076.ezboard.com/MRVs-MIRVs-and-MARVs/fhistorypoliticsandcurrentaffairs68862frm2.showMessage?topicID=122.topic

Thanks!  Very interesting reading.

[Woody]

Thanks RyanCrierie for the Stuart Slade excepts. Very interesting and he sounds like he knows what he's talking about but they are still only opinions and unfortunately not everyone agrees with him. Admittedly below are only Wikipedia quotes as I don't currently have access to a huge library but they contain about as many facts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-ballistic_missile

Things changed dramatically with the introduction of Multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle (MIRV) warheads. Suddenly each launcher was throwing not one warhead, but several. The defense would still require a rocket for every warhead, as they would be re-entering over a wide space and could not be attacked by several warheads from a single antimissile rocket. Suddenly the defense was more expensive than offense: it was much less expensive to add more warheads, or even decoys, than it was to build the interceptor needed to shoot them down.

The Patriot antiaircraft missiles was the first deployed tactical ABM system, although it was not designed from the outset for that task and consequently had limitations. It was used in the 1991 Gulf War to attempt to intercept Iraqi Scud missiles. Post-war analyses show that the Patriot was much less effective than initially thought because of its radar and control system's inability to discriminate warheads from other objects when the Scud missiles broke up during reentry.

If any of you experts can actually explain how these new decoy detection systems work, that would be very helpful. Or how the mass of a opaque decoy in free fall in a vacuum can be determined remotely, since it would follow a ballistic trajectory regardless. Also I'm interested to know more about this Polaris Chevaline Update as one failed program doesn't necessarily invalidate an entire concept but it might explain a lot.

Back to the Mach 6 plane and why, if it is so easy to shoot down ballistic missiles (traveling at Mach 10+?), is it so hard to shoot down a hot plane (no quotes please)? Personally I think they'd both be pretty tricky but Chinese allegedly shot down a D-21 Mach 3 drone more than 30 years ago. Not meaning to be disparaging or inflammatory it would be quite shocking for a Mach 6 plane program to exist given the US military's declared funding situation and the existence of a now cancelled X-43 program. But please convince me otherwise, I crave enlightenment, It would be great, honestly.

Cheers, Woody

[RyanCrierie]

Thanks RyanCrierie for the Stuart Slade excepts. Very interesting and he sounds like he knows what he's talking about but they are still only opinions and unfortunately not everyone agrees with him. Admittedly below are only Wikipedia quotes as I don't currently have access to a huge library but they contain about as many facts.

Ah, wikipedia.

Care to explain how MIRVed missiles will "Swamp" the defenses if they cannot release all the MIRVs from the missile busses at once, but over a period of time? This makes it simply easy to extend the range of your ABM missiles so that you can have the range to hit the missile bus and kill all the MIRVs on that missile bus in one fell swoop.

Also, if you released say, 10 decoys in 1 minute; when the release rate of actual MIRVs is about 3 per minute (don't have exact specific numbers on MIRV release rates here); how is that going to even fool the defense? The decoys will be so blatantly easy to spot that you can easily filter them out. Hint; this reason is why modern jets have towed jammer/decoy pods; because modern missiles will automatically discard any target which is not moving forward at a high velocity. E.G; chaff does not move at 400 MPH forward. It's constantly decelerating after release and moving downwards; something that a real missile or aircraft does not do.

If any of you experts can actually explain how these new decoy detection systems work, that would be very helpful

There is one method I know of, and can describe easily. Basically, you have your ABM interceptor shoot forth a spray of liquid jello (I am not making this up); the jello will harden and crystalize in space; and then go forth and will shred any balloons in the missile/decoy cloud.

Or how the mass of a opaque decoy in free fall in a vacuum can be determined remotely, since it would follow a ballistic trajectory regardless.

Two ways of defeating this:

1.) Hit the missile bus before it deploys it's MIRVs/Decoys. Problem was solved in the 1960s with Spartan, which had a second stage which had the range to hit missile busses at long range.

2.) Let the RVs/Decoys enter the atmosphere; and let the atmosphere sort the decoys for you. Then engage the real RVs with SPRINT (again from the 1960s).

SPRINT was a productionized variant of HIBEX, and was designed to intercept ballistic missile warheads within the atmosphere at altitudes of up to 100,000+ feet. It was so fast that it went supersonic even before it left it's launch cell. 

Back to the Mach 6 plane and why, if it is so easy to shoot down ballistic missiles (traveling at Mach 10+?), is it so hard to shoot down a hot plane (no quotes please)?

Because the plane can actively manuver and change it's trajectory. A ballistic missile cannot do that. Case in point; one time a SR-71 was flying over Libya; and got shot at by a SA-5. The Pilot and RIO spent a few minutes talking as the missile came up over which method of evasion to use:

1.) Slowly turn away from the missile to make it miss it's precomputed intercept point.

2.) Increase speed to make the missile miss it's precomputed intercept point.

In the end, they chose to increase speed by 100 MPH.

[elmayerle]

For discriminating decoys, I can think of several things.  The most basic is to look for different thermal signatures.  A second approach, if you've got the equipment, is to hit evrything with a laser impulse sufficient to cause a reaction in decoys but not in heavier warheads.  Of course, the optimum approach, one the ABL is being developed at, is boost phase intercept, before the warhead bus has even separated from the missile.  Obviously, there are other ways of doing this, such as UAVs over the launch area with AMRAAMs or such to catch ballistic missiles early in flight when they're comparatively slow.