U.S. GMD missile defense system: naked king dress on a protracted sale
Sometimes it’s useful to look into the past. In particular, it is useful to read the statements of the American military and politicians about the very system of the US national missile defense that they were building, they were building ... and, in general, they did not build anything functional, unlike Cheburashka, Crocodile Genes and their friends. For the statements collected in one place, I would like to thank the authors of the blog Mostlymissiledefence (these are employees of two American universities - from Ithaca, New York, and College Park in Maryland) for their efforts to collect all the verbal nonsense that American politicians and generals broadcast this problem.
Let's start with Bill Clinton. On September 1, 2000, speaking at Georgetowns University, he specifically said:
"I just can’t draw a conclusion, based on the information I have today, that we are confident enough in the technology and operational effectiveness of the entire missile defense system to move forward towards deployment. Therefore, I decided not to authorize the deployment of a national missile defense system yet."
The first preachers of the "Witness Sect PRO"
Less than three years have passed, and "confidence" in the effectiveness of a non-existent missile defense system has already appeared, and what! Edward Aldridge, Under Secretary of Defense for Procurement, Technology and Supply, said March 18, 2003 (aggression against Iraq was on the agenda, from which the United States has not yet gotten out of it) that "efficiency is in the 90% range." There is nothing yet, but what effectiveness is already - miracles, and nothing more. At that time, 8 tests were carried out, half ended in failure, and the goals, to put it mildly, were extremely far from the level of decent SLBMs and ICBMs, and even SLBMs.
The then director of MDA (the ABM Agency, now led by Michael Griffin, a true guru of cutting the budget for high-tech myths), however, was somewhat more cautious, saying that "there are many things that go into the concept of efficiency and therefore everyone can be right" . In 2005, the new MDA Director, Lieutenant General G. Obering, was also very cautious: "We have more than zero chance to intercept, I believe, an incoming warhead, and this confidence will improve over time." Although, if you recall that these people talked about intercepting the BMD ICBMs, although such missile defense systems of the system are still unable to hit even in ideal polygon conditions, even these cautious statements can be counted as unfounded praise. The same Obering a little later, a year later, declared, "from what I saw and what I know about the system and its capabilities, I am very sure (of its capabilities)." Living and believing, as they say, is wonderful. It would be what. The missile defense system is still not a god, and here I would like real evidence that there is, what to believe. But they were not then, and no, and now practically - but faith was and is.
Admiral Keating, then head of the Northern Command of the Armed Forces of the country, joined the ranks of adherents of the "true faith" in the same 2006.
"When the president announces the limited readiness of the missile defense system, we will be ready as a shooter, if you want, to fulfill the mission to protect our country. And I am very confident in the effectiveness of this system."
The then President of the United States, Bush Jr., joined the ranks of members of a sect that preaches faith in a holy missile defense, on July 6, 2006, in response to a question by Larry King about the unsuccessful test of the DPRK by medium-range BR on the eve of (ICBM, as we recall, appeared in a first approximation among North Koreans in 2017) who declared: “If the missile goes to the United States, we have a missile defense system that will protect our country.” Well, if the then most long-range BR Korea’s BR was heading towards the United States, it would not have reached Guam, the range of North Korean combat missiles then really did not exceed 3,5 km, so Mr. Bush could lie even to the point of turning blue. A little later, in 2007, General Obering states:
"Does the system work? The answer is yes. Will it work against more complex threats in the future? We believe that it will."
In general, faith again. He later specified that faith applies to "about 1 or 2 missiles aimed at the United States."
Korean-Iranian threat, which was not
Later, statements were added to the creed of the sect of "witnesses of the US missile defense" that, together with the DPRK’s ICBM (then nonexistent), the system is capable of intercepting the nonexistent Iran ICBM.
"The likelihood that the GMD system will be able to intercept this today will be high for 90%."
- said MDA Director Patrick O'Reilly in response to a question from Trent Franks about countering "one ICBM going from Tehran to New York," December 1, 2010.
Well, yes, to protect yourself from something that does not exist in principle (the range of the Iranian infantry regiment is officially limited at all to 2000 km, although the energy sector really allows them long ranges, but there were no tests, and there is no question of ICBMs) that still can’t protect against such (ICBM) threats. In 2011, Bradley Roberts, U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear and Anti-Ballistic Missile Policies, states that "today's position is that we are well protected from entry-level ICBMs that could be deployed by states like North Korea and Iran , and which are small, relatively slow and lack sophisticated anti-missile defense capabilities. " What was meant by “slow” ICBMs should be asked Mr. Roberts, because any ICBMs launched at the same range along a standard path will have approximately the same speed at the same time. Another issue is the time it takes to set this speed, that is, the duration of the ATU (active portion of the trajectory), in terms of counteracting the missile defense with the initial portion of the flight, this is a very important thing - to reduce the ATE to a minimum, like our ICBMs of the 5th generation of combat missile systems (" Topol-M "," Yars "," Yars-S "," Yars-M "," Sarmat "and others). Did Mr. Roberts mean this? But the United States simply did not have the means to intercept in the initial section of the hypothetical Iranian ICBMs at that time, and even now, if they did not deploy them practically on the Persian Gulf coast. But this is not the main thing, the main thing is faith, it must be supported in the flock.
On May 9, 2013, Lieutenant General R. Formica, commanding the US Air Defense and Missile Defense, in response to a question from Senator Mark Udell about the ability of the GMD missile defense system to protect all of the United States, including the East Coast, from current missile threats and threats from the DPRK in the near future and Iran stated:
"We are truly confident in the ABM system's ability to protect the United States from a limited attack by North Korea and Iran today and in the near future."
In July of the same year, after an unsuccessful test of the FTG-07 system (the interceptor did not even separate from the carrier), he stated that he "remained true to his answer in the testimony he gave on May 9th."
Approximately in the same spirit, other Pentagon officials declared. In August of that year, the then Director of the MDA, Vice Admiral Syring, a man who was flying with him in the next seats on the plane asked (finding out who he was dealing with), saying, "Am I protected where I live?" The brave admiral immediately replied: "Of course, you are protected. Yes, you are protected. We are proud to protect you." Although here, probably, any military man in any country would have said something similar. Well, professionals do not spread about the existing problems by some first-comer in a taxi or buses or planes. More precisely, this happens only in liberal tweets in Russia - only there are all secret news taxi drivers tell the authors in secret that someone there secretly told.
The threat appeared on the horizon
In 2017, the U.S. missile threat from the DPRK finally became a reality (although not quite, because several times tested ICBMs are not yet combat ready and deployed) and lying about security from Korean missiles has become much less secure. By the way, the Americans are stubbornly continuing to bypass the question: why, if they fear only Iran and the DPRK, will they stir up the elements of the system primarily in our direction? Like the European segment, for example. Another question is that all these systems have no real effectiveness against the strategic nuclear forces of the Russian Federation, and the forces and means are such that even in the long term they are unable to help here, even if they could intercept our SLBMs and ICBMs, say, in the initial sections trajectories. It seems that these plans were generally imposed for some other reality. Like “Russia without Putin” and any analogue of it, where the liberal bacchanalia of the 90s continues, the outskirts are gradually falling, and the nuclear potential is being squeezed to the very 150 charges in 2015, as predicted by American analysts at the end of 90 -kh (often then this domestic rubbish was repeated by various domestic political boobies in the early 2000s, but then such speeches disappeared somewhere, boobies themselves and now smoke the broadcast.)
Nevertheless, in 2017, both General Joe Dunford (chairman of the U.S. Armed Forces School at that time and until recently), and General John Heiten (then commander of the STRATCOM of the U.S. Armed Forces), and General Greaves (MDA Director) amicably announced their confidence in protecting "all 50 states" from North Korean missiles. And Colonel Kik, who commanded the 100th National Missile Defense ABM brigade (the very same GMD missiles in Alaska and Vandenberg are subordinate to it), so declared "100% system efficiency"! Apparently, he really wanted to become a general. But he didn’t. General Greaves said at all that the country's defense against ICBMs was "proven through testing." Excuse me, general, what tests? Of all 20 tests of the system (50% of them were declared successful or partially successful, which is clearly not enough), none of them fired at an ICBM simulator target!
We will not talk about how the Americans provided all these tests and how close they are to reality, and how close to the Potemkin village. But even in the last test on March 25, 2019, by launching 2 anti-missiles, a target was declared to be hit, simulating a missile that only formally entered the class higher than medium-range missiles. Its range was about 6000 km (and the limit for the ballistic missile defense is 5500). At the same time, the tests turned out to be so “successful” that they instantly covered up the program for creating an advanced interceptor, its deployment, and the deployment of additional anti-missile systems with it, and the question was raised about a new program for creating an interceptor, and even a new anti-missile. If everything was so good, why all this?
But in 2017, there was no talk of such tests, but the generals hung noodles on the ears of the White House, Congress, and the people of the United States. Of all the active speakers, perhaps Admiral Hill, deputy director of MDA, can put a plus sign for quick wit - he said that “if your children today ask if we are protected from the DPRK, I’ll tell you that they need to answer what we have the strongest defense against such a threat. " Indeed, children do not need to be scared ahead of time, and the admiral didn’t seem to tell the truth, and there seems to be nothing to show him: “I took care of the children, and this is the end,” as one of the heroes of “12 chairs” said.
But, the question is, if you guys from Washington are so good at protecting against the threat of North Korean ICBMs, then why did you sharply exclude Kim Jong-un from the rogue and non-shaking leaders, and did Trump even call him a friend and a wonderful guy? Are Americans inflamed with love for Juche ideas? Is Donald Trump really cute young Kim? It may be attractive, but politicians do not put personal sympathies and relations above the interests of countries, otherwise they are not politicians. Everything is simpler: the threat has become real, and since it cannot be somehow leveled by military means, diplomacy must be activated. Americans talk only with the strong, and with those who are really capable of threatening them. Remember how Donald Trump dismissed his assistants (which later became known) for not daring not to call him when VV called. Putin, telling them that they didn’t call me when the guy called, the only one who could completely destroy the United States in a matter of hours ... Iran would have nuclear weapon and delivery vehicles of at least a conditionally intercontinental range like the Chinese, with which everything is foggy with the real range, or the North Korean, which are not deployed at all, would be the Iranian president as "a cool guy" as Kim, and Iran’s rakhbar would even become a source wisdom, which is not shameful to listen to the US president.
20 years have passed. Nothing changes
Several years have passed. Do you think something has changed in the missile defense sect? There is nothing. The brave military bravo report something like: "Everything is very simple for me. If a rogue country or other entity shoots ICBMs at us, we intercept it." This was expressed by Major Brewer from the 100th anti-missile defense brigade of the National Guard of Colorado, which was already mentioned above. Of course, it is clear that in any army oaks are needed in order to strengthen the defense, but not to the same extent!
All the same unforgettable Mike Griffin, now deputy defense minister for research and development, confidently declares the ABM system's ability to "solve any problems", and he "trusts its technical capabilities." He would have said something else! After all, he was at the forefront of the system, and the scheme by which all interested persons and structures profit from selling this "dress of the naked king" to America is directly related to it. But he immediately recovered, they say, any tasks, but they are not designed against Russia and even China. We, Griffin said, know how to do this with the help of current technologies, but this, they say, will require enormous resources, "and this is a budget discussion and not my competence." Well done! You can feel the experience of slipping between any raindrops, a large hardware school of maneuvering!
They keep the brand and General Hayten, who has now become deputy chairman of the OKNS. Now (in January of this year) he is 100% sure of the XNUMX% protection of the United States from North Korean missiles. Previously, when he was in lower positions, he was much less sure, it seems that the position allowed him to lie less, but now it is impossible. Although, on the other hand, he was referring to the current threat, and the DPRK does not have any missiles of intercontinental radius that are actually deployed and are on combat duty at the moment. And other "anti-missile" figures became somewhat more cautious in their assessments. So, Admiral Hill, director of MDA, said a couple of weeks ago that "he is confident in the current capabilities to defend against DPRK missiles, but in the next five years he’s not at all," so you need to give even more money to the GMD missile defense program. But you only recently stated that you are confident in the system now and in the future? Or did the memory wander off? No, corporations just need the money again, and businessmen will find generals and politicians how to thank them later.
Hmm, the tailor rogues from Andersen's fairy tale were able to sell the invisible dress to the king only once, and then - some child ruined the entire media effect. And American dodger tailors have been selling the same dress to all of America for more than twenty years on an ongoing basis - and everyone seems to like it. Talent, what can I say! Or just really want to cheat?
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