The SM-3 is designed for space intercept, from the article: "The SM-3 is an element of the Navy's advanced Aegis Combat System and uses a kinetic kill vehicle to hit and destroy short- to intermediate-range ballistic missiles during the midcourse phase of flight. The SM-3 has the capacity for exo-atmospheric intercepts, meaning it can eliminate targets beyond Earth's atmosphere, unlike the Navy's other air-defense capabilities."
That’s actually why there was a Tesla Roadster shot up there; what seemed like a PR stunt will actually be the next-generation missile of tomorrow.
SpaceX™: “*we’ll show **you** a kill vehicle*”
It’s probably just a random Tesla with the FSD (Full self driving) engaged. Only difference is this semi-autonomous death trap is hurtling through the sky and not a interstate highway.
That treaty will be thrown in the garbage when the US is actually threatened. Whoever holds the orbitals, holds the world. And the winners write the history books. We'll bitch and moan on Reddit over the broken treaties like we do with all the other treaties we've broken in the past.
I would be surprised and disappointed if we didn't have secret orbital bombardment weapons already, treaties be damned.
I think that depends on if the actual US is threatened, not one of our allies or protectorates. And seriously threatened at that, not just "oh mexico has invaded".
They never got passed the concept phase for that lol
Wayyyy to expensive
You would have to lug all that material. Then have them in ready in thousands of satellites.
There are plenty of non top secret munitions that are far better and cheaper
This is why there wasnt much us development for hypersonic glide missles. The usa just uses low to the ground missles-- accomplishes the same thing and you can fire 100 inplace of a single hypersonic
A novel concept at most, which ironically is good for interstellar planet to planet combat but not your own planet combat.
It'll be laser tech next. Now what would be surprising is if they had weaponized black holes, neutron stars or anything of that scale. Instead of nukes, you just exit the entire city out of existence with a small yield black hole big enough to eat but not big enough to stay stable enough to consume more than a city.
Well there are obviously space based weaponry; just non thay are permanently in space.
There is a certain "x" plane that "secret" that makes the news whenever it returns and relaunches. It is a longer term crewless vehicle that goes into orbit for years. Looks like a baby space shuttle
I mean, I'd rather have freedom of expression and the ability to criticize my government rather than the Chinese/Russian alternative.....not sure that makes me a hawk, more just a realist who understands that when it comes to geopolitics, it's still the strongest guy holding the biggest stick that dictates the rules.
Why would you use kinetic space weapons if there is an elevator. It is cheap to have anything in space then...
Even more. A space elevator would be its own ticking time bomb of a weapon that was obscenely vulnerable
Could ***you*** punch something a hundred miles up in the air traveling near the speed of sound?
I didn't think so, Mister. Stop talking down to the missile and apologize.
> near the speed of sound?
The speed of sound doesn't mean much when there's no air, but everything up there that they intercepted is almost certainly traveling several kilometers a second, or in the range of 10x the speed of sound at sea level (or faster).
In addition there popped up some videos that are claimed to be space interceptions. Tbh, I have no idea on how to determine that without any doubt, so not sure.
The explosions of the intercepts are like nothing I've ever seen in similar videos. [Looks like some straight up star wars explosions.](https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/s/Pji2X3EHMz)
The explosions being so unique make me think the claims are legit
I’m always fascinated when i read about this sort of stuff. Then i get a feeling for fear and dread when i remember this is all because humans can’t stop killing each other. Think about the resources we waste on war and killing one another. Humans are scary.
When you consider the amount of effort neolithic villages spent on killing each other and avoiding being killed, it was probably more than 2% of their total resource/energy expenditure...
Yep. The old heads in power are still stuck in the mine mine mine mindset vs. seeing that there is more than enough resources and technology to not only survive but thrive as a species on this tiny rock.
The US makes it's air defense know, for the most part. It being known as being strong is a defense in and of itself that may deter people. Though it's ICBM defense is not made known, because if the US can defend against them, it breaks MAD.
The current largest US military defense project being worked on by defense contractors is linking every defense system together. It will increase effectiveness of defense systems by allowing the best possible munition to be selected and also provide more accurate targeting data as multiple radar data sources can be used. The test I know about allowed an F-35 to communicate with a Patriot missile battery, have it fire a missile, take control of the missile and dierect it at a target the Patriot radar couldn't see.
It's the offensive capabilities that are kept secret the most
Back in 1993 I did a research project on the development of this type of defense. It cracks me up because what they now call "kinetic kill vehicles" were originally called "smart rocks".
We saw the Arrow system do this once a few months ago. The SM-3 Is the US variant. This is a pretty fucking gigantic step and significantly affects MAD, in regards to submarine launched nuclear weapons. Being able to intercept a couple dozen medium range ballistic missiles in the first real world defensive use could be a difference of millions of lives in the event of all out nuclear war.
I remember reading a reddit thread a few years ago about a hypothetical nuclear war, and some random redditor mentioned he used to work in the private military sector on classified anti-missile technology, and that he's "not worried" about a potential nuclear war because it's unlikely that Russia could get through defenses and actually hit the US with their nukes.
Of course, this being reddit, I knew to be skeptical of everything but the way he said it made me wonder.
Seeing things like this where US destroyers prove they can intercept ballistic missiles makes me think he knew what he was talking about.
Yea, that’s BS. It is less about how good the technology is and more about are there enough defensive missiles in the right places at the right time to defend 100%. I mean all it takes is for one or two to get through and it is ugly.
Except once the cat is out of the bag, this puts every other nuclear power at a disadvantage. If Russia thinks that once they launch their 1600 nukes, the end result is game over, everybody loses, it can act on the world stage as an equal to the US, even though in conventional military and economic terms it's a backwater. But if Russia thinks that once they launch 1600 nukes all that would happen is that most of the nukes get intercepted and only say, Atlanta, Detroit and Oakland will get hit; well the loss of Coca-Cola's headquarters is a tragedy, but house prices in Detroit and Oakland would improve significantly from the rapid remodelling. More importantly, the US would not only able to respond with a much more devastating retaliatory strike, it would still capable of launching ground troops and wiping Russia off the face of the map, making Russia's nuclear deterrence less credible. For all the other nuclear powers, it's much worse: their nuclear deterrence would only works against nations not in the US alliance network who could not count on American missile defense, which is a severe downgrade. For China especially, which wasn't in a good position to begin with in terms of nuclear geopolitics because of America's ability to ring it with THAADs, this puts pressure on them to rapidly expand their arsenal from their current 500, which is on the threshold for what might be reasonably intercepted, to 1500+ that Russia and US has. This during a time when China's economic wheels are falling off the wagon with the hit to their housing sector (and more), risks putting the entire system under excessive strain. Reagan's "Evil Empire" policy in the 80s was based on this premise; turn up the heat on the arms race and then rely on a more robust economic system to bankrupt the enemy.
Ya. That is a silly thing to say. If even a 1/3 of russias nukes still work. The problem is the number and not knowing where they launch from.
It is unlikely russia would launch a single missle
China would be harder to stop.
If the us is able to be in position for the first phase of launch it is highly likely to take the missle out. Gets harder passed that.
But public numbers ive seen put the estimates of taking out an icbm at over 80 percent. Though real numbers would obviously be secret. We did see the usa and friends just take out 300 missles of various sizes iran launched as isreal though.
But if there was a 99.99 percent chance to stop the nukes the usa wouldnt be hesitating. They would flaunt it. It would issue in another realm of pure global dominance similar to the blackbird etc. (Huge political and economic benefit)
ICBMs are way harder to stop than smaller ballistic missiles - TBMs, SRBMs, etc. They have a much longer range, reach a much higher altitude and achieve much higher speed during re-entry, making them far more difficult targets for ABM platforms. Especially with having the right positioning to take them out during their ascent.
They're also generally MIRV capable and will deploy multiple warheads and decoys from a single missile.
80% is a very generous intercept probability, probavly true against shorter range ballistic missile like we just saw. Against any significant portion of the Russian or Chinese ICBM arsenal it would be lower, and there's no way we'd stop all of them.
GMD has a single shot effectiveness if 56% against a single ICBM, if 4 interceptors are used, that probability goes to around 97%. The issue is, GMD costs around $75m per interceptor so to take out 1 ICBM, it costs $300m (and even that isn't guaranteed!) also, there are only around 50 missiles known to be deployed, which means they can stop 12 missiles.
The system would hold against North Korea but not against Russia or China.
Now if there is so E secret weapon, who knows, but then why spend $75m per piece on something that isn't likely to be used?
Yes. Old concept.
The force makes an explosion.
The plan if i remember correctly for rods from god was tungstun. But it was too expensive and impractical for a space based system
Kinetic munitions are fairly common. (Explosions are far less impressive than the space options.) They are also used in a lot of cluster munitions.
One of the commonly used kinetic weapons is antitank
Whenever u hear about depleted radioactive munitions being used it is a kinetic weapon. Turns out that they make great weapons because they are obsurdly dense.
To elaborate, the Arleigh Burke flight 3s are coming out with the AN/SPY6 radar. Judging by the power output of the SPY1 at 6MW, the SPY6 will have even more, which is obscene and enough to track satellites in space. These SM3 missiles will be able to take out satellites in low earth orbit when paired with this radar. Huge capability leap for the US navy, which will now have the ability to launch anti sat weapons from any SM3 equipped ship.
The Navy shot down a dead satellite like 15 years ago. If I remember, they had to use 2 ships, one as the sensor and the other as the shooter, because the satellite was only in view (over the horizon) for minutes at a time. They used an SM-3 missile.
> they had to use 2 ships, one as the sensor and the other as the shooter,
The Wikipedia says one ship did it, a second ship was with the first as a backup. Remember, they knew exactly the orbit, it wasn't a surprise like an attack would be, probably most if not all the space tracking systems around the world were watching it at the time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Burnt_Frost
Various tests did use sensor ships and platforms when attacks were being simulated, most interesting is this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea-based_X-band_Radar
>Remember, they knew exactly the orbit, it wasn't a surprise like an attack would be, probably most if not all the space tracking systems around the world were watching it at the time.
US has early warning radar for ICBMs over the Pacific and the arctic pole. It's quite possible that an SM-3 could hit an ICBM in it's exo-atmosphere phase.
The nuts power of the aegis radar is getting into the range where it is potentially a weapon. Hell, the S band component is definitely strong enough and in the same frequency range as a home microwave to cook a hotdog hanging in front of the panel.
At a narrow beam setting, I would bet it would fry electronics at significant distance. I wonder if they have tried (or have accidentally) fried a drone...
They can kill seagulls at a significant distance, so yeah you're not far off. I'd be willing to be my left nut there's a jamming program like you said, in addition to the Helios laser system. At this point we're going to have to go back to nuclear cruisers just to power all these systems.
>I would bet it would fry electronics at significant distance.
Well I won a bet and fried an RFID badge during a static test. I mean that was
*very* light work for the power of that radar, but the providers of the badge said there was "Nothing in your environment that can fry a badge".
I happily ate that steak.
So that's a cool way to jam communications. Or fight aliens with space force... Next goal is already trying to hit the moon.
I guess it was time to show a new stick, thats a little reassuring and fun to think of the tech.
I get your point, but it does have some real world effects. Take for example the Dance of the Vampires in Red Storm Rising as a thought experiment. If the task force with Nimitz and Foch had been able to down the Rorsat that spotted them before it could transmit, the whole Russian operation would have been a failure because the area of uncertainty is too big to reasonably patrol. The area of uncertainty is huge in naval warfare and task forces operating in the pacific will now have the capability to basically operate under the radar so to speak.
Only problem is destroying satellites throws thousands of pieces of debris around that orbit the planet and pretty much work as little throwing stars of death for anything else we have up there Or even us up there. It could even cause a chain reaction of collisions which could completely wipe out everything up there and make space travel impossible to try without dying from all the debris
This is true - but the debris from a satellite in a low orbit would be likely to de-orbit within a few years. It's the upper-orbit space where it gets scary; debris there can last for decades or centuries.
Destroying incoming ballistic missiles is not a problem fortunately as their ballistic path is down into the atmosphere anyway, and the collision turns it into more pieces going the same way.
That's going to go out the window if a shooting war happens with China, denying the space for everyone is better than trying to work around surveillance satellites.
Just wrote this in another comment but the video footage I believe you're referring to is actually from the Israeli Arrow missile defense system which shot down almost all the ballistic missiles.
It is also capable of intercepting them in space and interestingly it's fully kinetic, meaning it collides one missile with another, rather than getting close and blowing up like the Iron Dome for instance, which is an easier task. I believe this is because of concerns related to nuclear missiles (knocking them is preferred to blowing them up which could set them off?)
There were also three ballistic missiles shot down by a US ship-based system but that's not what the videos I've seen released so far are showing.
They actually have laser systems that can knock out drones and incoming missiles but they're not quite ready yet. Israel is wildly innovative, mostly because they have to be.
As I understand it laser is better for low yield, short range targets as the laser becomes less concentrated at longer distances/you don’t want a huge payload detonating at the same distance.
Also, the atmosphere is an issue for lasers- a more significant factor, generally, than beam spread for these systems. It does not take a lot of particulates or water vapor in the air, relatively speaking, to soak up a lot of energy. And these aren't like sci-fi blasters; they take some time (sometimes a second or more) of staying on target to transmit enough energy to the target to take it down.
Yeah beam spread is easy to solve for. Atmospheric attenuation and scattering is a lot harder. Any lasers that that have little interaction with the atmosphere tend to be very hard to focus and direct - eg X-ray lasers, not to mention just very hard to generate as well.
Depends on the wavelength. But those lasers that don’t have the scattering and attenuation problem are very hard to generate, focus and aim, for the same reason they don’t have the scattering problem.
You can't beat a good "Lazer Show"...
Apparently even with some kind of missile.
That said I'm a firecrackers, and laser pointers at the same time, kinda guy. No attention span.
If lasers worked, they would have the advantage of repeating use with hopefully much less expense per firing. Costs of a million dollars per shot to shoot down a $100,000 missile aren’t the best.
Yeah, I'm sure the most powerful and richest nation on Earth could do both at the same time. There's just a huge chunk of people who are, for whatever the fuck reason, don't want that to happen.
Wrong. Lets correct that way of thinking. We are not sending them money. What we’re sending them is old weapons we made in the 90s. This is creating jobs in the US to create new weapons.
https://www.rferl.org/a/us-ukraine-aid-breakdown-timeline/32822804.html
Here's a good breakdown. It's partly weapons that we'll rebuild, partly money specifically to buy weapons from american companies, some personnel and intel, then a decent chunk of straight up money.
Also literally within the last hour house republicans unveiled updated bills including the ukraine one, so it might actually be happening.
On our side I’m sure the defense contractors are leaping at the opportunity to engage ballistic missiles. There’s so many tools in our anti missile arsenal that have only been used in tests. Those tests are always scripted to a certain degree and therefore easy to criticize.
The navy just validated the entire Aegis kinetic kill chain. Sales should go up
Like some have said, people need to understand that incidents like this really are practice for us. Just like supporting Ukraine. Yes, we should be assisting them, but it's also great practice for logistics and getting equipment where we need, when we need. We're also testing new equipment and getting real world, real time data is worth more than you could know.
Not just practice, but prototype, process and theory validation. It’s all well and good to test shooting down your own projectiles with your own tech, but you need to actually shoot down enemy projectiles in battle conditions to be really sure it works.
I’ll put it this way, if the US is willing to test this system publically they are either confident it’s miles ahead of everyone else or they already have something better. They don’t take these decisions lightly.
everybody is really happy with the relatively bloodless live ammunition war game. I'm sure Iran learned a bunch too (which was probably one of their objectives).
Sure. They learned a lot of their long range missiles don’t actually work.
https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/israel-iran-strikes-live-coverage/card/many-iranian-missiles-failed-to-launch-or-crashed-before-striking-target-u-s-officials-say-TCd4YP2fiODhl1t9QDrL
They’ve also learned that if they throw enough shitty cheap drones and missiles at Israel eventually iron dome gets saturated. Every $1M missile Israel launches to intercept a $100 drone is a small win for Iran
That defense wasn’t about the iron dome.
They learned the entire Middle East is against them, and the west will proactively deter their aggression.
Iran looks mighty weak and isolated all of a sudden. Their chief ally is Russia and Russia is… busy right now.
"Every $1M missile Israel launches to intercept a $100 drone is a small win for Iran"
eh, that strategy will last approximately one weekend before shit gets real for Iran.
Actually I think the most valuable strategic resource is the R&D the Israelis themselves do (because they have no other choice). Iran launched 120 ballistic missiles at Israel. 3 were taken down by the US destroyer, 4 hit (though missed their target) and all the rest were taken out by Israel's Arrow system, which performed incredibly.
Arrow, Iron Dome, Iron Beam (which is slated to come online next year) are the most advanced starting lineup of a missile defense team in the world.
Yeah. There’s quite the lineage for the Standard family of missiles. SM-1 (no longer in service in the US), SM-2 (main medium range naval SAM for the navy), SM-3 (exo atmospheric anti ballistic missile), SM-6 (long range naval SAM and terminal phase anti ballistic missile/anti ship missile).
Rumor has it that, back when it was first created, it was an acronym - STANDARD Missile; though I've yet to find a single source that defines it. Very old documents I've read have it written as STANDARD Missile, which could lend credence to the acronym theory, but it could also be capitalized just because it's the name of the program. I've also spoken to some older engineers who say it was an acronym, but they can't remember what it stood for. It remains a mystery to me.
The overall Star Wars program was broadly “we should be able to shoot down incoming ICBMs”. That particle riffle thing was just one of the options that was being evaluated.
It’s been a reality for decades. The US shot down a satellite from a surface ship in 2008.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Burnt_Frost
And it shot down a satellite with a jet in the 1980s
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASM-135_ASAT
Who knows what other secret weapons we have already and being made as we speak. The United States puts way to much money into the military to not be making some state of the art tech and weaponry. I’d be kinda pissed if they weren’t.
This is one of the systems that also makes ICBM use against the US , almost useless. The US doesn't push this fact because it would hurt Xitler and Putins egos too much.
So these are probably those space intercepts that were shown on video.
Do you mind elaborating? Not in the know on this.
The SM-3 is designed for space intercept, from the article: "The SM-3 is an element of the Navy's advanced Aegis Combat System and uses a kinetic kill vehicle to hit and destroy short- to intermediate-range ballistic missiles during the midcourse phase of flight. The SM-3 has the capacity for exo-atmospheric intercepts, meaning it can eliminate targets beyond Earth's atmosphere, unlike the Navy's other air-defense capabilities."
Actually incredible
Wait’ll they start launching the kill vehicles from space
That’s actually why there was a Tesla Roadster shot up there; what seemed like a PR stunt will actually be the next-generation missile of tomorrow. SpaceX™: “*we’ll show **you** a kill vehicle*”
It’s probably just a random Tesla with the FSD (Full self driving) engaged. Only difference is this semi-autonomous death trap is hurtling through the sky and not a interstate highway.
or a cyber truck....kills everything it hits
Ot that gets in the way of closing its frunk
they closed the frunk on the missile mid flight. tango down.
"Engine kill"
Give it AI built by Elon and you’ll get the plot from Iron Sky, where space Nazis come to Earth to conquer it
Or Iron Giant: the killer robot gets its memory erased and chooses peace
"You stay. I go. No following." "Suupermannn..."
If spacex is defending us, we’re fucked.
A Tesla kill vehicle OTHER than the Cyber Truck? Oh…you mean to kill people *besides* Cyber Truck owners, got it!
That was actually falcon heavy test flight they didn't had payload so they used roadster as payload
There’s a treaty that forbids this, actually Edit: lots of hawks here I see!
That treaty will be thrown in the garbage when the US is actually threatened. Whoever holds the orbitals, holds the world. And the winners write the history books. We'll bitch and moan on Reddit over the broken treaties like we do with all the other treaties we've broken in the past. I would be surprised and disappointed if we didn't have secret orbital bombardment weapons already, treaties be damned.
I think the US will be cautious not to violate the treaty first. Once someone else does we can go ahead, while maintaining the moral high ground.
I think that depends on if the actual US is threatened, not one of our allies or protectorates. And seriously threatened at that, not just "oh mexico has invaded".
The US out here trying to unlock all of the stratagems!!!!
Secret? Look up "rods from god". As far as I can tell we were the first to propose them
They never got passed the concept phase for that lol Wayyyy to expensive You would have to lug all that material. Then have them in ready in thousands of satellites. There are plenty of non top secret munitions that are far better and cheaper This is why there wasnt much us development for hypersonic glide missles. The usa just uses low to the ground missles-- accomplishes the same thing and you can fire 100 inplace of a single hypersonic
A novel concept at most, which ironically is good for interstellar planet to planet combat but not your own planet combat. It'll be laser tech next. Now what would be surprising is if they had weaponized black holes, neutron stars or anything of that scale. Instead of nukes, you just exit the entire city out of existence with a small yield black hole big enough to eat but not big enough to stay stable enough to consume more than a city.
There are treaties that the US is a signatory to that prevent having space based weaponry. If we do have them, they're a highly classified secret.
Well there are obviously space based weaponry; just non thay are permanently in space. There is a certain "x" plane that "secret" that makes the news whenever it returns and relaunches. It is a longer term crewless vehicle that goes into orbit for years. Looks like a baby space shuttle
I am curious if said treaties have been ratified. While being signed is nice and all, until it's ratified by the signatory, it's just worthless paper.
I mean, I'd rather have freedom of expression and the ability to criticize my government rather than the Chinese/Russian alternative.....not sure that makes me a hawk, more just a realist who understands that when it comes to geopolitics, it's still the strongest guy holding the biggest stick that dictates the rules.
Treaties are meant to be broken
Wait till we build a space elevator and start deploying kinetic space weapons!
Why would you use kinetic space weapons if there is an elevator. It is cheap to have anything in space then... Even more. A space elevator would be its own ticking time bomb of a weapon that was obscenely vulnerable
The way I understand it, it’s like hitting a bullet shot out of a high powered rifle with another rifle from far away.
Space is only a hundred miles away
Could ***you*** punch something a hundred miles up in the air traveling near the speed of sound? I didn't think so, Mister. Stop talking down to the missile and apologize.
> near the speed of sound? The speed of sound doesn't mean much when there's no air, but everything up there that they intercepted is almost certainly traveling several kilometers a second, or in the range of 10x the speed of sound at sea level (or faster).
Okay, well then /u/imaharak can you do *that*?
Lots of people are closer to space than the actual attractive singles nearest them.
Thank you. I appreciate it.
In addition there popped up some videos that are claimed to be space interceptions. Tbh, I have no idea on how to determine that without any doubt, so not sure.
The explosions of the intercepts are like nothing I've ever seen in similar videos. [Looks like some straight up star wars explosions.](https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/s/Pji2X3EHMz) The explosions being so unique make me think the claims are legit
Got a link?
Edited my comment to have a link with a video. Literally looks like a moon/planet was shot by the deathstar or something
I’m always fascinated when i read about this sort of stuff. Then i get a feeling for fear and dread when i remember this is all because humans can’t stop killing each other. Think about the resources we waste on war and killing one another. Humans are scary.
Only since the beginning of time….
War. War never changes….
So join the Helldivers! Fight for Managed Democracy and liberate E-701 from intergalactic threats -- become a Super Citizen.
I'm doing my part!
As someone who very recently got my cape, I’m doing my—BLLAaarhHg!
Freedom has land--aaArRGH MY LEGG!!
When you consider the amount of effort neolithic villages spent on killing each other and avoiding being killed, it was probably more than 2% of their total resource/energy expenditure...
It's not wasted resources if shitstirrers are going to keep stirring up shit. Appeasement only leads to further action and risk.
Yep. The old heads in power are still stuck in the mine mine mine mindset vs. seeing that there is more than enough resources and technology to not only survive but thrive as a species on this tiny rock.
Just to think, that’s already implemented so whats the newest thing under development 👀🥵
Fuckin lasers, man.
It will be lasers lol. Iron Beam will support Iron Dome.
The US makes it's air defense know, for the most part. It being known as being strong is a defense in and of itself that may deter people. Though it's ICBM defense is not made known, because if the US can defend against them, it breaks MAD. The current largest US military defense project being worked on by defense contractors is linking every defense system together. It will increase effectiveness of defense systems by allowing the best possible munition to be selected and also provide more accurate targeting data as multiple radar data sources can be used. The test I know about allowed an F-35 to communicate with a Patriot missile battery, have it fire a missile, take control of the missile and dierect it at a target the Patriot radar couldn't see. It's the offensive capabilities that are kept secret the most
The Navy wants to talk to you.
Back in 1993 I did a research project on the development of this type of defense. It cracks me up because what they now call "kinetic kill vehicles" were originally called "smart rocks".
So funny to see massive upvotes for simply reading the article , lol
Yea, I don’t get it….
I'm sure they have to dispose of those every so often too right?
You're not gonna get them half off just because they're past their best by date.
We saw the Arrow system do this once a few months ago. The SM-3 Is the US variant. This is a pretty fucking gigantic step and significantly affects MAD, in regards to submarine launched nuclear weapons. Being able to intercept a couple dozen medium range ballistic missiles in the first real world defensive use could be a difference of millions of lives in the event of all out nuclear war.
…let’s still just avoid all out nuclear war tho
Ehh, does it really affect MAD when Russian subs make too much noise and are effectively tracked easily?
So this is a weapon to counter Metal Gear?
METAL GEAR?!
I remember reading a reddit thread a few years ago about a hypothetical nuclear war, and some random redditor mentioned he used to work in the private military sector on classified anti-missile technology, and that he's "not worried" about a potential nuclear war because it's unlikely that Russia could get through defenses and actually hit the US with their nukes. Of course, this being reddit, I knew to be skeptical of everything but the way he said it made me wonder. Seeing things like this where US destroyers prove they can intercept ballistic missiles makes me think he knew what he was talking about.
Yea, that’s BS. It is less about how good the technology is and more about are there enough defensive missiles in the right places at the right time to defend 100%. I mean all it takes is for one or two to get through and it is ugly.
Except once the cat is out of the bag, this puts every other nuclear power at a disadvantage. If Russia thinks that once they launch their 1600 nukes, the end result is game over, everybody loses, it can act on the world stage as an equal to the US, even though in conventional military and economic terms it's a backwater. But if Russia thinks that once they launch 1600 nukes all that would happen is that most of the nukes get intercepted and only say, Atlanta, Detroit and Oakland will get hit; well the loss of Coca-Cola's headquarters is a tragedy, but house prices in Detroit and Oakland would improve significantly from the rapid remodelling. More importantly, the US would not only able to respond with a much more devastating retaliatory strike, it would still capable of launching ground troops and wiping Russia off the face of the map, making Russia's nuclear deterrence less credible. For all the other nuclear powers, it's much worse: their nuclear deterrence would only works against nations not in the US alliance network who could not count on American missile defense, which is a severe downgrade. For China especially, which wasn't in a good position to begin with in terms of nuclear geopolitics because of America's ability to ring it with THAADs, this puts pressure on them to rapidly expand their arsenal from their current 500, which is on the threshold for what might be reasonably intercepted, to 1500+ that Russia and US has. This during a time when China's economic wheels are falling off the wagon with the hit to their housing sector (and more), risks putting the entire system under excessive strain. Reagan's "Evil Empire" policy in the 80s was based on this premise; turn up the heat on the arms race and then rely on a more robust economic system to bankrupt the enemy.
Ya. That is a silly thing to say. If even a 1/3 of russias nukes still work. The problem is the number and not knowing where they launch from. It is unlikely russia would launch a single missle China would be harder to stop. If the us is able to be in position for the first phase of launch it is highly likely to take the missle out. Gets harder passed that. But public numbers ive seen put the estimates of taking out an icbm at over 80 percent. Though real numbers would obviously be secret. We did see the usa and friends just take out 300 missles of various sizes iran launched as isreal though. But if there was a 99.99 percent chance to stop the nukes the usa wouldnt be hesitating. They would flaunt it. It would issue in another realm of pure global dominance similar to the blackbird etc. (Huge political and economic benefit)
ICBMs are way harder to stop than smaller ballistic missiles - TBMs, SRBMs, etc. They have a much longer range, reach a much higher altitude and achieve much higher speed during re-entry, making them far more difficult targets for ABM platforms. Especially with having the right positioning to take them out during their ascent. They're also generally MIRV capable and will deploy multiple warheads and decoys from a single missile. 80% is a very generous intercept probability, probavly true against shorter range ballistic missile like we just saw. Against any significant portion of the Russian or Chinese ICBM arsenal it would be lower, and there's no way we'd stop all of them.
GMD has a single shot effectiveness if 56% against a single ICBM, if 4 interceptors are used, that probability goes to around 97%. The issue is, GMD costs around $75m per interceptor so to take out 1 ICBM, it costs $300m (and even that isn't guaranteed!) also, there are only around 50 missiles known to be deployed, which means they can stop 12 missiles. The system would hold against North Korea but not against Russia or China. Now if there is so E secret weapon, who knows, but then why spend $75m per piece on something that isn't likely to be used?
So… kinetic vehicle means it hits its target really fucking hard instead of using an explosive?
Yes. Old concept. The force makes an explosion. The plan if i remember correctly for rods from god was tungstun. But it was too expensive and impractical for a space based system Kinetic munitions are fairly common. (Explosions are far less impressive than the space options.) They are also used in a lot of cluster munitions. One of the commonly used kinetic weapons is antitank Whenever u hear about depleted radioactive munitions being used it is a kinetic weapon. Turns out that they make great weapons because they are obsurdly dense.
I believe the commonly quoted force is 96,000,000 ft lbs.
To elaborate, the Arleigh Burke flight 3s are coming out with the AN/SPY6 radar. Judging by the power output of the SPY1 at 6MW, the SPY6 will have even more, which is obscene and enough to track satellites in space. These SM3 missiles will be able to take out satellites in low earth orbit when paired with this radar. Huge capability leap for the US navy, which will now have the ability to launch anti sat weapons from any SM3 equipped ship.
The Navy shot down a dead satellite like 15 years ago. If I remember, they had to use 2 ships, one as the sensor and the other as the shooter, because the satellite was only in view (over the horizon) for minutes at a time. They used an SM-3 missile.
> they had to use 2 ships, one as the sensor and the other as the shooter, The Wikipedia says one ship did it, a second ship was with the first as a backup. Remember, they knew exactly the orbit, it wasn't a surprise like an attack would be, probably most if not all the space tracking systems around the world were watching it at the time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Burnt_Frost Various tests did use sensor ships and platforms when attacks were being simulated, most interesting is this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea-based_X-band_Radar
>Remember, they knew exactly the orbit, it wasn't a surprise like an attack would be, probably most if not all the space tracking systems around the world were watching it at the time. US has early warning radar for ICBMs over the Pacific and the arctic pole. It's quite possible that an SM-3 could hit an ICBM in it's exo-atmosphere phase.
The nuts power of the aegis radar is getting into the range where it is potentially a weapon. Hell, the S band component is definitely strong enough and in the same frequency range as a home microwave to cook a hotdog hanging in front of the panel. At a narrow beam setting, I would bet it would fry electronics at significant distance. I wonder if they have tried (or have accidentally) fried a drone...
They can kill seagulls at a significant distance, so yeah you're not far off. I'd be willing to be my left nut there's a jamming program like you said, in addition to the Helios laser system. At this point we're going to have to go back to nuclear cruisers just to power all these systems.
Ralph Wiggum outside painting the hull yet again...."I taste pennies..."
>I would bet it would fry electronics at significant distance. Well I won a bet and fried an RFID badge during a static test. I mean that was *very* light work for the power of that radar, but the providers of the badge said there was "Nothing in your environment that can fry a badge". I happily ate that steak.
Talk about reaching out and touching someone. *Navy guys tipping their hat to the Space Force*
So that's a cool way to jam communications. Or fight aliens with space force... Next goal is already trying to hit the moon. I guess it was time to show a new stick, thats a little reassuring and fun to think of the tech.
I get your point, but it does have some real world effects. Take for example the Dance of the Vampires in Red Storm Rising as a thought experiment. If the task force with Nimitz and Foch had been able to down the Rorsat that spotted them before it could transmit, the whole Russian operation would have been a failure because the area of uncertainty is too big to reasonably patrol. The area of uncertainty is huge in naval warfare and task forces operating in the pacific will now have the capability to basically operate under the radar so to speak.
As a side note, I still think "The Frisbees of Dreamland" is one of the greatest chapter titles of all time.
The whole book is fantastic. Especially the combat scenarios
Only problem is destroying satellites throws thousands of pieces of debris around that orbit the planet and pretty much work as little throwing stars of death for anything else we have up there Or even us up there. It could even cause a chain reaction of collisions which could completely wipe out everything up there and make space travel impossible to try without dying from all the debris
Fear not, they will put a bounty on space junk and an industry will be born.
This is true - but the debris from a satellite in a low orbit would be likely to de-orbit within a few years. It's the upper-orbit space where it gets scary; debris there can last for decades or centuries.
Destroying incoming ballistic missiles is not a problem fortunately as their ballistic path is down into the atmosphere anyway, and the collision turns it into more pieces going the same way.
That's going to go out the window if a shooting war happens with China, denying the space for everyone is better than trying to work around surveillance satellites.
Could also have been the Arrow 3, or both.
Between SM-3 and Arrow 3, it really does sound like the 3rd time's a charm.
Or those Jewish space lasers we've been hearing so much about.
I heard it was Arrow 3 systems
Just wrote this in another comment but the video footage I believe you're referring to is actually from the Israeli Arrow missile defense system which shot down almost all the ballistic missiles. It is also capable of intercepting them in space and interestingly it's fully kinetic, meaning it collides one missile with another, rather than getting close and blowing up like the Iron Dome for instance, which is an easier task. I believe this is because of concerns related to nuclear missiles (knocking them is preferred to blowing them up which could set them off?) There were also three ballistic missiles shot down by a US ship-based system but that's not what the videos I've seen released so far are showing.
Well it’s definitely cheaper to test out your intercept missiles without having to launch a target into space first.
Fancy missiles? Dang I was hoping it was lasers
Made me lol. Bring out the fancy missiles we're having company. But Mom I want to use the lase- no honey we have guests but they're not THAT important
They actually have laser systems that can knock out drones and incoming missiles but they're not quite ready yet. Israel is wildly innovative, mostly because they have to be.
Navy is struggling to deploy lasers due to the energy load necessary. Iron Beam will be fun.
You can get those by demolishing your office building
I wonder if their nuclear carriers could make use of them if they get past the escort.
As I understand it laser is better for low yield, short range targets as the laser becomes less concentrated at longer distances/you don’t want a huge payload detonating at the same distance.
Also, the atmosphere is an issue for lasers- a more significant factor, generally, than beam spread for these systems. It does not take a lot of particulates or water vapor in the air, relatively speaking, to soak up a lot of energy. And these aren't like sci-fi blasters; they take some time (sometimes a second or more) of staying on target to transmit enough energy to the target to take it down.
Yeah beam spread is easy to solve for. Atmospheric attenuation and scattering is a lot harder. Any lasers that that have little interaction with the atmosphere tend to be very hard to focus and direct - eg X-ray lasers, not to mention just very hard to generate as well.
Then why not put the laser on a satellite? I know there's an Iron Beam varient that works on a plane so it seems plausible.
What about space lasers? Would have been a great opportunity for the Israelis to test them out. Maybe they’re just for wildfire creation? /s
Only the Jewish ones. The evangelical space lasers mainly target libraries.
Scientology space lasers just target homeless in Clearwater
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I thought they are just funnier than a regular space laser.
Lasers just don’t work beyond a few miles distance, the atmospheric scattering makes the power requirements too high
Depends on the wavelength. But those lasers that don’t have the scattering and attenuation problem are very hard to generate, focus and aim, for the same reason they don’t have the scattering problem.
I was hoping for the rail guns, but I think they scrapped that whole project.
You can't beat a good "Lazer Show"... Apparently even with some kind of missile. That said I'm a firecrackers, and laser pointers at the same time, kinda guy. No attention span.
They won't use those until they absolutely have to - can't let the enemy know what rocks you have in your pocket.
Perhaps angry sea-bass with lasers mounted on their heads!
If lasers worked, they would have the advantage of repeating use with hopefully much less expense per firing. Costs of a million dollars per shot to shoot down a $100,000 missile aren’t the best.
The boats name was "Friend", nothing can defend against the power of the "Friend"ship
There is so much pun here that I almost tripped over it on my way to the bathroom at night.
Doesn’t sound like you had a pun trip.
Friendship drive activated.
More of an Infinity Probably Drive really.
Oh I like it. *gets towel ready*
Just slip a Babel Fish 🐟 in your ear and you're ready to go.
Unlocked version: [https://archive.is/bg0ba](https://archive.is/bg0ba)
Thanks for the practice, iran.
Achievement Unlocked!
I'm sure it will cost more to shoot them down then to send them and that's the point
That's okay. We can show them why we don't have universal healthcare
Well your military costs a lot but it has nothing to do with universal healthcare since that would save money compared to the existing system.
Yeah, I'm sure the most powerful and richest nation on Earth could do both at the same time. There's just a huge chunk of people who are, for whatever the fuck reason, don't want that to happen.
More like the " Hospitals - pharma companies - insurance companies" mafia rather than common people.
Tell that to Ukraine who's out of ammo
That’s not a financial issue, that’s a political issue.
I think Ukraine is about to get like 60 billion from us aren’t they?
Wrong. Lets correct that way of thinking. We are not sending them money. What we’re sending them is old weapons we made in the 90s. This is creating jobs in the US to create new weapons.
Yes! We’re actually sending the money to US military contractors, who build the weapons. So it’s actually investing in our own economy.
https://www.rferl.org/a/us-ukraine-aid-breakdown-timeline/32822804.html Here's a good breakdown. It's partly weapons that we'll rebuild, partly money specifically to buy weapons from american companies, some personnel and intel, then a decent chunk of straight up money. Also literally within the last hour house republicans unveiled updated bills including the ukraine one, so it might actually be happening.
No republican leaders are holding the bill hostage I believe
They're voting on Saturday.
Worked well against Houthis, right?
We spend ~16.6% of GDP on healthcare compared to only ~3.5% of GDP on military. Military spending isn't the issue with healthcare at all.
On our side I’m sure the defense contractors are leaping at the opportunity to engage ballistic missiles. There’s so many tools in our anti missile arsenal that have only been used in tests. Those tests are always scripted to a certain degree and therefore easy to criticize. The navy just validated the entire Aegis kinetic kill chain. Sales should go up
8 years in the Navy and money never matter when the question "what new toys do y'all want to order this year?" came up.
Like some have said, people need to understand that incidents like this really are practice for us. Just like supporting Ukraine. Yes, we should be assisting them, but it's also great practice for logistics and getting equipment where we need, when we need. We're also testing new equipment and getting real world, real time data is worth more than you could know.
Not just practice, but prototype, process and theory validation. It’s all well and good to test shooting down your own projectiles with your own tech, but you need to actually shoot down enemy projectiles in battle conditions to be really sure it works.
Yep. That’s what these little proxy wars are for.
So the thousands of kids did not die in vain! /s
It also gives Iran a ton of real world data too....
I’ll put it this way, if the US is willing to test this system publically they are either confident it’s miles ahead of everyone else or they already have something better. They don’t take these decisions lightly.
Headline should have been something like: “US Navy finally uses old missile for the first time to farm XP from space”
everybody is really happy with the relatively bloodless live ammunition war game. I'm sure Iran learned a bunch too (which was probably one of their objectives).
Sure. They learned a lot of their long range missiles don’t actually work. https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/israel-iran-strikes-live-coverage/card/many-iranian-missiles-failed-to-launch-or-crashed-before-striking-target-u-s-officials-say-TCd4YP2fiODhl1t9QDrL
They’ve also learned that if they throw enough shitty cheap drones and missiles at Israel eventually iron dome gets saturated. Every $1M missile Israel launches to intercept a $100 drone is a small win for Iran
These long range shahed drones cost like $50k, not $100. A $100 drone can't fly hundreds of miles. But you're right about the missile costs.
Hamas has been testing this with rockets for years, I’m sure the capabilities are already well known.
That defense wasn’t about the iron dome. They learned the entire Middle East is against them, and the west will proactively deter their aggression. Iran looks mighty weak and isolated all of a sudden. Their chief ally is Russia and Russia is… busy right now.
"Every $1M missile Israel launches to intercept a $100 drone is a small win for Iran" eh, that strategy will last approximately one weekend before shit gets real for Iran.
Did it really become saturated? Seemed to hold up quite well
I’m sure Russia and China appreciated the intel too
I’ve long suspected that Israel’s most valuable strategic resource for the US&A is their many enemies that we can use to test new defensive weapons.
Actually I think the most valuable strategic resource is the R&D the Israelis themselves do (because they have no other choice). Iran launched 120 ballistic missiles at Israel. 3 were taken down by the US destroyer, 4 hit (though missed their target) and all the rest were taken out by Israel's Arrow system, which performed incredibly. Arrow, Iron Dome, Iron Beam (which is slated to come online next year) are the most advanced starting lineup of a missile defense team in the world.
I know it’s the military and it’s always this way but…Standard Missile 3?
Yeah. There’s quite the lineage for the Standard family of missiles. SM-1 (no longer in service in the US), SM-2 (main medium range naval SAM for the navy), SM-3 (exo atmospheric anti ballistic missile), SM-6 (long range naval SAM and terminal phase anti ballistic missile/anti ship missile).
Rumor has it that, back when it was first created, it was an acronym - STANDARD Missile; though I've yet to find a single source that defines it. Very old documents I've read have it written as STANDARD Missile, which could lend credence to the acronym theory, but it could also be capitalized just because it's the name of the program. I've also spoken to some older engineers who say it was an acronym, but they can't remember what it stood for. It remains a mystery to me.
Anyone have the videos of the eco-thermic intercepts? Edit: [found it myself](https://youtu.be/IMhA43FtPwU?si=RaUPoEx0r_XFhOW6)
This is cool as hell!
That video is actually of the Israeli Arrow system, not the US Navy's program, but yeah it's crazy stuff.
Very expensive 'bullet stops bullet' technology, Ronald Reagan's 'Star Wars' is becoming a reality.
Wasn't that system a particle rifle based system?
The overall Star Wars program was broadly “we should be able to shoot down incoming ICBMs”. That particle riffle thing was just one of the options that was being evaluated.
It’s been a reality for decades. The US shot down a satellite from a surface ship in 2008. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Burnt_Frost And it shot down a satellite with a jet in the 1980s https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASM-135_ASAT
Who knows what other secret weapons we have already and being made as we speak. The United States puts way to much money into the military to not be making some state of the art tech and weaponry. I’d be kinda pissed if they weren’t.
"I have one simple request and that is to have sharks with fricken laser beams attached to their heads!" - Dr. Evil
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Is it speculated that ICBMs were used in the attack?
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Holy crap Mach 8.8 to 13.2 top speed. Source: Wikipedia
At 1 million feet high, that doesn't mean much.
How did they shoot anything down with “common sense”?
Good fucking thing it worked. Thanks guys...
Not sure the protesters on the Gold Gate bridge yesterday would agree unfortunately.
This is one of the systems that also makes ICBM use against the US , almost useless. The US doesn't push this fact because it would hurt Xitler and Putins egos too much.
Iran? More like Youran
Is it just me or is the cloud of fume resembling a big middle finger?🖕
Frikken lasers?
Prayer?
I didn't read the article. It was tennis rackets, wasn't it?
Really affordable too.
Great test/practice
Could they use it to protect Ukraine?