Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
Here's an amusing column from the ever-dull Phyllis Schlafly. She claims that the Navy shooting down that satellite a couple weeks ago proves Ronald Reagan right that missile defense works:
The U.S. Navy gave Ronald Reagan a dramatic 25th anniversary gift on Feb. 21. A Navy missile raced into outer space and destroyed an orbiting satellite, thereby providing new proof of the vision President Reagan proclaimed in his then-sensational televised address on March 23, 1983.While the Navy SM-3 missile didn't knock down an incoming nuclear missile, the direct hit on a satellite proved again that U.S. anti-missile technology is mature and reliable, and that an effective anti-missile system is within our grasp. Traveling at 6,000 miles per hour after being launched from a U.S. Navy Aegis cruiser in the Pacific, the SM-3 missile was even more accurate than anyone had predicted because it struck precisely at the satellite's dangerous fuel tank.
Hilarious. Here's what the shooting down of that satellite really proved: we can, indeed, shoot down a missile. Provided there's only one missile, that the missile is the size of a school bus, that we know its exact trajectory well in advance because we launched it ourselves and that we have weeks to prepare to shoot it down. And of course that perfectly replicates real world conditions, doesn't it?
This direct hit comes on the heels of a particularly impressive track record of successful anti-missile tests in 2007. Since 2005, the Missile Defense Agency has scored 21 successful space interceptions in 22 tests.
But once again, not with real world conditions. If we launch the missile and we know in advance where it's going, and we only launch them one at a time, and we don't deploy any of the possible countermeasures that would make a hit far less likely, then we're able to hit the missile some of the time. The proper response to that is "duh." But the real world just doesn't work that way. As Joseph Cirincione told a Congressional panel earlier this month:
We have never, in the history of the last 20 years, had a realistic test of any of these systems, the kinds you describe, that it's flown up against what we would actually expect even a primitive country to deploy, like North Korea or Iran. The NIE indicates that any country that can fly an ICBM is going to be capable of deploying one of, or perhaps all of, six basic countermeasures, including chaff, balloons, other countermeasures that can defeat the system. We've never had a test of these weapons.
An editorial in the Fayetteville Observer hit the nail on the head regarding this satellite intercept and missile defense:
The first is that this was not a demonstration, or even a rough illustration, of a ballistic missile defense capability. The missile that destroyed the satellite was moving at 6,000 mph as it closed on a relatively slow-moving target whose exact position had been calculated far in advance. Had it been deployed for the purpose for which it was engineered, it would have been searching for a much smaller target traveling three times that fast; one fired from a previously unknown location only a few minutes before.The level of official uncertainty about the satellite's destruction -- a day afterward, the military could only express "a high degree of confidence" that it had succeeded -- says more about the state of the missile defense program than does the interception itself.
More than one administration has admitted having had target "missiles" tampered with to resemble what the Navy shot down on Wednesday. In some cases, self-destruct devices were placed on board so that a miss could be passed off as a hit. Efforts to hit the real thing yielded so many failures that the current president turned the entire program "black," meaning that no one gets to know anything about it, other than what the administration finds it advantageous to release. His peculiar advice, at the time, was that Americans, in considering such tests, not concern themselves with outcomes.
This is like saying that since I can dunk on an 8 foot basket, I'm going to win next year's NBA slam dunk contest where the rim is at 10 feet and my opponents are better than I am. Not gonna happen.
Comments
Besides all that, 20 out of 21 is not very impressive when the one that got through carries multiple warheads. And 1 out of 21 when the total is in the hundreds is just not much good.
I am always reminded of Indiana Jones coming around the corner to face the guy with two swords. The guy waves the swords around impressively, and Indy shoots him.
Posted by: BaldApe | March 24, 2008 10:14 AM
Still they showed that they can shoot down any satellite they want. In my mind that was a powerful message.
Posted by: Oskar | March 24, 2008 10:19 AM
But what if North Korea, China, Russia and Iran promise never to use MIRVs, decoys, maneuvering and counter-measures, and promise to send the US full trajectory and timing information before launch? Then ... if you ignore the size and speed of the incoming warhead ... then, she's got a point.
Posted by: Ex-drone | March 24, 2008 10:19 AM
I know it's WND, but they don't have any editors or fact checkers capable of finding out anything about space tech or missile defense? I guess "Reagan good" all they need to know to pass a story. The Pentagon made it crystal clear at the time that this was not related to missile defense and that this was a one-off setup that will never be deployed because the technology they added to the cruiser rendered it incapable of performing its regular missions.
Posted by: SeanH | March 24, 2008 10:37 AM
Phyllis Schlafly has always been the darling and chosen representative of the most willfully ignorant and simpleminded far right. Indeed, her kind cross the line from ignorant to infantilized. Those people simply don't WANT to be adults; they want to be children, repeating the reassuring simplicities they learned from their parents when they were about five, never going beyond the bounds of that easy life, and pretending they know more than those too-too-complex grownups. And they have no shame about it either, which shows how far gone they are.
Posted by: Raging Bee | March 24, 2008 10:42 AM
Don't forget that the test misiles did not use ECM, and in some cases they had transmitters that sent their locations, allowing the missiles to home in on them. Tests with dummies and false missiles resulted in more misses.
Posted by: Badger3k | March 24, 2008 11:12 AM
The point is the technology is having some success and we are contiuing to develop it. If we had given up on space technology in the 50s after the first few dozen rockets blew up we would not be where we are today. The technology can and will work.
Posted by: AFSGTSAM | March 24, 2008 11:21 AM
Raging Bee - awesome characterization of Schlafly, wish I was that prescient and pithy.
Posted by: Michael Heath | March 24, 2008 11:31 AM
Yes, we can always expect a simpleminded false dichotomy from AFSGTSAM. Color me unsurprised.
So our choices are, go whole-hog on a technology that shows NO SIGNS of being feasible (and against which there are already well-known and easy countermeasures), or give up on technological advancement altogether? If you can't see a third path between those two extremes, then you really don't know what you're talking about.
Posted by: Raging Bee | March 24, 2008 11:35 AM
Still they showed that they can shoot down any satellite they want. In my mind that was a powerful message.
Not quite. They showed that they can shoot down a large satellite in a very low, decaying orbit. There's no way, for example, that that missile would have been able to shoot down any communication satellite -- it just doesn't have a 36,000km range.
Posted by: James | March 24, 2008 11:45 AM
An (slightly) amusing anecdote (are you sitting comfortably? Then we'll begin.)
Way back in the 50's engineers were trying to create a bomb with a camera to allow the bombardier aboard a plane to guide the projectile into the target. The goverment spend huge sums on the project, particularly the PR bumpf. One problem: the bomb took only a few seconds to drop from a typical drop height to the ground, far to short for any meaningful input from a human. After a massive outlay of money "the brass" realised what the engineers on the "frontline" had known from the start - it was a complete waste of time.
"Starwars" is exactly this. "Lions" at the "coalface"
wasting time (and money) which could better used developing something that works, being led by "asses" bent on a mere PR stunt.
Bet those terrorists are shaking in there boots knowing the US can take out a satellite in a known orbit, but can't stop a fully-laden 747 slicing into a building. -DJ
Posted by: DingoJack | March 24, 2008 11:52 AM
While I agree that Schlafly is largely clueless on any number of issues and concede that the (probable) success of the recent satellite "shoot down" is hardly the same thing as hitting an incoming ICBM, I think it does demonstrate at least the feasibility of such technology.
To dismiss the possibility of anti-ICBM technology just because it is currently technologically difficult or on grounds it could be opposed by hypothetical counter-measures seems a bit short sighted. Almost all current weapons technology could have been opposed on such grounds.
I remember similar dismissals of highly effective current weapons technologies such as cruise missiles, JDAMS, stealth aircraft and anti-radiation missiles. All were considered "pipe dreams" when first proposed and arm chair strategists rattled off various "easily deployed" counter measures to defeat each one. These weapons are in large part the reason that the US enjoys outright technological military superiority.
Throwing up your hands and declaring things impossible is not a good defense strategy.
Posted by: Lance | March 24, 2008 12:05 PM
While writing my post Dingo Jack was posting the following
Not so fast Dingo Jack.
Ironically this is one of the technologies that now makes American airpower the most effective on the planet. I doubt the people on the receiving end of those JDAMS are laughing, or even in one piece, now.
Posted by: Lance | March 24, 2008 12:16 PM
"it would have been searching for a much smaller target traveling three times that fast"
Nope. The speed would still be about 18,000 mph or a bit less. But this shoot-down was most likely nearly head-on, so the precise speed of the target isn't that important. Especially because we knew the sattelite's path to within a couple of feet.
Posted by: Coragyps | March 24, 2008 12:31 PM
...I think it does demonstrate at least the feasibility of such technology.
Sorry, but "physical possibility" is not the same as "feasibility." In the case of BMD, as in the case of nuclear-powered airplanes, we've demonstrated the former, but not the latter. In order to be "feasible," a BMD system must be effective in war-fighting conditions, against a realistic threat, at a cost that doesn't take away from the millions of other things the military may have to do in the event of war. And we're nowhere hear that point, certainly not near enough to justify spending more money on it at the expense of more promising projects such as modernizing our air-traffic-control system, rebuilding New Orleans, or winning the Iraq war for that matter.
BMD has already sucked resources and attention away from more important projects. One reason Bush Jr. ignored warnings of terrorism on US soil, was that they were more concerned with BMD.
Posted by: Raging Bee | March 24, 2008 12:33 PM
Lance - Umm not even close. Delveloped by the Aussies under British supervision, but finally cancelled because the Americans thought they could do better, and leaned on the British PM. They did - some 30 years later.
Guess what my dear old dad did when he was young man? -DJ
Posted by: DingoJack | March 24, 2008 12:55 PM
I recall hearing that the operation was keeping an eye on the weather forecast, because rough weather for the Navy ship would have scuttled the attempted shootdown.
Posted by: mark | March 24, 2008 1:03 PM
But hopfully not the naval vessal. ;) -DJ
Posted by: DingoJack | March 24, 2008 1:05 PM
http://www.designation-systems.net/dusrm/m-62.html
"Walleye" TV-guided glide bomb, originally deployed 1966.
Posted by: fusilier | March 24, 2008 1:07 PM
"Blue Streak" orginally tested at Woomera c1955. I"ve at gyroscope to prove it. So there! ;) -DJ
Posted by: DingoJack | March 24, 2008 1:12 PM
The "Fritz X" was deployed during WWII
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_X
(Sorry, I hit "send" too early.)
Posted by: fusilier | March 24, 2008 1:13 PM
BTW - I've heard of "Walleye". What planes carried it? - curiously DJ
Posted by: DingoJack | March 24, 2008 1:14 PM
Yep but "Fritz-X" was not camera guided. This meant the planes had to hang and take AA fire. "Fire and forget" came later (but when?) -DJ
Posted by: DingoJack | March 24, 2008 1:18 PM
Misleading. The satellite's destruction was immediately apparent. It took a day to determine to "a high degree of confidence" if the frozen block of hydrazine fuel was pulverized, which was the intent of the mission. Successfully intercepting a nuclear warhead requires only that the interceptor and warhead touch, not that some specific portion of the warhead become pulverized.
Posted by: CS | March 24, 2008 3:43 PM
Some of this is valid, but a satellite isn't exactly a "slow-moving target" - it's moving at 18,000 mph, which is twice as fast as the fastest ICBMs, not one-third as fast. I'm not sure where the writer got that idea from.
Posted by: Kevin W. Parker | March 24, 2008 4:06 PM
Schlafly was the original histrionic right-wing simpleton when Ann Coulter was still in grammar school. I could never understand why others on the far right didn't tell her to shut up and go home; she made them appear even more ridiculous than they already did. I finally understood when Coulter showed up on the scene. They don't care whether or not these lunatics make any sense; they're only interested in the attention they get and the numbers they can rally to to their causes.
Posted by: cipher | March 24, 2008 6:52 PM
The other problem with BMD is that we're no longer protecting ourselves against the Soviet Union. The Ruskies had exploded some 969 nuclear devices and launched thousands of ballistic missiles. They had a high certainty that their missiles and bombs would work. North Korea, the current major threat, has exploded one bomb (maybe) and launched a handful of missiles. Given that, what's the probability that the rocket will get off the pad and the bomb explode on target? You multiply the two probabilities to get an answer.
The most obvious way to increase the probability of success is not to use a rocket. Send the bomb via FedEx, or in a cargo ship, or truck it up from Mexico. So why do we need BMD again?
Posted by: Bob Munck | March 24, 2008 7:29 PM
I have friends who work, or have worked, in the shipping industry. They assure me they could--if they weren't patriotic Americans--deliver a nuclear bomb in a shipping container to any city you wanted, on the day you wanted, with nearly 99.99 certainty that it wouldn't be caught.
And Bush reduced funding--after 9/11--for inspections of shipping containers coming into US ports.
If N. Korea tries to send a nuclear missile at us, we'll pulverize their country, because we'll know exactly where it's coming from. Try tracking a shipping container that no longer exists because it's been disintegrated by the nuclear bomb that was inside it.
If SAM thinks ballistic nuclear missiles are the biggest danger, he needs to start paying attention to what the terrorisim experts are saying.
Posted by: James Hanley | March 24, 2008 7:59 PM
I have friends who work, or have worked, in the shipping industry. They assure me they could--if they weren't patriotic Americans--deliver a nuclear bomb in a shipping container to any city you wanted, on the day you wanted, with nearly 99.99 certainty that it wouldn't be caught.
And Bush reduced funding--after 9/11--for inspections of shipping containers coming into US ports.
If N. Korea tries to send a nuclear missile at us, we'll pulverize their country, because we'll know exactly where it's coming from. Try tracking a shipping container that no longer exists because it's been disintegrated by the nuclear bomb that was inside it.
If SAM thinks ballistic nuclear missiles are the biggest danger, he needs to start paying attention to what the terrorisim experts are saying.
Posted by: James Hanley | March 24, 2008 7:59 PM
Hmm, I caught the double-post bug. My apologies.
Posted by: James Hanley | March 25, 2008 7:40 AM
Thousands of ICBM's exist in foreign hands. At least two countries openly hostiie to the US have long range missile development programs. To ignore these threats would be irresponsible.
Arguing that other threats exist does not change these facts. Preventing delivery of nuclear warheads by other means does not preclude developing anti-missile technology.
Posted by: Lance | March 25, 2008 9:27 AM
true. and wasting billions of dollars on countermeasures which will not work in actual practice means effective, useful attention to this problem gets neglected. that is indeed irresponsible.
plus it pisses off the other side(s). they know damn well that "Star Wars" won't work, but seeing D.C. waste billions chasing daydreams of invulnerability against their strategic threats instead of engaging with them diplomatically to put both sides' mutual threats on the bargaining table insults them.
Posted by: Nomen Nescio | March 25, 2008 12:54 PM
Suppose that instead we'd put a few billion into preventing the possibility of flying large commercial airplanes into skyscrapers. Armored cockpit doors or cockpits not connected to the rest of the plane, controls that could be over-ridden remotely, a GPS-based system that won't let the plane go where the buildings are, whatever. Technically challenging, sure, but are any of those possibilities more difficult than what BMD is attempting to do (and has never yet done)? Think of the savings in dollars, time, and anguish if airport security could go back to what it was before 9/11, because a 9/11-style attack would no longer be possible.
(Not that I think a 9/11-style attack is still possible. Passengers now realize that hijackers are no longer demanding to be taken to Havana, but are going to kill them. They aren't going to cower in fear of a few box-cutters. That became true before the fourth plane could reach its target on 9/11.)
Posted by: Bob Munck | March 25, 2008 1:53 PM