World awaits ballistic-missile takedown over Asia
(Credit:
Raytheon)
Does a "Star Wars" missile defense work? We may soon find out, if the rocket launch planned by North Korea starts to veer anywhere near Japan, instead of disappearing harmlessly into the stratosphere, as is hoped.
Japan says it will station the destroyers Kongo and Chokai in the Sea of Japan off North Korea. Both vessels will be armed with SM-3 ballistic-missile defense systems, in case the rocket malfunctions or wanders close to any of its islands, according to the Japanese Kyodo news agency.
"If it is capable of reaching Japan, then it goes without saying that we will react," Japanese Defense Minister Yasukazu Hamada announced. "We have been making preparations, including ballistic-missile defense, for any incident which could affect Japan. If it will affect Japan, then it will be our target."
Shooting down an intercontinental ballistic missile outside the Earth's atmosphere, under live conditions, would be another major test for both the Raytheon SM-3, aka "Son of Star Wars," and Japanese resolve (PDF).
The SM-3 has already had success hitting a target outside the Earth's atmosphere. Just over a year ago, the U.S. Navy fired an SM-3 at a failed spy satellite (photos) and blew it out of the heavens (video).
If let loose, this would be the first time anything of "Star Wars" lineage--the Reagan-era missile defense notion--has been fired in anger, not under test conditions. But there's a lot more at stake than the future of a gold-plated $8.9 billion missile defense system. There's face--and the potential loss thereof.
If Japan takes a shot and misses, it suffers "international humiliation" and ridicule for going all-in with the SM-3. On the other hand, if it scores a bull's-eye, not only North Korea, but also China, will be afraid--very afraid, according to analysts and pundits awaiting the show of high-seas brinkmanship.
Japan and the United States have cooperated closely on the SM-3 program, and Japan was the first nation to procure the missile.
North Korea has said the purpose of the rocket launch is put a satellite into orbit; others believe it is to demonstrate an intercontinental nuclear ability to reach out and touch Alaska.
Mark Rutherford is a West Coast-based freelance writer. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and is not an employee of CNET. Email him at markr@milapp.com. Disclosure. 
Isn't the SM-3 what the US Navy used to take out that decaying satellite (the one with the big hydrazine tank that might have made it to the ground) last year? If so, that doesn't seem like "test conditions."
:D
And, like the OS/2 Powered Russian Federation Rocket Launchers it is hoped that this superb Operating System will be aboard the "Concorde" too. What do you think about this "MOBILE" and Air-To-Air defense system - Houston (NASA)!!!!
Live Long And Prosper!
.
Now, Now, Now "Dalkorian"! Repeat after me: "Father Into Thy Hands I Commit My Soul"
Since after the "White Flash" there may not be enough time to be "Beamed Up"; and, "mobility" has its strategic advantages.
Cheers!
They Are Called "Laser Battle Stars" and those 360' rolls must certainly feel good!
I could almost see this missile going "awry" on purpose simply to test the missile defense system. It wouldn't be too terribly difficult to stage some malfunction that would force them to shoot at it without it looking like a deliberate attack. That would give them the information that need to either be afraid, or to not worry about it at all.
Did anyone mention that if its a satellite, nK could easily claim its destruction as an act of war? Very dangerous game of brinkmanship here.
- by Commander_Spock March 5, 2009 7:32 AM PST
- Re: "malfunction/s"... can and do occur - they can be caused by computational and other errors (see the attached articles):
- Like this Reply to this comment
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(12 Comments)Re: "The Explosion of the Ariane 5"
"On June 4, 1996 an unmanned Ariane 5 rocket launched by the European Space Agency exploded just forty seconds after its lift-off rom Kourou, French Guiana. Ariane explosion The rocket was on its first voyage, after a decade of development costing $7 billion. The destroyed rocket and its cargo were valued at $500 million. A board of inquiry investigated the causes of the explosion and in two weeks issued a report. It turned out that the cause of the failure was a software error in the inertial reference system. Specifically a 64 bit floating point number relating to the horizontal velocity of the rocket with respect to the platform was converted to a 16 bit signed integer. The number was larger than 32,767, the largest integer storeable in a 16 bit signed integer, and thus the conversion failed...."
http://www.ima.umn.edu/~arnold/disasters/ariane.html
Also, Re: "The Patriot Missile Failure"
"On February 25, 1991, during the Gulf War, an American Patriot Missile battery in Dharan, Saudi Arabia, failed to track and intercept an incoming Iraqi Scud missile. The Scud struck an American Army barracks, killing 28 soldiers and injuring around 100 other people. Patriot missile A report of the General Accounting office, GAO/IMTEC-92-26, entitled Patriot Missile Defense: Software Problem Led to System Failure at Dhahran, Saudi Arabia reported on the cause of the failure. It turns out that the cause was an inaccurate calculation of the time since boot due to computer arithmetic errors. Specifically, the time in tenths of second as measured by the system's internal clock was multiplied by 1/10 to produce the time in seconds. This calculation was performed using a 24 bit fixed point register. In particular, the value 1/10, which has a non-terminating binary expansion, was chopped at 24 bits after the radix point. The small chopping error, when multiplied by the large number giving the time in tenths of a second, led to a significant error. Indeed, the Patriot battery had been up around 100 hours, and an easy calculation shows that the resulting time error due to the magnified chopping error was about 0.34 seconds. (The number 1/10 equals 1/24+1/25+1/28+1/29+1/212+1/213+.... In other words, the binary expansion of 1/10 is 0.0001100110011001100110011001100.... Now the 24 bit register in the Patriot stored instead 0.00011001100110011001100 introducing an error of 0.0000000000000000000000011001100... binary, or about 0.000000095 decimal. Multiplying by the number of tenths of a second in 100 hours gives 0.000000095×100×60×60×10=0.34.) A Scud travels at about 1,676 meters per second, and so travels more than half a kilometer in this time. This was far enough that the incoming Scud was outside the "range gate" that the Patriot tracked. Ironically, the fact that the bad time calculation had been improved in some parts of the code, but not all, contributed to the problem, since it meant that the inaccuracies did not cancel...."
http://www.ima.umn.edu/~arnold/disasters/patriot.html
So, there!