Missile Defense Agency chief: Iran will soon be able to strike US, Europe with missiles

how long till Russians starts playing "be nice to us, we'll convince Iran to play nice" game? oh wait, they already have been.
Reminds me also how mad Reagan was at Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon for allowing Russians to build their nuke arsenal. So how do people here see the world after Iran gets the nuke? Or are we looking at an Israeli raid within weeks? I don't see other alternatives, do you?

Barry sez: Iran only a small country, only tiny threat.

Barry sez: Will use “tough diplomacy”, not to worry.

Barry be in charge for next four years – not to worry.

Iran will have their nukes unless Israel, on its own, terminates their nuke program. Lets face it, no one else will do it, so it is all up to Israel.

If Iran gets enough nukes, I suspect that they will begin by just being being their usual nice selves and continue threatening the world. Then all of a sudden, one day, we hear that the Hizbo's have nukes, and maybe soon after that, other Arab countries begin playing nice with Iran until Iran can consolidate power under Islamic control in the middle east.

Then Israel will get into a fight with the Hizbo's over something. That's when it will get really interesting.

If they fear a U.S. response at any point, the Hizbo's will send a "fishing trawler" our way to test an EWMD at high altitude over our heads, or maybe by that time they will have one in orbit over our heads. That would keep us busy for a long while and change our perspective to any response we may have. Of course, if Barry is in charge, he will get this all handled smoothly, probably in advance.

iran is the head of the snake, and needs it taken away. they have meddled with their neighbours using surrogates, hezbos. we can thank carter peanut farmer for that, and hopefully barry willnot get a chance.

The Czechs will help us. Bless them.

I've been playing Fallout 3 for a while(The game with the image of Washington D.C. all destroyed and used by the mohammedans to threat us) and how much anyone here wants to bet that we will end up like the game if no one does nothing?

Yeah, playing it, it gives a weird sensation that this has a stupidly high chance of happening with Iran getting nuclear weapons, if they dont have it already.

I hope Israel, the only pillar of civilization in the Middle East, does something and soon.

Lt. Gen. Henry A. Obering III was speaking in Prague in an effort to convince the Czech Parliament to approve a US missile defense installation in the country's territory.

these military guys, they want to increase sale of the missile defense to anybody. it hasn't even been tested yet. and who's the bad guy in all this? not iran, even though we'll sell it to you for defense from then, its russia!

our leaders (mccain) want to recreate the cold war with russia. why do have still have troops in europe? NATO, we defeated the soviet union, its time to retire.

its time we got with russia (and china) and talked to them: what are we gonna about islam?

I believe you're right about those EWMDs, SpotOn - whether from Hezbollah, or directly from Iran.

It's so frustrating as an "ordinary citizen" to have to watch while our "leaders" do NOTHING.

"So how do people here see the world after Iran gets the nuke?"

Posted by: kuchuklambat

If they use it against the US, I see a world without an Iran, though that may be naive. If they drop it on someone else, I don't know.

Would we retaliate, on behalf of the nuked nation? Hard to say.

I've begun to believe we should have gone in with clear revenge in mind, after 9/11. We should have, in my opinion, gone after the country sheltering the "mastermind", bin Laden, and announced to the entire world that it was payback, and they could shove it, if they didn't approve.

Had we done so, there might not have been so much sabre-rattling from Iran as there was, and is. The rattling is provocative to the sentiments of the threatened, but not enough so to make us strike preemptively. Talk, as they say, is cheap, and Amahdinejad looks pretty cheap, too.

The moral high road is a nice route to take, but I'm beginning to think we were fooled about what the moral high road was. Is it moral to not take revenge (or claim not to do so) for the deaths and terror and trauma, and destruction wrought upon the US on 9/11? Personally, the more I ponder it, the more hawkish I feel.

" ... these military guys, they want to increase sale of the missile defense to anybody. it hasn't even been tested yet. and who's the bad guy in all this? not iran, even though we'll sell it to you for defense from then, its russia!"

A ballistic missile shot at Europe would rise up to suborbital altitudes, travel a continental distance over the ground, and drop down on its target at something like mach 20. Because of the continental scale geometry of engagement, in order to defend against such an attack, the missile defence system must be sited well back, a half continent away. It is critical to stop missile in its boost phase--on the way up. That is, you cannot expect to just "shoot over the top" as the missile is passing over your head. If the attacking missile has got that far, pretty much you have already failed to stop it.

Thus, geometry is what determines the siting of the missile defense, not military sales or beefs with Russia. The huge fixed-orientation phased array acquisition and tracking radars will be in the Czech Republic. They have to be pointed toward Iran. They cannot be swiveled toward Russia. The missile interceptors will be in farther back, in Poland, again, to give them the best geometry to make a successful engagement.

"Military guys" don't make money selling weapons. And they have no interest in pointing things at Russia or anybody else if they don't need to. The military today is already overtasked with global missions and national commitments that the political leaders only increase daily, while shrinking their manpower, permitting their hardware to wear out without replacement, stunting R&D, and cutting their budgets across the board. The position they are in today, a steady trend since the end of the real Cold War is tasking to do "more and more, with less and less, until they can do everything with nothing."

Finally, the idea that missile defense is "untested" is baloney. Successful tests have been completed over and over again in the Pacific, from land and from ships. An anti-missile system was even used recently (last year, I believe) to shoot down a satellite that that got out of control.

In any case, the way one builds an excellent defense system of any kind is the same way one builds an excellent airliner, or automobile, or locomotive, or DVD player, or toothbrush. First you build one that is just okay--one that is certain to have some deficiencies, glitches, and failings. By operating it and gaining experience with its defects and limitations, you figure out how to make improvements. The next generation of hardware and software and operational procedure is more effective, and better designed, and better used and deployed. Each successive generation makes the system more reliable and valuable militarily.

Most of the time, to insist on technical perfection for the first generation of any defense system is just a political ruse for those who either want to spend the money somewhere else, who think the threat is not real, or who want the bad guys to win, for whatever perverted reason.

Nobody wants a new cold war with Russia. Russia is behaving in classical Russian imperial fashion. They think of Poland and the Czech Republic, and other Slavic countries in Eastern and Central Europe, are their "little Slavic brothers" and part of exclusive Russian turf. They want to control what goes on there. The Czechs and the Poles know what that means, and want none of it. They deserve our respect, our support, and our thanks.

How welcome are such no-nonsense and lucid explanations of something that needs to be understood, as in the post just above.

"Thus, geometry is what determines the siting of the missile defense"

Stendec

The siting geometry can readily be changed by moving the launching attack missile platform by means of a "Fishing trawler" or other non-descript ship.

"The moral high road is a nice route to take"

Absedere

Judeo-Christian high moral ground is far different than Islamic high moral ground. Christian high moral ground is purely defensive in nature while Islamic high moral ground is purely aggressive in nature.

Theoretically with the new WMD's that are now available, Judeo-Christians can easily be annihilated if they choose to remain only on "safe" high moral ground.

I believe you're right about those EWMDs, SpotOn - whether from Hezbollah, or directly from Iran.

Vee

Everyone has an opinion on this but I think that the EWMD is a perfect fit for the Islamic goals in war. The EWMD first brings the advanced nation to its knees, without electricity or communications. Then every Muslim in every Mosque in that nation goes to the aid of all the suffering people with Muslim help in showing everyone how to live without electricity. This is the Muslim world that they are accustomed with and they would have the clear advantage for survival. They would kill anyone who did not cooperate with them but they would gain many converts and establish a solid base. No question that they would have some fights on their hands, but fighting in a 10th century setting is what they are set up to do.

So the answer to Iranian aggression is missile defense?

Who is giving Iran ICBM technology?
Russia? China? France?

Why not a policy of PAD - Persia's Assured Destruction?

Oh, but that would punish the many Iranians who secretly "like the US"! If the people of Iran want to avoid PAD they will do something about it.

PMK, PAD sounds good to me. The initiation sequence should be for our ABM to destroy their first offensive missile at launch and then we destroy all of Iran so it won't happen again. Somehow, I don't think Barry would approve.

According to the CIA fact book

Exports - commodities:
petroleum 80%, chemical and petrochemical products, fruits and nuts, carpets

We have to stop thinking about defeating these Islamic states and start thinking about how to cripple them. We need to spend hundreds of billions on finding an alternative to oil, rather than fighting these terrorism wars. Without oil revenues, all Iran has to export is fruit, nuts, and carpets. One would assume that with such a large population, they would need to eat the fruit and nuts. Basically, without oil, Iran exports Persian carpets. You can't build a weapons program on carpets.

Without oil, Russia also loses its revenue base, as does many of the USA's enemies. The USA becomes stronger without oil revenues, as does Europe, Japan, and many other allies.

CIA Fact Book? Puhleeeze.

Didn't President Bush take care of the nuclear Iran issue? I seem to recall his mumbling, on numerous occasions: "a nucyuhlr Iran is not acceptuble". Something to that effect.

You mean - the problem is still out there?!! Who would have guessed that the stutteror-in-chief (SOC) had dropped the ball?

Striking Iran would need to be an "all in" affair. Iran will make it so. What ever assets Iran has will be used where ever they have them. Iran understands they would be in a use it or lose it situation.

The straight and the Gulf cannot be closed for a protracted period of time without major ramifications for not just us, but the entire World.

Iran would need to be rendered prostrate and its weapon stockpiles either completely expended by them or destroyed by us before any traffic could begin again. Provided, of course, there are still functioning facilities in the region.

It will be one ugly affair and given the proclivities of our Media, who 75% lean left, will make sure we are viewed as losing.

Israels help is problematic given the nature of her neighbors and their likely response. while it is not beyond the realm of possibility that Hugo won't do something to close off the Panama Canal.

This rosy picture fades with every passing day.

Excellent post Stendec.

For an overview of the ballistic missile defense problem and the technical approach the United States is taking, see this Missile Defense Agency document on-line:

http://www.mda.mil/mdalink/pdf/bmdsbook.pdf

Posted by theygottago:
these military guys, they want to increase sale of the missile defense to anybody. it hasn't even been tested yet. and who's the bad guy in all this? not iran, even though we'll sell it to you for defense from then, its russia!
our leaders (mccain) want to recreate the cold war with russia.

I hope you don’t really believe this. This line of “reasoning”, spread by our schools and news media, make our politics more contentious and dangerous.

why do have still have troops in europe? NATO, we defeated the soviet union, its time to retire.

We did not “defeat” the Soviet Union. We encouraged them to spend themselves into oblivion trying to counter our tested and “untested” systems of the day. Study defense spending relative to GDP to understand why a vibrant, free enterprise, i.e. capitalistic, economy is vital to our national defense.

Note that the September 11 attacks occurred at historical minima of defense spending:
http://www.heritage.org/research/features/BudgetChartBook/fed-rev-spend-2008-boc-S7-Despite-War-Costs-Defense.html

And a look at how this compares to other countries:
http://www.fas.org/man/crs/RL32209.pdf

its time we got with russia (and china) and talked to them: what are we gonna about islam?

What do you think the administration has been trying to do? In spite of that, Russia and China are both helping the Iranians with reactor technology and air defense systems.

From the Missile Defense Agency home page:
http://www.mda.mil/mdalink/html/mdalink.html

It is the policy of the United States to deploy as soon as is technologically possible an effective National Missile Defense system capable of defending the territory of the United States against limited ballistic missile attack (whether accidental, unauthorized, or deliberate) with funding subject to the annual authorization of appropriations and the annual appropriation of funds for National Missile Defense.
— National Missile Defense
Act of 1999 (Public Law 106-38)

Signed into law during the Clinton administration.

If you are interested in politicians with nefarious motives, or those that are just plain incompetent, how they could “fundamentally change the United States of America”, and the effect that may have on you personally, I’d suggest you look into Obama’s background, the background of his associates, and what they believe:

http://www.zombietime.com/prairie_fire/

Near the bottom of the page you'll find a link to documentary video that has now been removed from YouTube (gee, I wonder who would want it removed).

Here's the text from that portion of the page:

Undercover agent Larry Grathwohl, who had infiltrated and joined the Weather Underground, described their post-revolution governing plans for the United States in this video taken from the 1982 documentary "No Place to Hide." The Weather Underground openly discussed exterminating 25 million Americans who refused to be "re-educated" into communism.

Here's a transcript of his interview:

I bought up the subject of what's going to happen after we take over the government. We, we become responsible, then, for administrating, you know, 250 million people.

And there was no answers. No one had given any thought to economics; how are you going to clothe and feed these people.

The only thing that I could get, was that they expected that the Cubans and the North Vietnamese and Chinese and the Russians would all want to occupy different portions of the United States.

They also believed that their immediate responsibility would be to protect against what they called the counter-revolution. And they felt that this counter-revolution could best be guarded against by creating and establishing re-education centers in the southwest, where we would take all the people who needed to be re-educated into the new way of thinking and teach them... how things were going to be.

I asked, well, what's going to happen to those people that we can't re-educate; that are die-hard capitalists. And the reply was that they'd have to be eliminated. And when I pursued this further, they estimated that they would have to eliminate 25 million people in these re-education centers. And when I say eliminate, I mean kill. 25 million people.

I want you to imagine sitting in a room with 25 people, most of which have graduate degrees from Columbia and other well known educational centers, and hear them figuring out the logistics for the elimination of 25 million people.

And they were dead serious."

-- Larry Grathwohl, former member of the Weather Underground

Think about it. Are the immature politics of the Left; the politics of division, envy, and ultimately violence against those in your own country that won't agree with your definition of "fairness" really the kind of "change" we need?

It certainly makes it more understandable why the House Unamerican Activities Committee was formed in the first place. It's called survival. But, unlike what Ayres envisions; the attrocities that every "Worker's Utopia" eventually commits, the Unamerican Activities Committee didn't put Ayres in a death camp. Unfortunately, it didn't even limit his influence on education. Count me as one who thinks that limitation would have been a good thing.

"Unamerican" should be "Un-American"

RalphInfidel-

Sounds like Obamas 250,000 civilian army(or what ever its pretty name is) armed and funded to be as strong as the Military.

Posted by flowerknife_us:
Sounds like Obamas 250,000 civilian army(or what ever its pretty name is) armed and funded to be as strong as the Military.

Trying to engage the current US military with those hobbyists would be a fool’s errand. But loosely organized Brownshirt operations, the beginnings of which are appearing spontaneously now, could quickly breakdown the fabric of civil society and provide a convenient excuse for expanded executive power.

A renewed legal assault on the Second Amendment as misunderstood, unnecessary, and outdated would be among the first signs. First that is, unless there is some sort of riotous Krystalnaught activity following the election.

Posted by: Spot on at November 1, 2008 11:32 AM

Spot on,

Exactly. Too many Americans don't realize, or refuse to admit that we are in a defensive position.

"How can we possibly be on the defensive?" they might ask. "The whole world accuses us of bullying, so it must be true," they might add.

Ralph Infidel,

It's funny--my Mom called up to ask me about my Thanksgiving and Christmas plans, for the year, and after a while, we began discussing that very topic.

She said we might have gone too far, in the Patriot Act, in that citizens can be oppressed by such "brownshirts", whenever the President feels it necessary.

I think you're right about the corrosive effect these hobbyists could have on the fabric of the country. The last thing we need is our own Taliban!

"Civilian Army" is an oxymoron.

Posted by: HotSpur at November 1, 2008 2:12 PM

The US was pressured into "working with its allies". In this case, it was the Europeans who have been negotiating with Iran.

The world will have to decide what it wants.

"The siting geometry can readily be changed by moving the launching attack missile platform by means of a "Fishing trawler" or other non-descript ship."

Spot on:

Sure. That's why the United States maintains attack submarines, patrol aircraft, and other systems tailing and surveilling non-descript ships, 24/7. That's also why we have interceptors based on ships--the one that got the satellite last year was fired off a Navy missile cruiser.

But of course that defensive array does not mean a non-descript ship could not one day slip through the net enroute to a glorious day of jihad martrydom.

Another technical point that has been brought up before is this: Shooting a long-range ballistic missile off a bobbing ship is not something easy to do with any accuracy because such a missile needs exceptionally precise knowledge of its geographic location and orientation at launch time. But if you are irrational and you actually don't care where the missile lands, like a jihadist, then you can go for it--you might just get lucky.

And then there are other nasty kinds of missiles, like cruise missiles. But that's another story.

None of these fancy weapons would be militarily significant (although still somewhat useful for terror, as the V1s and V2s of World War II were) if there were no WMD warheads for them. Until Islam itself somehow dies off, or is somehow supplanted by a real peaceful religion, keeping WMDs away from the irrational Islamic world has to be a continuing and paramount defensive objective.

None of these fancy weapons would be militarily significant (although still somewhat useful for terror, as the V1s and V2s of World War II were) if there were no WMD warheads for them.

Stendec

Thank you for your obviously learned illustrative explanations above. They are very much appreciated.

Possibly you have an opinion on the effectiveness of EWMD's when used by terrorists. The suicide terrorist could launch from a bobbing ship without serious regard for accuracy and still hit his target. Even if the missile went the wrong way, entirely off target, but gained sufficient altitude, the radiation would take out most satellites causing great distruction and possible massive death.

A Rocket based EWMD needing to reach a minimum altitude of only 25 miles would seem to need an almost immediate response from a defensive platform. Where time and distance to intercept is as much a critical factor as the geometry of the intercept angle.

The interesting aspect of the Iranian tests in the Caspian sea is when were we aware of it. Were we aware of the platform being prepared or did we just pick up the launch from sensors designed to do just that?

I'm not that comfortable thinking we can shadow every Ship leaving Iranian ports. Do we even have the ability to scan each Ship for the presence of such a system on board?

As I understand it, our Navy is something like half of what it was under Weinberger.

Flowerknife_us:

"I'm not that comfortable thinking we can shadow every Ship leaving Iranian ports."

I am not a Navy guy (I am retired Air Force), but I understand that the Navy, like the other services, basically got reduced by half after the Cold War, while the mission requirements, for tailing ships and other purposes, have expanded. The Navy is in the same boat (nice pun, by accident!)--trying to do more and more with less and less.

So I am not comfortable, either, and did not mean to imply we should feel at all comfortable about the present peril from Iran.

Rather, the point I was trying to make, and not very well obviously, was that the land-based system, while necessary to counter a real threat, does not cover every threat out there. Other defense systems are needed, and that requirement should be respected as legitimate--not viewed as just some "expensive toys for those military guys to play with."

Unless we are willing to destroy the Iranian war machine in a pre-emptive attack, we are condemned to a hugely expensive and perpetual defensive task--that of fielding a wide array of extra (extra, as in not otherwise essential) military systems across the globe.

Personally, I would rather attack the Iranians now and get it over with, since that approach would likely be cheaper and more effective. Above all, a ferocious pre-emptive attack would "send a message" to the Islamic world that we take their Koran-inspired threats of genocide and conquest seriously, that we will not be intimidated, and that we will rightly and firmly respond to their obscene threats with hellish force. Think El Dorado Canyon, writ large.

I don't have any details about the Caspian incident.

Spot on:

"Possibly you have an opinion on the effectiveness of EWMD's when used by terrorists."

Obviously, any nuclear event on our soil, or on European soil, would cause grave damage, including electromagnetic disruption (EMP), no matter where it landed or at what altitude it detonated. I am no expert on fuzing, and if I were, I certainly would not publish any details here. But it is common knowledge that a typical nuclear device is going to have an altitude driven fuze--the Hiroshima and Nagasaki gravity bombs (i.e., dropped from airplanes) fuzed that way. So I would think that fuzing for high altitude, with the intent of creating severe and widespread EMP effects, should not be anything especially difficult to pull off--assuming that you have a reliable fuze. Designing a special warhead to maximize such effects is another thing--probably beyond the current capability of Iran.

I would ask myself whether a rogue state like Iran would really want to disrupt our economy so severely, since the Islamic world and the Islamic cause would itself be hurt badly by the financial disruption--not to mention the mistake of waking up the sleeping giant. But these regimes have their own Koran-inspired logic, as you know, and we therefore cannot assume rational behavior.

Posted by Stendec:
... But these regimes have their own Koran-inspired logic, as you know, and we therefore cannot assume rational behavior.

The core of the problem.

Stendec: Thank you for your excellent and informative posts above.

"But these regimes have their own Koran-inspired logic, as you know, and we therefore cannot assume rational behavior."

Stendec

Stendec, Thank you again for your clear descriptions. We always get back to the behaviour of our enemy and faith that our enemy will not hurt us real bad. I fully understand that our defense systems have a specific purpose with specific limitations. Our enemy's job is to exploit those limitations and hurt us, that is, if one chooses to believe that we have this kind of enemy.

My problem with our "Koranic-Inspired" enemy is that they could kill millions of us and go home telling their friends and family that they have had a real good day. Not because we have done anything to them but simply because we are not Muslims like them. These people have been acting this way for 1400 years and will likely continue without any abatement in their behaviour.

If they really want certain nuclear and missile technology, they will get it at some point in time.

In my mind, the EWMD offers them an opportunity to get in a cheap shot at us and kill or harm us all intensely. Would they or wouldn't they. I and many others have a hard time dealing with the lack of our government taking the necessary precautions to protect our citizenry from this threat.

You may have already seen these authoritive articles from Dr. William Graham. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/sep/02/invisible-nuclear-threat/

http://www.empcommission.org/docs/A2473-EMP_Commission-7MB.pdf

Don't worry, folks. If anything happens, American Leftists (I refuse to call them liberals, because they hate liberty) will cringe and wring their hands while a Socialist Belgian judge rescues them by flying the Tehran to plop the appropriate writ on Ahmadinejad's desk.

Ralphinfidel, Spot On,

Thanks for the excellent links on missile defense, EMP issues, and on military expenditures.

It is truly sad that the Islamic ideal is to destroy, loot, and kill in the example of Mohammed--so many Muslims beaver away each day just trying to think up new and horrible ways to wage jihad. As you know, they must do this, each and every one, to score points with Allah--to win salvation.

If you are playing defense against this cult, as we are doing now by and large, it is not long before you are forced to consume half of your available manpower and resources just guarding society. This bankrupting process is well underway in the USA.

To avoid bankruptcy, we need to go on the offense. By that I don't mean military things, solely or even primarily. We need to confront Islam itself--and soon.

As an Israeli I know recently said, "The Iranians are not sleeping."

Vee, It is a very bad feeling to watch the world sit idly by while Iran moves headlong into the mastery of nuclear technology. Especially since they have announced their intentions over and over again and no one is doing anything to stop them. As an Israeli, you know only too well the consequences that will likely result from the Iranian nuclear program. As an American, I fear for the safety of both Israel and the USA when Iran's plans for us materialize. Your country is a small target for some nuke armed terrorist but the EWMD would bring our country down to size for any terrorist. Neither of our countries could just get up and casually walk away from a direct nuke attack and the perpetrator will not actually be known with any certainty. The only defense is a pre-emptive strike.

I hope your country has the gumption to take out Irans nuke program because our country is "temporarily out of order".

Stendec

I agree, Will we harvest the Rose or watch it wither on the vine?