Space-Based Missile Defense Can Be Done

Interception is no small problem  but can be done with a kinetic weapon.  You would require multiple platforms packing an arsenal of tethered kinetic weapons with enough control to actually chase and intercept at extreme high speed.

Explosive effects would be limited to producing a focused cloud of material but not even that unless very close.

The speed is huge and any lateral movement by the target will allow evasion.  Such movement every thirty seconds or so would be ample.  Recall it still takes minutes to close the gap and the speed is such that adjustment becomes difficult as well.

At least our sensing tech will now be up to it.

Space-Based Missile Defense Can Be Done

https://nationalufocenter.com/

Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. writes, ‘Some 35 years after Ronald Reagan’s famous Star Wars speech, the Pentagon’s R&D chief said that space-based missile defenses are technically feasible and reasonably affordable.”


Hypersonic weapon (Raytheon concept)

Since Reagan’s day, technology has advanced enough that putting both sensors and shooters in space is not only possible but “relatively easy,” Undersecretary for Research & Engineering Mike Griffin said. What’s more, past estimates of the cost of space-based interceptors have been “unrealistically,” even “naively” high.

Specifically, Griffin told reporters here,


Michael Griffin

The US “absolutely” needs space-based sensors to detect low-flying hypersonic cruise missiles, a new threat that’s much harder to spot from orbit than ICBMs; and We probably need space-based interceptors to shoot down high-flying ballistic missiles during the boost phase, the period before the warheads separate from the rocket.

Note these are two different functions with two different types of targets. Space-based interceptors would not work against hypersonic cruise missiles, Griffin said. They fly too low, deep in the atmosphere, so any munitions you shoot at them from space would have to be hardened against the heat of atmospheric reentry, which he called prohibitively difficult. “It may not be a bridge too far, but it’s a pretty far away bridge.” Ballistic missiles, by contrast, ascend rapidly out of the atmosphere into space, so space-based interceptors would only have to travel through vacuum, which is much easier.

Note that Griffin’s speaking only about interceptors, missiles that shoot down other missiles. He didn’t comment on lasersexcept to note them as a promising possibility. (In the past, he’s told Congress he wants a megawatt-plus laser in space by the late 2020s).



F-35 firing AMRAAM air-to-air missile

Air-Launched or Space-Based? It is also possible, Griffin noted, for an aircraft to shoot down a ballistic missile in boost phase. The launch platform could be either a manned fighter — the stealthy F-35has gotten a lot of attention, but the older F-15 could do the job as well, he said — or an unmanned drone — which he said might be “more cost-effective” than a manned fighter. (Griffin didn’t go into details, but unmanned aircraft can dispense with bulky, costly life support systems and can stay aloft longer than a human can endure). Such an airborne boost phase intercept would require modifying current air-to-air missiles such as the AMRAAM to take on new types of targets, Griffin said. But that’s entirely doable against “limited threats,” he said, and in a shorter timeframe than developing a space-based interceptor.

(For those who need a reminder, an F-15 fired an anti-satellite weapon and successfully destroyed an American bird in September 1985. Shooting down a satellite isn’t quite the same as hitting a ballistic missile in flight, but there are similarities.)