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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/44616333
President Donald Trump left out a key detail this week when he outlined his plans for a massive missile and air defense shield over the continent: He can’t build it without Canada.
Ottawa has historically funded about 40 percent of NORAD investments, according to VanHerck, and is putting $38 billion into the command to add new radars in the north over the next two decades. Without those investments — and additional sensors that can peer over the North Pole — officials believe the U.S. will have trouble putting together a credible North American air defense.
What Trump is pitching is the same snake oil Reaganite “Star Wars” program that was scrapped 30 years ago. The Israeli Iron Dome can’t beat Yemeni intercontinental bottle rockets, nevermind Iranian SCUD missiles. These programs don’t meaningfully protect a country that is under bombardment. They’re wingnut welfare for the MIC and always have been.
The only successful nuclear deterrent was detente. JFK picking up a telephone and telling Khruschev “We’ll pull our Jupiter Missiles out of Turkey if you pull your missile out of Cuba” saved the world from nuclear annihilation. The fantasy of missile defense only escalates these conflicts.
The “Golden Dome” system is almost certainly more bullshit from Trump not because it’s infeasible but because we can’t afford to build it. At least not right now.
SDI never really ended and research on the core technologies continue to this day. Things like Patriot and NIKE came out of the program some 20 years ago and we’re now starting to get the energy weapon systems that Reagan envisioned.
Iron Dome does an amazingly good job at defending from the threats it was designed to handle. It wasn’t meant to deal with MRBM or ICBM threats.
Effective defense from MRBM and ICBM attack has been technically possible for nearly two decades however installing a GBMD system of that size would bankrupt the United States several times over. The missiles it uses are a hundred million a piece if IIRC and we’d need tens of thousands of them.
What’s changed is that Ground Based Directed Energy Weapons of sufficient power, a direct result of SDI, to interdict ICBMS will be available in the near future. The US Military is already fielding lower power systems like the DE M-SHORAD and everyone from Lockheed to Raytheon has 1MW (or higher) GBDEW systems starting testing this year.
Hell the British already have their Dragonfire system, rated at 300KW, not only built but scheduled to be put on Navy Vessels in 2027 and the US Navy has had a system like this for nearly a decade already.
Missile defense isn’t a fantasy, the short range version has been around for a long while now. Medium and Long Range has been possible for two decades it’s just been wildly unaffordable at scale. That is about to change.
So did the Maginot Line
The most conservative estimate I’ve seen for the IDs intercept rate is 80% and many sources claim 90% or even 95%. I’m am not a fan of the Israeli Government but its beyond question that the ID system does an excellent job at countering the threat it was designed to handle.
IDF report highlights failure of air-defense system on Oct. 7
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Pretty textbook strategy in the face of missile defense systems. Anti-missile systems typically need two to three munitions to counter one attack. This math hasn’t changed since the ID was created.
The primary mechanism Israel has to protect its citizens is its network of air raid sirens and fallout shelters. The secondary mechanism is the threat of retaliation (to the point of systematic genocide of a region) which requires an enormous perpetually-standing army. The ID is only materially beneficial in combating small scale, low-frequency attacks. And only when they have ample time to repair and reload. And even then, the modern IDF has been rife with nepotism, graft, and institutional neglect such that a lot of their military readiness has degraded.