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Technically Iran fires SRBMs and MRBMs not ICBMs. They intentionally gimp their missiles to avoid advertising ICBM range as a way of placating Europe.
Missile defense is NP-complete
81–90 of 446 posts
Re: Missile defense is NP-complete
#82Not sure if it applies exactly but this discussion brings to mind this saying...
"The loser of a knife fight dies in the street. The winner dies in the hospital."
Re: Missile defense is NP-complete
#83Two more sobering axes to introduce: cost and manufacturing capability. Numbers are hard to find for obvious security reasons, but using the numbers most optimistic to the defender[0] suggests an adversary using a Fatah type hypersonic is spending 1/3rd the cost of an Arrow interceptor, and is launching missiles that are produced at a much faster rate. Interception is deeply asymmetric in favor of the attacker. [0] h…
That's a false comparison. You want to compare between the actual options you have, which are either (a) firing an interceptor (or several); or (b) repairing the damage caused by a non-intercepted missile.
It’s far more complicated than that. The choice is often between firing an interceptor against this missile aimed at this target, or firing that interceptor against the next missile aimed at a target you can’t yet know. Because unless your production capacity far outstrips theirs, you’re going to run out first.
Re: Missile defense is NP-complete
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or perhaps they will learn they are outmatched, lack the resources and technological capabilities to compete, and deterrence will have been established.
Iran has always known that the US is a higher tech nation, but you should not just expect them to surrender on that basis.
That's not what deterrence means. From google: the action of discouraging an action or event through instilling doubt or fear of the consequences.
It's meant to avoid conflict altogether, say with China and Taiwan.
Re: Missile defense is NP-complete
#85Add multiple decoys and the missile math tends to become an argument for the importance of preemption. Han shot first for a good reason.
If you haven't, I'm going to recommend you to listen to an episode of Dan Carlin's Hardcore History, specifically The Destroyer of Worlds [1].
Why? Because it goes into the change in strategic thinking brought on by the atomic age (and, soon thereafter, the thermonuclear age). And there was an element of US strategic thinking that argued for a preemptive strike against the USSR.
The episode also goes into the arguments for and against the development of the hydrogen bomb, a weapon that could never really be used and arguably not even necessary when we already had the atomic bomb.
The outcome of those debates shaped American foreign policy from 1945 to the present day.
[1]:https://www.dancarlin.com/hardcore-history-59-the-destroyer-...
Re: Missile defense is NP-complete
#86Why does a ground based interceptor cost $75M? High idiot index?
Re: Missile defense is NP-complete
#87Those rockets are lobbed in high arcs and glow in the sky then slowly fall down - they are so slow they almost look like flares.
Your so-called missile defense does nothing at all against a real missile like Iran's supersonic ICBMs which can exceed 24,000+ km/h.
Re: Missile defense is NP-complete
#88Re: Missile defense is NP-complete
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is wrong, for example Iran have thousands of Shahed drones, they cost almost nothing to build, to intercept just one the ratio is way way higher that 1:10. A single patriot missile is in the multi millions $ range.
No, what I said is not wrong just because there exists other things to intercept, that just changes the ratio. You still have to consider whether it's worth it to spend a patriot missile to intercept a drone, vs letting the drone hit, say, a billion dollar radar installation or a dozen troops. On the manufacturing side, nobody said that all drones are intercepted with patriots. You have to look at the avg cost to int…
For one thing, the entire world economy is not even close to 1000x Iran’s.
Re: Missile defense is NP-complete
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If the interceptor keeps a multi-million dollar building around then interceptor at a million dollars is still cheap, even if the missile it takes out was only $100. Not if it means you can't intercept the next one hitting much a more valuable/critical building.
That is a trade off that hopefully you never need to consider, but it is a valid concern that does come up in the real world.
It's not a hypothetical:
Trump started blaming Biden for the US's interceptor shortage two days into the war. Third-party military analysts say there's a high probability Iran's drone stockpile will outlast the US's first-tier interceptor stockpile.
The first-order math checks out: At the beginning of the war, we (and allies) were using 800 x $1M patriot missiles per day. The global production capacity for patriots is 600 per year, so there's no way we've have been able to maintain that cadence now that we're in week 4 of the war (the patriot program has not existed for enough decades). Now we see things like successful strikes on Israel's nuclear complex.
If the math isn't good enough, note that Trump backed down over the weekend, after Iran reiterated that they'd target civilian infrastructure if the US did so first. If we still had adequate interceptor capabilities, calling his bluff would not have worked.