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Missile defense is NP-complete

smu160.github.io

371–380 of 446 posts

Re: Missile defense is NP-complete

#371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best missile defense is offsense: degrading the launchers, stockpiles and defense industrial base, with cheap stand-in munitions after SEAD, leveraging air and intelligence superiority. Expensive interceptors are only a stop-gap that buys you time for the offensive degradation. Expensive stand-off munitions, likewise, are a short-term stopgap until SEAD is complete.

And that's why nuclear deterrence is so key: the enemy can never be sure to destroy everything before being hit once. The Russian invasion of Ukraine really reminded everyone that nuclear deterrence is a nice thing to have for you security, and I suspect the Israelo-American attack on Iran is going to be the nail in the coffin of nonproliferation. I expect countries like Brazil, Japan, South Korea or even Taiwan or V…

There's a big difference between all the countries you named and Iran, the difference is jihad. You can't just let jihadists have nukes and hope they will only use them as a deterrent.

They're not just joking around when they say things like "Death to America" or "Death to Israel". They're not being hyperbolic when they say "We love death more that you love life".

They will absolutely use that bomb as soon as they have it, and it will trigger a response from the west when it happens.

Re: Missile defense is NP-complete

#372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A v1 was 30 feet long with a 20 foot wing span, and had no evasive capabilities.

Do the drones being launched by Iran have evasive capabilities?

Unlikely but they can be intelligent about their trajectory. That is avoid known areas of resistance, use natural features for protection.

Being slow moving as they are, they are quite vulnerable to countermeasures after they have been detected. I expected a-10s, helicopter gunships guarding critical infra, but have not heard of anything like that in the news.

Re: Missile defense is NP-complete

#373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and its much more rational to see that the invaders are natural born liars and they installed puppet dictatorships while talking "democracy" and very literally a few days ago backstabbed and invaded you while in the pretense of doing peace negotiations. Logically for an Iranian the most rational response would be to always kill Americans or Israelis in this case.

Iraq is many things but its not a puppet dictatorship, if anything it suffers from too much democracy in secterianism.

Iran itself in the past, Iraq as Saddam, Pinochet, Batista, ....

Re: Missile defense is NP-complete

#374
post #239
post #165

I spent some time reconstructing the current US missile defense interceptor numbers. This was done from open source DoD data, CSIS P-21 procurement exhibits, and CRS reports, that are are in depth, non partisan, objective policy analyses written by experts at the Congressional Research Service (CRS) specifically for U.S. Congress members. Also used Lockheed/RTX financial disclosures. The numbers are pretty bad… Way w…

How does this guarantee a political and strategic win for Iran? Iran was already teetering on the edge of being a failed state: socially, economically, environmentally, and agriculturally. Iran is expending expensive ballistic missiles to force those THAAD and Arrow shoot-downs. Yes, they're winning the shot exchange ratio, but their economy is orders of magnitude smaller than the US. Besides, unlike the Gulf states,…

They're not going to win. It's about extracting as much concessions

Remember the US attacked Iran, not other way round. Iran didn't start a war they thought they could win.

Re: Missile defense is NP-complete

#375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could counter multipayload missiles by hitting the missile earlier in its trajectory before the payloads deploy, that was the plan for MIRV nukes but it requires usually forward interceptors or perhaps energy weapons we don't yet have.

Hitting Ballistic missiles "Midcourse" as you suggest requires interceptors that look more like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground-Based_Interceptor or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow_3 It is.... Entirely infeasible to deploy these against tactical ballistics like Iran is using.

Israel seems to be using Arrow 3s for this exact effect. If we are to believe the news, the Arrow 3s hit bomblet arme missiles attacking Dimona ( after the one that got through)

Re: Missile defense is NP-complete

#376
post #8

The author explains that this problem is actually adversarial, in the sense that the attacker gets to observe defenses and allocate warheads and decoys accordingly. Thinking of our current circumstances, this suggests another cost of war: our offensive capabilities, as well as our defensive capabilities become more observable. Our adversaries are studying our strengths and weaknesses in Iran, and they will have a muc…

Take China for an example. No one knows China's true military capabilities, because they're rapidly evolving and because they virtually never use them. If there's an element of surprise to be had, they have it. But that cut's both ways, because China itself doesn't have experience exercising those capabilities. The learning curve could be noticeable. Meanwhile, no one doubts the ability of the US military to execute.

China uses wars like these to test their equipment for example the s300 knockoffs. These were not effective in Iran nor in Pakistan. I am sure the Chinese have made a note of that and debugging the failure.

Re: Missile defense is NP-complete

#377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My heartfelt sympathy to the MH17 victims and families, but the airplane was flying in the risky warzone. That does not discount the fact that it's an atrocious act by the Russian backed military. However, to send missile to primary school killing hundreds of school girls on the very first day of the war, if intentionally is just pure evil.

It wasn't intentional; the building was used by the military years before. The US had really badly out-of-date intelligence and was negligent in updating it. There's absolutely no military benefit to bombing a girl's school. Remember Hanlon's Razor, and remember how incompetent the Trump Administration has been in everything ever since he took office.

But 10~15 years outdated intelligence about an area considered a significant adversary that is penetrated by oodles of humint sources... hard to believe.

Israel has hit schools before knowing full well that it's a school (in war against Egypt). May well be policy.

Many of these kids would have been kids of IRGC. Likely that was the reason.

Re: Missile defense is NP-complete

#378
post #8

The author explains that this problem is actually adversarial, in the sense that the attacker gets to observe defenses and allocate warheads and decoys accordingly. Thinking of our current circumstances, this suggests another cost of war: our offensive capabilities, as well as our defensive capabilities become more observable. Our adversaries are studying our strengths and weaknesses in Iran, and they will have a muc…

That’s why Russia cut cables in the Baltic Ocean and flew a drone around Copenhagen airport.

That’s why StarCraft players sends “scouts” into enemy bases in the early game.

Re: Missile defense is NP-complete

#379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when part of their reasoning and authority is based on a divine mandate If you are atheist is becomes rational to surrender to the people that are invading your house and killing your friends at random?

Yes. Absolutely. If there are invaders who are killing everybody around me and telling me that they'll stop and generally let me be if I surrender and agree to live in a democracy, I expect that I'll be very inclined to accept. Maybe afterwards, if I see it's not working out, I may still consider guerrilla resistance down the line, but I don't see the benefit of fighting and most likely dying just for the sake of def…

> If there are invaders who are killing everybody around me and telling me that they'll stop and generally let me be if I surrender and agree to live in a democracy

I mean, that is not what is happening or was happening tho. No one is saying they want to build democracy in Iran ... and Iranians would be dumb if they believed such claim. Because of Irans history itself, but also because if Israel history/ideology and because of how USA behaved last year.

And in addition, the only one who can surrender is the Iranian regime itself (not Iranians in general) and that regime would gain nothing in such deal (if such deal was offered).

Re: Missile defense is NP-complete

#380
post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's America that's waging this war, having attacked Iran for no reason the world can see It's somewhat similar to Russia waging a war in Ukraine, although I can see some reasons for Russia to attack Ukraine (mainly territory)

If "I want this land" is a legitimate reason to initiate a war then basically anything is a legitimate reason.

I can see the reasons even if I don't think they're legitimate. I can see the reasons why someone steals from someone else, or rapes or kills. Those reasons aren't good enough, but most people have reasons to do something.

Why is America attacking Iran? What's the official reason? What's the actual reason? Does anybody know?

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