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Why so many of us were wrong about missile defense

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Re: Why so many of us were wrong about missile defense

#51

Post by bluGill »

cjbgkagh wrote: post #27
bluGill wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They needed to do more damage. iran looks really bad when after such a large attack they hit to little. Iran didn't suceed in any retribution. (other than money spent on a defense test)

Iran has no great options available to them, and of the terrible options on the table I think they picked the best one for them. Now if Israel wants to attack Iran directly they have to make a mountain out of a molehill and it’ll cost Israel public support at a time where public support for Israel is rapidly waning.

Iran has the option of not inciting violence.

Re: Why so many of us were wrong about missile defense

#52

Post by [deleted] »

bparsons wrote: post #6

People were (rightly) critical of the notion that missile defense was something the United States could rely upon to survive a nuclear war. Scientists pointed out that this is a dangerous strategy, and that non-proliferation and arms reduction treaties were the only sane way to avoid nuclear annihilation. There is no amount of technology that is going to save Europe and the US in an all out nuclear war. Theatre missi…

[deleted]

Re: Why so many of us were wrong about missile defense

#53

Post by maxglute »

A lot of propaganda from both sides but figures being thrown around put some numbers to guestimate bounds in less than credible manner. Given Iran at least could coordinate mixed salvo of ~300 ordnances. May or may not have shit industrial base with 50% dud rates. Israel+Co, missile defense on ballistics largely works. Which should be expected if one follows US FTM interceptor tests. Subsonics being completely vulnerable should also be assumed, TLAMs has been shot down with reliable consistency in last 10 years, including by RU.

Rough interpretations depending on how pessimistic/optimistic one is of each side's narrative. One end of spectrum is coalition took out 95% (evidence of ~10 hits) of ballistics assuming no duds and all arrived in IL airspace. Other end of spectrum is coalition took out 70-75% assuming allegations of 15+ hits if only 50% made it to IL. High Iranian duds makes ABM performance worse. Also don't know if penetrations happened because interception failure or they ran out of interceptors - i.e. coalition had ~100 interceptors with "99"% interception rate but ran out of interceptors which allowed tail end of salvo to land uncontested. Was Iran competent enough to calibrate strike to just overwhelm IL defense? That seems to be in keeping with narrative that IR wanted to signal they can hit Israel without massive escalation. Plus now IR has data now on most of IL missile defense network for follow up strikes assuming IL +co can replenish interceptors in time.

Take away is defensive has equal or greater missile defense coverage as the entire country of IL + co, one of the densest network of missile defense : geography size ratio in the world, with uncontested assets in region to intercept, multiple days of warning, a ~100 garbage-adequate ballistic salvo timed with subsonic used to draw magazine fire, is large enough to slip through and potentially hit target(s). Iran's attack validates notion that 10s-100s million of drones/missiles can deplete billions in missile defense and take out strategic target worth billions - good chance ~5 missiles kills/mission kills a carrier. This is bad (but not novel) news for countries less capable than Iran, and good news for countries that's more capable.

IMO what we have seen in UKR, Red Sea and Israel is missile defense can reliably be saturated by 100s of ordnances, given proper ISR, which TBF only less than handful countries is capable of delivering in a coordinated package. Even then US DDGs can't reliably prevent Houthis from hitting ships. How many assets/locations has as much missile defense as Israel + multiple in theatre US/UK basing and multiple DDGs? Arguably none.

Re: Why so many of us were wrong about missile defense

#54

Post by rokkitmensch »

koube wrote: post #10

The F-35 comment seems especially relevant as (for some reason) negative F-35 posts show up on hacker news all. of. the. time[0]. I don't get why negativity on this plane is such a hot topic here, it's like the lab leak theory of military planes. On at that note why is this post here? Is there a theme to hacker news anymore? [0]: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Armaments for the last war. I have no idea why anyone thinks the expensive-pilot-in-expensive-platform is going to survive the drone swarm paradigm shift.

Re: Why so many of us were wrong about missile defense

#55

Post by [deleted] »

aprilthird2021 wrote: post #39

This is a great article and an excellent breakdown of how what we hear on the news can be so off base. Just to nitpick, this part stuck out to me: >Fast forward two decades, and this outlook looks dangerously naive. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Iran’s attacks on Israel, and a possible Chinese attack on Taiwan or the Philippines show the importance of ballistic missile defense as a way of blocking attacks by invading…

[deleted]

Re: Why so many of us were wrong about missile defense

#56

Post by leetcrew »

bb88 wrote: post #16

Metrics of success are going to be: Ratio of cost of defense vs attack. The US and it's allies spent X on the missiles. Iran spent Y on the attack. If the ratio of X/Y is 1k or more, then it's probably not a feasible long term solution. IOW we're spending a billion to defend against a million dollars worth of materiel (no that's not a misspelling). Percentage of effectiveness to cost. If a smart missile is more effec…

I do have to ask: are you actually claiming the total cost of the iranian attack was $1mm, or just posing a hypothetical? I can't find cost estimates for most of iran's missile portfolio, but this seems pretty low. the fixed wing drones are thought to have a unit cost around $50k, but that's with a pretty large error bar [0]. I'm having trouble finding unit cost estimates for their cruise and ballistic missiles, but it's a safe bet that the ones capable of reaching israel are at least 2-3x more expensive. even if the attack consisted 100% of those fixed wing drones, that would be at least $15mm just in expended munitions.

anyways, sure, spending 1000x the cost of incoming munitions on interception is not tenable if that's the entire conflict. but most conflicts don't consist of one party lobbing missiles while the other tries to shoot them down until someone runs out of money. it looks like that right now because the US is caught between supporting an ally, protecting freedom of navigation, and preventing further escalation in the region. the two carrier strike groups alone could do a lot more damage to iranian production and infrastructure than its military could in return. it's fortunate that no one wants that.

[0] https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/17549019063238084...

Re: Why so many of us were wrong about missile defense

#57

Post by rokkitmensch »

bglazer wrote: post #32

What’s the conclusion here? Basically, the last paragraph says pundits should talk to different sources, and that they should “keep the interests of the nation” in mind. He concludes by saying some vaguely ominous thing about politics not mattering if America “goes down”. So all in all, the thesis of the piece is that no one knows how or why defense contractors are spending a significant fraction of American GDP. But…

The conclusion here is that American military might is definitely, definitely, definitely not on the wane, or engaged in asymmetric warfare the narrative class tricked us into believing to be backwards religious zealots with no hope of ever playing on the global stage, and that this new multipolar world is fake Russian news.

Re: Why so many of us were wrong about missile defense

#58

Post by rokkitmensch »

leetcrew wrote: post #22
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #3

Isn't the problem with these missile defense systems that the per-unit cost is very high? And so in a longer term battle (like Russia vs Ukraine) one side can drain the other's defenses and $$ through the continuous use of cheap drones where the cost of the missile defense rocket far exceeds the cost of the sent drone?

yes and no. the difference in cost between the weapon and the countermeasure matters, but it's not the whole story. the value of the thing being defended also matters. in the absence of a viable alternative, it's easily worth burning $1-2mm per interceptor to prevent a mission kill on a $2bn destroyer or a strike on a major population center. not saying this is you personally, but people seem to view this kind of thi…

Deep pockets in the sense of "can print indefinitely or until the inflation leaks into Bitcoin", and shallow pockets in the sense of actual artillery shells and interceptors.

Re: Why so many of us were wrong about missile defense

#59

Post by relaxing »

koube wrote: post #10

The F-35 comment seems especially relevant as (for some reason) negative F-35 posts show up on hacker news all. of. the. time[0]. I don't get why negativity on this plane is such a hot topic here, it's like the lab leak theory of military planes. On at that note why is this post here? Is there a theme to hacker news anymore? [0]: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

The narrative is pushed in part by Boeing PR and lobbying, who would prefer the world buy the upgraded F-15EX instead. BAE/Daussalt/Saab also stand to benefit.

Re: Why so many of us were wrong about missile defense

#60

Post by invalidname »

cjbgkagh wrote: post #15

Do we know for sure what has been reported is true, was it really only a few? Perhaps we should consider that the goal wasn't to do a lot of damage but instead saber-rattling. It would seem wise for Iran to both to satiate the demands of their constituents desire for retribution without triggering escalation. That Israel was told to 'take the win' by the US seems to be as good as result for Iran as one could possibly…

It's true. There's photo and video evidence plus confirmation from multiple separate sources (different countries).

You don't fire 300+ missiles and drones just as a "show of force". It's expensive. Their stated goal was to overwhelm the missile defense system and it clearly failed.

> The cost of the attack seemed to be 1/10th the cost of the defense so that does appear to be a net win for the attackers.

Not really. First, Iran is far worse off. Second, it showed that their missiles are crap. Many of them failed on launch and some crashed in Iraq (they intended to fire more).

But this was also a unique situation where Israel held back. In a typical case a firing would receive an immediate deadly response. E.g. planes and missiles from Israel returning the favor. Thus the cost for Iran would have been much higher.

Lastly, you should calculate the cost if the missiles would have hit the target.

> I worry that the west will become over confident with our missile defence and use it as an excuse to push conflict as close to nuclear exchange as possible. To paraphrase Bertrand Russell; 'like teenagers playing a game of nuclear chicken'

I partially agree with that notion. Still, as an Israeli I'd rather have that defense system over ideology. I can tell you that if a missile had hit anything important the outrage would have been terrible and the retaliation would have been immediate. In that sense at least, it gives the space to take a breath and deliberate.

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