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[sluissa]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinel_program
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARx2-wRn9-Y (illiterate version)

If by modern tech you mean the 1950's...  We could easily deploy an ABM system for a limited threat like North Korea or even China (China has a limited number of missiles as a conscious policy decision, unless things have changed). The Soviets simply had too many warheads on too many missiles to practically defend against. Treaty arrangements let us have a defense site for the national capital and for our Minuteman fields, the same as the Soviets. They ended up with a defense for Moscow and the US had a defense for North Dakota. Things may have changed since.

My main point about it being "almost possible" was that by my understanding, even modern interceptor missiles are actually not very reliable.  Pretty much what Lord Shonus said: interceptors cost a lot of money and you need a huge number to have much hope of them protecting you against a large strike.  That's where my off hand comment about a laser system came from.  A laser system would have a (very) high installation cost, but after that it's reusable and can potentially disable or destroy many missiles.  A laser can't be actively dodged, and it only has to cause fairly superficial damage to a missile to make it tumble and break up.

Then again, the warheads might survive that and just blow up somewhere else.  Trying to destroy the warhead directly might be possible, but if it's protected by a heat shield for reentry then a laser might not do a whole lot of good.

Since we're this far into a derail. We've tried lasers. They don't work well for a number of reasons. Take a look at SDI under Reagan.

[Madman198237]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinel_program
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARx2-wRn9-Y (illiterate version)

If by modern tech you mean the 1950's...  We could easily deploy an ABM system for a limited threat like North Korea or even China (China has a limited number of missiles as a conscious policy decision, unless things have changed). The Soviets simply had too many warheads on too many missiles to practically defend against. Treaty arrangements let us have a defense site for the national capital and for our Minuteman fields, the same as the Soviets. They ended up with a defense for Moscow and the US had a defense for North Dakota. Things may have changed since.

My main point about it being "almost possible" was that by my understanding, even modern interceptor missiles are actually not very reliable.  Pretty much what Lord Shonus said: interceptors cost a lot of money and you need a huge number to have much hope of them protecting you against a large strike.  That's where my off hand comment about a laser system came from.  A laser system would have a (very) high installation cost, but after that it's reusable and can potentially disable or destroy many missiles.  A laser can't be actively dodged, and it only has to cause fairly superficial damage to a missile to make it tumble and break up.

Then again, the warheads might survive that and just blow up somewhere else.  Trying to destroy the warhead directly might be possible, but if it's protected by a heat shield for reentry then a laser might not do a whole lot of good.

The problem with "fairly superficial damage" is that it's not superficial, you need a massive laser with excellent tracking...and you also need to get the laser beam through the atmosphere to the target.

We can't do all of that, at least not at the same time, yet.

[Dorsidwarf]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinel_program
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARx2-wRn9-Y (illiterate version)

If by modern tech you mean the 1950's...  We could easily deploy an ABM system for a limited threat like North Korea or even China (China has a limited number of missiles as a conscious policy decision, unless things have changed). The Soviets simply had too many warheads on too many missiles to practically defend against. Treaty arrangements let us have a defense site for the national capital and for our Minuteman fields, the same as the Soviets. They ended up with a defense for Moscow and the US had a defense for North Dakota. Things may have changed since.

My main point about it being "almost possible" was that by my understanding, even modern interceptor missiles are actually not very reliable.  Pretty much what Lord Shonus said: interceptors cost a lot of money and you need a huge number to have much hope of them protecting you against a large strike.  That's where my off hand comment about a laser system came from.  A laser system would have a (very) high installation cost, but after that it's reusable and can potentially disable or destroy many missiles.  A laser can't be actively dodged, and it only has to cause fairly superficial damage to a missile to make it tumble and break up.

Then again, the warheads might survive that and just blow up somewhere else.  Trying to destroy the warhead directly might be possible, but if it's protected by a heat shield for reentry then a laser might not do a whole lot of good.

The problem with "fairly superficial damage" is that it's not superficial, you need a massive laser with excellent tracking...and you also need to get the laser beam through the atmosphere to the target.

We can't do all of that, at least not at the same time, yet.

Well that was why the SDI was space-based, right? Since ballistic trajectories take the missiles into space, you can shoot them with lasers?

[Madman198237]

Yes, though not far into space, and space is big and mostly empty, which means you need a lot of lasers in space to have a good shot at any missiles launched at any given time in any given place. And there's also all sorts of fun with either using geosynchronous orbits or attempting to calculate when a satellite will be *where* to shoot down a missile and all that.

[Telgin]

You can cover the whole Earth with only a handful of satellites in a high orbit, but, well, there are lots of issues with space lasers.  You'd still need a huge number to intercept enough missiles, and satellites are expensive and hard to get into space.  Plus, there are heat dissipation issues, power issues (solar only gives you so much), and so on.

Hey, but the satellites could at least theoretically destroy antisatellite missiles trying to shoot them down.  Except the same problem applies and you can fire a lot of antisatellite missiles for the cost of one laser satellite.

The problem with "fairly superficial damage" is that it's not superficial, you need a massive laser with excellent tracking...and you also need to get the laser beam through the atmosphere to the target.

We can't do all of that, at least not at the same time, yet.

Oh, sure.  We've had proofs of concept aboard a jet, but the tests were against smaller missiles and the range wasn't good enough.  I'm just speaking hypothetically about how things could change in the future.

[Il Palazzo]

And then, once you've spent bazillion dollars on your space lasers, everybody adds some cheap armour to their missiles, so you have to spend another bazillion to upgrade your now-obsolete satellites. And then they do it again.
Sounds like a creative way to burn your money.

[Starver]

Fire the money directly into space and have the lasers burn it for you!

[Trekkin]

And then, once you've spent bazillion dollars on your space lasers, everybody adds some cheap armour to their missiles, so you have to spend another bazillion to upgrade your now-obsolete satellites. And then they do it again.
Sounds like a creative way to burn your money.

We could go through how armor itself is cheap but payload capacity is not, particularly given their likely flight profile, but the primary effect of debates of this sort is to discourage investment in defensive systems of any kind so as not to forestall the sweet release of death.

EDIT: Which actually suggests a solution to the problem, come to think of it. Give random armchair "space (or physics) enthusiasts" lots of fancy honors, let other nations recruit them to their nuclear programs, and then just wait until the endless purple/green debates over lasers vs. kinetics drive them to either detonate their own nuclear weapons or ride them into orbit in a desperate attempt to escape.

[smjjames]

You guys are forgetting the basic principle of rockets, more weight=more fuel needed to throw it x distance. So, unless they used a more heat resistant material of similar weight, that weight is going to change the parameters of the missile itself.

[Il Palazzo]

but the primary effect of debates of this sort is to discourage investment in defensive systems of any kind so as not to forestall the sweet release of death.

What, and not to discourage wasteful spending of limited resources?

[PTTG??]

Hey, but the satellites could at least theoretically destroy antisatellite missiles trying to shoot them down.  Except the same problem applies and you can fire a lot of antisatellite missiles for the cost of one laser satellite.

Actually, to ballpark the number, you could probably launch maybe two antisatellite missiles per laserstar. Orbital launch is the hard part.

[Max™]

Hey, but the satellites could at least theoretically destroy antisatellite missiles trying to shoot them down.  Except the same problem applies and you can fire a lot of antisatellite missiles for the cost of one laser satellite.

Actually, to ballpark the number, you could probably launch maybe two antisatellite missiles per laserstar. Orbital launch is the hard part.

Ok, crazy idea, but bear with me here: what if we used a series of small thermonuclear devices detonated under a ship with like... a tungsten or even DU plate mounted on shock absorbers, and lifted our anti-nuclear lasers into space with it?

Though to get enough oomph from a given laser we might be better off going with a bomb-pumped system, but hey, the hard part is taken care of, now we just need to build our nuclear anti-nuclear lasers and our nuclear nuclear anti-nuclear laser launcher!

[Kagus]

I'm suddenly reminded of a less-known RTS game where one of the factions could hack satellites out of orbit and bring them crashing down in a blaze of fire on the battlefield, wreaking destruction.

The satellites also were loaded with Ebola, somehow.

[Trekkin]

but the primary effect of debates of this sort is to discourage investment in defensive systems of any kind so as not to forestall the sweet release of death.

What, and not to discourage wasteful spending of limited resources?

Anyone worth discouraging is going to care about the actual mathematics, and we're more in the business of bandying about snappily phrased but vague general principles coupled with thinly veiled insults. So no, not really.

[Il Palazzo]

How are we then discouraging investment in defensive systems?