Lockheed Martin Team Conducts Free-Flight Hover Test of MDA

reply to post by SLAYER69

I guess they have perfected it and made it fly better.
maybe it was on the "backburner" all this time and they are working on it again!

reply to post by SLAYER69


Like you said, old technology, but still cool. I just can't figure out why this is getting circulated as something new 20 years later. Cool concept though i would imagine much more has been perfected in the last couple of decades.

reply to post by infinite8 & GenRadek



True but it seemed like they are trying to say this is something new and they are trying to market it as something else!

Smaller unit smaller than the newer one this was in 1990

Brilliant Pebbles

Brilliant Pebbles, the top anti-missile program of the Reagan and the first Bush administrations, was an attempt to deploy a 4,000-satellite constellation in low-Earth orbit that would fire high-velocity, watermelon-sized projectiles at long-range ballistic missiles launched from anywhere in the world. Although the program was eliminated by the Clinton Administration, the concept of Brilliant Pebbles remains among the most effective means of ballistic missile defense.

In 1993, however, the Clinton Administration delivered a severe blow to U.S. missile defense by systematically eliminating Brilliant Pebbles through a series of budget cuts. Secretary of Defense Les Aspin stated his objective as “taking the star out of Star Wars.” The Administration did more than just that: it slashed missile defense funding across the board and replaced SDI with the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO). Yet the technology itself would continue to be tested, for a short time: one year later, NASA launched a deep-space probe known as “Clementine,” which had been built using first-generation Brilliant Pebbles technology. Clementine successfully mapped the entire surface of the Moon. The mission, which cost $80 million, effectively “space qualified” Brilliant Pebbles’ hardware. All the same, no steps were taken by the Clinton Administration to resurrect the program.

Brilliant Pebbles remained on the shelf and out of the public eye until 2002, when President George W. Bush withdrew the U.S. from the 1972 ABM Treaty. At first, many believed that Bush II planned to resurrect Brilliant Pebbles, which had been the focus of his father’s anti-missile program. Instead, the Missile Defense Agency (BMDO’s successor) concentrated its efforts on “hit-to-kill” ground-based defenses, such as the 20 interceptors that will be deployed at Fort Greely in Alaska and Vandenberg Air Force Base in California in late 2004. Little attention was paid to space-based defenses, although MDA’s Near Field Infrared Experiment (NFIRE), scheduled for launch in the summer of 2004, recently shifted the national debate back to Brilliant Pebbles-like interceptors.

www.missilethreat.com...

The MKV obviously uses Brilliant Pebbles Technology, but it is mounted on top of a ground based interceptor. It ####s me when they cancel programmes, then resurrect them 15 years later. If the Clinton administration didn't cancel the programme, we would of had a superior shield, cheaper. They need to make up their mind. This hasn't been the only programme that has been delayed then resurrected years later... waste of money.

www.heritage.org...
www.globalsecurity.org...
www.answers.com...
www.defensetech.org...
www.thespacereview.com...

Aviationweek 1
Aviationweek 2
Aviationweek 3
www.aviationweek.com...

[edit on 13/12/2008 by C0bzz]

reply to post by SLAYER69


That's the KV. The new test is the MKV-L. The MKV-L will carry the KV up towards the target, and then launch multiple KVs at the incoming missiles.

reply to post by C0bzz


Awesome I knew I wasnt going nuts

Good take off the shelf technology and use it

Originally posted by Zaphod58
reply to post by SLAYER69

 

That's the KV. The new test is the MKV-L. The MKV-L will carry the KV up towards the target, and then launch multiple KVs at the incoming missiles.

I was talking about the " Hover Test " and the unit it'self not the launch or carrying vehicle.

Also watch the video I posted on the first page



[edit on 13-12-2008 by SLAYER69]

reply to post by SLAYER69


In the video you linked to you said "Smaller unit smaller than the newer one this was in 1990." The hover test in 1990 was a hover test of the KV. The 2008 hover test is the carrier for several KVs.

[edit on 12/13/2008 by Zaphod58]

reply to post by SLAYER69


yeah...but if you watch the 1989 video, the movement is haggard and choppy, it is much much more refined, which is probably controlled by modern microprocessors...compared to the calculator power ones they had back then.

i dunno /shrug...but would it be strange to think that these things dont just appear and arent completed in 2 years time?

Outside of the description the hover test footage is nearly identical

Maybe I'm being misunderstood I'm not saying it's the same exact vehicle all I'm saying is that this is not NEW

and that when viewing the OP video I remembered something very similar to it from 20 years ago and if this is the best they can do with 20 years of development I want my money back.

The R & D back then was paid for by tax payers

[edit on 13-12-2008 by SLAYER69]

The smaller video was the kill vehicle for Brilliant Pebbles, a part of Reagans SDI programme. The 2nd December test was for the Multiple Kill Vehicle that is essentially a carrier for newer kill vehicles, unrelated to Brilliant Pebbles.

Picture:
www.globalsecurity.org...

All explained here:
www.globalsecurity.org...

[edit on 13/12/2008 by C0bzz]

Originally posted by Zaphod58
reply to post by SLAYER69

 

That's the KV. The new test is the MKV-L. The MKV-L will carry the KV up towards the target, and then launch multiple KVs at the incoming missiles.

I think they called it the EKV back then

In October 1990, the Department of the Army’s Space and Missile Defense Command (acting as an agent for BMDO) awarded three parallel contracts for the design, development, and demonstration testing of sensor designs for an EKV to be used in National Missile Defense. These contracts contemplated one or more “downselects” to eventually choose one contractor to build an EKV using the successful design.

LINKY HERE