Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense Effective Against NK Threat?

Indications are that North Korea can not "reach" the mainland United States with a nuclear war head. This means that their missiles can not accurately target the US. It is quite conceivable that NK could now, or in the near future place a Nuke into space. A nuclear detonation in the upper atmosphere would create a devastating EMP shock-wave. This weapon does not need to be accurate, any explosion over the continental US would be devastating. This could easily be done by placing a nuclear device into orbit and then causing it to renter orbit roughly over the US. This is not sophisticated technology and stretches back to just post WW2.

Detonating a nuke in the upper atmosphere appears to be well within North Korea's ability, or will be in the very near future. To prevent such attack the delivery device would need to be destroyed prior to re-entry. The United States has recently committed to moving anti-ballistic missile batteries to Alaska to defend against a NK nuclear threat. The problem is, these missiles are only effective post reentry and would not be able to prevent an upper atmospheric explosion. In essence the nuke would be rigged to explode immediately upon reentry and the ABM would not have time to reach the target.

To complicate the problem, NK would likely launch such a device from sea, for instance a cargo vessel could be outfitted to launch a missile capable of space entry. By the time we were aware of launch, the ICBM would be well on its way into space and very difficult to engage. Therefore the missile would need be be detected and destroyed in its boost phase. To my knowledge the only weapons platform we have in range of the NK mainland or capable of detecting and attacking a sea launched missile is the Aegis. If North Korea wished to launch a nuclear missile from the sea with the intent to cause a massive and debilitating EMP could the US stop it? From my understanding of the Aegis it has never been tested on fast moving long range missiles and was designed to shoot down low flying slow moving cruise missiles. Also the range of the Aegis is somewhat limited. Am I missing something, or is the US more vulnerable to a NK attack than the main stream media is letting on?

Aegis

EMP Threat

Ground Based Missle Defense (what we moved to Alaska)

Tactical Systems (no proven effectiveness against ICBMs)

You know, I have a buddy who has expressed repeated concerns over the possibility of North Korea launching an EMP attack against a varying portion of the United States. Is there a system like this in place for countering such an assault?

reply to post by AfterInfinity


I think some people on these forums do not realize the military force of the USA. If NK was to ever attack this country, it would mean complete annihilation for them. And finally South Korea could take over the entire territory and be done with the the north.

They cannot even make their test missiles go where they want and lose them in Australian waters.

Its called the Ground Based Midcourse Defense system and uses an exoatmospheric warhead...

I believe the systems the U.S. has in place combined with its global intelligence capabilities would fully blunt any attempts by the DPRK to attack the CONUS with nuclear weapons.

The hard part of weapon design is reportedly in miniaturization and reliability, its obvious the North has stretched its technological and industrial capabilities to get this far. I don't see them fielding a viable ICBM threat for quite a while yet.

I would also add that a nuclear strike against the U.S. would be suicidal for any nation, especially so for a nation like the DPRK...

reply to post by ParovStelar


Do you know this for a fact?

reply to post by AfterInfinity



Do you realize that the annual budget for the military of the US is close to a trillion $.
NK has absolutely zero chance to win any sort of war against the USA.

Yes, that is a fact.

reply to post by ParovStelar


What do you think the plan of retaliation would be in such a scenario?

Also since you want facts. Here for your amusement :

Aircraft strength:

USA: 15 293
NK: 1667

Helicopter strength:

USA: 6665
NK: 237

Serviceable airports:

USA: 15 079
NK: 81

Aircraft carriers:

USA: 10
NK: 0

Oil reserve:

USA: 20 680 000 000 bbl
NK: 0 bbl

and more here : www.globalfirepower.com... es

reply to post by ParovStelar


None of those assets matter if North Korea manages to launch a successful EMP attack against our government. Everything electronic would be killed.

reply to post by AfterInfinity


Bombardment of every North Korean infrastructure day and night accompanied by ground support coming from the south Korea border. Destruction of North Korea in less than a week if USA goes all out on them.

reply to post by AfterInfinity


What exactly do you think the radius of an EMP attack is ?

reply to post by ParovStelar


Now let's go off of speculation based on that large military budget and U.S.'s future global interests and say the U.S. has hundreds of secret weapons, craft, and a good amount of undisclosed tech.

NK doesn't stand a chance, and you're right people underestimate the U.S.'s military capabilities.

reply to post by FidelityMusic


What is not in the book is not even necessary to overcome NK. But good point, imagine the overall force of this military if you take into account what is not accounted for.

reply to post by ParovStelar


I have no idea. Honestly, I'm with you on this. My buddy, however, does limited research that only describes the capabilities of EMP attacks and not the possible defensive strategies which have been theoretically and empirically proven to efficiently neutralize such an assault - such as a Wanted-style EMP-to-EMP attack in which the missile's controls are hit with a countering projectile of the same type. That's my own imaginative idea, but there's ways of countering that kind of threat, I'm sure.

Originally posted by ParovStelar
reply to post by AfterInfinity

 

Bombardment of every North Korean infrastructure day and night accompanied by ground support coming from the south Korea border. Destruction of North Korea in less than a week if USA goes all out on them.

And do you think China would sit back and let that happen ?

reply to post by AfterInfinity


The military has classified protections in place against an EMP. You think they haven't thought about the possibility of a high altitude EMP event?

As for Aegis, it was used to shoot down a satellite prior to reentry, so it can hit targets before reentry, as well as the pointed out, Ground-Based Midcourse Interceptor. I have more faith in the Aegis system than the GBI system, but both can hit targets in space prior to reentry.

Oh my god will you guys stop with this "America is untouchable" attitude, you are totally missing the point of the post. We are here to discuss the possible threat of a nuke detonated in the upper atmosphere.

I think this is a very interesting fact that you have pointed out. I believe this maybe on their list of possible ways to infiltrate or try to put a dent into out frame. I am not aware of any weaponry or systems in place that would help us. But I would imagine that our most sophisticated technology are inside of faraday cages or something similar that could nullify the blast. Not only that I also imagine that we have the technology to turn "missiles into ashes" with the help of one of our lasers.


reply to post by ken10

And do you think China would sit back and let that happen ?

I wonder...???... People here seem to think that these kind of things don't effect other nations. I wonder how China will respond if any event were to take place.


Something else to consider. Is anyone here aware of the fact, Dennis Rodman ( I know right) recently returned from a vacation in North Korea. A couple of days after his arrival he sat down with a News station and had a terrible interview. Anyway go watch it. In the interview he states how NK does not want any war, he also states KJUN wanted Obama to call him to talk to him directly. I thought this was strange. A few days later were reporting alleged missile testing and other non-sense.

My whole point bringing this up is, is this even real??? Is this media fu**ery again (sigh). Do they despise us, or do we despise them, to the point where we would create a fictitious scenario to achieve a personal agenda or goal!?!?!.


IDK just my 2 cents.
I appreciate the op, it is the product of an open mind.

reply to post by AKINOFTHEFIRSSTARS


No one is saying the US is untouchable, at least the realists among us. What is being said is that the US has thought of EMP attacks, and has taken steps to keep systems operating, and has systems that will help protect the US against missile attack. The GBI has a 50% hit rate in tests, while the Aegis has a much higher hit rate, but wasn't designed to hit some targets. So neither system will protect the US 100%, but at least there are systems that work, and that can be used to protect against these attacks.

I'm well aware that the US would win any war with North Korea. But I enjoy using my cell phone and laptop and would not like to live like they did in the 1800's because some nut job from NK has a death wish. The point of my post was to assess how secure we are from some whacko trying to EMP us, not if we are secure from being invaded by NK.

I was not aware that the Ground Based Mid Course Defense used an exoatmosphric kill vehicle. The weapon system only has a 50% success rate in testing though and many of the tests were under far simpler scenarios than the one presented. The need for redundancy would explain why we would want to move more missile systems to Alaska.


I had no idea that that Aegis shot down a satellite, that is fairly impressive and shows the system is far more capable than the military lets on.

What is scary is that the Government Accountability Office has stated that our anti ballestic technology is not effective. The report is critical of both the aegis and the gbmcd. Apparently extreamly basic countermeasures exist that make exoatmospheric kills of ICBM's impractical. For instance launching dummy missle/warheads to overwhelm our defenses. We only have a couple dozen of these systems and only a handful could be employed at a single time due to range restrictions, travel time, climate conditions etc. Check out this GAO report its kind of scary.
GAO Report Critical of the GBMCD

I'm sure the US has thought about EMP attacks but once an EMP is detonated I can not think of any countermeasure to undo its affects. It is obvious 90%of our infrastructure is not hardened. I'm sure the military equipment is, but that doesn't help the average joe like me and you.

reply to post by IndianaJoe


One of the reasons that Aegis is labeled ineffective is that it was designed for SRBM and MRBM interceptions, and has been slowly advanced to more capable missiles. It's vastly improved since the original tests, and is much more capable with the new SM-3 missiles.

The GBI systems all work, individually (the Cobra Dane radar I believe it's called to detect the launch, the SBX midcourse guidance system, the Aegis tie in to the SBX), the problem has been in either the missile, or the kill vehicle itself. The non-intercept tests have been very successful, which shows that everything works together and plays well together. The last intercept test was in 2010, and missed, even though everything worked as advertised. The last non-intercept test was in January. It used a three stage booster, which deployed a kill vehicle, which traveled to a fixed point and performed a series of maneuvers.