Iran announced a nuclear fuel breakthrough and test-fired a new radar-evading medium-range missile in the Gulf on Sunday, moves that could further antagonize the West at a time when Tehran is trying to avert harsh new sanctions on its oil industry.
I sure hope Bill’s Prediction #3 of his Things I Hope Happen in 2012 comes true because it looks like we’re running short of time and how.
I don’t know if I should be more concerned that Iran seems to be further along in their nuclear program than previously thought or that they are further along in their delivery systems capabilities than previously thought.
You can do both. I certainly am.
I’m personally not worried about their delivery systems, largely modified North Korean missiles. The last time the Norks tried to launch an ICBM, the U.S. announced it could, and would shoot it down. The missile crashed on take-off, and the U.S. clammed up about it. That left some English bettors in limbo, since they depended on U.S. announcements of time in flight, and it wasn’t announced. I’ll assume the “radar evading” tag is Middle East bluster, and I suspect the announced nuclear fuel breakthrough is an attempt to minimize the computer bug damage too.
Certain military systems are capable of downing those missiles, in certain conditions. This, from my upcoming novel The Fall of the American Republic: Death and Destruction demonstrates the mechanism:
This does not cover every eventuality.
Nailing ICBMs or MRBMs in boost phase is a lot easier than in terminal attack mode. In the former, ballistic missiles are about as maneuverable as a pregnant yak, putting out a rocket plume that can be seen for hundreds of miles in every direction, they still have nice flammable rocket fuel on board to help turn interceptor near-misses into kills, and they will lose their ability to reach their targets if forced into even relatively small evasive action. The only problem is that you have to have your interceptors very near the enemy launch sites to take advantage.
OTOH, warheads in terminal attack would be coming in at about Mach 6, can easily be mixed with both heat and radar decoys, can maneuver easily while still staying on target, have to be hit much harder to get a kill, and if nuclear* can do hideous damage even from a mile up. Even if you do kill them, you just wound up either dropping an unexploded nuclear device on your city, or else spreading a cloud of fissionable debris over it. Both are better than detonation, but neither is pleasant.
*A single properly designed fusion weapon could catastrophically EMP the entire Continental USA from altitude over Kansas. I don’t believe that this is true of fission-only weapons.