THAAD

Missile defense resembles an elaborate shell game

On By gyonasLeave a comment

shell gameAccording to  Chinese general, military strategist, and philosopher Sun Tzu, “All warfare is based on deception.” The classic shell game uses three walnut shells and a pea to deceive the victim of the scam. The crook uses slight of hand to disguise the rapid moves. In mid course missile defense the reentry vehicle (RV) is the pea and the walnut shells are lightweight balloons. The slight of hand is to make each of the balloons look slightly different from all of the others. The game gets more challenging by spreading out the balloons so the observer can’t attack all of them. So one approach to defeat the balloons is to wait until the threat cloud reenters the atmosphere so the light weight objects slow down leaving only the RV to be attacked with an atmospheric interceptor like Terminal High Altitude Area Defense  or THAAD, which works for a limited area. shell game

Wide area defense requires that either the defense discriminates the empty balloons in mid course or attacks the booster before it can deploy the threat objects. Every booster would have to be attacked and launching many at once from a limited area challenges the boost phase interceptors. If the boosters are driven around, maybe in extensive underground tunnels, the trucks can be the shells hiding the real booster. The key to defense is sensors that can observe and discriminate in all phases including preparations for the attack, and the latest development of swarms of satellites is the key to discrimination.

I will write more about satellites later, then more regarding the vital issue of information and shell gamebattle management software. Does the street smart trickster win the shell game? We can only answer with tests of the defense system in the face of a credible “red team” of attackers….using realistic computer simulations. But how do we test the software against accidental faults or determined hackers who hide their moves under more shells?

Many a truth is spoken in jest

On By gyonas2 Comments

physicistsneedporches1.jpgMany politicians including Ronald Reagan and Jack Kennedy knew how to express reality through humor in order to communicate real news hidden behind quips. I believe their style would be useful today.

In my two years as the SDI chief scientist, I often used that approach to deal with the daily chaos, confusion and contradictions in my assignment. I recall sitting  in my SDI Pentagon office just down the hall from Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger when I got a call to hurry over to the Hill to answer an urgent question from a senator. The question was regarding a reporter’s claim that we were hiding an alien spacecraft at a secret facility on a South Pacific island. Even worse, I was accused by the reporter and the editor of the paper of being involved in developing the alien’s propulsion technology.

I had no experience with “fake news,” but I was already prepared with my approach to SDI humor. During my time with the SDI, I had become the brunt of ridicule–depicted as a chubby lying penguin named opus in Bloom County cartoon–and my natural sense of the ridiculous had become well developed during my two year assignment. It was a common occurrence that some serious event tested my communication skills, or maybe it was just my sense of humor that I used to preserve my sanity.  My official memo to my supervisor, Lt. Gen. James Abrahamson, aka Abe, giving a record of the meeting was even sillier than the alien accusation, but it allowed me to deal with the real and the unreal. For the rest of the story, check out my soon-to-be-published book Death Rays and Delusions on Amazon.com.