J_kies' Most Recent Comments
in: Burn Notice
in: It Takes a Village to Raze a Test Stand
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Allen – if you hit the https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB235/index.htm released documents – mostly overheads don’t see the “heat” of ground tests as those occur within the usually optically thick lines that reduce clutter as viewed by the spacecraft. The ‘cloudbreak’ comment usually refers to missiles rising over 7km where the atmospheric molecular absorption becomes significantly less.
in: Who’ll Stop the Rain?
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Holding fast to common sense and economics are not ‘sexy’ but they are likely the only achievable goals until and unless we attain political leadership more traditional than the last couple of generations. We can note that Eisenhower is in the news and some level of emulation of that deliberate style of seeking expertise and consensus in decision-making is called for in the future. At the moment I fear the demagogues that murdered the Party of Lincoln and Eisenhower and replaced it with the resurgent party of Jefferson Davis.
in: A Nobel Prize for Brinkmanship?
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Perhaps just Kim? He is the genius that parades paper mache missiles, tests a couple missiles (that could easily be the product of foreign expertise) and detonates ‘gadgets’ underground as a means of leveraging an astoundingly weak position to get the US to agree to ending a frozen conflict and possibly backing forces out of a tripwire position? Its genius at a level that makes any James Bond villain look weak and poorly focused and deserves a reward.
in: Guest Post: Consequences of Testing an H-Bomb in the Pacific
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Given imperfect missile reliability and realistic expectations. Juchebird is effectively a first strike in a nuclear conflict. Frigate bird did not overfly foreign populations on its way from the Submarine launch in the Pacific to its point of detonation also high over the Pacific. Frigate bird also had safety systems and a safe/arm that precluded function in the event of non-nominal flight.
An armed nuclear explosive fired from the DPRK to the Pacific holds non-trivial likelihoods of failure to include 1) failure on the pad, 2) failure early in boost leading to ground ranges of less than 200km (and unconstrained dispersal on where the RV could land). 3) Early propulsion failure leading to dropping the RV on Japan near the overflight track. 4) Catastrophic guidance / control failures leading to the missile flying west or north or south putting the PRC, Russia, and ROC, and the Philippines at risk.
As no foreign knowledge or confidence exists of DPRK flight safety / flight termination systems or weapon systems safe, arm or firing, we must presume any flight by a Juchebird represents a potential nuclear strike on any nation within the flight range.
That’s the definition of the first shot of a nuclear war.
in: Domestic UDMH Production in the DPRK
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Rather well done. While Broad may not publish a retraction of his story, he was certainly provided insight ahead of publication that UDHM manufacture was not exotic merely toxic and instead of looking for imports of fuel, he should have been looking for any foreign supply of a chemical line to manufacture UDMH.
in: Nuclear Deterrence and the Revenge of Geography
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Joshua – thanks for 1) talking sense at the AFA meeting, 2) pointing out the innate hazards of having both BMD and ICBMs in the face of bad Russian sensors that cannot realistically distinguish between an ICBM decapitation attack and the debris of successful BMD defense of the US East Coast from DPRK attack.
I wish your sense had been included in the recent Brookings discussion and report on deterrence as the only mention of BMD is some half-baked marketing material on the wonders of BMD despite its pathetic record on the test range.
Sadly – I suspect that we can’t rationally have a discussion about real deterrence for a few more years as the present administration does not care about credible deterrence if that gets the in way of generating a few more headlines about the US throwing away decades of carefully built credibility.
in: Deterrence Stability is a Hoax. The Delicate Balance of Terror is, Too.
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Brilliantly and insightfully stated – bravo sir.
Just to add ammunition to your masterful discussion; the Chinese and Russian hypersonic systems are publically asserted to be nuclear armed and the trajectory shaping is expressly to evade US BMD capabilities. In a further context of similarity; the vehicle behind the design for the US CPGS (now CPS) began life as a nuclear MARV research effort, the SNLA SWERV vehicle of the early 1980s.
So the CPS people can pound sand; absolutely nothing about the trajectory provides distinct separation from nuclear tipped vehicles and CPS is astoundingly easy to misinterpret in use as a nuclear strike that just hasn’t landed yet.
in: Is Space the Final War-Fighting Frontier?
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Lest I go off on a tangent – I should remind people that Donald Kessler is merely retired not dead and I think it would be rather wise for someone to resource him to study the ASAT / SBI concepts as presently directed by Congress. I don’t get to write checks and do tasking in my day job or I certainly would do so.
Consider the hundreds to thousands of KKVs implied by NDAA-17 directing MDA to look at a space based architecture. Given some small but reasonable failure rate releasing debris on satellite deployments; at what point would a constellation of KKVs with large explosive cross-sections (when convolved with ordinary debris crossings) self-destruct during the emplacement phase? (I am betting well under 30% populated)
The end-state of a fully populated constellation would obviously be vulnerable to a satellite launch ‘failure’ that happened to put a population of counter-rotating debris into play.
in: Is Space the Final War-Fighting Frontier?
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Gregory Matteson gets the key point; launching to Geo is a serious endeavor and Michael gets the essence of the suicidal nature of KKVs. Donald Kessler’s debris cascade is a real constraint on all thoughts of ‘space war’ as debris + time = no viable space assets. What Don didn’t look at was the types of innately explosive payloads or large rocket engines on satellites as that causes the debris cascade to accelerate hugely. None of the advocates of space capabilities is thinking on the timelines necessary to have a viable strategic view that retains US capabilities (at all) at the exit of some conflict.
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Dave – I suggest you are not looking at disposal but more in the lane of quality assurance / characterization firings of subscale motors – Consider the BATES motors used by US labs as an example of subscale heavyweight means to look at the differences in thrust (and Isp) caused by different manufacturing processes such as the uniformity / grinding of the solids that become components of the propellant.