Sadly, this is all bull#. There are no technologies that can effectively stop nuclear weapons mid-flight. It is nearly impossible.

Not so... The military has all but gone public with the existence of HELs (High Energy Lasers) designed for the express purpose of anti-missile defense...and they've been putting the sattelites carrying them, in orbit for the past couple decades... In addition, there are versions of the improved Patriot that can travel into high altitudes and destroy an enemy nuke before it arms and goes nuclear... Also, an ICBM trajectory is a lot easier to predict than a land to land SCUD missile...

Originally posted by infinite
well IMO, no cities would be destroyed. LA and its surrounding areas will stain some damage, but nothing major.

I agree with this, but NK probably has their scientists working on longer-range thermonuclear delivery systems. I doubt NK would actually launch an actual ballastic missile, I think that the new tactics are to sell nukes and WMD to terrorists who will do the dirty work from within the US. We have no evidence of these transactions being made, but I have to imagine this is possible. Even Kim Jong-il isn't foolish enough to launch an actual direct strike knowing the possible consequences, but maybe not... the guy doesen't seem to give a crap about his own people, to him, so what if several million die.

Originally posted by Gazrok

Sadly, this is all bull#. There are no technologies that can effectively stop nuclear weapons mid-flight. It is nearly impossible.

been putting the sattelites carrying them, in orbit for
Not so... The military has all but gone public with the existence of HELs (High Energy Lasers) designed for the express purpose of anti-missile defense...and they've the past couple decades... In addition, there are versions of the improved Patriot that can travel into high altitudes and destroy an enemy nuke before it arms and goes nuclear... Also, an ICBM trajectory is a lot easier to predict than a land to land SCUD missile...

Do you have any documentation about these "actual" laser satellites? I am interesting in reading about these.

Originally posted by Gazrok

Sadly, this is all bull#. There are no technologies that can effectively stop nuclear weapons mid-flight. It is nearly impossible.

Not so... The military has all but gone public with the existence of HELs (High Energy Lasers) designed for the express purpose of anti-missile defense...and they've been putting the sattelites carrying them, in orbit for the past couple decades... In addition, there are versions of the improved Patriot that can travel into high altitudes and destroy an enemy nuke before it arms and goes nuclear... Also, an ICBM trajectory is a lot easier to predict than a land to land SCUD missile...

I sincerely hope you don't believe this. Do you have any idea how hard it is to shoot down a nuclear missile? The technology may be available someday, but we do not have it right now. These lasers can't do a thing. Also, there is hardly any time between when the nukes would be detected and when they would hit; the only thing that would happen is we would counterattack which would result in the US and the attacker being hit. There is no reliable nuclear defense system in place.

I sincerely hope you don't believe this. Do you have any idea how hard it is to shoot down a nuclear missile? The technology may be available someday, but we do not have it right now. These lasers can't do a thing. Also, there is hardly any time between when the nukes would be detected and when they would hit; the only thing that would happen is we would counterattack which would result in the US and the attacker being hit. There is no reliable nuclear defense system in place.

Precisely. AS previously posted. An SDI sytem may be able to fry the command(or targeting) circuitry of an incoming ICBM, but that still has to be proven.
And what if they DO knock it out of the sky? Do you think that after a missile is armed, that the laser will disarm it? It has to fall somewhere, with that area getting the full yield of the warhead.

Yea, they waste all sorts of money on these defense systems that are all unproven and untested. Any statistics about the percentage of missiles they would hit are made up as we have no idea. Sorry, but your only hope as of right now would be to get away from targets.

Although, at this moment N. Korea isn't capable of hitting continental united states.

The missile defense system was designed for first strike, meaning we launch first and then hope to god that our countermeasures can take out some of the returning missiles, with any luck maybe 1 or 2 would be disabled.

The best defense I feel would be an energy weapon to knock out missles. That battlefield laser cannon looks promising.

hmm wouldnt ionic radio waves destroy things like lazers could? ionosphereric energy dunno if i spealt that right.

COUGH HARRP project cough.

[Edited on 7-12-2003 by blobby]