The waters of international conflict never stay calm for long. A recent case in point was the heated exchange between the Bush administration and Russian president Vladimir Putin over Georgia. “It’s nonsense not to talk about Perimeter,” Yarynich says. If the existence of the device isn’t made public, he adds, “we have more risk in future crises. And crisis is inevitable.”

The mistake that both Yarynich and his counterpart in the United States, Bruce Blair, want to avoid now is silence. It’s long past time for the world to come to grips with Perimeter, they argue. The system may no longer be a central element of Russian strategy—US-based Russian arms expert Pavel Podvig calls it now “just another cog in the machine”—but Dead Hand is still armed

"The whole point of the doomsday machine is lost if you keep it a secret!” cries Dr. Strangelove. “Why didn’t you tell the world?” After all, such a device works as a deterrent only if the enemy is aware of its existence. In the movie, the Soviet ambassador can only lamely respond, “It was to be announced at the party congress on Monday.”

Originally posted by ManFromEurope
reply to post by trollz

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You can NOT shoot down intercontinental missiles with multiple warheads. There is no technology for that. They enter earths athmosphere with thousands of miles per hour, releasing a dozen or more working warheads while chaffing up the radars with hundreds of fake decoys.

Do you remember the defense system Patriot? Well, it didn't shoot down a single one of Saddams rockets, but several of Israels own planes. The technology may sound simple in theory, but in reality there are very small inaccuracies in the detection of an incoming rocket adding up to enough wrongness that those rockets will be missed by several meters - so either you deploy a dozen interceptor rockets per incoming rocket, which is nearly impossible if there are THOUSANDS of warheads, real and fake, in the air. Or you accept defeat (reality).

Of course, the military doesn't accept defeat. So they ignored reality. And pretended that nothing like that could even happen.

Lockheed Martin-led weapons systems have achieved nearly 40 successful intercepts since the 1980s and continue to prove themselves in challenging tests and combat operations.

Originally posted by ManFromEurope
reply to post by LockNLoad

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Yay, SBIRS.. That was a mayor failure: www.defenseindustrydaily.com...

Just look up all the mentioned projects, combined with "problems" or "failure", like "google sbirs problem". Not a single one project seems to be able to reach production status.

SUNNYVALE, Calif., June 5, 2012 – The first Lockheed Martin [NYSE: LMT]-built Space Based Infrared System (SBIRS) geosynchronous (GEO-1) satellite, launched on May 7, 2011, is exceeding performance expectations and is on schedule to achieve operational certification later this year.