USS Lake Erie to destroy failed spy satellite

[kennylibben]

A bit off topic from what the conversation has turned to,

but last night i watched the ISS pass over my house and began to realize that someone is going to have a view of the satellite getting shot down won't they? Well, i suppose time of day would matter.... but if its nighttime for the area the satellite is over then they'd have a view of the skies were right, right?

Is there any way to tell what region that will be? I'm assuming it will be easier to figure out once more details are released ....

[Devin]

Several months ago I saw the ISS go overhead with the Space Shuttle following by 50 miles. An awesome sight, even though it was just two dots of light in the twilight sky.

Yes, it would depend on when and where they shoot down the satellite, weather conditions, etc. Under perfectly clear weather conditions you can see some satellites. It depends upon the size of it, etc. Consider that the ISS is huge and then figure how little that spot of light was in the sky. I doubt there'll be an explosion or anything. Depending on the warhead, there's generally a small explosion to release the payload, and then the "kill" of the satellite itself will be accomplished by some sort of a kinetic load. Space shrapnel, if you will.

[Werner]

There have been literally dozens of successful ICBM intercepts with the SM-3, mostly of Minutemen missiles launched from Kwajelein and intercepted about 1,000 miles from the PMRF in Kauai. The last was by a Japanese heavy destroyer or cruiser. This is an operational system, and I guess there would be a minimum of sweat aboard USS Lake Erie.

And given that you would assume that there would be minimum sweat aboard the USS Normandy during a missile test in 1993, using two missiles, an SM-2 and SM-3, to shoot down an old Talos missile used as a simple high-altitude drone. You would be incorrect. We practiced at least once a day for a week, and everyone was on-edge and freaking out during the entire time. The Normandy and the Monterey shot at the drone, and the Monterey completely failed the shoot/test. Their single SM-2 smacked the launch cell door on the way out and self-destructed 5 seconds after launch. Our two shots were "close enough to be probable" kills.

Just because a system is "operational" does not mean that it will all go smooth. Again, see early WWII torpedoes, Vietnam era aircraft missiles, Desert Storm Patriot system, and the mistaken downing of the Iranian Airbus.

Unfortunately for those of you who would say the SM-3 couldn't hit a barn door, and Ronald Reagan did not cause a paradigm shift, there are just scads of photos of the SM-3 intercepts, including from the warhead's IR seeker.

021121-N-0000X-006.jpg

Unfortunately, disagreements involving Star Wars and Reagan frequently take on the character of the discussions with those who claim the US Government destroyed the World Trade Center on 9/11/01.

To put off your next argument, the USS Port Royal recently shot down several missiles simultaneously in several different aspects from sea skimming to ICBM during a timed two minute engagement.

[Seasick]

Unfortunately, disagreements involving Star Wars and Reagan frequently take on the character of the discussions with those who claim the US Government destroyed the World Trade Center on 9/11/01.

Werner some people also think that if you are disagreeing with the Republican administration you must be unpatriotic or in league with America's enemies.

[Devin]

Werner, I never said an SM-3 couldn't hit a barn door. It works well in testing from my personal experience and from other reports I've read. I'm a Regan hating conspiracy theorist because I want testing in the Persian Gulf with dust in the air, in heavy sea states, with multiple targets on unknown bearing, altitude, and numbers? I'm wrong to balance my belief in ANY structured tests against the historical situations that I've mentioned (again - WWII torpedoes, Vietnam aircraft missiles, the Patriot system and the Iranian airbus), where something was "operational" but not tested sufficiently, and it failed miserably and people died for it?

Again, I'm merely stating my own personal experience, and I'm sorry that the truth of what I saw and my experiences do not meet your expectations. But you don't want to discuss real-world scenarios.

[Werner]

Werner some people also think that if you are disagreeing with the Republican administration you must be unpatriotic or in league with America's enemies.

Unfortunately, there is no Republican Party. The current occupant of the White House is a Big Spend, Big Government insider who is more connected personally to those moralists who were thrown out of the Democratic Party by people who just can't find a single thing right with traditional families or anything wrong with anonymous sex with as many partners of the same (or opposite) sex as one can accommodate in a seven day week, between binges of mind-altering drugs and excursions in their Prius. I think a new Republicanism will emerge from the 2008 election, but it remains to be seen whether it will be large enough to get elected anytime in the future.

The only reason to support Republican candidates in the last 4 elections is they were incomparably better than the dregs the Democrats dredged up to be their candidates. Especially the traitor John Kerry.

What this has to do with the SM-3 is anybody's guess. The last 20 years have been extraordinarily uncharitable to the US Navy, and the future does not look any better no matter who sits in the Oval Office.

Werner, I never said an SM-3 couldn't hit a barn door. It works well in testing from my personal experience and from other reports I've read. I'm a Regan hating conspiracy theorist because I want testing in the Persian Gulf with dust in the air, in heavy sea states, with multiple targets on unknown bearing, altitude, and numbers? I'm wrong to balance my belief in ANY structured tests against the historical situations that I've mentioned (again - WWII torpedoes, Vietnam aircraft missiles, the Patriot system and the Iranian airbus), where something was "operational" but not tested sufficiently, and it failed miserably and people died for it?

Who can argue with this? The SM-3 program has attempted to do as much of this "real-world" testing as possible, and frankly I have more confidence in the SM-3/AEgis than I do in rail guns or airborne Laser cannons.

In any event, these things do not spring fully formed from the forehead of Zeus, like Athena. The current program is part of an evolution, and these things always have a beginning and an end, with a toddler period when they bobble along just below effectiveness. Fortunately, that time has long passed for the Standard Missile/AEgis.

The character of your complaint reminds me of the "expert" critics of the A-10 Warthog just before Gulf.1, and who vanished just after. Maybe the weapon is not all it's cracked up to be, but I believe in this particular case it is far enough outside the ordinary procurement protocols and there may be enough honest people involved for it to actually do the things it has already been reported to have done. In any event, Reagan's critics would have had the US do nothing, and we'd be sitting here in 2010 with systems which were known to be defective in 1970. These critics are now senators, congressmen, or the senior advisers of some of the current candidates standing for President of the USA.

[Devin]

Well, if I'm akin to the Gulf War 1 armchair warriors on the Warthog in your mind, then obviously I don't have anything to say about the weapons system I lived with and worked on. Sorry I wasted your time with my experience and the truth of how the weapons system functioned in actual use.

[Werner]

Devin, you took my statements wrong. First, I was only replying to your SM-1 statements, since you were talking about Adams class destroyers. By the end of the Vietnam War the Adams class were considered nearly obsolete. Even the Ticonderogas performance when new was considered "modest".

If you were on another ship, you may be confusing NTU with CG/SM, the $8 million program to fit the DLG/CG ships with SM-2 block 2. Once ships got CG/SM they were entitled to the $18-20 million additional NTU upgrade (which didn't apply to Ticonderogas and actually gave the older ships capabilities in excess of AEgis. That's why a Leahy was selected to test the antisatellite function of Block 4+ in the early 1990s, in a part of the world with the least quantity of Radar and EW coverage.

Nevertheless, time marches on. Two AEgis cruisers have been assigned to PMRF nearly continuously for the last decade, and the stated test successes lead one to believe the system as of 2005 performs as promised.

[Devin]

If you look a few post back you will see that I clearly stated that I worked on the AEGIS system. Mentioned it several times; my second ship was the USS Normandy, a Ticonderoga class cruiser.

I'm well aware of the tests, upgrades, and outcomes you mention. Being a Tarter tech that worked on the SPG-51 system I was well aware of the NTU tests and upgrades. When my first ship, the Adams class DDG Barney decommed, I fought to get assigned to NTU school and then on to a nuke cruiser, but the writing was on the wall and they wouldn't have it. One of my Chief's at the time said I was "too smart to waste myself anywhere else" and got me a berth at AEGIS ORTS school, which put me on the missile shooting console when I got to the fleet. The issues I've pointed out in the AEGIS system are from 3+ years of working on the most active warship in the U.S. Navy surface fleet at the time - excluding maybe a carrier or two - and the things we encountered. Yes, the missile tests worked then (except for Monterey's botched launch, but that ship couldn't get anything right back then), and the space shots so far have been impressive. But it's also true that if we had been fired upon with a Silk Worm in the Persian Gulf, with all of the sand in the air, we wouldn't have seen it coming until it was probably too late. Not the fault of the missile, to be sure, but, you know, that whole "weakest link" adage. I trust someone has rectified that issue since then, the sand interference problems with laser guided weapons during Gulf War 1 were resolved (mainly by switching to GPS), but I haven't read anything to confirm it.

I give AEGIS full credit for being totally impressive and probably the best thing the US military industrial complex has turned out since WWII. Granted, maybe I'm being unrealistic to expect full combat level testing with the military budget today - during my 3 years on board Normandy we got to shoot twice, that was all - but that's the only thing that really proves a weapons system will work under realistic conditions. Well, either that or combat, and by the time combat comes around, well, we all know what that sort of testing costs. I'm aware that time marches on, but I equally aware that history repeats itself. I hope someone is making sure that AEGIS is ready whatever is to come, be it atmospheric or stratospheric, but I've read too much history not to be pessimistic.

[Werner]

Sorry I overlooked the stuff you mentioned in your previous posts. You obviously have an understanding of the abilities of the SM-1/2/3/6. I am really tired of people throwing stuff at these systems as if they were part of a trend of uniformly defective systems the USA has turned out. Sometimes, I wonder how we won WW.II with the attitude of so many.

On the other hand, one or two live fires a year is insufficient for training and debugging at any level.

I spent several extended vacations visiting a friend who works at the PMRF. I saw realistic tests against low-flying Q-planes and leftover Polaris missiles. I never saw or heard stories of people fabricating results to push the program along. Based on what I know of my friend, his job and his colleagues, I have every confidence in the current generation of interceptor missiles.

[Devin]

I've spoken with several who doubt the AEGIS system works at all as well. Like you said, after a while you can't convince them of anything, so I usually give up.

It does look like they are having some non-system interference, though. It's that sort of thing I was mainly talking about in regards to reliability, accuracy, etc.

Also, in regard to an earlier comment I made, I actually did not work with the SM-3. It was the SM-2 Block III, IIIa, etc. I misremembered the designation.

[Werner]

Well, I will agree that having waves wash over the missile launch doors during the launch might be a problem in this case (maybe they should have kept some of the launch-arm based ships).

For those who don't think SM-3 works, remind them it has hit the target in around 15 successive tests (the first two launches failed for some reasons). 15/17 is a pretty good success rate, es[ecially when the first two are discounted. Then the kill rate is 100%.

[Werner]

The Pentagon reports USS Lake Erie shot down the satellite with a hit in the fuel tank. A modification to the missile was necessary to boost the sensitivity of the infrared sensor because the dead satellite was very cool, and not hot like an active ICBM.

The satellite was also traveling faster than the usual missile target.

an impressive showing for the Navy and a BRAVO ZULU to all involved.

[kennylibben]

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/21/us/21 ... te.html?hp

[Timmy C]

Standard rule of the Internet:

Pics or BS.

[Devin]

That was a nice shot. I'd really like to find out more about that heat seeker; all the birds in my day were proximity seekers.

What I do not understand, though, is that they said they're removing the special programming and returning the remaining two birds modified for this shot to the factory. Seems to me they'd want to keep this stuff on-hand and work with it a little more.

[MartinJQuinn]

That was a nice shot. I'd really like to find out more about that heat seeker; all the birds in my day were proximity seekers.

What I do not understand, though, is that they said they're removing the special programming and returning the remaining two birds modified for this shot to the factory. Seems to me they'd want to keep this stuff on-hand and work with it a little more.

Maybe they said that to calm the Chinese...

[Devin]

Maybe they said that to calm the Chinese...

I doubt they care what the Chinese have to say about it. The satellite shot they did last year was much "worse" than what we just did. This was a low-level shot -- as far as space objects go-- and the debris won't stay in orbit. The Chinese shot was much higher altitude, the debris will be up there forever as a hazard to other objects, and they had a much greater risk of hitting something other than their target.

I'm willing to bet this is something that the manufacturer stipulated. Why would the Navy pay for the new SM-6 bird when they just proved the existing SM-3 can be retrofit to do the same job? It's probably not as simple as that, but such things are usually looked at in such black and white terms.

[Werner]

I'm willing to bet this is something that the manufacturer stipulated. Why would the Navy pay for the new SM-6 bird when they just proved the existing SM-3 can be retrofit to do the same job? It's probably not as simple as that, but such things are usually looked at in such black and white terms.

ECONOMY. The future SM-6 will carry a common future warhead and seeker for the SM-6 and the AIM-120.

[Werner]

From the BBC
What in incredible achievement. To all those who doubted the USN and the SM-3, all I can say is