Redstate

Cruise missiles are pretty easy to kill compared to ballistic missiles -- since they're basically robot aircraft, anything in our anti-air inventory works fine.

The problem is that the prospect of defending every american city with SAM batteries is daunting, to say the least. The reason you don't hear much about cruise missile defense it that it's basically impossible on a large scale -- one can defend a particular military base or carrier battle group, but not every potential target on American soil.

The hard truth is that no city is ever really going to be safe from nuclear attack. Progress on the ABM front is encouraging, but the odds of a ballistic-missile attack are pretty low. (For one thing, it paints a giant target on whoever launched the missile, ensuring American retaliation.) Not to mention the drone problem -- NK probably couldn't manage it, but a real power like China would have no problem saturating any concievable missile defence with decoys. (And lots of other scary possibilities: smuggled bombs, FOBS, high-altitude EMP detonation, etc.)

The point is that while ABM is all well and good, the only real defense is controlling who has the bombs.

As I see it, ballistic missiles have two important strategic advantages:
1) Demonstrated capability. Lower Trashcanistan can say, "Look, if our backs are to the wall, we're going to nuke [some place you value], and we have the means to do it, as you can see by our firing this missile." "We're going to smuggle a bomb into [some place]" doesn't have the same demonstrability, or at least you can only demonstrate it once.
2) Command and control. Sending off a tramp freighter with nuclear arms in its hold, or even a submarine, introduces a lot more uncertainty into the equation than being able to call up your Strategic Rocket Forces and ordering "let 'er rip." If the crack nuclear smuggling team decides that it's better to be millionaires in the Witness Protection Program than finely dispersed particles, that would mean a whole lot of trouble for the guys who sent them.

As you say, the larger powers like Russia and China will be able to saturate, decoy, evade, etc., etc. enough interceptors to make a horrendous mess anyway, so this isn't really directed at them. But the up-and-coming nuclear powers can obtain considerable advantages by the plausible threat of a ballistic nuclear attack, and NMD knocks them back considerably.

As regards cruise missiles, I understand the old way of handling that was very high awareness of who was playing, or trying to play, in our littoral. I assume that's still the same today, to some degree — I don't know whether it would be possible to conceal and "smuggle" a nuclear-armed cruise missile into a port aboard a container ship, which would certainly make the problem of defense a lot harder.

That's pretty good, I have to admit. LOL!

The Academy: researching the Illiberal Arts

The circumstances requiring such a system are frightening--certainly not something to be happy about. But given this reality, I think we can be thankful that there have been leaders with sufficient vision to pursue a system to protect us from them.

It is National Missile Defense. It defends against conventional and nuclear missiles.

"I'm kind of old-fashioned. I like to engage my brain before my mouth." Donald Rumsfeld

The premise behind MAD is that there will be a missile force that will be able to retaliate against an attack. A first strike becomes reasonable if you feel that you can wipe out the enemies retaliatory force to a degree that your losses will be acceptable. Notably Stalin felt the soviet union could ride out a nuclear attack in response to an invasion of western Europe.

Any type of BMD makes the first strike calculus that much harder. You really have no idea of what the odds are on the bet you are making.

The other issues that it helps with are launch on warning scenarios. There have been instances where our early warning systems have malfunctioned and reported inbound missile attacks.This puts the national command authority in a very tricky position regarding the land based portions of the triad. Its either use em or lose em. With BMD you can use that first and have a greater margin of safety.

The above reasons are why 2/3 of the triad's throw weight is stationed on ballistic missile submarines. They are thought to be impossible to target in a preemptive strike. Note this is an as yet untested assumption.

The greatest upshot is that this system might not make us safe but it does significantly raise the bar for our foes.

I for one sleep a little better knowing this is progressing.

Veritas magna est et praevalet.

capitulation. Gorby's advisers all say that Reagan's insistence on star wars, coupled with his defense build up and alliances with freedom fighters wherever the USSr tried tried to rape countries for their resources and slave labor to keep the USSR afloat, convinced the USSR that they could not compete, beacuse the only thing that made the USSR a superpower was the possibility that they could overwhelm our ICBMs.

"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson
The HinzSight Report
Race 4 2008

ballistic missile defenses fit into the category of weapons that can blunt or neutralize a second strike. That makes them highly destabilizing, in theory, because they potentiate the effects of a first strike. With the Soviets, however, the mere threat of SDI had the effect of obsoleting the other guy's whole first-strike capability. (I think streiff recently made the latter observation here.)

With China, I don't think the issue is to deter a first strike (although there are scenarios in which a major first-strike against cities can occur as an escalation from an attempted blackmail). Rather, I think the Chinese are playing jujitsu with us. A proper BMD will force them into asymmetrical counters to our strategic capabilities. Case in point: the recent rather bizarre ASAT test.

And for what it's worth: by "classical theory" I'm talking about the game-theoretic stuff that first emerged from civilian institutions like the RAND Corporation in the late Fifties. It's never really convinced me in any case, and I think it has relatively little to say to the strategic threats we now face.

Where does that leave BMD? Worth doing to counter the Russians and the Chinese. Might be able to stop a bolt-from-the-blue from a nutcase like Kim Jong-Il. Not adequate to meet the full range of threats we face.

Or an iterated case with potential for multiple exchange ?

Veritas magna est et praevalet.

literature, and for a reason you will perhaps find odd. To the best of my knowledge, the formal analyses with iterated cases (two and three stage games) don't start appearing until well into the Sixties. (I recently read one that AcademicElephant laid on me, that was from the late Eighties.) Joliphant, you may have more insights than I do on this, as it relates to BMD.

I've read very little of the military literature on this subject. As far as I can tell, the Air Force thought the civilian arms-controllers were essentially nuts. (Any of you military types care to add or subtract?)

Herman Kahn, writing in 1960 or so, pays relatively little attention to what he called AICBMs (anti-ICBMs). He considers them as they relate to civil defense, and also as a modality for attenuating the power of a first strike, not as a strategic destabilizer. He also felt it was improbably that they could work against a large first-strike force.

The problem I have with all the subsequent mathematical literature is that after the Cuban crisis, it just feels completely removed from reality. My point remains that BMD addresses an important class of concerns, but probably not the ones we should be most worried about.

Aside: since I mentioned civil defense, that's a subject with a fascinating history. (The other day my wife and I were out for a walk in our neighborhood and we counted half-a-dozen antique "Fallout Shelter" signs on a single block.) Civil Defense was considered extremely destabilizing by nonexperts in the early Sixties because it would encourage the US to calculate that we could win a nuclear war, and therefore we could be expected to initiate a first strike. Or so the thinking went. We had several near-riots here in New York City to protest Civil Defense. And then came October 1962.

It was an interesting thing to realize when growing up.

It did lead me to what I feel is the problem of using game theory to model nuclear exchange, especially fullscale exchanges. Game theory always assumes two rational actors, the primary act in a nuclear exchange is the ultimate form of irrationality.

Veritas magna est et praevalet.

Prisoner's Dilemma by William Poundstone

is a biography of John Von Neuman but is also a fantastic overview of the evolution of the subject.

Veritas magna est et praevalet.

Was not that I am worried about discouraging the Other guys but that I am worried about certain elements of OUR government (notably large ones) who have the potential of looking at folks like Iran or NK and saying "Well, NMD protects US from their direct nuclear abilities, so who cares if they get them? We'll have no trouble weathering the storm and hitting them back."
Or others saying, "Hey, we have NMD. We can survive nuclear war. Let's nuke [fill in country here]."
These positions being Regardless of the actualities of our ability to protect against those attacks.
I am worried about Our "leadership" thinking MAD no longer applies. Not our enemies. And, as you pointed out, there is No Possiility Whatsoever of defending against every missile out there. What you forgot to point out, however, was that if WE launch, EVERYONE launches...

"The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal comfort... has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."
--John Stuart Mill

I don't know about that. It would depend on who we attacked and why. Do you think Russia would sacrifice their country if we decided to take out, say, Cuba (not saying we would or should)? Or what if we nuke Iran in response to them attacking Israel?

Which of course raises the question from our point of view: everyone assumes we have MAD and thus no big power will use nukes at all, but if you're the President faced with attacking Russia after they nuke some little non-NATO county on the other side of the planet, would sacrifice hundreds of millions of American lives in response? Sure, we should of course say we would. But if it really came down to it, would you?

The Academy: researching the Illiberal Arts

When one side has Guaranteed Optimal Destruction without fear of reprisal, people are less likely to attack. I want GOD on my side.
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Thou art the Great Cat, the avenger of the Gods, and the judge of words...-Inscription on the Royal Tombs at Thebes

we readily gave up these systems under SALT and the reason that we aren't going that direction now is that a high altitude nuclear detonation will create a huge EMP problem.

In the 60s, EMP wasn't a huge deal. Now it means com satellites, GPS satellites, your own intel satellites - if they are in line of sight to the nuke - your power grid, computers, etc. could all be killed by EMP.

Once you eliminate nukes, kinetic kill becomes one of your better alternatives.

ABMs are an excellent idea. All our critical military systems are shielded from EMP sufficiently to protect against that incidence. Furthermore, we can always shut down most of the systems that Aren't sufficiently shielded prior to the EMP rolling over us. Thus enabling a greater possibility for 2nd Strike.

Better yet would be an initial wave of ABMs going off over the Target Country to reduce the effectiveness of any NMD they may have And reduce their ability for a 2nd strike (as well as torching Their satellites and any missiles they have that are still in that kill-zone).
Come to think of it, that would be a Great initial response to a Nuclear launch. Have a bunch of subs throw up ABMs all around the launching nation and you take out a large percentage of their initial strike...

"The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal comfort... has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."
--John Stuart Mill

a bunch of ABM subs just sitting off the coast of all nuclear nations.

Come to think of it, that may not be such a bad idea after all...

You will notice that I assume no such thing, whatsoever.
I merely suggest that suh an idea might be worth looking into...

Only two defining forces have ever offered to die for you:
Jesus Christ and the American G. I.
One died for your soul; the other for your freedom.

I can't remember exactly when SALT started (my memory says 1972 or so) so the ABM treaty may have been part of SALT as you say. Doctrine of the time held that ABMs were destabilizing because of their theoretical ability to attenuate a second (retaliatory) strike, so the treaty allowed each side to build only a single ABM system. We complied. The Soviets cheated all over the place.