>17746452

ICBMs can fool US missile defence

US missile experts and defence officials say the rate of success in shooting down ICBMs is very low due to their higher altitudes and countermeasures. The current US missile defence system has been tested only 19 times since 1999 with only a 50 per cent success rate.

James D Wells, a professor at the University of Michigan, doesn’t see an effective defence against ICBMs in the next 15 years. “ICBMs are a qualitatively different threat travelling significantly higher and having potential penetration and countermeasures.”

After North Korea tested the Hwasong-17, its first ICBM since 2017, in March, Frederick L Lamb, a professor at the University of Illinois, told CNN: “If North Korea were to fire ICBMs at the USA, we cannot be assured that our missile defence system can prevent the deaths of millions of Americans.” Even the Hwasong-14 (10,000 km range if fired on a maximum trajectory) can reach New York and the Hwasong-15 (13,000 km range) anywhere in the US.

Asked why it is so hard to shoot down an ICBM, Lamb said, “The warhead will undoubtedly be accompanied by decoys aimed to fool a missile defence system.”

The first study of its kind in 10 years commissioned by the American Physical Society, a non-profit membership organisation of professionals in physics and related disciplines, revealed that despite more than six decades of missile defence efforts, “no missile defence system has been shown to be effective against realistic ICBM threats”.

“It has been described as shooting a bullet with a bullet trying to hit a warhead,” Laura Grego, a Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said

https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/china-to-strike-us-bases-in-indo-pacific-aircraft-carriers-in-war-over-taiwan-10812481.html