Low-Level Ballistic Missile Intercept

Interesting low-level ballistic missile intercept:

The U.S. military has shot down a short-range ballistic missile in the last stage of its flight during a test off Hawaii.

An interceptor missile launched from Kauai shot down the target fired from a decommissioned amphibious assault ship positioned offshore.

The U.S. Missile Defense Agency said the intercept occurred at the lowest altitude so far for an interceptor missile in the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system.

The agency says the test occurred around 9:30 p.m. Monday Hawaii time.

Soldiers of the 6th Air Defense Artillery Brigade from Fort Bliss, Texas, fired the interceptor. They didn't know the launch time in advance.

Low-level intercepts are very difficult to do, because flight times are so short. These folks are to be congratulated!

Nevertheless, despite this success, I remain adamantly opposed to all forms of ballistic missile defense. Ballistic missile defense lulls everyone involved into a false sense of security and its costs are so prohibitive as to be indefensible. One can have any number of engineering successes with ballistic missile defense, yet have a complete failure of the defense system as a whole.

Consider a missile defense system for an aircraft carrier, capable of a 90% hit rate. Fabulous! Nevertheless, if ten missiles are fired at the vessel, and if even just one missile gets past, you lose the ship. Failure!

Similarly, the system BP has jerry-rigged to recover oil from the runaway well in the Gulf of Mexico is an engineering marvel. Success! But it can't capture anywhere close to all the oil spewing forth. If even a tiny fraction of the oil escapes, you have environmental failure. Better than nothing, of course, but failure nonetheless. That's just the way of it!

As always, success in modern technological warfare has to remain focused on the offense....