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China, Korea and Russia have moved away from stationary, large MIRV-based ballistic missiles (those that actually come close to the edge of the atmosphere). This system can only deal with that 1st generation technology. If it ever worked. It has to launch high and fast, AFTER nonexistant satellites detect the boost phase, note the arc and anticipate the target. The warhead then has to be tracked by nonexistant mid range radar, and finally ID's tracked, targetted and shot from Alaska. In other words, we have to pray that China and Russia AND Korea direct their missiles close to the arctic, just so our defense system can find them in range and in time. Any further south, and we are SOL.
What those three countries have done is to allow us to waste many billions on a maginot line that works even worse than the original.
Today's threat comes from 1) supersonic cruise missiles which we have no way of detecting, much less defending. Moreover this piece of junk we are still building in Alaska can only shoot up and very high. It cannot detect or aim down to a low flying cruise missile, especially one travelling at Mach 2.
2) Ship launched, low trajectory missiles from one use only fishing boats or towed platforms. China, Russia and the EU are all gaining experience in sea launching. NASA is not, nor is the DOD. Instead, we have a couple of private US companies that are far ahead of our military planners.
3) Containerized weapons, with hidden bombs, to be detonated by remote control, or timers. (we only check 1/10 of 1/10 of 1/10th of 1/10th of all millions of containers arriving each week, and a small fraction of those by eye.
4) Sub launched missiles, with an extra quiet diesel based sub, holding no more than one to two missiles per sub.
As stated before, NONE of these viable techniques can be stopped by today's ABM systems being built in Alaska. It is akin to using a worker trained in gas lamp lighter technology to program the operating system for a nuclear powerplant.
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