Important point of note: the way these tests are designed, they are NOT full-up tests of the entire system as a whole. Rather, they’re set-ups intended to test certain specific aspects of the system.

Missile terminal defense is a losing gamble. It is somewhat easy to take out a rogue missile booster on the way up, but on the way down, it is too easy to add a huge number of decoys and chaff to make detecting the real warheads improbable. No matter how many defensive missiles there are, a dedicated attack force can…

The system we have stands a reasonably good chance of stopping a single missile from North Korea, which is pretty much the only thing it’s designed to do, as all other scenarios of an ICBM attack on the U.S. involve Russia or China, both of which have enough missiles to overwhelm any BMD system we could deploy in the…

Sure it can. The hardest part is seeing it coming in time.

Midcourse, an ICBM warhead bus is essentially a low-orbiting satellite on a crash course. Easier to hit the whole shebang before it reaches the terminal phase where the bus starts popping out the much small reentry vehicle(s) and penetration aids (the decoys).

There was a clock-drift issue if the computers were not reset on a regular basis. But at least, although the effectiveness of the Patriot in its missile-defense role notwithstanding, it has a saving grace in that it is still a very lethal platform against aircraft - its original mission.

Perhaps, though the Patriot missiles were operating way outside their design parameters at that time; they were not designed to shoot down missiles, but aircraft.

The US supported a coup in Ukraine. Then the US and EU propped up a puppet pro pro US/EU Government which CAUSED a civil war in Ukraine.

Maybe the way to stop it is, I don’t know, stop selling drugs in the Philippines?

Russia views Eastern Europe in much the same way we view Latin America and the Caribbean: A sphere of interest where countries like Russia and China have no business sticking their noses. In the Baltics especially, there are a lot of ethnic Russians they view as displaced citizens.

It’s not much different than the current “Muslim Ban” narrative.

China’s economy is still largely dependent on America’s appetite for consumer goods, though that is beginning to diminish as China’s own consumer class develops. As long as 90% of the goods you purchase are “made in China” and wealthy Chinese nationals keep acquiring assets in the United States its pretty safe to…

Jalopnik needs to stop posting this garbage noise on its feed. We get it - Terrell is pessimistic about all things Trump. We get enough of the political bullshit from Jalopnik’s own contributors.

Back in the day we just complained that FTA brought military stuff to to an automotive site. Now FTA is just a shell site for anti-trump pro-gawker pro-theslot liberal garbage. Please do is a favor and either associate FTA with the liberal parts of this site or quit posting your political crap on the jalopnik tree.