An anti-ballistic missile (ABM) is a missile designed to counter intercontinental ballistic missiles: the strategic ballistic missiles used to deliver nuclear weapons or their elements in flight trajectory. ABMs may also be used against chemical or biological payloads. A missile (British English: miss-isle; U.S. English: missl) is, in general, a projectile—that is, something thrown or otherwise propelled. ... A Minuteman III missile soars after a test launch. ... The mushroom cloud of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, Japan, 1945, rose some 18 km (11 mi) above the epicenter. ...

For current US developments, see Missile Defense Agency. The Missile Defense Agency is the section of Department of Defense responsible for developing a layered defense against ballistic missiles. ...

For defense against short-range missiles, see Arrow missile, MIM-104 Patriot, Aster 15 or Crotale missile. The Arrow Interceptor ( טיל חץ, Hebrew: Hetz) is a theater missile defense (TMD) system; it is the first missile that was specifically designed and built to intercept and destroy ballistic missiles on a national level. ... Four Patriot missiles like the one shown here can be fired from this mobile launcher between loadings. ... Aster is a surface-to-air missile manufactured by the European firm MBDA. The missile comes in two variants, the medium range Aster 15 and the longer range Aster 30. ... Crotales are also percussion instruments. ...

Defense of Moscow

There is a limited ABM system around Moscow, an upgraded Galosh known in the west as the ABM-4 Gorgon. The interceptor missiles are armed with a nuclear warhead. See also below. Saint Basils Cathedral Moscow (Russian/Cyrillic: Москва́, pronunciation: Moskvá) is the capital of Russia, located on the river Moskva, and encompassing 1097. ...

History of ABMs

Early developments

The idea of shooting down rockets before they can hit their target dates from the first use of modern missiles in warfare, the German V-1 and V-2 program of World War II. British and American fighters attempted to destroy V-1 "buzz bombs" in flight prior to impact, with some success. The V-2, the first true ballistic missile, proved impossible to intercept using Spitfires and similar craft. Instead, the Allies launched Operation Crossbow to find and destroy V-2s before launch. The operation failed, as would a similar operation during the first Persian Gulf War nearly fifty years later against the V-2's direct descendant, the Iraqi Scud missile. The Vergeltungswaffe 1 Fi 103 / FZG-76 (V-1), known as the Flying bomb, Buzz bomb or Doodlebug, was the first modern guided missile used in wartime and the first cruise missile. ... German test launch. ... Mushroom cloud from the nuclear explosion over Nagasaki rising 18 km (over 11 miles) into the air, August 9, 1945. ... The Supermarine Spitfire was a single seat fighter used by the RAF and many Allied countries in World War II. The Spitfires elliptical wings gave it a very distinctive look; their thin cross-section gave it speed; the brilliant design of Chief Designer R.J. Mitchell and his successors... Operation Crossbow refers to a British project in World War II to destroy a German secret weapons project. ... See also: 2003 invasion of Iraq and Gulf War (disambiguation) C Company, 1st Battalion, The Staffordshire Regiment, 1st UK Armoured Division The Persian Gulf War was a conflict between Iraq and a coalition force of 34 nations led by the United States. ... Polish missile wz. ...

The American armed forces began experimenting with anti-missile missiles shortly after World War II, as the extent of German research into rocketry became clear. But defenses against Soviet long-range bombers took priority until the later 1950s, when the Soviets began to test their missiles (most notably via the Sputnik launch in October 1957). The first experimental ABM system was Nike Zeus, a modification of existing air defense systems. Nike Zeus proved unworkable, and so work proceeded with Nike X. Sputnik 1 The Sputnik program was a series of unmanned space missions launched by the Soviet Union in the late 1950s to demonstrate the viability of artificial satellites. ... 1957 was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Launch of a Nike Zeus missile Project Nike was a US Army project, proposed in May 1945 by Bell Labs, to develop a line-of-sight anti-aircraft missile system. ...

Another avenue of research by the U.S. was the test explosions of several hydrogen bombs at very high altitudes over the southern Atlantic ocean, launched from ships. When such an explosion takes place a burst of X-rays are released that strike the Earth's atmosphere, causing massive secondary showers of charged particles over an area hundreds of miles across. The movement of these charged particles in the Earth's magnetic field causes a powerful EMP which induces very large currents in any conductive material. It was felt that this would effectively destroy any electronics on the warheads, thereby ruining terminal guidance. The project was found to be unworkable, although the exact reasons are not given. The mushroom cloud of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, Japan, in 1945 lifted nuclear fallout some 18 km (60,000 feet) above the epicenter. ... In the NATO phonetic alphabet, X-ray represents the letter X. An X-ray picture (radiograph) taken by Röntgen An X-ray is a form of electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength approximately in the range of 5 pm to 10 nanometers (corresponding to frequencies in the range 30 PHz... In telecommunications and warfare, the term electromagnetic pulse (EMP) has the following meanings: The electromagnetic radiation from an explosion (especially nuclear explosions) or an intensely fluctuating magnetic field caused by Compton-recoil electrons and photoelectrons from photons scattered in the materials of the electronic or explosive device or in a...

A number of other countries were also involved in early ABM research. Perhaps surprisingly one of the more advanced projects was at CARDE in Canada. Here several teams researched the main problems of ABM systems, developing several advanced infrared detectors for terminal guidance, a number of missile airframe designs, a new and much more powerful solid rocket fuel, and numerous systems for testing it all. After a series of drastic budget cuts in the late 1950s the research was wound down. One offshoot of the project was Gerald Bull's system for inexpensive high-speed testing, consisting of missile airframes fired from a sabot round, which would later form the basis of Project HARP. Equally surprising was the lack of similar development on the part of the British or French militaries, neither of whom appear to have had serious programs in place. The Defence Research Establishment Valcartier, typically shortened to DRE Valcartier or simply DREV, is a major Canadian military research station in Quebec. ... Image of a small dog taken in mid-infrared (thermal) light (false color) Infrared (IR) radiation is electromagnetic radiation of a wavelength longer than visible light, but shorter than microwave radiation. ... Gerald Vincent Bull (March 8, 1928 - March 22, 1990) was an engineer who many consider to have developed long range artillery beyond what anyone else has accomplished. ... A sabot (French: shoe) is a device used in a firearm or cannon to fire a projectile or bullet that is smaller than the bore diameter. ... Project HARP, short for High Altitude Research Project, was a joint project of The Pentagon and the Canadian Department of National Defence created with the goal of studying ballistics of re-entry vehicles at low cost; whereas most such projects used expensive (and failure-prone) rockets, HARP used a very...

Prototypes and deployment plans

Nike X was a US "system" of two missiles, radars and their associated control systems. The original Nike Zeus was upgraded for longer range and a much larger 5 megatonne warhead, known as the Nike EX, intended to destroy warheads with a burst of x-rays outside the atmosphere. A second shorter-range missile with very high acceleration was added to deal with warheads that managed to get past the slower but longer-ranged Nike. Sprint was a very fast missile (some sources claimed it accelerated to Mach 10 within 5 seconds of flight--an acceleration of 65 g!) and had a smaller warhead in the low kiloton range for in-atmosphere interceptions. Further upgrades to the Nike would eventually lead to it being renamed Spartan. The name of a class of Super Soldiers in the video game series called Halo. ...

The new Spartan changed the deployment plans as well. Whereas in the past the plans for the Nike systems had been to be clustered near cities as a last-ditch defence, the Spartan allowed for interceptions at hundreds of miles range, so the basing changed to provide almost complete coverage of the United States in a system known as Safeguard. The Stanley R. Mickelson Safeguard complex in Nekoma, North Dakota, with the separate long-range detection radar located further north at Concrete, North Dakota, was the only operational anti-ballistic missile system ever deployed by the United States. ...

The only remaining ABM system to reach production was the Soviet A-35 system based on the A-350 missile (known in the west as the ABM-1 Galosh and ABM-1b Gammon) deployed at four sites around Moscow in the early 1970s. Originally intended to be a larger deployment, the system was in fact downscaled to the two sites allowed under the 1972 ABM treaty in the late 1970s in preparations for replacement by newer systems. These did not in fact arrive until the 1980s, when they were supplanted with the ABM-3 Gazelle short-range system, and then replaced with an upgraded Galosh known in the west as the ABM-4 Gorgon. In general the system is thought to have capabilities similar to that of the US's Safeguard sites, and with one of the main battle management radars aimed at the People's Republic of China, it appears they also felt that the ability to fend off an attack by an advance MIRV-equipped force was not worth trying. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) (Russian: (СССР)  listen?; tr. ... Saint Basils Cathedral Moscow (Russian/Cyrillic: Москва́, pronunciation: Moskvá) is the capital of Russia, located on the river Moskva, and encompassing 1097. ... Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name. ...

The MIRV problem

When ABM systems were being developed they were attempting to counter single warheads from large ICBMs. The economics seemed simple enough; since rocket costs are exponentional with power, the cost of the interceptors should be considerably less than those of the ICBMs which had much longer range and heavier loads. In an arms race the defense would always win. A Minuteman III missile soars after a test launch. ...

Things changed dramatically with the introduction of MIRV warheads. Suddenly each launcher was throwing not one warhead, but several. Nevertheless the defense would still require a rocket for every warhead, as they would be re-entering over a wide space and could not be attacked by several interceptors on a single rocket. Suddenly the defense no longer "worked", it was much less expensive to add more warheads, or even decoys, than it was to build the interceptor needed to shoot it down. Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name. ...

The experimental success of Nike X persuaded the Lyndon B. Johnson administration to propose a thin ABM defense in a September 1967 speech by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, known as Sentinel. McNamara, a private opponent of ABM because of cost and feasibility (see cost-exchange ratio), claimed that the ABM system would be directed not against the Soviet Union's missiles (since the USSR had more than enough missiles to overwhelm any American defense), but rather against the potential nuclear threat of the People's Republic of China. Order: 36th President Vice President: Hubert H. Humphrey Term of office: November 22, 1963 – January 20, 1969 Preceded by: John F. Kennedy Succeeded by: Richard M. Nixon Date of birth: August 27, 1908 Place of birth: Gillespie County, Texas Date of death: January 22, 1973 Place of death: Johnson City... Robert McNamara in 1964 Robert Strange McNamara (born June 9, 1916), American was a businessman, politician, and United States Secretary of Defense from 1961 to 1968. ... In anti-ballistic missile defence the cost-exchange ratio is the ratio of the incremental cost to the aggressor of getting one addtional warhead through the defence screen, divided by the incremental cost to the defender of offsetting the additional missile. ...

Cynics thought that the system was really an "anti-Republican" shield designed to give the Democratic Johnson political protection against Republican election charges in the 1968 presidential election. Due to its immense cost and strategic importance, ABM systems have often been the subject of low-key but intensely bitter partisan struggles. The Republican Party, often called the GOP (for Grand Old Party, although one early citation described it as the Gallant Old Party) [1], is one of the two major political parties in the United States. ... Presidential electoral votes by state. ...

All the while a huge public debate over the merit of ABMs broke out in public, notably the science magazines such as Scientific American. Even before the MIRV problem made the ABM system non-workable in the late 1960s, a number of serious technical difficulties were highlighted as potentially making any such system essentially useless. Primary among these complaints were the use of Fractional Orbital Bombardment System (FOBS) that would give little warning to the defence, as well as the high-altitude bursts that the U.S. had researched, used in reverse to blanket the defending radars with an opaque shield they would have to shoot through. Scientific American is one of the oldest and most serious popular-science magazines. ... Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name. ... This article provides extensive lists of events and significant personalities of the 1960s. ... Fractional Orbital Bombardment System (FOBS) was a Soviet ICBM in the 1960s with a low Earth orbit that would de-orbit for an attack. ... This long range radar antenna (approximately 40m (130ft) in diameter) rotates on a track to observe activities near the horizon. ...

Technical difficulties aside, the debate soon turned to an odd position—that no defense was better than any defense. Key to this opinion was that a false sense of security might prompt the owner into a position of escalating minor threats, feeling safe that the opposition was helpless to do anything about it as their offensive force could be countered. The argument was even made that simply starting to deploy such a system would prompt a full-scale attack, before it could become operational and thereby render such an attack useless. This curious set arguments thus put the system in a terrible position: it couldn't possibly work, but if it did that would be even worse.

The ABM Treaty of 1972

The great cost and dubious feasibility of building successful missile detection and interception systems with 1970s technology, led to the ABM treaty of 1972, which restricted the deployment of missiles designed to shoot down each other's ICBMs. Under the ABM treaty and a 1974 revision agreed to by the Soviets and Americans, each country was allowed to deploy a single ABM system with only 100 interceptors to protect a single target. The Soviets deployed a system named Galosh, designed to protect Moscow. The U.S. deployed a system called Safeguard to defend ballistic missile sites at Grand Forks Air Force Base, North Dakota, in 1975. Few people seriously think either system would have been very effective. (In December 2001, the U.S. announced its intention to withdraw from the treaty.) The Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (or ABM treaty) was a treaty between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on the limitation of the anti-ballistic missile (ABM) systems used in defending areas against missile-delivered nuclear weapons. ... A Minuteman III missile soars after a test launch. ...

Why did the Soviets and Americans accept this limitation? Nuclear strategists in the United States believed that allowing either country to develop a first-strike capability would be destabilizing and increase the likelihood of the use of nuclear weapons in a crisis. Soviet leaders suspected that the United States, with its mammoth resources and technological superiority, might well be able to create a leakproof defense. By limiting ABM systems to a marginal role, strategic stability would be assured (this is the logic better known as mutually assured destruction). In what appears to nonexperts to be ironic, this limitation of defensive arms led to treaties limiting the construction of offensive arms known as the SALT I treaties. In nuclear strategy, first strike capability is a countrys ability to defeat another nuclear power by destroying its arsenal to the point where the attacking country can survive the weakened retaliation. ... Mutually assured destruction (MAD) is the doctrine of military strategy in which a full scale use of nuclear weapons by one of two opposing sides would result in the destruction of both the attacker and the defender. ... SALT I is the common name for the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks from 1969–1972 between the United States and the Soviet Union, which resulted in a number of accords relating to the offensive nuclear arsenals of the two nations and a reduction of the nuclear arms race. ...

Conservatives in the United States, suspicious of the foreign policy machinations of Henry Kissinger and dubious of the Soviet-American détente engineered by President Richard Nixon, never accepted the logic of the ABM Treaty, which was designed and ratified under Nixon and Kissinger. Over the next decade, activists pressured Republican leaders to overturn the ABM Treaty and begin the construction of a massive anti-Soviet defense. Henry Kissinger Henry Alfred Kissinger, (born May 27, 1923) former National Security Advisor in the Nixon Administration, Secretary of State in the Ford Administration, and winner of the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize, who played a dominant role in foreign affairs between 1969 and 1977. ... Détente was the general reduction in the tension between the Soviet Union and the United States and a thawing of the Cold War that occurred from the late 1960s until the start of the 1980s. ... Order: 37th President Vice President: Spiro Agnew (1969–1973), Gerald R. Ford (1973–1974) Term of office: January 20, 1969 – August 9, 1974 Preceded by: Lyndon B. Johnson Succeeded by: Gerald R. Ford Date of birth: January 9, 1913 Place of birth: Yorba Linda, California Date of death: April 22...

anti-ballistic missile image File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...

Reagan and "Star Wars"

The Reagan-era Strategic Defense Initiative (better known as "Star Wars"), along with research into various energy-beam weaponry, brought new interest in the area of ABM technologies. Extensive research and some experiments proved that several concepts for space-based systems (X-Ray Lasers, "brilliant pebbles", etc) were not feasible with then-current technology. Order: 40th President Vice President: George H.W. Bush Term of office: 20 January 1981 – 20 January 1989 Preceded by: Jimmy Carter Succeeded by: George H.W. Bush Date of birth: 6 February 1911 Place of birth: Tampico, Illinois Date of death: 5 June 2004 Place of death: Bel-Air... For the computer game, see S.D.I. The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) is a system proposed by U.S. President Ronald Reagan on March 23, 1983 to use space-based systems to protect the United States from attack by strategic nuclear missiles. ...

Nothing was deployed operationally until Patriot antiaircraft missiles were used in the 1991 Gulf War to attempt to intercept Iraqi Scud missiles. Post-war analyses show that the Patriot was largely ineffective because of the limited range of its radar and the control system's inability to discriminate payloads from other objects when the Scud missiles broke up (or were broken up -- it's not clear which) during reentry. On the other hand, the Scud itself was highly inaccurate and not very reliable. It was more a psychological than real threat to military targets. Theodore Postol of MIT wrote a study which concluded that the Patriot (originally designed, like the early Nike systems, as an anti-aircraft system) may not have hit a single Scud. Four Patriot missiles like the one shown here can be fired from this mobile launcher between loadings. ... C Company, 1st Battalion, The Staffordshire Regiment, 1st UK Armoured Division The 1991 Persian Gulf War was a conflict between Iraq and a coalition force of 34 nations mandated by the United Nations and led by the United States. ... For the comics character Scud, see Scud: The Disposable Assassin. ... For the comics character Scud, see Scud: The Disposable Assassin. ... For the comics character Scud, see Scud: The Disposable Assassin. ... The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or MIT, is a research institution and university located in the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts along the Charles River and across from Bostons Back Bay district. ...

Testing of ABMs and ABM technology continued through the 1990s with mixed success. Use of non-nuclear interceptors requires that the interceptor physically contact the incoming payload -- a much more difficult problem. There are also many unresolved issues with warhead discrimination and decoy deployment. There is little doubt that occasional intercepts are possible. The issue is whether an ABM system is a cost effective deterrent or whether a potential enemy will simply deploy a few more missiles with more warheads.

The George W. Bush administration and ABM

The election of President George W. Bush in 2000 has led to the renewed interest and several ABM tests, as the U.S. military seeks to demonstrate the feasibility of shooting down ballistic missiles. In contrast to the Reagan era Strategic Defense Initiative which was intended to shield the United States from a massive attack by the Soviet Union, the stated purpose of this era's ABM's (National Missile Defense, see also there) is the much more limited goal of shielding the United States from a limited attack by a rogue state. It remains to be seen whether a system reliable enough to be useful operationally can be developed. George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is a politician and currently the 43rd President of the United States. ... A payload launch vehicle carrying a prototype exoatmospheric kill vehicle is launched from Meck Island at the Kwajalein Missile Range on Dec. ... Rogue state is a term used almost exclusively by the government of the United States and has not gained wide acceptance. ...

President Bush and his advisors appear to be determined to deploy a system, and have proposed to develop a dual purpose test and interception facility in Alaska. The Alaska site, it should be mentioned, might be effective against missiles launched from East Asia (such as North Korea), but is not likely to provide much protection from missiles launched from Southwest Asia (Iran or Iraq, for example). President Bush has used the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attacks to justify the need for such a shield. The World Trade Center on fire The September 11, 2001 attacks were a series of coordinated terrorist attacks against the United States on September 11, 2001. ...

Often overlooked in the ABM debate in the United States is the resistance of many Pentagon leaders to the construction of a National Missile Defense. Admirals and generals of all services oppose spending huge sums (currently $8bn/yr in 2003) to research, develop, and procure NMD systems. They would prefer to have that money spent on new conventional weapons, training, equipment, or pay. By conventional procurement methodologies (cost-benefit analysis and cost-utility analysis) missile defense would be regarded as a 'bad buy' owing to its very high costs, high level of project risk (it is essentially a research project, not acquisition of proven technologies) and the benefits are disputed. In order to prevent its cancellation by the Pentagon, successive administrations have placed missile defense outside of direct Pentagon control in a separate organisation. 2003 is a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... The acquisition of goods or services at the best possible total cost of ownership, in the right quantity, at the right time, in the right place for the direct benefit or use of the governments, corporations, or individuals generally via, but not limited to a contract. ... Cost-benefit analysis is the process of weighing the total expected costs vs. ... Cost-utility analysis is a form of economic analysis used to guide procurement decisions, especially health technology assessment (HTA). ...

International ABM efforts

In 1998 the Israeli military conducted a successful test of their Arrow ABM, developed in Israel with American assistance. Designed to intercept incoming missiles traveling at up to 2 mile/s (3 km/s), the Arrow is expected to perform much better than the Patriot did in the Gulf War. Taiwan is also engaged in the development of an anti-ballistic missile system, based on its indigenously developed Tien Kung-II (Sky Bow) SAM system. Although reports suggest a promising system, the ROC government continues to show strong interest towards the American THAAD program. The Arrow Interceptor ( טיל חץ, Hebrew: Hetz) is a theater missile defense (TMD) system; it is the first missile that was specifically designed and built to intercept and destroy ballistic missiles on a national level. ...

Related topics

• National Missile Defense
• nuclear disarmament
• nuclear proliferation
• nuclear warfare
• Terminal High Altitude Area Defense

A payload launch vehicle carrying a prototype exoatmospheric kill vehicle is launched from Meck Island at the Kwajalein Missile Range on Dec. ... Nuclear disarmament is the proposed undeployment and dismantling of nuclear weapons particularly those the United States and the Soviet Union (later Russia) targeted on each other. ... Map of nuclear nations Nuclear proliferation is the spread from nation to nation of nuclear technology, including nuclear power plants but especially nuclear weapons. ... Nuclear war, or atomic war, is war in which nuclear weapons are used. ... Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD - formerly Theater High Altitude Area Defense) is a United States Army project to develop a anti-ballistic missile defense system, against theater or regional threats. ...

External links

• The Center for Defense Information has many resources on ABMs and NMDs.
• The Federation of American Scientists, as usual, is a wonderful resource for technical data, full-text of key documents, and analysis.
• MissileThreat.com, a listing and descriptions of ABM systems around the world.