According to the Czech newspaper Prague Post today, The head of the U.S. anti-missile program says North Korea is helping Iran develop missiles that could reach Europe. U.S. officials say a missile-defence system, with missiles in Poland a radar base in the Czech Republic, would protect Europe in the event that Iran developed long-range ballistic missiles.
It seems some high ranking Americans are ready to say anything in order to get Europe down on its knees to pray for a system which has the soul target of stopping rockets on the way to the USA. What happens to Europe itself, when these (possibly) atomic heads are brought to explosion in the air, does not seem to concern anybody. However it must be clear to many on these forums, that radio-active clouds could still reach America and these bring a slower but much more painful death to recipients.

You don't seem to understand how nuclear warheads work if you believe that a successful in-air interception will trigger detonation of the payload. An education is in order.

http://science.howstuffworks.com/nuclear-bomb.htm

http://howthingswork.virginia.edu/nuclear_weapons.html

No need to thank me.

After reading, post any questions you have and someone will be along to answer anything you didn't understand.

I have a question professor.

What if a Mufti from Iran, cleverly disguised as an Irish Tinker woman, travels west with a nuclear device cleverly disguised as an accordion in the back of "her" caravan.

How will Uncle Sam's anti-nuclear missle programme save old and new Europe alike?

Interesting query from my esteemed colleague of the clergy. Aye, well, see that's why all Irish tinkers will be forbidden to travel from Iran. All the Irish in Iran must stay where they are and die in place.

I don't understand why Russia is getting so nervous about this missile defense system. Do they really think we still want to nuke them? Or do they still want to nuke us?

BD, you're right about the warheads of today being extremely difficult to coax into going critical or supercritical on cue. First, processing the component materials to a level of purity is almost impossible. Then, the mechanics of critical assembly became Swiss watchmaking, just a figure of speech, when America completed minification of payloads. Now, clusters of small warheads could be combined as one large payload or many separately targetable ones.

The process has been stolen, copied, and prayed over, that they would work as designed but most will fizzle as high explosive triggers. There is still the brute force, simpler, but extremely destructive warheads that have a high success rate.

The possibility of a nuclear warhead going critical from being intercepted is almost null. As for concerns about this being a gambit just to protect America at the expense of Europe consider this: The United States and most of Europe are allied via NATO and it is therefore not too unreasonable to assume that an attack on America would target much of Western Europe also. The United States is the most powerful member of NATO and we have a unique ability to bring any war anywhere to our enemies thanks to our fleet of (14?) nuclear power aircraft carriers, if memory serves me correct the United States has 2/3's of the world's active aircraft carriers in our fleet. As a whole wouldn't it be in the best interest of the United States and our European allies alike if the United States survived such an exchange with as little damage as possible, even if it is at the expense of a Europe that is quite likely already being targeted anyways?

Originally Posted by Englander2

According to the Czech newspaper Prague Post today, The head of the U.S. anti-missile program says North Korea is helping Iran develop missiles that could reach Europe. U.S. officials say a missile-defence system, with missiles in Poland a radar base in the Czech Republic, would protect Europe in the event that Iran developed long-range ballistic missiles.
It seems some high ranking Americans are ready to say anything in order to get Europe down on its knees to pray for a system which has the soul target of stopping rockets on the way to the USA. What happens to Europe itself, when these (possibly) atomic heads are brought to explosion in the air, does not seem to concern anybody. However it must be clear to many on these forums, that radio-active clouds could still reach America and these bring a slower but much more painful death to recipients.

As bulldogg has stated through his links, nukes in its delivery stage generally do not fly "hot." From an engineering point of view, it's frankly unstable. The warheads usually arm themselves (undergo the fission process) when it is extremely close to the target and has split from the final delivery vessel. An explosion from an interceptor missile is not enough energy to start the fission process that causes the nuclear detonation. If the missile had a plasma tip then MAYBE it would set it off, but we aren't at that stage of technology yet.

Don't you think the EU saw your point, too? If what you say is remotely true or even possible, do you really think any of the EU nations would hop on board with the missile shield plan?

Only problem with this wonder system is that it protects us against the least likely delivey.

As Padre said, if/when a nuke finds it´s way through defences it´s not going to be a missile launch.

That however is NOT to say we don´t need to defend against such a possibility ALSO.

//KJ.

Originally Posted by major liability

I don't understand why Russia is getting so nervous about this missile defense system. Do they really think we still want to nuke them? Or do they still want to nuke us?

Russia sees ANY NATO activity near Russian borders as hostile.
One of the points brought by them that a little anti-missile program could become a huge undertaking later and give the US a huge advantage (if it will be able to shoot down the Russian missiles right after the launch).

However, in my book, the main purpose of the Russian statements is internal. They want to show their people how threatened they are, so they should get more loyal to the Government and not pay too much attention to some pesky details like civil freedoms or corruption in the government.