Checkmate: Iran Defeats the US-Israeli Missile Defense Architecture. Scott Ritter
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The world’s attention has, rightfully so, been focused on the fallout from Iran’s retaliatory strike against Israel on April 13-14, 2024. Iran’s purpose in launching the attack was to establish a deterrence posture designed to put Israel and the United States on notice that any attack against Iran, whether on Iranian soil or on the territory of other nations, would trigger a retaliation which would inflict more damage on the attacker than the attacker could hope to inflict on Iran.
To achieve this result, Iran had to prove itself capable of overcoming the ballistic missile defense systems of both Israel and the United States which were deployed in and around Israel at the time of the attack.
This Iran was able to accomplish, with at least nine missiles striking two Israeli air bases that fell under the protective umbrella of the Israeli-US missile defense shield.
The Iranian deterrence posture has implications that reach far beyond the environs of Israel or the Middle East.
By defeating the US-Israeli missile defense shield, Iran exposed the notion of US missile defense supremacy that serves as the heart of US force protection models used when projecting military power on a global scale.
The US defensive posture vis-à-vis Russia, China, and North Korea hinges on assumptions made regarding the efficacy of US ballistic missile defense capabilities. By successfully attacking Israeli air bases which had the benefit of the full range of US anti-ballistic missile technology, Iran exposed the vulnerability of the US missile defense shield to modern missile technologies involving maneuverable warheads, decoys, and hypersonic speed. US bases in Europe, the Pacific and the Middle East once thought to be well-protected, have suddenly been revealed to be vulnerable to hostile attack. So, too, are US Navy ships operating at sea.
Israel’s ballistic missile defenses were given a supercharged boost by the deployment of an advanced AN/TPY-2 X band radar on Israeli soil. The radar, operated by the US Army’s 13th Missile Defense Battery, is located on Har Qeren, a height which rises out of the Negev Desert near the city of Be’er Sheva. The AN/TPY-2 is a missile defense radar that can detect, track and discriminate ballistic missiles, discriminating between threats and non-threats (i.e., incoming missiles and space debris).
The AN/TPY-2 operates in two different modes. The first, known as the “forward-based mode,” detects and tracks ballistic missiles as they are launched. The second—“terminal mode”—is used to guide interceptors toward a descending missile. The AN/TPY-2 is optimized to work with the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) ballistic missile defense system by guiding the THAAD missile to its target.
The US had deployed at least one, and possibly two, THAAD missile batteries to Israel at the time of the Iranian missile attack. In addition to assisting the THAAD missiles in shooting down incoming threats, the AN/TPY-2 radar data was integrated with Israeli radar data and other technical intelligence collected by the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization’s (BMDO) network of early warning satellites deployed for the sole purpose of monitoring and reporting Iranian ballistic missile launches. This integrated early warning/surveillance/tracking system was tied into a multi-layered missile defense architecture which included the US THAAD and Israeli Arrow 2, Arrow 3, advanced Patriot, and David’s Sling anti-ballistic missile interceptor systems.
Adding to the capability and lethality of the US-Israeli ballistic missile defense architecture was the presence of at least two US Navy ballistic missile defense (BMD) system-capable Aegis-class destroyers equipped with the SPY-1 S band radar and SM-3/SM-6 interceptor missiles.
The Navy BMD-capable ships are configured to tie into the ground-based AN/TPY-2 X band radar as well as the broader BMD system through the Command and Control, Battle management, and Communications (C2BMC) system. The combination of ground-based radars and interceptors with the US Navy BMD system provides US military commanders with theater-wide protection from hostile ballistic missile threats. This integrated system is designed to detect, acquire, and track incoming threats and, using complex computer-drive algorithms, discriminate targets and destroy them using hit-to-kill kinetic warheads (i.e., a “bullet hitting a bullet”).
On April 13-14, 2023, this system failed. In short, the combination of US and Israeli anti-ballistic missile defense capabilities deployed in and around the Negev desert made the Israeli air bases located there the most protected locations in the world from threats posed by ballistic missiles.
And yet Iran successfully struck both locations with multiple missiles.
The global strategic implications of this stunning Iranian accomplishment are game-changing—the US has long struggled conceptually with the notion of what is referred to as “A2/AD” (anti-access/area denial) threats posed by hostile ballistic missiles.
However, the US had sought to mitigate against this AA/A2 threat by overlaying theater ballistic missile defense architecture like that that had been employed in Israel. The failure of the combined US-Israeli defense systems in the face of a concerted Iranian missile attack exposed the short-comings of the US ballistic missile defense capabilities world-wide.
In short, this means that the US and NATO forces in Europe are vulnerable to attack from advanced Russian missile technologies which match or exceed those used by Iran to attack Israel. It also means that China would most likely be able to strike and sink US navy ships in the Pacific Ocean in the event of a conflict over Taiwan. And that North Korea could do the same to US ships and forces ashore in the vicinity of Japan and South Korea.
Until which time the US can develop, produce and deploy missile defense systems capable of defeating the new missile technology being deployed by nations like Iran, Russia, China, and North Korea, US military power projection capabilities are in a state of checkmate by America’s potential adversaries.
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Featured image: North Korea conducts a mass launch of ballistic missiles (Source: Scott Ritter Extra)
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As the Solar-induced Dry Cycles orbit the Earth from East to West, (at 15 degrees of Longitude per 30 Day/Night Interval) ; the destruction of water vapour Albedo in the upper atmosphere by the bombardment of the resultant charged Solar Particles, causes temperatures to rise under the path of the Dry Cycles. These temperatures reduce again after the Dry Cycle passes, thus the progressive fluctuating temperatures.
The next Dry Cycles to affect the planet, will be a Regional Dry Cycle,(of Two Year duration), starting from 50 degrees East Longitude, (circa Madagascar) in early August, 2024 – followed by a Minor Dry Cycle, (of One Year duration), starting from 140 degrees East Longitude,(circa Melbourne Australia) in early November 2026.
This will mean severe and prolonged Drought conditions for Africa and Europe starting from Early August 2024.
As both these Dry Cycles start to the West of Australia’s East Coast, the temperatures will remain cooler on the Barrier Reef until January 2026.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TFFDXyhe5b0ZfLCiFt23W4PbubQaQfQo/view?usp=sharing
I recall Alex S. Gaddes quoting Thomas Huxley on Nature to me Jennifer. You must not become disillusioned by it all. The Conservationist will become more important as the
current crop of climate charlatans (and their fantasies), fade into deserved obscurity, to be replaced by observed reality.
Hi Jennifer
Such a delight to have such good information that is plebs can digest and counter the narrative we see on main stream media leftist governments
Thank you. Karl Penna. Mapleton
Thanks for those fascinating facts re water temps, Jen.
And it is hard to believe that these “experts” have such an objection to going underwater to observe the true state of the corals. Especially when their current errors are so similar to their past ones.
The real data on water temperatures show the alarmists, as usual, are over-hyping the situation. However, even if there is general warming around the globe it does not prove the so-called greenhouse gases, CO2 and CH4, are the cause. Consistently, the alarmists confuse correlation with causation even though there is abundant evidence to show these gases are not the driver of global temperatures or, even more fanciful, of changes to the climate.
It is just unbelievable that so called government and academic scientists can get away with such fabrications. Jennifer provides evidence of no or little ocean warming but still the lie continues.
For me the real issue is what warms the oceans. CO2 radiation, IFR, cannot heat the ocean, so even if the oceans were warming it would not be due to CO2.
Jennifer, you are correct in your assessment of Sea Surface Temperatures – and the assertion that the ‘surface’ warms the atmosphere – but it becomes a little more complex when one considers the role of Albedo,(Reflectivity) on the amount of Sunlight reaching the surface – and how much is reflected back into Space by water vapour (clouds,) or various aerosol particles, (eg, volcanic activity, or wind-blown dust etc.) Also, a considerable amount of heat is absorbed by various ‘dark’ or semi-reflective surface features, both marine and terrestrial. So, temperature is primarily dependent on Albedo. Sea Surface Temperatures are not a reliable predictor, as they depend on many other factors, such as changing currents, winds and tides. Remember also, the Earth only spins from West to East – the purported movement of ‘El Nino’ from East to West via Sea Surface Temperatures would seem impossible.
Coming from Jennifer’s admirable post of today, 2024 Apr 15, in an email. Just taking the opportunity to do some chatting.
Jennifer writes: “If the surface of the ocean is on average warmer than the atmosphere immediately above it, then the direction of heat transfer must be ocean to atmosphere. This is certainly the case in the tropics, driving atmospheric circulation.”
I fully agree with the above remark by Jennifer. I would like to comment a little:
In thermodynamics, heat transfer is one of just three main forms of energy transfer: as heat, as work, and accompanying matter transfer. According to good authority (Max Born, Edward Guggenheim), energy transfer accompanying matter transfer cannot be resolved into heat and work components, at least in classical thermodynamics. In non-equilibrium thermodynamics, people try to do it, but they are probably over-optimistic.
Heat transfer is by conduction, radiation, and friction.
The main energy transfer from ocean to atmosphere is accompanying matter transfer, perhaps about 4/5 of the net total transfer, known as evaporation (this is the principal component feedback of the process considered as caused by added CO2).
Smaller amounts are by radiation, conduction, and friction. Energy transfer, through the kinetic energy of wind, does some mechanical work on the ocean, which eventually appears as heat in the sea (such transfer is sometimes said to be a reason for saying that the earth’s energy transport process is like a “heat engine”; I don’t like that story; I think it is too metaphorical: the energy ends up as heat if you consider the wave motion to be frictional.) There will also be simple friction between wind and wave; I don’t know how this pans out as a net frictional transfer one way or the other.
Jennifer is wise to say that “this is certainly the case in the tropics”. That says the main thing. There is also a small contributory back transfer as heat from atmosphere to sea or ice in the polar winter. And yes, importantly, it is “driving atmospheric circulation” (classified in thermodynamics as convective circulation of matter).
It is also important to remember so-called ‘back radiation’. Radiative transfer between two bodies is the net of two one-way transfer components, according to the Helmholtz reciprocity principle. The net is always from the hotter to the colder body; this is part of the burden of the second law of thermodynamics, referring to radiation. The mainly relevant part of the atmosphere is the troposphere, which is mainly colder than the surface. (As a fine point, it is not just the temperature of the immediately contiguous atmosphere; the atmosphere is semi-transparent to infrared radiation, so that its whole temperature and moisture profile is to be considered.) The overall net radiative transfer between condensed matter surface and atmosphere pans out to be about perhaps 3% of emitted infrared radiation from surface to atmosphere. We cannot be sure of the exact amount, because it is hard to define or know the temperatures of the surface and of the nearly contiguous atmosphere, and other things, such as the emissivity of the surface.
“New data shows the Great Barrier Reef has suffered through its worst-ever heat stress with more than 80% of reefs enduring dangerous levels of heating (more than 4 Degree Heating Weeks), as scientists grapple to quantify the irreparable, cumulative damage from repeated such events.
Surveys show widespread coral bleaching affecting an area likened in size to the land burned during the Black Summer fires. Marine scientists have reported coral bleaching at greater depths of the ocean than previously recorded, and centuries-old corals succumbing to the extreme heat.
Reports from the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (GBRMPA), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the United States, and other experts show that:
The Great Barrier Reef as a whole has been subject to a greater level of heat stress than during any of the previous six mass bleaching events (See Figure 1).
Almost half (46%) of the individual reefs that form the Great Barrier Reef experienced record heat stress. (Based on analysis of data from NOAA Coral Reef Watch.)
More than 60% of individual reefs across the Great Barrier Reef have shown “prevalent bleaching” (GBRMPA – Reef Health Update, 12 April 2024).
“New data shows the Great Barrier Reef has suffered through its worst-ever heat stress with more than 80% of reefs enduring dangerous levels of heating (more than 4 Degree Heating Weeks), as scientists grapple to quantify the irreparable, cumulative damage from repeated such events.”
Yet Jennifer has shown NO increase in ocean temperature.
And CO2 does not heat water.