Going to make a blanket set of clarifications here for people who are new followers or who are unaware that I've been on a long term crusade about this issue. When I say "missile defense is fake" I don't mean that in the literal sense. What I mean is that there's been a 40 year campaign by governments, defense contractors, and military officials to deceive the public about how effective ballistic missile defense systems are, specifically.
This campaign goes back to the introduction of the Patriot, with George H.W. Bush giving a speech at a Raytheon (not kidding) factory where he claimed the Patriot had intercepted ~98% of Iraqi Scuds in the Gulf War. This was an extension of Cold War missile defense propaganda campaigns, like Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (Star Wars). We now have solid evidence that the Patriot probably failed to intercept any Iraqi Scuds.
What the Patriot had actually done was intercept booster sections and bits of debris from Saddam's Scuds when they broke apart in the air (these were the famously old and unreliable "wobbly scuds"). These failures cost the coalition forces dearly when a Scud hit a US barracks in Saudi Arabia, killing 28 American soldiers and injuring over 100.
What we see now, over the skies of Israel, is similar, but on a much larger scale. One of the great advantages missile defense propagandists have is that they've been able to pass off every explosion in the sky as a supposed interception. Most people aren't aware that a modern ballistic missile attack will include decoys, countermeasures, and dummy missiles, and many interceptors are programmed to self destruct if they miss their target. As a result, what can look like a sky full of successful interceptions is really dozens of misses, or decoys doing their job.
The Saudis and Ukrainians have done their absolute best to play along. Long before the Ukrainians claimed 100% interception rates for hypersonic missiles, the Saudis were telling the world that the Patriots we forced them to buy had successfully shot down 100% of Yemeni drones and missiles in attacks during the Yemeni Civil War. Booster sections of missiles which automatically detach before impact were trotted out as proof. Again, the Patriot's stats were padded as intercepted boosters were claimed as intercepted warheads.
Interestingly, the only US "ally" not to play along was Israel. Having nothing to fear from criticizing their vassal state, they openly derided the Patriot after its poor showing in the Gulf War, directly contradicted Raytheon and HW's narrative, and only acquired them as a stopgap while they worked to replace them with domestically produced systems. They've now completed this process, but it's clear that they haven't been as successful at fielding a superior system as they expected to be. Their situation is desperate enough that they're now trying to recall the Patriots they threw in the trash by donating to Ukraine.
So when I talk about "air defense bros," I'm talking about people who bought into the narrative that ballistic missile defense systems can achieve high kill rates. The strategic picture changes massively if you drop from a 99% kill rate to a 90%, or even, God forbid, 50%, or even lower (likely where we are now). It means that you cannot guarantee that your military personnel, cargo ships, infrastructure, etc are anywhere close to safe.
Air defense systems are useful. They are extremely effective at shooting down aircraft and decent at shooting down cruise missiles. But even older ballistic missiles are a major challenge, and the newer classes of maneuvering, countermeasure dropping, even low-hypersonic missiles fielded by Russia, Iran, or China are likely all but impossible to shoot down.
nitter.tiekoetter.com/ripplebr…
#iran#palestine#china#russia#news
@palestine@a.gup.pe
TXPatriot2021🇨🇱✝ΣΧ🇺🇲
Unknown parent • • •@magicalthinking
Don't disagree with that.
Lori ✝️🏡🇺🇸
in reply to TXPatriot2021🇨🇱✝ΣΧ🇺🇲 • • •@magicalthinking
They sound vaxxed....
and boosted beyond repair.