Ted Postol: U.S. Missile Defense Is 'A Giant Technical Fraud'

You go to war with the army your contractors give you.

There’s a mountain of good information in this video interview/presentation by Dr. Ted Postol, MIT professor emeritus of Science, Technology, and International Security. More on Ted Postol here. He’s truly pre-eminent in his field.

If you want to know what missiles are used by Iran, how they work, and how they defeat U.S.-supplied missile defenses, settle down and watch. You won’t be disappointed.

Just a few of his points from his talk. First, about nuclear weapons in the Gulf:

• Netanyahu is a “homicidal maniac.” He would use nukes.

• Iran could get nukes quickly.

• Iran is being incentivized to get nukes.

• 10 nukes is easily enough to end Israel as a state.

• Iran will not use nukes first.

About the progress of the war:

• News from Israel friends: “Things are hellish on the ground.”

• Israel’s condition will continue to deteriorate.

• Attacks on Tel Aviv and Haifa have been highly effective.

• Iran is saving their most capable missiles for later, if needed.

About Iranian drones:

• Iran is getting real-time high-resolution targeting satellite data from China and Russia.

• Iranian drones have a homing capability that is extraordinarily effective. They’re going to overwhelm what’s left of Israel’s air defenses, which are being depleted.

Other points:

• Iran has thousands of ballistic missiles with advanced capabilities.

• The U.S. naval base in Bahrain is “up in flames.” Reason: these drones. They are manufactured in the hundreds per day. (In contrast, Russians are manufacturing drones in the thousands per day.)

• At some point, Israeli air defenses will be depleted.

• The Al Fattah hypersonic missile, at mach 10, does twice the explosive damage as its total weight. Reason: The weight of the vehicle itself gets converted to thermal energy, which adds to the effect of its explosive munitions.

Plume from the Al Fattah hypersonic missile in flight (see small cursor, upper right)

U.S. Missile Defenses: A Giant Technical Fraud

One final point, and it’s big. After going through how good the Iranian missile countermeasures are, he says this about American air defense missiles (39:26):

So these counter measures have been existing for years and people — well, I’ve largely been alone talking about this, but I’ve been warning people for decades about these counter measures.

So you not only have the United States spending hundreds of billions of dollars on [the Patriot] strategic ballistic missile system that can be defeated with these measures. But you have tens or hundreds of billions of dollars [spent] on shorter range missile defenses which are also being defeated by the same counter measures, but against more tactical systems rather than strategic systems.

This is a gigantic technical fraud that has been going on for decades.

The argument has always been, ‘Well, we don’t see counter measures.’ And my statement is, ‘Well, of course you don’t see counter measures, because there’s no need for them. [But as] Soon as there’s a need for them, you’re going to see them.’

And of course, now we’re seeing them. So the prediction from 30 years ago is coming out in spades now.

The video explains the counter measures and why they work.

This is something you might expect, if you think about it. This is what you get when your military supply chain is driven by profit and fraud (witness the F-35) instead of effectiveness. You go to war with the army your contractors give you.