Hacker News Reader

Comment by nkoren | Hacker News Reader

I'm as big a critic of the "Security Theatre" as the next guy, but trying to fight bollocks with even higher-grade bollocks isn't really very helpful. And Charlie's "white-hot supersonic shrapnel" is bollocks of the purest sort. A surface-to-air missile -- after its fuel is burnt out and its payload is detonated -- is basically nothing more than a thin tube. The "shrapnel" would consist of lightweight scraps of carbon fibre and sheet metal, fluttering downward like ordinary carbon fibre and sheet metal. Definitely annoying to have it land on your roof -- but fairly inconsequential.

Disappointed in Mr. Stross for this one.

View on HN

>A surface-to-air missile -- after its fuel is burnt out and its payload is detonated -- is basically nothing more than a thin tube.

No, no, no. Modern SAM missiles have either a continuous rod warhead, a quite substantial affair that on detonation will spread shrapnel to a substantial range, or, even worse in this context, are kinetic killers like the HVM Starstreak the UK DoD is deploying. A kinetic killer is a heavy metal rod with some guiding fins that is propelled to hypervelocity (Mach 3.5 for the Starstreak) by a first stage. The Starstreak has 3 of these. There's a strong possibility that they stay intact after hitting their target, as aircraft are more flimsy than armoured combat vehicles, or even worse, some of the 3 will miss the target. What happens then is easy to guess: is goes on a ballistic trajectory at a high Mach speed, and in a dense urban area, may hit something fragile and cause some damage. Each of the 3 Starstreak submunition has as much energy as a 40mm Bofors shell.

So your scenario of "they'll gently come down" is far off target.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starstreak http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous-rod_warhead

Edit: the Starstreak submunitions also have an explosive payload so they won't stay intact neither on hitting nor missing the target. The raining shrapnel caveat still applies, but shrapnel slows down beyond a few hundred meters.

That edit is an important caveat: the Starstreak is not a kinetic killer, but a kinetic penetrator. Half its weight is explosives, and after those detonate, the rest would turn into very small bits.

Of course an intact Starstreak submunition is very definitely something you that wouldn't want landing on your roof. But fragments from half a mile overhead? Not such a problem. Certainly not pleasant, and possibly a bit dangerous -- but probably no more than things that London drivers do hundreds of times every day already.[1]

[1] NB: I'm not a weapons engineer, but I do live in London. So to that degree, at least, I know of what I speak.

What's most unfortunate is that he's drawing attention away from the real issue by whipping up this largely unfounded public safety concern.

There aren't a lot of places on earth that put SAMs in residential areas apart from North Korea.

The Olympics is all about sponsorship. One could see this as a sponsorship deal: British designed technology (Starstreak) built by a British company (British Aerospace) being promoted to the world via the Olympics. They've already got their money's worth in publicity. (Were you aware of Starstreak before reading it here?) If the Olympics can be used to sell a soft drink, why not a missile system?

Where can I place my order? I can't wait to have a Starstreak in my home for three easy payments of $49.99 (plus shipping and handling).

I was there on holiday last week; whilst I saw lots of military hardware in the parades, I must say that I didn't see any SAM batteries in Pyongyang (and we did a lot of driving around, and had a good look at it from the top of the Juche Tower and the revolving restaurant on top of the Yanggakdo).

What, I wonder, is the chance of a passenger airliner being shot down by such missiles...? To what extent does this - small - chance counter the also small risk of airplanes being used by the terrorists?

I agree with C. Stross that this is a daft idea.

> The "shrapnel" would consist of lightweight scraps of carbon fibre and sheet metal

I suspect that people who are concerned about shooting down planes over London are worried less by the debris of the missile, and more by that of the target.

Not in TFA, which is about the possibility of AA-missile shots deliberately provoked by a harmless dummy.

In the scenario of an attack by something that is actually dangerous, shooting it down will almost certainly cause less damage than letting it hit its intended target (at least when the target is a mass of spectators at a sports event).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com