Does anyone know if the simulation video used in the 2nd half of this BMDS engagement video:
http://www.northropgrumman.com/missiledefense/video/bmds.mpg
is from the ACTUAL simulation program that the missile defense agency used in the late 1990’s for evaluating the GBI system?
The fact that:
a) The location of the sea-based x-band radar, uplink and downlink locations to DSP, GBI launch site, target missile launch site, etc etc all seem to be in EXACTLY the same place as their real-life counterparts.
For example, the target missile is launched from the NE part of North Korea near the coast, which is exactly where North Korea launches their test (and active) missiles from. The sea-based x-band radar (which wasn’t even developed at the time the video was made) is located at exactly where it would be located today, which is at Adak island in Alaska. The DSP sat seems to uplink info from exactly where Vandenburg is, and relays the data to exactly where Ft. Greely is. I could go on and on as well..
b) The missile follows a realistic trajectory, the simulation is realistic, and
c) There is extremely detailed target and track data for each element in the air (with vectors, to 100th’s of a degree to other elements, etc). If you zoom in on the video you can see that there are vectors pointing to each different point, with a data node listed off of them.
This all leads me to believe that this probably was the simulation program that was used 10 years ago by the missile defense agency. The amount of detail and accuracy seems too high in the video for it to just be something that someone threw together for a PR video. Sure, the graphics aren’t great, but this was from the 90’s, and it’s not the graphics that count in a sim program, it is the math that counts.
Does anyone else agree?
The video is quite old BTW, it was uploaded to NG’s website in 2002.
EDIT: Here is the program they currently use by the way:
By: Mercurius - 19th October 2007 at 18:13
The ‘screen displays’ are so crude that we can assume this video to be a product of the Northrop Grumman public-relations department. I doubt if there is any serious simulation being used to generate these images.
I’ve watched a simulated engagement by the Israeli Arrow BMD system, and the screen displays were much more detailed that this. There was no attempt to show a ‘War Games’ style 3D trajectory – on one map display the ellipse showing predicted impact point steadily shrunk as more accurate trajectory data became available, while the zone containing the calculated launch point shown on another map also shrunk.
My recollection is that most of the other displayed data was tabular or in the form of bar charts.
At first, the zone showing the estimated launch point was so large that it contained more than one ballistic missile battery. When the point was reached that the zone contained only one battery, a unit known to have WMD capability, several Arrow missiles were assigned to engage the incoming missile.
Mercurius Cantabrigiensis
By: YourFather - 18th October 2007 at 18:08
Take note of the “Notional Unclassified” under the screens.
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October 16, 2007 at 8:07 pm