Navy Develops Mathematical Formula to Intercept Enemy Missile Attacks at Sea

By Cameron Curtis,

The answer is – at least two, probably three or more. Period.

When an Aegis destroyer fires six Standard 3 ABMs at 300 incoming Iranian missiles, it is not going to shoot down six of the threats. It will be lucky to shoot down three. It might shoot down two. On many occasions, it might not shoot down any.

The same goes for all our air defense missiles. Patriot PAC-3s, THAAD, Israeli Arrow 3. It is standard air defense doctrine to fire at least two, and often three air defense missiles, for each incoming ballistic missile threat.

Why?

The purpose of this short article is to show the mathematics (don’t be scared, I promise it will be painless) behind the doctrine. I will also show that the doctrine is fundamentally flawed because of a basic statistical truth: The Law of Large Numbers.

Think Las Vegas

The mainstream media makes you think we fire a Patriot and bring down an enemy missile. The Pentagon doesn’t help if they say they fired twelve Standard 3 missiles and brought down twelve Iranian ballistic missiles on October 1. Of course they want their weapons to look good. I don’t believe it for one simple reason. They had to target specific threats, and they wouldn’t have targeted incoming threats one-to-one. They would have targeted threats two or three-to-one. That’s standard doctrine. That means at best they would have shot down six. At best.