according to Thomas P. Christie (DoD director of Operational Test and Evaluation from 2001–2005) current defense systems “haven’t worked with any degree of confidence”.[12] A major unsolved problem is that credible decoys are apparently “trivially easy” to build, so much so that during missile defense tests, balloon decoys are made larger than warheads—which is not something a real adversary would do. Even then, tests fail 50% of the time.
I didn’t follow this. What are the decoys? Are they made by the attacking side or the defending side? Why does them being easy to build mean that people make large ones during tests, and why wouldn’t that also happen in a real attack? Why is it notable that tests still fail at a high rate in the presence of large decoys?
I didn’t follow this. What are the decoys? Are they made by the attacking side or the defending side? Why does them being easy to build mean that people make large ones during tests, and why wouldn’t that also happen in a real attack? Why is it notable that tests still fail at a high rate in the presence of large decoys?