As a result of Abbabeel, India will exhaust its air defense missiles very quickly as for every incoming sub vehicle, it would consume one missile, and that too if it achieved 100% kill ratio.
Just like Babur-III, Abbabeel is a game changer. Now Indian strategists would have to increase ballistic missile defense system by 5-6 fold to get the same level of defense against Pakistan, and that too with the assumption that India still has 100% hit rate against incoming missiles.
In short, Indian dream of attacking Pakistan and then being able to live is even flimsier and increasingly unlikely. If India attacked Pakistan, India would end up living in the stories only.
And if Pakistan will attack India, what would happen to Pakistan.
As for the thread
I think it's best to try and break this issue down into it's constituent parts. Let's first break down the stages a ballistic missile goes through during its flight:
- The ascent (boost) phase: In this phase, the ballistic missile is launched and begins it's travel upwards. This phase, while not the shortest, is still relatively short and-- at least for land-based systems-- tends to happen within the confines of territory controlled by the launching state.
- The mid-course phase: In this phase, the missile has (in most cases) reached space and is nearing its apogee. At this point, the missile will release its multiple warheads and/or any sort of decoy countermeasures, if equipped with any of the above, and . This phase comprises a bulk of the missile's flight time.
- The descent (re-entry) phase: At this point, the warhead(s) begin their return to Earth in order to strike their targets. The warheads, being in free-fall, are moving extremely fast, and so this phase is over relatively quickly.
Now, let's look at, in a basic sense, what you have to in order to intercept a ballistic missile:
- You have to know that a missile has been launched: In order to know that there's a missile to be intercepted, you have to know that one is out there.
- You have to figure out where the missile/warhead is going: In order to intercept the missile, you have be able to track it and try and figure out where it's going to be in the future.
- You have to be able to actually send something to intercept the missile: While all of these requirements are rather basic, this is probably the most basic of all of them; in order to intercept the missile, you have to have something that can actually intercept the missile.
Now, let's put these things together.
During the
ascent phase, the ballistic missile is quite vulnerable; it's obviously traveling at a high rate of speed but it's not going terribly fast relatively speaking, it's flight path is relatively basic, and it hasn't had the ability to release countermeasures or multiple warheads yet. During the ascent phase, the missile is at its most vulnerable state, but is still very difficult to hit given its (rough) geographical location. Since it is inside an opponent's physical territory/airspace, and given the short duration of this phase, it is relatively difficult to get an interceptor on-target within time.
During the
mid-course phase, the missile becomes less vulnerable; it can deploy countermeasures (e.g. ballons, dummy warheads, chaff) and multiple, independently-targed re-entry vehicles (MIRV). To intercept the nuclear warheads during this phase, one would need to:
- Have an intercepter vehicle capable of reaching space (read: large and expensive).
- Have an ability to launch multiple interceptors.
- Have some level of ability to tell what targets need to be hit and what targets can be avoided.
These are not trivial issues.
During the
descent phase, the incoming warhead is traveling at an extremely high rate of speed (hitting top speeds of anywhere from mach 3 to mach 20). This phase is decidedly short and attempts to intercpet a missile within this time frame are, because of that, inherently complicated; you have to pick up the warhead, figure out where it's going, launch an interceptor, and then have the interceptor get on target (with precious little margin for error) within the span of, say, 30 to 40 seconds.
Oh, and all of this has have a low turnaround time, and work 100% of the time.
Getting all of that together in a working system just isn't easy.
https://www.quora.com/Why-is-it-so-hard-to-intercept-a-nuclear-missile
Seems Laser systems will be the end solution for those system, but then, what will intercept laser?
