THAAD-Like High Altitude Theater Missile Defense: Strategic Defense Capability and Certain Countermeasures Analysis

By incorporating the publicly available information about the Theater High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) theater missile defense system and making some educated guesses about the unknown parameters of the system, we construct a computer model of a THAAD-like kill vehicle to simulate the endgame homing process. Using this model, we simulate endgame homing processes against incoming targets of different velocities, corresponding to theatre and strategic targets. We also simulate homing processes against certain types of countermeasures. The simulation results demonstrate that, given state-of-the-art technologies for infrared sensors, ground-based radars, and divert/attitude control thrusters, first, a THAAD-like defense would have nearly the same miss distance and kill probability against a strategic target as against a theater target, and second, countermeasures, like infrared stealth, radar jamming, and decoys, have the potential to defeat a THAAD-like kill vehicle using infrared homing during the endgame.

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