Even the EU report on the confrontation acknowledges Georgia's guilt. Wiki is edited in real time by all sorts of interested parties
that have all sorts of agendas. Never take anything from this toilet without a ton of salt and independent confirmation.
That is what I am saying... wiki on its own is no good as a source.
The THAAD and PAC-3 patriot and their other ABM systems were developed at a time when the ABM treaty was in force... the ICBM Marvs being talked about were developed at a time when ABM systems were restricted to a limited number of weapons around a single target (in the case of the Soviet system that location was Moscow).
The purpose of MaRVs was not to evade extensive nation wide ABM systems or mobile ABM systems... it had more to do with attacking much more widely separated targets on the path of the ICBM they were fitted to.
A standard MRV held all the warheads until a relatively short distance from the target and then released the RVs so they landed all around the point of aim to spread damage for a large area target like a city. Three 150KT warheads spread out could actually do a lot more damage to a normal city than one really big warhead because the destruction caused by nuclear weapons is highly centralised a 10MT bomb does not destroy 10 times the area of a 1MT bomb, it is like a cluster bomb... even a small 1kg cluster munition will kill, but a 500kg bomb doesn't kill over 500 times the area of a 1kg bomb. The effect is that 20-30 x 2kg bombs spread evenly over an area is more effective at killing people in the open than one 500kg bomb.
The only time really big bombs are more useful is with protected targets where a 500kg bomb will kill people inside buildings with a direct hit whereas dropping hundreds of 1kg bombs will damage the roof and top floors but people 5-6 floors below will be fine.
As the power of warheads increased but more importantly accuracy increased smaller warheads could be used against separate targets so MIRVs enabled different targets along the flight path of the weapon to be engaged... as the warhead bus went past an RV could be released to hit it... though the target couldn't be too far off the flight path because the whole warhead bus needs to be manouvered like a bomber to send the warhead on the right trajectory and then manouver back for the next targets.
The idea behind MaRV is that the warheads don't travel in a warhead bus and each head towards their target from the start... not to evade interception but to improve accuracy and the distance to the targets they can engage.
Missiles and warheads developed since the end of the ABM treaty are now getting manouvering stages that are intended to to more than just improve accuracy or extend the reach to targets out of the missiles way... they are intended to evade enemy defences...
Iskander was one of the first because Patriot and PAC-3 patriot would make them sitting ducks if they followed a simple ballistic path... so they don't.
Yes, with some super computers you might be able to predict what flight path options the hypersonic warheads might take, but the options would include hundreds of different paths, so you would need to launch hundreds of interceptor missiles of which only perhaps one or two might have any chance of interception... but if you have 10 missiles coming in that are timed so that the interceptors launched at the first missile can't hang around for the next target then you would need to launch thousands of interception missiles still with a fairly ordinary chance of success.
For instance... if incoming target flys one path... all the way to target then interception can take place... but any deviation from that path anywhere from detection to impact means a potential new interception location... and that target could choose to deviate in multiple ways including climbing, or descending, turning left or right, speeding up or slowing down... or any combination of any two or three or four or five or six things, and it can do any combination of those as well... it can speed up and slow down... it can turn left or right or it can turn left AND right, it can turn left and slow down and then right and then climb and then speed up... the actual flight path cannot be predicted even with a super computer, because as fast as you calculate its options it can be manouvering in ways that make all previous calculations useless and all already launched missiles ineffective...
A volley of nuclear detonations is about the only option to assure an intercept which could do more damage than the incoming missiles because you will be setting these nukes off over your own forces...
The British Defence minister wanted to include hypersonic manouvering missiles with nuclear weapons and bind their deployment in treaties... is that because he thinks they can already intercept them at will?
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Name me one other quasi-ballistic air-launched missile that is designed to attack ships from the zenith (where radar coverage is poor) at hypersonic velocities from a 1000km range....
