Can you hit a bullet with a bullet?

That's the reason given for not being able to stop ICBM's and the rain of terror that they can bring upon us.

But what if that catchphrase is wrong?

Here's something on the subject via an Instapundit link here.  The story there was that there may be some problem with China and their anti-satellite weaponry.  In my opinion, this is bad stuff.  If the worse happens, there needs to be a response to it.

The worse could be a nuclear exchange.  Certainly not a good thing.  What could be done?  Well, it has been taken for granted all these years that ICBMs cannot be stopped.  It is my opinion that this sentiment or opinion may be in error.

An idea occurred to me this very morning.  In earlier and unrelated posts, I discussed some work on gas guns which are proposed to send payloads to orbit.  The idea is this, what if you could make this a dual use technology and use it for terminal defense?

Terminal defense is when everything else fails and the warhead is coming in for the kill.  When the warhead is at its most dangerous point, it is the most vulnerable to an attack upon it.  Now, what if you were to use these gas guns to send up very high speed object and smash into it?  At very high speeds, nothing could withstand the force of that much kinetic energy.  As a bonus, the gas gun's projectile will be very hot.  It will most likely melt the warhead even if did not score a direct hit.

If you were to use these big gas guns in the Atlantic near the Eastern Seaboard, you could offer a terminal missile defense for the major cities in the US.  As a bonus, you could launch civilian payloads from it to enable in orbit refueling of spacecraft.

How about that for an idea?

But you can't hit a bullet with a bullet!  No, we do it all the time.  Every time a spacecraft docks with another spacecraft, it is going much faster than a bullet, and not only are we hitting it, we a barely touching it!  No damage is done, so it is a relatively gentle affair.  But you can get less than gentle if you wish.  That's what the anti-satellite weapons are about.  They will smash satellites and make them useless.  There may not be any answer for this but to be able to respond and not get too burnt with the retaliation.

But won't the warhead explode anyway when it is hit?  Probably not, but even if it does, it is better up there miles away than at the surface where it can do the most damage.

A better response to an anti-satellite attack is to be able to save your population in the event of a war.  Another is to be able to send up replacements really fast.  A third response is to be able to clean up the mess afterwards.