The goal was to be ready for the inevitable.
Tell any soldier or service member who were at the Fulda gap that there is no need to worry about things going hot.
They will laugh at you.
There was always a chance. Always.
We didn't start money pitting them till the 80s, and by then we had already developed things to counter what ever they had.
There was always a chance things could go hot.
Remember, the USSR was one of the biggest exporter or arms in the world. That is how they stayed afloat until we started to make a comeback after Vietnam in the sense of power in capabilities over them in most.
They had us in a fee, mainly in terms if equipment on the ground via tank and artillery wise.
For the third time, a hot war vs the USSR, everyone dies. There's no need to be ready for it beyond nukes. Ready for a hot war vs some small country? That matters. Vs the Soviets? The only thing you need really is nukes. There was literally no reason for people to get into the weeds about which conventional force was better, if it looked like one side was about to lose, they'd start chucking nukes.
THAAD and related systems are a filter for accidents, rogue generals, crazy fanatics, and hybrid warfare shit where someone in a third world shithole launches a nuke or something resembling a nuke for whatever reason.
They also apply to local bases in ME and Asia. Sure, it's not as useful for USA as for Israel, as of now, but on the other hand we can imagine a scenario where a Iran related flare-up may suddenly make it more useful.
Either way, what they do is that they ensure that no one is going to try funny business with a missile attack if they aren't both willing and able to make it a saturation attack.
How valuable exactly it is will be impossible to say before the system reaches its end of life, probably to be replaced by another, but even by existing, it has certain effects too.
No one will ever be able to see all the alternate realities where NK, Houthis, Iran or someone else tried some silly business with a single ballistic missile because USA had no tools to do anything about said missile, but didn't decide to try in our reality.
Let's look at your scenario, and look at the alternate realities. Let's say there's a rogue actor who would have launched at the US but for THAAD. Given that they have access, you don't think they have a list of non-US targets they'd like to hit if they can't get the US? They'd still have launched, just at a different target. But there hasn't been rogue nuke launches. So there have been no rogue actors yet that have access to nukes plus the willingness + capability to launch them. So THAAD hasn't stopped this, nor has GDI or the rest of the anti-missile capabilities in the US.
Hence these aren't a threat in being vs stuff that isn't actually used. They are, one could say, a threat in being vs ordinance that is used.
As for the stuff of value we got from SDI, and crediting all of the PAC-3's success to the SDI, No. Most of it was not from SDI.
Again, you have made a definition that inherently consigns any new defense system as definitely of no value, potentially useful at best.
Yes. The point I'm asking about is return on investment, which is how much of it was used against the enemy. This is a fine tool to use for analyzing past decisions using the benefit of hindsight. Note I said
tool. It's not perfect, but it's a good
tool. And I'm not using it in places it doesn't work, like choosing what should be developed in the future.
The return on investment for an home insurance policy is -100% if your home is fine. It doesn't mean that the home insurance policy wasn't worth it, but one can still say that the Home Insurance didn't benefit you. And that's
good.
I'm not saying that THAAD wasn't worth buying. I'm saying that so far, we've barely needed it.
My claim is a simple one: the SDI has a very,
very low Americans saved/$ spent rate. So low that even just counting the Americans saved by it is small. It's primary purpose was as a money pit (also apparently a spy trap), and it was incredibly good at it.
>for now
As you see from the development histories, this is not the sort of thing that you can throw together in few weeks or months if you suddenly find yourself needing it and expect it to work.
This is a really bad time to badmouth preparedness like this as a waste.
Literally why I italicized it, I know that can change, I specifically pointed attention at it for that reason. In fact, I expect Iran's ability to nuke to grow beyond our ability to stop it, rather than us being able to catch up to any state that wants to nuke us.
Iran has an actual economy. It's a hamstrung one, but it's not communist. They can afford to do research. And attacking is a lot easier than defending.
In contrast, I think North Korea is going to fall further and further behind in the nuke vs shield race, as they simply can't afford many missiles.