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Missile Defense

Russian military leaders have expressed concern about US plans for a national missile defense system. Will defense technology be limited by possibilities for a strategic imbalance? Is this just SDI all over again?

lunarchick - 12:23am Feb 19, 2001 EST (#712 of 713)
lunarchick@www.com

Many of the problems that are having to be handled, in a scientific culture, are of the same form as the most essential problems involved in a military paradigm change, where military forces have to adapt to new challenges, and learn to work more flexibly, and more "in clear" than they now do.

Isn't this called 'taking one's eye off tomorrow's BIG PICTURE' ? (dR)

rshowalter - 07:36am Feb 19, 2001 EST (#713 of 713)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

You need a "Big Picture" from many points of view. From many time scales. Including todays and tomorrows.

Dawn, let me think about what you suggest - youve jostled my thinking. While doing so, Id like to suggest a book, written by my late partner and mentor, Professor S.J. Kline, of Stanford.

CONCEPTUAL FOUNDATIONS FOR MULTIDISCIPLINARY THINKING Stanford University Press, 1995.

Part 5 includes useful, compact statements, and so do the appendices.

I think that, if more people knew what Steve worked out and put in that book, many decisions on defense, especially nuclear defense, would be better informed, and much more satisfactory.

Steve was a close friend, and we worked together on some of the ideas in that book. Recommendation letter

Steve's way of looking, and thinking, influenced many people. For many years, he was co-chair of the Program for Science, Technology, and Society at Stanford. The JSME named him "the most distinguished theoretical and experimental fluid mechanician of the 20th century." - I wrote a short eulogy for his Memorial Service at Stanford Chapel that has been quoted in journals and elsewhere since.

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