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Missile Defense

Technology has always found its greatest consumer in a nation's war and defense efforts. Since the last attempts at a "Star Wars" defense system, has technology changed considerably enough to make the latest Missile Defense initiatives more successful? Can such an application of science be successful? Is a militarized space inevitable, necessary or impossible?

wordspayy - 11:16am Dec 18, 2001 EST (#10434 of 10657)

wbtake1 - 09:47pm Dec 17, 2001 EST (#10431 of 10433)

I'm afraid that yet again you miss the point. The system of NMD makes the overall security of America LESS safe not more. All the mindless associations you made regarding Japan and China and the Soviet Union do nothing for your defense against the arguement presented to you. Try again;0

or try picking up a few books;0

wordspayy - 11:22am Dec 18, 2001 EST (#10435 of 10657)

wbtake,

Please! The majority of the forums are filled with "armchair hacks" in their respective fields of discussion. For example If I go onto a forum about high end physics-and just start shooting from the mouth-I am very well nothing more then an arm chair hack;0 Yet when people wish to discuss foreign affairs and policy, for which I hold a degree in, and work in. Those whom visit the forums, god forbit I call their opinions nothing more then "armchair hacks" So please, do take caution in your tone sir. You are the armchair hack. And while I bow in respect for those who serve in service, for whatever year, It does not provide them the instant understanding of matters of foreign policy and international relations, or for that matter the different levels of examination of detterence. So often the "little privates" and GI.s run on the forums quick to trounce all- well ya know what. Why not learn a few things from the ones you study it and live it. Instead of always throwing out the academic on the forum-;0 after all, all you are in discussion in anyway is nothing more then theory;0 ha,haha,h,ah,a,h,ah,a,h

wbtake1 - 03:41pm Dec 18, 2001 EST (#10436 of 10657)

I have a MA degree too, from Stanford. Ms. Rice was my professor and mentor also! So please go on about how I need to be educated... !

wordspayy - 04:22pm Dec 18, 2001 EST (#10437 of 10657)

wbtake1 - 03:41pm Dec 18, 2001 EST (#10436 of 10436)

Really, How do you feel about her take on neorealism. Ya know Politics Among Nations was a big influence on her;0 She doesn't talk about Waltz all that much in interviews. Just a great deal of Morganthau;0

RobertShowalter - 06:35pm Dec 18, 2001 EST (#10438 of 10657)

sduluoz 12/15/01 7:43pm is right about the "larger agenda" - - but there are all sorts of technical problems (even if people didn't know how to build reflective decals) for the lasar space technology, and for the simplest stuff in the "missile defense" programs, as well.

Eloquent piece by James Dao: Navy Missile Defense Plan Is Canceled by the Pentagon http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/16/politics/16NAVY.html

also

Pentagon Terminates Raytheon Deal By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-Raytheon-Contract.html

"It was considered the least technologically challenging of the Pentagon's missile-based defense systems."

The navy really needs short range missile defense, we've been peddling ships (or trying to) to Taiwan and others, on the understanding that Aegis could be upgraded - - and there isn't any basic problem I can see on making short range missile defense work. If they had to cancel this one - - - -- John Pike had it right in Dao's piece:

"If the easy things are this difficult . . the difficult things are going to be extraordinarily difficult."

RobertShowalter - 07:00am Dec 19, 2001 EST (#10439 of 10657)

In the Enron disaster, some people knowingly (or at least half knowingly) pushed the limits of honesty and public spirited conduct (to say no more) overclaiming, overcharging, hiding detail, and setting up a situation which, because of quantitative misjudgements, great damage was done, not only to those immediately involved, but to the web of trust, the web of assumptions, on which our society is built, and on which free societies must be built. Some of what was done may have involved political corruption by most reasonable definitions - perhaps not, but there was that appearance.

Very many more people, employees of Enron, as well as investors, were swept along - - did trust - - did participate on bases which are normal, and expected. These people got hurt - sometimes terribly hurt.

The effort to upgrade Aegis for short range missile defense has failed conspicuously enough that not even DOD can salvage it as it stands. The Associate Press writer, quoted above, who said

"It was considered the least technologically challenging of the Pentagon's missile-based defense systems."

was stating a literal, and quantitatively very compelling truth. In Dao's article above, some sense of the technical desperation involved (programmers and engineers looking for additional information from space sensors, and other ships, that they could not get from the Aegis installation)is evident, if you do a little sketching, a little thinking, and some very easy arithmetic.

Missile Defense is in technical trouble, from top to bottom. Since this is the truth, it is safer for us to know so -- (and it would have been safer for the country if accounting, and technical accounting, had been more carefully done, and more carefully heeded, long ago.)

Efforts need to be carefully thought out to take care of the infrastructure we have -- if we've asked engineers to do things they can't do -- there are plenty of things we need to do, that they should be able to do And efforts to GREATLY improve our standards of accounting need to be made IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST.

Missile Defense, technically, bears too many resemblances to ENRON. The politics, and military-industrial linkages of missile defense bear too many resemblences to those of ENRON for comfort.

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