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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?

Read Debates, a new Web-only feature culled from Readers' Opinions, published every Thursday.

rshow55 - 04:56pm Jan 18, 2002 EST (#10866 of 10882)

The problems in the mid-course interception system covered by the Coyle report, that has soaked up most of MD resources to date, are just as great, if not greater.

In both cases, there are many VERY optimistic assumptions. In both cases, there has been great difficulty meeting tests MUCH easier than reasonable operational ones. "Technical miracles" or "triumphs" are required - - many of them -- and required together. End for end.

Enormous amounts of impressive work could be done on these things -- but to no operational purpose.

MD10764 rshow55 1/14/02 7:36pm

We need some "islands of technical fact" to be determined, beyond reasonable doubt, in a clear context.

We need that, because defense is serious business - - hardware has to work - - and also because the human and financial resources involved should be used in workable ways, rather than wasted.

mazza9 - 05:34pm Jan 18, 2002 EST (#10867 of 10882)
Louis Mazza

The Nova Laser System has been used to maintain Nuclear Stockpile Stewardship in light of the nuclear test ban treaty. This high energy facility has a proven record of simulating high energy physics events in order to model and understand theromnuclear events without having to explode a nuclear weapon. This underatanding is the underpinning of the ABL system and verifies that the weapon will work.

The kinetic and thermal heating of targets is explained and my suggestion that the kill mechanism of a laser is not defeated by a mirrorlike coating is suggested here. Indeed, since the site suggests that certain energy coupling is in the X-Ray range it is possible that the warhead within the nosecone might be exploded were it the target of the laser beam. Yes it is very complicated, but when it comes to weapons, it seems we usually refine them to the detriment of ourselves.

Nova System

LouMazza

rshow55 - 05:58pm Jan 18, 2002 EST (#10868 of 10882)

http://www.llnl.gov/str/Remington.html includes this:

" Although far less powerful than NIF, Lawrence Livermore's Nova laser is a very potent machine . . . . . . It is a neodymium-glass laser with ten beams. Typically operating at a wavelength of 0.35 micrometers and 40,000 joules in 2.5-nanosecond pulses, Nova produces 16 trillion watts of laser light.

Resemblance to the COIL system, which is megawatts, for seconds -- is coincidental.

Can light pressure be significant for the NOVA laser, for its very small target, and totally different circumstances? I don't doubt that.

But not for the COIL laser, or anything proposed for a weapons.

The weapons lasars work on absorbed light to heat surfaces. Not the "impact" of "light pressure". So they are vulnerable to reflectors.

rshow55 - 06:05pm Jan 18, 2002 EST (#10869 of 10882)

mazza9 1/18/02 5:34pm

" This understanding is the underpinning of the ABL system and verifies that the weapon will work."

The knowledge gained building, or using, the NOVA laser system may be valuable otherwise, but it has little or nothing to do with "verifying that the ABL weapon will work." -- Both are laser systems - they use coherent monochromatic light that is in phase. That is about all the similarity there is between the systems.

rshow55 - 06:24pm Jan 18, 2002 EST (#10870 of 10882)

Last year, Russia hosted a meeting on the militarization of space - something like 104 countries attended. The United States did not. Laser weapons were centrally involved in the issues of concern. Take away the laser weapons, and the other offensive ideas for space weapons don't amount to much.

The Next Battlefield May Be in Outer Space By JACK HITT http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/05/magazine/05SPACEWARS.html

A quote in Hitt's article is worth noting, when judging space weapons - "it costs a bar of gold to put up a coke can."

Reflective decal countermeasures (which would certainly occur to any engineer seriously thinking about defending against laser weapons) are so easy that these laser weapon systems, either on airplanes or in space - just don't make sense as weapons.

rshow55 - 06:46pm Jan 18, 2002 EST (#10871 of 10882)

The argument was made "why shouldn't we bluff --- even if our stuff doesn't work.?"

Because for THESE costs-- the bluffs aren't worth making.

Nor are they likely to work. And the bluffs are too far fetched.

The credibility of the United States is an asset worth protecting -- by avoiding mistakes, and fixing them when they are found.

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