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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 - 07:56pm Jan 20, 2002 EST (#10909 of 10921)

For example, The Air Born Laser program has many technically beautiful things about it - at many levels of detail. A tremendous amount of hard creative work has gone into it. http://airbornelaser.com/special/abl/

Unfortunately, the system is trivially easy to defeat with reflective decals, using physics that is both quite old and quite basic http://www.phy.davidson.edu/jimn/Java/Coatings.htm - - and known all over the world (to all sorts of people, including people who make reflective and "holographic effect" decals.

MD10861 rshow55 1/18/02 3:51pm ... MD10862 rshow55 1/18/02 3:53pm
MD10864 rshow55 1/18/02 4:07pm ... MD10866 rshow55 1/18/02 4:56pm

There are similar specific objections to the mid-course interception system, covered by the Coyle report, that has soaked up most MD money to date.

If people were really FOR missile defense (that could work) they'd be anxious to discuss reasons why things couldn't work. Because hardware that works militarily has to work.

I'm for reducing risks from weapons of mass destruction, of all kinds, in the most cost effective way possible.

I think MD is necessary - - important enough to do in ways that can work. That may include "low tech" assets, that we actually have, and ought to be proud of -- superb reconnaissance, many military resources on the ground and in the air of all kinds, and a lot of diplimatic and intelligence resources. It only includes "new hardware" approaches if those approaches can be made to work.

MD10798 rshow55 1/16/02 7:31am ... MD10799 rshow55 1/16/02 7:38am
MD10800 rshow55 1/16/02 7:51am

rshow55 - 08:01pm Jan 20, 2002 EST (#10910 of 10921)

And there are PLENTY of things that need doing for the engineers and engineering teams now tied up on projects that, however attractive in some ways, can't work in any tactically realistic sense. They should be redeployed, to things that they can do, that the nation needs.

mazza9 - 10:08pm Jan 20, 2002 EST (#10911 of 10921)
Louis Mazza

Rshow55:

I must be dense but what in the blue blazes are reflective decals? You speak of them as if they can be found at your neighborhood Home Depot. I don't believe that the Koreans or Chinese weapons have this capability.

The ABL system is proceeding along a definite plan/test/implementation course. There are a good many test points.

The August 13 issue of Aviation Week had a cover story, "Boost Phase Defense Resurgent" speaks of the pluses and minuses that are being encountered. "Confidence in the emerging field of laser weapon technology was bolstered last year when the Army destroyed a short-range Katyusha rocket with its Tactical High Energy Laser". "Furthermore, in a report to Congress earlier this year, test officials raised concerns that a missile warhead could still cause damage because ABL won't necessarily destroy the rocket but could only shorten its flight time by damaging the booster."

We are way beyond the BMD site in North Dakota that was decommissioned almost 30 years ago. But we are getting close to the phaser weapons of Star Trek!!

LouMazza

lchic - 04:53am Jan 21, 2002 EST (#10912 of 10921)

Bear : Eagle : and the human heart!

rshow55 - 08:44am Jan 21, 2002 EST (#10913 of 10921)

Good questions, Mazza. I'll answer carefully - - I think some things are getting clearer.

You're right, I'm sure, that

" The ABL system is proceeding along a definite plan/test/implementation course. There are a good many test points.

That was also true of a lot of Edison's projects. But when it was clear that something wasn't going to be practical, he redeployed his assets. He had limited time, limited attention, and limited resources, and he knew it. We should know it, too.

rshow55 - 08:45am Jan 21, 2002 EST (#10914 of 10921)

There are assumptions about adversaries that, in the past, have been monotonously wrong. Russia's SS23's, now being destroyed, had stealth coatings, to reduce radar signature - the idea of reducing detection from EM radiation is old and obvious -- especially since we've advertised our "stealth" technology, now largely obsolete, so extensively.

I recall an old ad, circa maybe 1890, that advertised a Whiskey made by "honest North Carolina people -- who wouldn't dilute their whiskey, even if they knew how."

My people, who are from North Carolina, always smiled at that old ad.

If you're worrying about the odds of missile defense, assumptions like the one in that ad aren't so funny.

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