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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.

mazza9 - 10:47am Jan 23, 2002 EST (#10982 of 11008)
Louis Mazza

lchic: Is GPS accurate. In a recent Aviation Week it was reported that the Navy had autolanded an F-18 on an carrier using GPS to position the fighter over the end of the deck. "Look Ma No Hands" This capability will allow an aircraft to land even if the pilot is incapacitated. Maybe this also means that there will be no more flight crew on a commercial airliner, ergo no more hijackings since the craft will be navigated and operated by HAL!

These are facts and extrapolations of demonstrable facts. Of course you are free to believe what you want but....

LouMazza

rshowalt - 12:02pm Jan 23, 2002 EST (#10983 of 11008)

No one doubts that the U.S. has a lot of military hardware that works, and works well. -- Based on sound, usually simple principles.

Why waste resources, and credibility, on stuff that cannot possibly work?

We don't need to "Enron" our situation -- we're stronger, and more credible, with truth, honesty, and real strenght on our side.

It doesn't serve the national interest to support MD approaches that can't possibly work. We have real defense needs, and other real needs, and shouldn't waste scarce resources.

Nor should be take risks, with nuclear weapons - - risks that could easily destroy the world -- just because a lot of "old hands" are attached to these old, obsolete menaces.

mazza9 - 01:01pm Jan 23, 2002 EST (#10984 of 11008)
Louis Mazza

You offer no evidence that.."It doesn't serve the national interest to support MD approaches that can't possibly work.

Missile defense will work. I ask you just how much is New York worth. Two 767s brought down the WTC and the cost to repair that attack could be $50 to $100 Billion? A rogue missile with a 20 kiloton, (Hiroshima sized bomb) would kill a million if it hit at the same time as the the WTC attack. The cost? We bought the island for $24. I suspect that the loss would exceed $2.4 Trillion!!!

LouMazza

rshow55 - 01:24pm Jan 23, 2002 EST (#10985 of 11008)

You've never seen me doubting that weapons of mass destruction were a major concern. But dollars spent on approaches that can't work, or that have only a tiny expected payoff, accounting for real risks, compared to huge and certain costs - - pulls away resources from approaches that could work.

The more you're really concerned about controlling risks from weapons of mass destruction - of all kinds, delivered by any means, accidental or intentional -- the more you ought to be concerned about wasting financial and human resources on approaches that are, putting the matter kindly, far-fetched - - and that could not stand up to technical cross-examination.

We have plenty of national resources that DO work well. We should concentrate on those.

mazza9 - 01:50pm Jan 23, 2002 EST (#10986 of 11008)
Louis Mazza

RShow55:

Who said that these expenses were a waste and by what measure.

I believe that the SDI program advocated by Pres Reagan plus the Chernobyl meltdown is what did in the Soviet Union. The Soviets tried to maintain a Super Power military and just couldn't afford it or the Chernobyl clean up. The manner in which they disposed of the nuclear submarines is an environmental mess and their military is in shambles, (why do you suppose the Chechens are holding their own?)

As I mentioned earlier, I would much rather we had spent our national resources on the Pan Am Shuttle and the Hilton orbiting hotel depicted in "2001 A Space Odyssey". Check out my thread at the Space Forum and you'll appreciate where my head really resides.

Space University?

Yeah I know a better place to spend our wealth. Unfortunately the barbarians are at the gates and need to be dealt with.

LouMazza

rshow55 - 02:09pm Jan 23, 2002 EST (#10987 of 11008)

Suppose I grant you that successful psychological warfare, pushing the Soviets to exhaustion by military challenges, both real and imaginary, did indeed destroy the Soviet Union.

I agree with that.

If our objective was to get some other military power to fold, on the basis of bluff, then MD now might be useful -- and I'll admit that SDI was an effective bluff. This is, if we happend to have an adversary vulnerable to that kind of bluffing, and so vulnerable that the bluffing was cost effective.

We don't.

It is a different world. And bluffing that might well have made sense in 1972 (where I could well have made a wrong decision, for which I've paid a price) doesn't make sense now.

The Cold War ought to be OVER. We have challenges, serious ones, from terrorism -- but expenditures on MD won't be effective in dealing with them. We ought to do what makes sense NOW.

And not throwing away real opportunities for a more peaceful, rational, prosperous world.

mazza9 - 02:25pm Jan 23, 2002 EST (#10988 of 11008)
Louis Mazza

RShow55:

We agree on somethin'. Wonderful.

I don't believe that current BMD is a bluff. Rather I consider it an imperative because we are not confronted by a "peaceful, rational, prosperous world."

North Korea is ruled by a Communist King. It watches its citizen eating dirt and yet finds the money to manufacture and sell delivery systems that can mount WMDs. We've watched this proliferation in Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, etc and this is frightening.

What would it take for one of these countries from mounting a Scud like missile on a seagoing barge and sailing it close to our shores. Wam Bam and Chicago goes up in smoke. This is why we need strategic intelligence resources, (read satellite surveilance) and tactical resources, (read on the ground spies), to keep track of these regimes.

then an ABL 747 can be implemented in times of crises. It can shoot down rogue missiles both ballistic and cruise. remember the cost of not providing for the common defense might mean stretches of US land that are uninhabitable for thousands of years. Remember "Canticle for Liebowitz"?

LouMazza

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