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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 - 06:16pm Feb 1, 2002 EST (#11169 of 11171)

Interesting namecalling, gisterme .

Key point is in the following sentence:

" . . . neither the layered polymer nor gold leaf would be the least bit effective at defending against high-energy lasers."

Given a high enough energy flux, for long enough, that's true of course.

But nonsense, and basically a lie in context.

Beyond the point that "with high enough flux, the energy not reflected can destroy a reflector" . . . your statement amounts to nothing.

And for numbers that are already extremely optimistic for ABL, there isn't that much energy.

I stand by just exactly what I said:

. Countermeasures that can defeat the weapons in the program may be a million times cheaper to build than the MD systems themselves.

There's another point about the reflectivity -- that is that it makes countermeasures against the mid-course interception system very straightforward -- and there's no "energy flux" argument there at all.

rshow55 - 06:24pm Feb 1, 2002 EST (#11170 of 11171)

Gisterme , you're making it easier for me to get things checked -- not alone -- that can't work -- but in ways with umpiring that can be made to stick. MD11158 rshow55 1/31/02 8:04pm

rshow55 - 06:27pm Feb 1, 2002 EST (#11171 of 11171)

There are plenty of other reasons, discussed before, why the ABL is far-fetched indeed -- and why the midcourse system, and the other systems, are, too.

Whatever the objectives of these MD programs may be, defending the United States can't be among them. Because the systems don't work, and are so full of flaws that they can't.

It is a situation where military expenditure is the objective , without much else mattering?

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