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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?

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rshow55 - 03:34pm Feb 7, 2002 EST (#11336 of 11337)

A fine, rich piece, about 11 pages long, with much technical and historical context on missile defense:

Can Missile Defense Work? By Steven Weinberg http://www.nybooks.com/articles/15132

The New York Review of Books February 14, 2002

It starts:

"On December 13, 2001, President Bush announced that in six months the United States would withdraw from the 1972 ABM treaty, a treaty that limits the testing and prohibits the deployment of any national missile defense system by Russia or the US. The stated reason for this decision was that the United States needs to develop a system that would protect us from attack by intercontinental ballistic missiles launched by terrorists or by a so-called rogue state. The US has not yet withdrawn from the treaty; this is the formal six months' advance notice that is required by the treaty, and the President could still decide not to withdraw, but it is hard to imagine that anything could happen before June 2002 that would change his mind.

. . . . .

And it ends:

" . . In seeking to deploy a national missile defense aimed at an implausible threat, a defense that would have dubious effectiveness against even that threat, and that on balance would harm our security more than it helps it, the Bush administration seems to be pursuing a pure rather than applied missile defense— a missile defense that is undertaken for its own sake, rather than for any application it may have in defending our country. (emphasis added.)

If the President is doing this, I'm sure he's not doing so with full, focused intention -- he's doing so because his understanding of the facts is wrong. Or, at worst, because he understands unpleasant facts, but cannot explain them to his constituents.

Gisterme and I have differences, but though we may disagree about facts, we agree that they matter.

Weinberg argues against missile defense programs that he guesses would probably work -- but not well, and not in ways that helped the nation.

But what if the technical possibilities of the program are also incorrect? What if the program is technically hopeless, as well?

Once that was clear, almost no one would be for it.

The circumstances are getting a lot more favorable for getting issues of technical fact set out and checked on an umpired basis. There are difficulties. The key one is that technical people associated with the contractors or the military, with names and PE tickets at stake, would have to participate on a public basis. Not to discuss matters that are classified - but to discuss, and discuss clearly, what can be done, and has been done, on the basis of the open literature.

That participation would take some political will -- but a kind of will that may be easier to muster, in the current environment of reduced laxity, and renewed respect for umpires and referees.

The exercise would be in the interest of essentially all credible stakeholders involved.

Including, and perhaps especially including, the officers and elected officials concerned in the administration, and the contractors.

It is not in their long term interest to preside over expensive farces.

rshow55 - 03:41pm Feb 7, 2002 EST (#11337 of 11337)

One example among a number - - the existence of an effective feedback loop, and usable reference, for the adaptive optics that the ABL takes. If Chaisson's 1 arc second number is the right one to use for the illumination -- there is no reference available, with respect to the missile, better than 1 arc second -- which would spread a line source to a 30" beam in 100 miles -- not nearly good enough. Nor is there light enough on the return, for long enough -- any light from the illumination onto the missile will be attenuated, on the way back, more than ten million fold.

There are a list of such problems. When they are considered in public -- ABL, no matter how beautiful it may seem as an idea, ceases to be a reasonable military bet.

There are similar problems with the midcourse system . . . they couldn't be checked to closure on this thread, but with umpires -- the cases could be made and checked, in ways everybody could accept.

Politician now support the popular idea of missile defense -- and are expected to by their constituents. But if they knew it was technically wrong -- they wouldn't support it -- and their constituents would expect them not to.

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