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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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gisterme - 01:07pm Feb 8, 2002 EST (#11351 of 11355)

rshow55 2/8/02 10:44am

"...Preemption, as a general family of approaches, is far less problematic than BMD -..."

How so? During the Gulf War, I believe that more aerial combat sorties were flown in search of mobile scud launchers than all other sorties combined. It's not clear that any scuds were destroyed by all those sorties, although I think they might have got a couple. Despite all that effort and expense the scuds continued to be launched. All that difficulty in locating mobile missiles was under a condition of complete air supremacy. How is that less problematic than just knocking the missiles down after they're launched? The point is that unless we want to go occupy the territory, we can't know where the missile is located until after the launch. The US is not in the business of occupying other people's territory.

So if we leave ourselves vulnerable to a small-scale missile attack would that mean we'd need to interdict every time some new bad guy begins trying to get missiles? Think about that, Robert. Think of the grief that just one nuclear armed ballistic missile could cause. In my view it's better to neutralize the threat of small-scale ballistic missile attacks once and for all. And if the threat appears to be getting large enough to overwhelm the missile defense, then perhaps that would be the time to consider interdiction.

Having a defense would mean it would be much harder for an adversary to "get together" everything needed to launch an attack large enough to overwhelm the defense. That increased difficulty for the adversary would make it proportionally easier for our own intelligence resources to detect such activity before it could reach fruition. That would also mean that we could keep our own fingers a bit further back from the trigger.

Having a defense is a more stable situation than needing a conquest every time some evil dictator wants to kill us. Isn't it better to be proactive than reactive?

rshow55 - 01:14pm Feb 8, 2002 EST (#11352 of 11355)

"Better or worse" depend on details. In this case, I'm strongly for preemption, not on "general" grounds, but specific ones. But right now, let me respond to some calculations and arguments you set out, where I very much appreciated your clarity.

lchic - 01:17pm Feb 8, 2002 EST (#11353 of 11355)

Truth, in even Gulf War Time, fell casualty.

rshow55 - 01:17pm Feb 8, 2002 EST (#11354 of 11355)

MD11344 gisterme 2/7/02 8:41pm ... MD11345 gisterme 2/7/02 8:49pm
MD11346 mazza9 2/7/02 9:55pm
represent real progress, and I appreciate the common ground between us in them.

I also hope we agree that right technical answers here are important to all responsible players, for reasons I reviewed in MD11338 rshow55 2/7/02 4:13pm . I expect that we do agree about that.

Getting straight where we agree makes it possible to sort out disagreements -- and sort them out in ways that are most likely to be fair and productive.

In MD11346 , Mazza says that he has " faith in Boeing, TRW, Raytheon and other contractors who are bring(ing) the parts together in a weapon system that will protect us." Well, in human terms, I have a lot of faith in them, too. As careful human beings, working together in organized teams, trying to get systems that actually work. People like that, who I've known, try to check for possible mistakes, quickly and carefully. And the value of getting things right is high enough that they don't usually penalize a person who thinks a mistake may have been made, if he happens to be wrong, for reasonable reasons.

I agree with a great deal in MD11344-45 gisterme 2/7/02 8:41pm , but not everything. We're agreed about what an arc second is. 1 arc sec is 1/3600 of a degree. 2.778x 10e-4 degrees, or 4.849 microradians. And we're agreed that that resolution can just resolve a 1 meter square of plywood, facing it square, over a distance of 1,281 miles. We're agreed that this is much more resolution than you'd need to see a 20meter tall, 2 meter diameter missile at 1200 miles.

I'm also glad for the common ground in gisterme's ending of MD11345:

" And you're right about one thing...there are no classified numbers involved there and the reference material would be almost universally accepted."

There are references that ought to be almost universally accepted. And calculations, clearly set out in terms of those references, on the basis of clear assumptions, should be accepted, too.

Now, those agreements only go as far as they go. For instance, the 1 arc sec number I take from Chaisson may not be the one to use, as gisterme points out. Maybe it isn't, but if it isn't, one can discuss how hard advances from 1 arc second are likely to be, in a vibrating airplane, moving at an appreciable fraction of the speed of sound, with the time-on-target issues, and other technical matters, as they are likely to be.

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