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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 - 07:54am Feb 15, 2002 EST (#11554 of 11565)

I'd also like to point out Pentagon Urged to Raise Major Weapons Budget by JAMES DAO http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/15/politics/15PENT.html

People setting military priorities have a tough job.

" Although a handful of lawmakers has echoed such concerns (about military effectiveness and modernization) more typical have been the views of Representative Gene Taylor, Democrat of Mississippi, which is a major shipbuilding state. Mr. Taylor warned on Wednesday that the Navy was on a pace to shrink below 300 ships if its budget was not bolstered.

" Chastising Navy Secretary Gordon England, Mr. Taylor said: "After a $66 billion increase over the past two years, you're building fewer ships than the Clinton administration. Guys, who's going to jump up and say, `When do we get our share?' Because if you don't do it, who will?"

" The 2003 budget calls for spending $8.6 billion to buy five ships. At that rate of construction, the Navy will shrink from its current 310 ships to fewer than 250 in the next 20 years, the Pentagon says. But the Navy also contends that its fleet remains young enough that it can postpone a major increase in ship construction for several years.

" Advocates of additional spending have cited an internal Pentagon study that shows that the military needs to spend $100 billion or more each year to pay for all the weapons programs on its books, $30 billion more than proposed in the 2003 budget.

. . .

" "When you look at what is recognized as the least likely threat to this country of all the external threats we face," Mr. Allen said, "it is the threat of an attack on this country by an ICBM. And yet that's where the money is going."

. . .

There is so much money involved in our military budget that we have to ask where it is going, and what the money can do for the country. Issues of jobs, of money, and of political standing are at stake, not just stark issues of "cost-benefit analysis." That's true of all government spending. When "pork" projects are advocated, and won, the issue of pork for a politician's constituents is a big issue --- but concerns about merit matter, as well. Getting them into better focus isn't easy, but there is room for improvement.

Accounting in these areas is very important, for the United States, and for the whole world. Some of the concerns central to the campaign finance reform debate apply to military programs, as well. Many of the problems do, too.

gisterme , I'll be just a while responding to your postings of last night. They're worth reading.

We disagree on a good deal, but it seems to me that some checkable questions of fact are getting clearer.

lchic - 08:53am Feb 15, 2002 EST (#11555 of 11565)

Rendering the nuclear LARD ... errr!

gisterme - 02:34pm Feb 15, 2002 EST (#11556 of 11565)

rshow55 2/14/02 6:49pm

"...Sticking with it" is only a good answer if you have a problem you can reasonably hope to bring to convergence...."

As is the case with NMD. It's already working in a rudamentary form.

I think Mr. Rumsfeld's point in making the reference to the Corona spy satellite program was that the technological advancements needed to make that work given the technology of the day were far greater than those required to make the current NMD project work given the technology of today.

"...Not all problems are like that. It is assumed that BMD will yeild satisfactory performance, after enough work..."

An assumption based on results to date...

"...For the levels tactical performance [it] is going to take, that may not be true..."

The sun may not rise in the morning either. If we never tried a thing beacuse it may not work, I'd say we would never accomplish much. Wherever you may be, just look around you. Virtually every peice of technology you see wouldn't exist if "guaranteed to work" had been the prerequesite for its invention.

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