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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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mazza9 - 09:06am Feb 16, 2002 EST (#11572 of 11581)
Louis Mazza

RShow55:

The question of balloon decoys has been around a long time but, to my knowledge, has never been tested or even developed.

Oft times, during the Cold War, some speculation regarding Soviet weaponry would be made in the press and Pravda would immediately respond, "Yep! We have that capability." and would imply ..."and your worst fears are now confirmed." It's called propoganda.

ABL is boost phase and those types of countermeasures, inclucing the foil wrapped package, are not as easy to develop and implement as you might expect.

The key is North Korea. Their sale of missile technology has had a destabilizing effect on many of the efforts the US, USSR and our allies have expended to eliminate this class of weapons. Maybe we do need to focus on the Axis of Evil!

LouMazza

rshow55 - 10:02am Feb 16, 2002 EST (#11573 of 11581)

Mazza, I'd agree that focusing on effective ways of reducing and eliminating the threats from missiles would make more sense than working on BMD programs that are tactically implausible.

Last year, it looked like there were openings to get N. Korea to dismantle its missile program -- and they looked quite far along. They weren't pursued -- were closed off, and it didn't make sense to many, who thought the objective of the Bush administration was to serve the security of the United States.

I wondered, and I had a lot of company, whether the Bush administration rejected them because it was looking for a justification for its "missile defense" programs.

Perhaps unfairly, but accounting about questions of fact on the programs is hard to get.

The difficulty of getting countermeasures built isn't 0 - - but it can be accounted. And it is tiny compared to the difficulty of the BMD programs the countermeasures neutralize.

Why not check - - in ways that can't be reasonably rigged? I think the answer is becoming more and more obvious. Checking is resisted, because the patterns of "logic" that support the BMD programs, and some of the motivations behind them, look too much like some of the goings-on at Enron.

"Trust us" is not an answer that is going to be easy to sustain, with so much evidence against it. When I look at gisterme's responses since MD11541-11545 rshow55 2/14/02 6:49pm , and put them into the context I know he must know about the BMD program, from the Coyle Report and other sources -- I'm amazed at the level of enronation .

Ken Lay said "trust us" . . . and it worked for a long time. But trust has to be earned, and from time to time checked and justified. We're finding that out in the Enron matter, and it is a big issue in politics, international relations, and any workable military policy.

A piece about trust, that I feel bears rereading, is The Democratic Party's Southern Problem

by ZELL MILLER Senator from Georgia.

lchic - 10:50am Feb 16, 2002 EST (#11574 of 11581)

if you don't look and act as if you are serious with the people's money, they won't trust you with any more of it. And why should they? (Miller)

rshow55 - 12:45pm Feb 16, 2002 EST (#11575 of 11581)

Yes, Mazza, the issue of balloon decoys, and related matters --- the issue of the stunning inability of the midcourse BMD system to handle countermeasures at all, have been around a long time. Here's a posting from this thread, many months before I joined. Worth reading ! MD99 wrcooper 6/23/00 12:02pm

A few months after scientists went to Washington to make clear that the BMD system couldn't work, the Coyle Report was written -- and it verifies, in great detail, how bad the technical situation is - - and remains.

The BMD programs are boondoggles -- make-work programs for contractors, sources of churned money for "insiders -- not an honest effort to defend the United States of America.

Is this "old news, already discussed, to be forgotten?" By the old rules of "the culture of lying" -- discussed by Paul H. Weaver in NEWS AND THE CULTURE OF LYING: How Journalism Really Works --- Free Press, 1994.
old news is forgotten , and complexities are easy to paper over with "sound bites". MD1294-1295 rshowalter 3/22/01 8:11am ... MD10151-10152 rshowalter 10/6/01 10:43am

Those old "rules", which Enron, Carlyle, and other ventures have exploited so well, are changing. News has been easy to manipulate, and political decisions have been, as well. That will always be true, whenever few enough people who care are watching.

But when constituents start to pay attention -- lies are unstable, and problems get corrected.

The Two Enron System by FRANK RICH http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/16/opinion/16RICH.html says a lot about what needs to be corrected -- and how widespread some problems are. But people are noticing, and that is hopeful.

The system gets a lot less corrupt when people are looking -- politicians, most of them, are capable of honor.

That means that the deceptions and frauds that are now connected at so many levels with BMD are unstable. Even though the programs, expressed in general terms, are popular -- people do sometimes pay attention.

The things said in the reference cited in MD99 wrcooper 6/23/00 12:02pm are true.

That should be checked, and connected to context. It can be.

lchic - 01:06pm Feb 16, 2002 EST (#11576 of 11581)

... three dozen scientists journeyed to the Capitol today to warn lawmakers that the $60 billion system, designed to knock incoming warheads out of the sky, is technically flawed because it can't distinguish real warheads from decoys. The rally came as Pentagon officials heatedly denied one scientist's charges that they have rigged tests to hide the problem. (from wrcooper link above)

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