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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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manjumicha2001 - 03:24pm Feb 26, 2002 EST (#11850 of 11863)

I would not be as charitable as you are about NYT's reporting on NK or Sk for that matter.

rshow55 - 03:51pm Feb 26, 2002 EST (#11851 of 11863)

manjumicha2001 2/26/02 2:59pm

"I think Japanese had ICBM capability way back before any of this stuff about H2 rockets came about."

Not unless they tested that capability. In my youth, I gave much thought to issues of mixing, and oscillatory instabilities of various kinds, and problems of control.

Missiles have a way of shaking like hell, even when design is fairly far along, and have a tendency to go off in inconvenient, unplanned directions. Not infrequently both the liquid and solid fueled kinds shake themselves apart.

I've worked with some fluid mechanics and other mechanical engineers who know about such things, including S. J. Kline, who wrote this http://www.wisc.edu/rshowalt/klinerec and also Kline's arch-enemy, LSG Kovasnzy, the villian of the story in http://www.wisc.edu/rshowalt/klineul . ( Les Kovasnzy introduced me to his daughter, then a med student, in a very formal way . . and Kovasznay, a very big name, shared a hotel room with me at a tech conference - - though I never took a course with him, and only worked with him as a consultant.) All a while ago -- but I don't take the capability of "untested missiles" very seriously - - don't think I've ever met an engineer who would -- and I don't think anybody who has been very near the development of the beasts would take "untested missile capabilities" seriously either.

I'm inclinded to think the very much more conservative estimates about Korean missiles I've heard elsewhere are closer to the mark than the ones you cite.

If your sources were true -- it seems to me that "missile defense" would be a high priority for the whole world. And both the Chinese and the Japanese would know the score very clearly. Nobody would be too interested in MD programs unlikely to bear fruit without many years of testing -- and easy to defeat.

But supposing your sources were true - just as a hypothetical. I think there's plenty that the world could do. And, in that event, would do. Because the N. Korean regime is unstable -- and vulnerable in many ways. They'd be helpless in the face of a lot of true, well coordinated information, and coordinated pressure from all their neighbors. Especially if the US apologized for the things it ought to have regretted a long time ago. There's been horror and wrong on both sides, bad as the N. Koreans have often been.

rshow55 - 03:57pm Feb 26, 2002 EST (#11852 of 11863)

If the US and the Japanese (being honest and appropriately apologetic, for once) joined forces with the S. Koreans, the Chinese, the Russians, and other nations (and all these nations would be concerned) it would be possible to get the situation safely under control, in a way that would be good for almost everybody concerned -- certainly including the N. Korean people.

And the N. Korean leaders aren't all bad. Their top guy got in trouble trying to take his kid to Disneyland last year. So there's some common ground, at the level of sympathy.

manjumicha2001 - 04:06pm Feb 26, 2002 EST (#11853 of 11863)

I am not sure China and Japan, or even Russia, would go along with the "strangle NK" strategy any more than they have up to now.

In fact I think Chinese, Japanese and Russians all want NK to open up and help faciliate their vision of their countries' NEA block's economic boom. They wouldn't mind keeping NK's tricky ICBM or nuclear issues under the wraps as long as NK do not overtly threaten them (interestingly, both China and Russia seem a lot more comfortable with NK capablities than US or Japan).

Probably that's why they are so eager to reduce tensions between NK and USA.

rshow55 - 04:19pm Feb 26, 2002 EST (#11854 of 11863)

They wouldn't mind keeping NK's tricky ICBM or nuclear issues under the wraps as long as NK do not overtly threaten them (interestingly, both China and Russia seem a lot more comfortable with NK capablities than US or Japan).

Don't agree.

China and Russia may have a clearer sense of the N. Koreans than we do -- and my guess is that you much overstate those NK capabilities.

But suppose you haven't. Those capabilities are part of a more general problem of bringing weapons of mass destruction under control. And the main barrier to doing that -- if you look at the record -- is the United States.

It seems to me that you work, with quite probably biased examples, and bias at many steps, to rule out of existence anything but military solutions.

Strangling N. Korea isn't in the interest of many nations -- but opening them up, so they join a reasonable, sane community of nations - and eliminating them as a threat to other nations - is .

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