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Missile Defense

Russian military leaders have expressed concern about US plans for a national missile defense system. Will defense technology be limited by possibilities for a strategic imbalance? Is this just SDI all over again?

rshowalter - 03:03pm Apr 28, 2001 EST (#2713 of 2717)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

rshowalter 4/22/01 5:01pm .... Key facts, which could be determined, are these:

1. Is "missile defense" as it has been sold, a massive technical fraud, involving the use of funds under false pretense, lying on a big scale to Congress, and the great risk and inconvenience of the entire world?

2. Have large misappropriations of funds, involving illegal conduct in massive disregard to standards of public responsibliity, occured that have funded the right wing in American politics, and enriched members of "the military industrial complex" in indefensible ways?

If the answer is "yes" to either 1 and 2, then it is in the interest of the Republican party to take action, in the National interest and its own . . . . If the answer to both is "yes" this should be true beyond any reasonable question.

rshowalter - 03:04pm Apr 28, 2001 EST (#2714 of 2717)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

rshowalter 4/24/01 7:47pm I've said on a number of occasions that

" Missile Defense, as it has been sold, and in any form that can reasonably be proposed, in any technically examinable detail, is a fake, a shuck, in Menken's phrase "as devoid of merit as a herringfish is of fur."

This is somehow unpersuasive to many people, including some motivated people on the right wing of the republican party. One can ask:

" How could such a thing happen? How could such a wrong idea come to be accepted? Is such a mistake possible? Is such corruption possible?"

Broad's NYT Science Times story illustrates a good reason, connected to much detail, why the corruption IS possible.
rshowalter 4/24/01 7:47pm
rshowalter 4/24/01 7:49pm

rshowalter - 03:06pm Apr 28, 2001 EST (#2715 of 2717)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

rshowalter 4/22/01 3:59pm

" gross servo-instability in a interceptor test last year, shows how very far short we now are from the "we can do it" assumption that makes the difference between practical beauty, and gross and dangerous ugliness

rshowalter - 03:10pm Apr 28, 2001 EST (#2716 of 2717)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

rshowalter 3/29/01 7:44pm

I repeat rshowalter 3/29/01 7:01pm

The basic physics here is all unclassified.

Why doesn't the military, or Lockheed Martin, or some other reputable source of engineering talent, get a real person, with a name and a face, in front of a video camera, with me or any of a number of other people who could do the job, with UMPIRES there so he couldn't lie ---- and establish, beyond any reasonable doubt at all, that these missile defense schemes aren't respectable engineering, but are a fraud instead.

Or that I, and many, many other technical people, are mistaken.

The proceedings can be put on a video feed on the internet -- for everyone to see.

The U.S. Patent Office has people with sufficient competence and integrity to do the umpiring job, but the British Patent Office -- or people from their opposite number to our NIST - might be better.

Some Russians watching might make it even clearer.

It should be possible to set this out in public, so that anyone, at leisure, could get on the internet and look, believe their eyes, and check details.

I don't see a way to escape the conclusion that people in the American "military industrial complex" have been putting the whole world to really massive risk and inconvenience on the basis of a fraud.

And done so in gross disregard of the national interest -- to keep old lies from being uncovered, and to enrich themselves illegally.

rshowalter - 03:27pm Apr 28, 2001 EST (#2717 of 2717)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Community standards .. rshowalter 4/18/01 10:24pm ... and a related matter, with a specific person.
rshowalter 4/19/01 10:32am
rshowalter 4/19/01 5:31pm
rshowalter 4/25/01 11:50am
rshowalter 4/26/01 11:21am

Using consistency checking, applied again and again, not only to what people say, but to facts, we can determine questions as multiply connected as these. Determine them beyond reasonable doubt.

On matters central to world survival, a reasonable level of world peace, and the integrity of the United States, we should do so.

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