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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?

almarst-2001 - 04:10pm Jun 26, 2001 EST (#6063 of 6070)

On MD technology - the dirac's and Gisterme favorite:

I assume the MD has a chance to work, eventually. The questions are:

Will it take 5 or the 50 years to develop?

Will it take 60bn or 600bn of funding?

The longer it will take, the less predictable the future is, taking into account the parallel development in missiles attacking and survivability capabilities.

On the pro-MD reasoning:

The US was never attacked by another nation, except during the War of Independence and Japan in WWII. Only the first was a war on an American territory to protect the America citizens. Only the second was initiated by the foreign nation. And Japan's attack was provoked by the US maintained maritime and economic blocade.

On the other hand, in its short history, the US was aggresively involved in more wars then probably any other nation.

if the past history has any value to study,

The chance of US being attacked by another nation is very small, and

The chance of another nation (usually small and relatively defenceless) being attacked by US is very high.

The MAD so carefully established and maintained for many years was instrumental in preventing a deadly confrontation between superpowers. There is a very high probability it would work the same way in restraining the US ability to attack the nation in possession of nuclear missile forces, however small by making any agression too expensive and dangerous. The probability of a small nation commiting the suicidal missile attack against US is close to zero.

My conclusions:

The MD is not designed to protect the US against unprovoked agression by a small nation.

The MD is designed to neutralise the possible retaliation making the US agression still possible. Initially against what US designated as "rogue" nations. then probably China and possibly Russia. However unlikely to succeed given the reasonong above (MD technology).

The MD is designed to provide jobs and money to some interested parties. The US taxpayer's money. A lot of. For a very long time.

The side-effects:

The MD will lead to militarisation of the space and prolifiration and future missile's development as well as development of other means to make the agression by a superpower too costly to consider. Including (may be even primerelly) as it seems to me, the biological warfare.

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