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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 - 04:02pm Jun 28, 2001 EST (#6226 of 6242)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Great stuff !

"The problem with "constructed preferences" is that they are unstable and highly influenced by how information is presented. "

But after enough information is collected, so one is confident of the weightings, and after time to think -- the constructed preferences may become solid, and stable, and reasonable, and explainable to others.

rshowalter - 04:05pm Jun 28, 2001 EST (#6227 of 6242)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Once the preferences are clear, and not hidden-- deals can often be struck that work well.

rshowalter - 04:10pm Jun 28, 2001 EST (#6228 of 6242)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Sometimes there are biases, misjudgements about weights that need to be rethought. --- and in this matter of military balances, it seems to me that some gross problems of this kind exist on the American side.

It seems to me that accomodations that would really please Russia and most of the European countries as well, would be in the interest of the United States both from the viewpoint of prosperity and security.

rshowalter - 04:11pm Jun 28, 2001 EST (#6229 of 6242)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

I've never once heard almarst ask the US to sacrifice US security - - or interests of the people of the United States that either almarst or I or Dawn could understand.

rshowalter - 04:17pm Jun 28, 2001 EST (#6230 of 6242)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

almarst expresses a need for Russian security, too -- and from a position more suspiscious and concerned than my own - as far as conventional weapons issues go. But it is hard for me to see how what he wants for Russia really conflicts with the valid economic or security interests of the US.

Unless an assumption is made -- and that assumption, it seems to me, is that unless our current military-industrial complex stays busy doing the sorts of things they've always done, the US will face an unacceptable loss of infrastructure.

I think that's wrong -- there are other, better things for those people, basically organized as they are to do.

People are scraping the bottom of the barrel on military engineering ideas worth backing -- these people and organizations, now building mostly ineffectual "gimmicks and gizmos" at very high cost -- could be much more productive doing things the US and the whole world needs, that are there to do.

rshowalter - 04:28pm Jun 28, 2001 EST (#6231 of 6242)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Subject to some rules of checking that we're getting close to here -- where engineers outside the security vail can "count miracles that DOD has to solve" -- it is getting harder and harder to maintain that the missile defense programs have anything worth doing.

Really good people are working their hearts out, on jobs that they can't do -- and forced to lie about it (or, at the least, to deflect attention from fundamentals.)

Whether money is being stolen or not -- it sure is being wasted.

For example, the "space based lasar" program -- for missile defense - is VERY far fetched when you look at Space Telescope resolution, and consider the much higher levels of resolution the program has to ask for technically -- for control systems, optics, and radar resolution and a stack up of related reasons .

And similar objections are dense all over the technical phase space of these programs.

The people and organizations here can find better things to do --- such as fix global warming, get the world a stable, permanent, expandable energy supply, get near thermodynamic limit water desalinization (maybe 40times lower energy cost than current plants) -- handle core nutritional needs of the planet -- and a list of other things that can be done.

Or, at the least -- things that look a lot more feasible than any of the proposals about missile defense I seen, or heard hints about.

possumdag - 04:32pm Jun 28, 2001 EST (#6232 of 6242)
Possumdag@excite.com

The money goes round and round but there's only so much of it!

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