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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 - 11:14pm Aug 8, 2001 EST (#7799 of 7807)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Rumsfeld Near Deadline for Reshaping the Military By THOM SHANKER http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/09/politics/09MILI.html

Decisions are looming that have to be explained, and justified. Committments are being advocated, or made, to systems that adress no credible threat, and cannot work.

lunarchick - 02:58am Aug 9, 2001 EST (#7800 of 7807)
lunarchick@www.com

The obvious 'problem' relates to the Congress failing to audit appropriately, downsize budgets to reality status, have other pressing options to utilize R&D, along with 'mind changing' think-ins.

An economist died recently, he'd worked with the UN. His concern was simply this - why is the first world so far ahead of the third world, and why doesn't the latter ever catch-up?

Obviously economies have complexity, require capital and educated commitment. The way the USA churns out post grads, one might think the penny might drop with regards to the advantages to the USA were the third world to raise to second then first world.

The current ressession with a drop in demand for computers - intel halving the sale price of the P4 - to stimulate demand. Were the third world on the rise ... there would be insatiable demand.

Time the MILoPrats gave way to ECONoCrats and SOCIoCrats ... more Cratting, less Pratting would make the world a better place !
(Forgive the idiosynCRATic indulgence)

richr11b - 07:26am Aug 9, 2001 EST (#7801 of 7807)

Mr.Daschle is correct in his analysis of the so-called missile shield proposed by the Bush people. Even if it worked it would make no sense.

rshowalter - 07:35am Aug 9, 2001 EST (#7802 of 7807)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

The most interesting thing about it is -- as tactically and strategically ineffectual as it is, and as technically flawed as it is -- why is the MIC and the administration so deeply committed to it?

Whatever is happening, it "makes sense" in some significant ways -- even if not the ways it would appear at first.

A key question, to me, is this - what happens to the people involved, if the real history, and the real achievements, and the real deceptions involved with missile defense became widely understood, at home and abroad?

What should happen?

- - - - -

There is mess here, and it isn't only technological. It needs to be fixed.

rshowalter - 07:42am Aug 9, 2001 EST (#7803 of 7807)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

lunarchick 8/9/01 2:58am

Perhaps people, and groups, are tied up, intellectually and practically, with committments to "facts" and models that aren't true -- that don't fit cases. Perhaps, if some of that was sorted out, MUCH more would be possible, working with the same resources, and the same people, step by step.

To make good decisions, on good things, in complex circumstances, takes RIGHT ANSWERS - a LOT of feedback, and knowledge that, for things of the level of complexity of sociotechnical systems, NOBODY understands the systems completely, either when they work, or when they don't -- so there has to be feedback, and plenty of it -- with careful checking -- and incremental change.

With the internet -- much more complexity can be accessed, and human memory capacities are augmented -- more sorting should be possible now than before.

bilbobaggins0 - 07:52am Aug 9, 2001 EST (#7804 of 7807)
The emperor has no brains.

richr11b 8/9/01 7:26am

Nothing Bush does or says makes any sense, because he is a damn fool.

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