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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 - 04:55pm Sep 2, 2001 EST (#8343 of 8359)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

What I'm proposing is explained, using a NYT article as a partial exemplar, in

MD8211rshowalter 8/28/01 5:35pm ... MD8212 rshowalter 8/28/01 6:07pm
MD8213 rshowalter 8/28/01 6:15pm ... MD8214 rshowalter 8/28/01 6:23pm
MD815 rshowalter 8/28/01 6:42pm ...

I lack both the skills and the resources to do these things alone -- But I believe that it is a time where progress can be made, for peace, by solidly establishing "islands of technical fact" about missile defense and the weaponization of space.

rshowalter - 05:03pm Sep 2, 2001 EST (#8344 of 8359)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

The Science - Missile Defense thread is extensive, and somewhat specialized. A summary of it, with many links, is set out in

MD8062 rshowalter 8/23/01 5:34pm ... MD8063 rshowalter 8/23/01 5:35pm
MD8064 rshowalter 8/23/01 5:36pm ... MD8065 rshowalter 8/23/01 5:36pm
MD8067 rshowalter 8/23/01 5:41pm ... MD8068 rshowalter 8/23/01 5:42pm
MD8069 rshowalter 8/23/01 5:43pm ...

Here's a letter of recommendation from my late partner, Stephen J. Kline, of Stanford and the NAE http://www.wisc.edu/rshowalt/klinerec ...... and a Eulogy I gave for Steve at Stanford Chapel http://www.wisc.edu/rshowalt/klineul

Writings connecting me to Bill Casey, formerly head of CIA: MD6057 rshowalter 6/26/01 7:22am ... MD6370-71 rshowalter 7/1/01 7:19am

My technical background and orientation: MD6397-99 rshowalter 7/2/01 8:00am . . .

Here are summaries of what I'm trying to do. MD8107 rshowalter 8/24/01 1:19pm ... MD8108 rshowalter 8/24/01 1:23pm
MD8109 rshowalter 8/24/01 1:23pm ...

ndpnyt - 05:05pm Sep 2, 2001 EST (#8345 of 8359)

Doesn't anybody here have anything good to say about ballistic missile defense? OK, so it won't work, but who cares? It will provide lots of new jobs just as several million people are losing their old ones.

So don't knock Pentagon boondoggles. They're just as economically beneficial as non-boondoggles. In fact, they're more beneficial because they cost more than non-boondoggles.

That's the theory anyway. But it seems to work. In fact, until quite recently, American prosperity seems to have been based on that theory. Some economists thought that the dot.com economy would take up the slack caused by declining military spending (relative to GDP, that is. What is it now, a lousy 300 billion or something?), but that hope proved illusory. So it's back to the good old tried and true, deficit financed, Pentagon boondoggle based economy.

Of course, a non-boondoggle based economy might work just as well, but nobody knows because no one has ever seen a Pentagon non -boondoggle.

rshowalter - 05:06pm Sep 2, 2001 EST (#8346 of 8359)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

MD8113 rshowalter 8/24/01 2:12pm

Nobody has to trust my word about anything to get at the things that matter. The key issues are all discussable in the open literature, and they can be discussed, checked, and explained.

MD8116 rshowalter 8/24/01 6:30pm "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea."

rshowalter - 05:09pm Sep 2, 2001 EST (#8347 of 8359)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

There are worthwhile things for engineers to do. Lots of things.

Getting the world a permanent energy supply that's practical, for one.

Getting the global warming situation solved and turned around, for another.

Economical, very large scale water desalinization, for another.

And lots of other things that the world needs, that could pay the salaries of the people involved, and that could actually be done.

Non-boondoggles.

There are billions of man hours going to be wasted that could be used constructively.

mareich - 05:16pm Sep 2, 2001 EST (#8348 of 8359)

Well, it would be one thing if the government were merely funding a worthless missile defense system that (like all software) will undoubtedly have bugs appearing in use. (First bug might let NYC be nuked.) Besides, all the terrorists need is:

a homemade nuclear bomb

a garbage scow

a suicide bomber to detonate the bomb

and they can pull into any harbor a few miles off-shore and, there goes an American city. Who needs missiles?

But NOW Bush is giving the Chinese the go-ahead to ramp up their cache of missiles and their missile technology. So while he's wasting our money on a worthless defense, he's creating a greater offense.

Why not put the same money into non-petroleum energy research and development and end the world's dependence on rogue states and polluting technology?

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