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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?

applez101 - 10:32am Sep 3, 2001 EST (#8383 of 8395)

Lunarchick - nice links, it is particularly disconcerting that the US places itself, in its own eyes, as final arbiter, judge and jury on how participants conform to international agreements that all its signators helped craft and enforce...the arrogance of the position is astounding. What's worse is the worry a nation like the US provokes when it suggests it is O.K. to break with international protocol, extending its own past discrepancies to favoured ex-partners! LOL! This is comic in its tragedy!

(ref. 'permission' for China to pursue underground nuclear testing...)

<Why hell, what's next? Atmospheric nuclear tests - one gets much better data results! LOL!>

applez101 - 10:39am Sep 3, 2001 EST (#8384 of 8395)

BobDuff (ref. message 8364)

I really don't think it is likely that the PRC has the latest US ICBM warhead technology (i.e. Minuteman II), in yield or guidance.

The only *allegation* that barely holds any water is the accusation of technology theft with the failed Longmarch satellite launch. One of the reasons it is so spurious is that not only did a great number of people die in that accident, including useful techies, but precious little of the rocket would survive from such an accident.

The only real opportunity for tech theft would be in the ground control facilities, upgraded for the *commercial* launch (where guidance systems are designed to get a payload in orbit, not to hit a reinforced silo with pinpoint accuracy in a ballistic trajectory). Now, that doesn't mean there can't be modifications if one has the commercial original intact, but between the destruction and the comparision with a Minuteman I or II, I find the probability rather low.

If one has anything to complain about with Chinese tech-theft, then you should tell the Pentagon to quit launching Tomahawks and other cruise missiles at every bloody opportunity - the Chinese already have a documented knock-off after they salvaged all the duds from Iraq and Serbia.

It's just a question of when the Chinese will go ahead and market these cheaper versions...

rshowalter - 10:51am Sep 3, 2001 EST (#8385 of 8395)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Doomsday by Rebecca Johnson , executive director of the Acronym Institute for Disarmament Diplomacy http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4222863,00.html found by MD7153 lunarchick 7/17/01 11:08pm

We were warned.
MD7151 rshowalter 7/19/01 1:01pm

Things should be checked.
MD8064 rshowalter 8/23/01 5:36pm

rshowalter - 12:07pm Sep 3, 2001 EST (#8386 of 8395)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

md7388 rshowalter 7/24/01 8:17pm ... md7389 rshowalter 7/24/01 8:18pm
md7390 rshowalter 7/24/01 8:20pm

"Has all this work been useful? Dawn and I have tried to make it so.

MD7394 rshowalter 7/24/01 10:04pm

jimmyz211a - 03:23pm Sep 3, 2001 EST (#8387 of 8395)

So the US aid it's okay to let China have some short range nuclear missiles. Yeah, long enough to strike our bases in Japan and Korea. Long enough to hit Taiwan and any of our naval fleet that might cover over to help Taiwan. Boy are we stupid or what?

James Ziolkowski Buffalo, NY shellback211@aol.com

rshowalter - 04:04pm Sep 3, 2001 EST (#8388 of 8395)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

The United States cannot handle every possible threat so that it is invulnerable, and its allies are invulnerable, in all ways.

At various levels, there have to be incentives for cooperative actions, and deterrants to make other nations want to avoid attacking us. But they have to be workable -- and proportionate to circumstances.

And we do not control China. How would we react if they attempted to control us so that we had no way to ever hurt them ?

Chinese ought to be able to hurt Americans, and American interests. We ought to expect them to have that capability. An effective capability.

How, as a practical matter, could we stop them from getting such a capability? There are too many ways they can get at us -- too many ways to defend.

We should arrange things so that, for both negative and postive reasons, they don't want to hurt us.

The US can't dominate the whole world -- and makes itself ridiculous when it tries to.

rshowalter - 04:06pm Sep 3, 2001 EST (#8389 of 8395)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Perhaps this thread is not influential, or read by influentials.

But I feel that some stances being taken by Putin are just as Dawn and I would wish.

MD8243 rshowalter 8/30/01 3:00pm ... MD 8380-82 rshowalter 9/3/01 9:30am

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