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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 - 08:30pm Sep 29, 2001 EST (#9951 of 9959)

Robert,

For the better or worst, I have no association with Putin or any other Russian official entity and can't even imagine to represent their line of thoughts.

What I am posting are just my personal feelings and ideas.

And believe me, as an US Citizen, if I could, I would be much happier being proud of US foreign policy, then be as critical and bitter as I am now.

kangdawei - 08:31pm Sep 29, 2001 EST (#9952 of 9959)

Robert has decided to take over this thread and so fill it with his own posts that anyone wanting to discuss or even read about the issue must wade through reams of repititive nonsense and irrelevant ramblings so that they will go away and think about something else. I do not have the full-time-job Robert seems to have to saturate this thread and I will not, therefore, attempt to respond to every one of his posts. I'm going to post links to substance, links to material that suggest that people of engineering stature not only believe NMD is a solvable engineering problem but who are working on it right now, today, even as Robert spews forth his sludge of disdain against them. (Why? Robert. What motivates you? The question bugs me and I know you will not answer it honestly.)

So I'm going to pop in and out of this thread and to those of you who are lurking: My lack of point-by-point response to Robert should not be construed as anything other than boredom with his methods. I am not intimidated by his "ideas".

rshowalter - 08:32pm Sep 29, 2001 EST (#9953 of 9959)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

kangdawei 9/29/01 8:30pm . . it is easy to "stretch technological goals" - - - and may be a good thing . . but attempting the impossible is simply stupid.

And the real motivations for advocating it may be, not patriotic, but treasonous.

rshowalter - 08:33pm Sep 29, 2001 EST (#9954 of 9959)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

kangdawei 9/29/01 8:31pm

In the last run of posts, when I've not been interfacing with you, I've been interfacting with almarst.

How about checking.

I have no doubt that NYT writers, Stanford ex-provosts, and others can come up with very good sequences of words. How about some checking?

kangdawei - 08:36pm Sep 29, 2001 EST (#9955 of 9959)

You are "on" 100% of the time. That is highly suspicious.

You treat this as your personal thread.

There must be a reason, a motivation and (perhaps) a source of income.

I don't trust you. I think you're trying to snow the public and so fill this thread with your own ramblings that casual readers will be turned away.

rshowalter - 08:41pm Sep 29, 2001 EST (#9956 of 9959)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

kangdawei 9/29/01 8:36pm ... There's a reason - - I think current US policy is dangerous.

Look at the dialog from
MD266 rshowalt 9/25/00 7:32am to . . MD304 rshowalt 9/25/00 5:28pm .... an all day exchange with a person I then thought might be a very able personage indeed.

My motivations are clear. And, it seems to me, sufficient.

kangdawei - 09:01pm Sep 29, 2001 EST (#9957 of 9959)

Since there's so much repitition being done in this thread (yes, Robert, this means you), I'm going to repeat a link that none of the naysayers here have yet addressed, and that is the simple statement by Rumsfeld that the questions here are more than ones of just a technological nature but also encompass extremely important political considerations:

If you think back to the Gulf War, if Saddam Hussein, a week before he invaded Kuwait, had demonstrated that he had a ballistic missile and a nuclear weapon, the task of trying to put together that coalition would have been impossible. There's no way you could have persuaded the European countries that they should put themselves at risk to a nuclear weapon. People's behavior changes if they see those capabilities out there.

And if the bad guys perceive we have a missle defense it will affect their behavior. Notice: none of the bad guys in the world believe that NMD is a hoax. They're badly frightened by it. They don't oppose it because they are concerned we will be wasting our money, but because they know that the USA, once it seriously takes on an engineering problem goes on to solve the problem.

We will solve the problem. Much to the shagrin of the bad guys.

(2 following messages)

New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense