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Missile Defense

Technology has always found its greatest consumer in a nation's war and defense efforts. Since the last attempts at a "Star Wars" defense system, has technology changed considerably enough to make the latest Missile Defense initiatives more successful? Can such an application of science be successful? Is a militarized space inevitable, necessary or impossible?

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rshow55 - 08:02pm Jun 8, 2003 EST (# 12409 of 12412)
Can we do a better job of finding truth? YES. Click "rshow55" for some things Lchic and I have done and worked for on this thread.

At my first meeting at Gettysburg, in late September 1967, Eisenhower also handed me a copy of C.P. Snow's Science and Government and pointed out these passages:

Tizard and Blackett worked to "teach one lesson each to the to the scientists and the military" . . . "The lesson to the military was that you cannot run wars on gusts of emotion. You have to think scientifically about your own operations. That was the start of operational research, the development of which was Blackett's major personal feat in the 1939-1945 war. The lesson to the scientists was that the prerequisite of sound military advice is that the giver must convince himself that, if he was responsible for action, he would himself act so." p. 29

Eisenhower knew Blackett, had used what Blackett had in operations research as fast as Blackett could explain it - and knew what operations research - and math generally, could and couldn't do. He knew what simulation was good for. And was well informed about how good it was and wasn't. He knew about every problem in simulation (and fluid mechanics) that frustrated Kelley Johnson and Johnson's bosses at Lockheed and the USAF. Eisenhower pointed out another passage of Snow's especially.

"I could go on accumulating negatives and empirical prescriptions. We know something about what not to do and whom not to pick. We can collect quite a few working tips from the Tizard-Lindemann story. For instance, the prime importance, in any crisis of action, of being positive what you want to do and able to explain it. It is not so relevant whether you are right or wrong. That is a second-order effect. But it is cardinal that you be positive."

(I'm quoting from the Harvard U. Press 1961 edition.)

Eisenhower knew the stakes. He knew how soldiers and weapons, including atomic weapons, worked. He wanted to find ways so that being right could become a first order effect.

General Eisenhower also had a list of stumpers - from operations research - negotiation theory, such as it was - crypto - and servomechanism theory. He wanted answers. Right answers.

Eisenhower was a brave but rational man, and he was terribly concerned that the world was going badly - and might end. Just as he'd been concerned about mistakes, including his own, when he guided US forces to the most technically impressive victories American arms have ever known.

Eisenhower was very clear about one point - and it is a point that journalists need to think about, I believe. If I was physically intimidated - that was a fatal operatiobnal problem -a problem that, one way or another, I had do surmount. I think that journalists, including journalists at The New York Times, need to face up to whatever physical fears they have - not by actso of will, but by competent organizational action, so that they can function decently, flexibly, and well.

I'm off for a little while - collecting my courage and thinking about how to be both honest and effective. Sometimes I'm a little daunted. But other times, rationally hopeful.

lchic - 08:10pm Jun 8, 2003 EST (# 12410 of 12412)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

"" ... Dr. Strangelove was the best among the fine movies directed by the late Stanley Kubrick. The film's long subtitle, "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb," gives you a taste of its precise and biting satire.

How do I know that line is satire? Because I assure you, back in the mid-Sixties when the movie was made, no one I knew loved the bomb. No one I knew lived without worry. Especially me.

I remember very well how the bomb affected me back in the year ..... http://www.firstuucolumbus.org/sermons/mb19990822.htm

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