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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 - 04:45pm Jun 9, 2003 EST (# 12437 of 12441)
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.

That's true - and almarst has been right in some significant senses. But not in all. Sometimes the truth is more complicated (and in some ways more dangerous) than Almarst thinks - but maybe much more subject to improvement, too. I'm just about to take a step I'm afraid to make. I hope I'm making the right decision.

rshow55 - 04:50pm Jun 9, 2003 EST (# 12438 of 12441)
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.

12426 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.5nS3bwTdeHB.106365@.f28e622/14079 includes this:

For now, I stand by everything I wrote in Psychwar, Casablanca and terror - on Sept 26-27 - 2000 http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7a163/0 - - in terms of the context then. And things I stated as facts I believe to be facts - because I think I understood what Eisenhower told me about US military arrangements.

This passage was part of that - originally written on September 26, 2000 - a day after my meeting with "becq" . It was written at lchic's suggestion that I should set out my story as quickly as possible. I did the best I could at the time. This section "makes a long story short" and deletes details that I did not dare disclose on Sep 26, 2000 - but that I now feel a duty to disclose. The additions are bolded.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- rshowalter - 10:11pm Oct 24, 2000 BST (#7 http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7a163/6

Nuclear war has bothered me because of personal experience. As a bookish boy with big muscles and a forceful disposition, I found that I had to fight or defer, found that I fought pretty well, and learned something about fighting, both with individuals and with groups. When I went to college, I got interested in some matters of applied mathematics which had military significance, where it was felt by Eisenhower and government officials he trusted that, if the Russians solved a certain class of control problems before we did, we might find ourselves, without warning, stripped of the capacity to fly planes that could survive air-to-air missile attack. That is to say, we'd find ourselves without an air force, and conceivably losers in a war with the very terrible Soviet Union. That made the problem interesting to me, and I've kept at it, and made some progress on this class of problems, since. By this time, I had had the problem solved for some time - and was looking for a way to make contact with the government, according to Bill Casey's instructions, http://www.mrshowalter.net/CaseyRel.html , after many difficulties, and after much help from lchic. I have since disclosed that solution - in the ways that ought to be technically significant - on the NYT missile defense thread after Gisterme suggested I do so - and the disclosure and some connected circumstances are discussed, with links, at http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?13@@.ee9b7ef/278

On October 3, there was a sequence of postings on the NYT Missile Defense forum - and all the NYT forums were closed down thereafter for four days. I was cut off sometime less than an hour after I posted this:

" it is now technically easy to shoot down every winged aircraft the US has, or can expect to build - to detect every submarine - and to sink every surface ship within 500 miles of land - the technology for doing this is basic - and I see neither technical nor tactical countermeasures."

There was a difficulty , well known and discussed by 1966 . Here was an instability that deeply concerned Eisenhower and others I was involved in looking at a number of "stumper" problems involving negotiation and economic planning, and some other issues of military interest - but this question of missile guidance was the largest concern.

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