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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 - 04:52pm Jul 19, 2003 EST (# 13053 of 13055)
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.

This time, rottnenburg03's links in http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.OtwDb1trrG4.38837@.f28e622/14724 are excellent. If that posting is deleted, I'll try to remember to repost those links.

How can you tell the difference between truth and deception or "performance art"? Some deceptions can get very far.

. He Conned the Society Crowd but Died Alone By DAN BARRY http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/19/nyregion/19ABOU.html

To do so, you check .

But a problem occurs if the incidence of hidden things gets too high. Then nobody can really check anything to closure. Even the "keepers of secrets" get lost.

For run-of-the mill classified work, there are procedures, set out to some degree in a fine article

Code Name: Retract Larch WILLIAM M. ARKIN http://www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/20001203mag-lexicon.html

If the government's system for labeling its billions of secret documents seems utterly incomprehensible, then it's working exactly as planned.

No one knows exactly how many secrets the United States government maintains, but by some estimates its safes and secure rooms contain tens of billions of pages of classified documents. In addition to being marked either Top Secret, Secret or Confidential, many of these pages are assigned a "compartment," a unique code word for whatever surveillance effort, covert operation, special-access program, classified research initiative, military exercise or development effort the document refers to.

But when things are sensitive enough, and communication difficulties (or legal difficulties) are significant enough - - nothing at all is written down.

But "connecting the dots" - and keeping at it - and rejecting things that are inconsistent - you can usually get to the bottom of things. With enough work - when it matters enough.

It is in the national interest, and the world interest - to sort out very many of the questions raised in links cited in rottnenburg03's http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.OtwDb1trrG4.38837@.f28e622/14724 .

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New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense