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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?

Read Debates, a new Web-only feature culled from Readers' Opinions, published every Thursday.

rshow55 - 03:10pm Oct 12, 2003 EST (# 14819 of 14823)
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.

Wishing Won't Make Star Wars So http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/03/opinion/03FRI3.html was a fine editorial, and right on the forum heading topic. I've dealt with it in these postings - which fit again here.

14270 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.hRgzbrokNWv.2110928@.f28e622/15980

14248-50 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.hRgzbrokNWv.2110928@.f28e622/15958

. 14252 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.hRgzbrokNWv.2110928@.f28e622/15962 writes out Wishing Won't Make Star Wars So http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/03/opinion/03FRI3.html with some supporting material

14326 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.hRgzbrokNWv.2110928@.f28e622/16036

Here are the key questions, for any specific weapons system - with the people involved considered as part of the system:

Can it see the target?

Can it hit the target?

Can it hurt the target?

The most specific information about these questions will be classified, and rightly so.

But the most fundamental information cannot be classified - because it is deeply embedded in the open literature, and based on simple physics an engineering. Some discussed recently here - and some discussed on this thread for years.

14778-9 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.hRgzbrokNWv.2110928@.f28e622/16489

14791-2 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.hRgzbrokNWv.2110928@.f28e622/16502

When the target is a nuclear tipped missile - and the job is "hitting a bullet with a bullet" the standard systems questions become especially awkward for the defense - and can be thought of in a loop structure.

For i = 1 to infinity

1. For a specific missile target - specify "How in detail can the defense system see , hit and destroy the target. "

2. Given a specific defensive system with specific affirmative answers to 1. above - "How can the offensive target system be modified to defeat the defense? "

Repeat and reanalyze - in a loop.

The logic massively favors the offense - countermeasures may cost less than 1/1000 of what it costs to defeat them - for reasons that are basic and unchangeable.

At every step it is much easier to fire a "bullet or system of bullets and decoys" than to successfully hit that "bullet or system of bullets and decoys" with a reliable defense.

In the long run ( and the long run is not so very long ) we need to control these threats in other ways .

I think the title of Wishing Won't Make Star Wars So http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/03/opinion/03FRI3.html was well chosen.

klsanford0 - 03:14pm Oct 12, 2003 EST (# 14820 of 14823)

WRC:

"massive attack by China"

what massive attack...? The Chinese have currently between ten and fifteen ICBM's of highly uncertain quality, and do not have the USA-style production facilities to greatly add to this arsenal in the near future...you mention Chinese missile boats....they do not possess these and are also unlikely to in the near future. Also, I believe the Chinese missiles are only capable of hitting westcoast of USA. A Chinese General threatened to nuke LA. in 1995...

In short, the Chinese are no threat to the US now, and their number of missiles is precisely in the range of possible deterrence by MD.

klsanford0 - 03:17pm Oct 12, 2003 EST (# 14821 of 14823)

WRC:

"What 9/11 shows is that the sort of threat posed by ICBMs is way down the list of likely threats."

How so? The existence of a new threat, logically, does not obviate the old ones; It simply adds to the list of possible threats...in a world of rapid BM proliferation...

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