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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 - 07:00am Oct 13, 2003 EST (# 14865 of 14871)
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.

14819 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.w390bwDMNvy.2251022@.f28e622/16530 makes good links to last week's "Star Wars" editorial - useful for "connecting the dots" at a number of scales and in a number of different, mutually reinforcing ways.

14819 includes this:

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.

- - -

Some of our problems are logical - and some are emotional . We need to adjust - both logically and emotionally.

Here are summary links on the logical part.

. 1623 http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7b2bd/1792

. 1624 http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7b2bd/1793

We need to grow up some - to use that logic when our emotions blind us. We're at a time where it is dangerous not to. High tech weapons can't solve our problems.

lchic - 08:50am Oct 13, 2003 EST (# 14866 of 14871)
TRUTH outs in the end : TRUTH has to be morally forcing : build on TRUTH it's a strong foundation

Carnegie 2003 MD

''Approximately 95 percent of the global arsenals are held by the United States and Russia. The possession of the remaining weapons by other states is a matter of serious concern, although the proliferation problem is often exaggerated for political purposes. Overall, there are fewer nuclear, chemical and biological weapons in the world and fewer nations pursuing these weapons than there were ten, fifteen or twenty years ago. The most serious proliferation problem remains the thousands of nuclear weapons, hundreds of tons of nuclear materials and thousands of tons of chemical weapons stored in Russia, many vulnerable to theft or clandestine sale to other nations or groups. ..... ...... John Spratt noted the "dangerous drift in U.S. arms control policy." He warned that "ballistic missile defense is a prime example of how the emphasis on counterproliferation comes at the expense of non-proliferation" with missile defense consuming almost $8 billion in the national defense budget while all non-proliferation programs get less than $1.8 billion total.

http://www.ceip.org/files/Publications/Folketingrealsummary.asp?from=pubdate

wrcooper - 10:49am Oct 13, 2003 EST (# 14867 of 14871)

The New York Times published an editorial on October 3 related to missile defense. It is worth reprinting in this forum:

October 3, 2003

Wishing Won't Make Star Wars So

President Bush's rush order to begin fielding a costly, unproven system for ballistic missile defense by next September is proving to be riddled with risks for technical failures and budget overruns. Congressional investigators have found the current state of antimissile technology hardly up to the actual threat.

A detailed report by the General Accounting Office warns that the hurried attempt to blend 10 separate high-tech defense systems into one program is proceeding full speed ahead, as Mr. Bush ordered, but without adequate preliminary demonstrations that the pieces will ever work well together. Most pressing, a crucial Alaska radar system at the heart of the plan has not yet been shown to be ready for the job it is being adapted to do.

Still, administration officials are stubbornly pushing ahead with plans to start opening 10 West Coast missile defense bases next year. They are betting that the technology can eventually be shaped to fit Star Wars, the bullet-hits-bullet dream first envisioned in the Reagan administration.

There is no belittling the true concern that rogue nations like North Korea are intent on developing ocean-spanning nuclear weapons. But until the prodigious innovations of an antimissile defense have been clearly proved trustworthy, the nation is installing "no more than a scarecrow, not a real defense," in the words of Dr. Philip Coyle III, a former head of weapons testing at the Pentagon.

The investigators warn that the uncertainty and haste make it more likely that the system, once its pieces are linked, will balk when put to actual flight tests. This would mean more funds to try to fix the program, whose eventual cost is already tabbed at $50 billion.

Critics maintain that the president's timetable is as much about the next election — about homeland security as a political issue — as it is about a credible defense. He still has a chance to deny opponents a political weapon by ordering more time and testing to show the system is workable.

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