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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 - 07:19am Aug 20, 2002 EST (# 3828 of 3866)

3804-3805 rshow55 8/18/02 8:32pm makes interesting reading, looking at the work of "brushback" et al.

Deception, distraction, and big lies are pretty common practice - and Tyler's article Officers Say U.S. Aided Iraq in War Despite Use of Gas http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/18/international/middleeast/18CHEM.html is worth reading and remembering.

3805 rshow55 8/18/02 8:33pm includes this:

I stand by what I said on this thread in June 2001, that is posted on the Guardian.

http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7a163/289
http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7a163/290
http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7a163/291
http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7a163/292
http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7a163/293
http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7a163/294
http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7a163/295 ...

When things are complicated, truth is our only hope: http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7a163/296

I have some solutions. Solutions that I was assigned to get. Hard won. Expensive for me and others. Subject to rather extensive attention on this thread. Why doesn't anybody talk to me?

It seems to me that the answer is fairly obvious, but not to the credit of the United States of America.

3806 rshow55 8/18/02 8:42pm

Morality is an issue. Survival is a big issue.

Money matters, too. Especially when trillion dollar errors are involved. Not all big financial "errors" are made by private firms, such as Enron.

I have a P.E. ticket, and don't risk it lightly.

Essentially all of our manned and unmanned airplane development programs are based on assumptions about their relative invulnerability to air-air and ground-to-air missiles that are false.

Anybody want to contest this? There are some very straightforward ways of doing it.

There are also some straightforward ways of evaluating our "missile defense" programs MD1075-1076 rshow55 4/4/02 1:20pm

lchic - 08:11am Aug 20, 2002 EST (# 3829 of 3866)

But how many other steps are there?

And how hard or impossible are those steps?

These things should have been done ten years ago .....

.... but Showalter still hasn't received that 'letter' in the post!

lchic - 08:22am Aug 20, 2002 EST (# 3830 of 3866)

The Path to Peace,
Prosperity, and Freedom
http://www.isil.org/resources/lit/libertarianism.html

mazza9 - 01:29pm Aug 20, 2002 EST (# 3831 of 3866)
"Quae cum ita sunt" Caesar's Gallic Commentaries

Robert:

The efficacy of a tool may be questioned but not the final outcome. To say that aircraft and airborne weapons don't work is simplistic.

I once had a discussion with a pilot about the danger of transiting a particular area of the world. Iran had just purchased F-14s and I counseled caution because of the state of the art fire control system. The pilot reminded me that he had trained with those "camel jockeys", (indeed he explained that as an Iowa farm boy he had drive tractors and operated machinery at a young age while the Iranian pilots were, in reality, one generation removed from the 10th Century), and could fly rings around them!

I don't know what your expertise is vis a vis application of airborne weapon systems, but every encounter has always shown that the training and capability of the man behind the weapon system is what counts. Remember the fields of white flags during the Gulf War?

LouMazza

lchic - 04:53pm Aug 20, 2002 EST (# 3832 of 3866)

'What gets measured gets done' Tom Peters

http://www.tesseracts.com/Main_32x.html

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