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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 - 04:58pm Aug 30, 2002 EST (# 4022 of 4045)
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.

Mazza, we disagree on some things - - in ways where I think a lot of military officers would agree with me, rather than you. When resources are limited, and there are other things that need to be done (like fund social security - or keep the economy running in other ways) - technical choices have to be made. But you're clear about how you feel, and though I don't agree - - I respect the clarity with which you say some things.

Cooper, we agree on some basic things.

What do I say is impossible, specifically?

What have I said about technical unlikeliness that you disagree with?

Hint: - - I talk about "breakthroughs" where performance FAR beyond published state-of-the-art performance would be required. Don't say it is impossible - but say the degree of progress needed can be specified. On a number of VERY difficult points. And sometimes a LOT of progress is needed.

Sometimes a far-fetched amount. If I worked at it, I could jump higher than I can now. But not, I don't believe, 12 feet in the air, on this planet, unaided. I'd call that impossible. Some advances in performance involved on the beam weapon systems look impossible to me in that sense. But I don't claim that's anymore than my personal judgement. With the advances needed specified - I think engineers who'd write their names in public would be unlikely to disagree.

My own judgement is that the beam weapons are grossly far-fetched -- and I suggest that be checked - but I don't say "impossible" in any strict sense. Though I don't rule it out.

I also say that, so far as I can tell - - it is maybe a thousand to a million times easier (meaning cheaper) to defeat a given BMD system than to build it. And for the examples I've been able to see and think about - that seems right. Do you object to this?

Do you have specific disagreements about anything I've said - - that you specifically know about?

Or are you just staking out the position that "nothing ought to be called impossible if it can be imagined within physical laws?"

wrcooper - 07:15pm Aug 30, 2002 EST (# 4023 of 4045)

rshow55 8/30/02 4:58pm

You're the person who intimated that physical law prohibited the development of an effective and reliable BMD system. Why don't you specify what you think physics disallows?

I don't disagree that countermeasures to a BMD system would be far easier to develop than the system itself.

Yes, nothing ought to be called impossible if it can be imagined within physical law. I'd go further, though. I would say that nothing about the proposed BMD system lies beyond our current and foreseeable national engineering capacity. Each of the key elements of the system has been demonstrated, though not under warfare conditions. Clearly, the system is in an early beta phase of development and hasn't reached a level of effectiveness and reliability upon which national strategic policy should be based. A large number of subsystems need to be strengthened and tested under realistic simulated conditions. While I think that these challenges could be dealt with, the question really is whether it serves our interests to try. I definitely see Bush's unilateral pursuit of a BMD system as strategically destabilizing and dangerous. As I've said, even if it could be made to work tomorrow at an acceptable cost, it would be a disaster.

rshow55 - 08:21pm Aug 30, 2002 EST (# 4024 of 4045)
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.

If "far easier" is in the proportion I suggest - that is 1000 to a million times less costly than the BMD systems defeated - do we have other technical details worth talking about?

Don't we then agree about the essentials?

A sense of how complicated and how inflexible missile defense is - look at the problems set out in the Coyle Report http://www.fas.org/spp/starwars/program/nmdcoylerep.pdf

Could we do better in the future? Maybe. But we'd have to do almost miraculously better to get a system that made military sense - against reasonable countermeasures.

I thought I was pretty clear in rshow55 8/30/02 4:58pm

A lot of technical references links are collected in MD84 rshow55 3/2/02 11:52am

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