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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 - 09:48pm Oct 7, 2002 EST (# 4742 of 4742)
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.

The lead front page story on Sunday was this:

Israel Set to Use New Missile Shield to Counter Scuds By MICHAEL R. GORDON http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/06/international/middleeast/06MISS.html

Israel is ready to use a missile defense to protect Tel Aviv and other major population centers if they come under fire from Iraq.

It includes an excellent interactive feature: Israel’s Antimissile System.

Impressive as the results of that system are - - the program illustrates the technical challenges of ballistic missile defense - especially for longer range missiles, and with the complications of decoys. The Isreali system might perhaps lend itself, at moderate cost, to some of the insights described described in the example of 4533-4547 rshow55 9/25/02 4:38pm . Radars and controls at the heart of the system, good as they are - might be subject to further improvement.

I posted some a reference to MD4739-40 rshow55 10/3/02 9:06am and some later postings on a Guardian Talk thread Psychwarfare, Casablanca -- and terror 330 http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7a163/352

Including links to CIA and my security problems, 3774-3779 rshow55 8/17/02 5:58pm

Perhaps some of those security problems have occurred in the past because I haven't stated clearly enough why I felt I needed to be careful, and needed to be debriefed. It seems to me that the reasons for my feeling so ought to be clearer now.

When National Security Adviser Rice wrote this, I believe she wrote something profound and hopeful. I'm doing the best I can to help make it true.

" Today, the international community has the best chance since the rise of the nation-state in the seventeenth century to build a world where great powers compete in peace instead of continually prepare for war. . . . . . The United States will build on these common interests to promote global security. "

" The National Security Strategy of the United States," http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/20/politics/20STEXT_FULL.html . page 2.

For that to be true - we need to make decisions based on correct information .

We also need to make sensible judgements based on what we know - and ought to know. It is dangerous, and wasteful, for us to put too much faith in systems that are vulnerable, and can easily become ineffective.

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