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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.

bbbuck - 08:01pm Oct 30, 2002 EST (# 5389 of 5396)
'The scoops are on the way'....

Yes that's why I taunt them. Next question. Keep up the slop I'll add you to the list.

manjumicha - 02:02am Oct 31, 2002 EST (# 5390 of 5396)

Well, true to your form, you rested my case for me....

kalter.rauch - 02:47am Oct 31, 2002 EST (# 5391 of 5396)
Earth vs <^> <^> <^>

You're right, B2Buck......did you see Rshow's brag about he and lchic holding a 2 hour/70 post session at the Guardian's "Anything About Anything" forum??? It's pretty much the same drill in this forum......"Anything EXCEPT Missile Defense......

I mean, there was an interesting article recently in AW&ST mag.(10/07/02)about the tremendous power levels being attained by microwave pulse weaponry (eg. in the 10s of gigawatt range). These generators are rapidly maturing into practical battlefield tactical emitters which can defend against missiles as well as frying the electronics of ground targets. Ranges are thought to be possible up to

...tens of kilometers, and future advances...should permit the development of even longer ranges.

Some of these systems can derive power from an aircraft engine and deliver rapid-fire pulses, or be built into free-fall or guided "munitions" (eg. HERF, Vircator, FCG, etc....see Schwartau, Information Warfare). Unlike lasers, high power microwave devices are impervious to weather conditions and generate wide area effects. Applied to strategic missile defense, these weapons would blanket incoming arrays of decoys and warheads, neutralizing guidance systems and firing mechanisms......with the added advantages over lasers of much more rapid "recycling" and not being limited by exotic chemical beam fuels, such as in the Boeing 747/ABM system.

rshow55 - 05:41am Oct 31, 2002 EST (# 5392 of 5396)
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.

kalter.rauch 10/31/02 2:47am

Anybody at DOD ever done any welding? Or thought about how to damage aircraft, or tanks - with welding equipment? Experienced how much concentration of energy is needed - and how hard it is to melt or bend, or destroy things just with heat?

We all have reasonably refined and high power microwave devices in our kitchens - microwave ovens. We know what they do - and how easy the shielding technology is, as well.

Compared to bullets, and high explosives, the effectiveness per unit energy (and the concentration of focus of energy available in space and time) with microwaves is paltry.

Anybody for weapons that a soldier would actually want to use - when right answers really ARE a matter of life and death?

Anybody ever looked at the engineering people have, routinely, for shielding microwave interference?

"Microwave communications" is wonderful - and a huge body of technical stuff works.

"Microwave weapons" are an idea that could only be seriously advanced by an organization that's been intellectually, technically, and morally corrupt for a long time. Not that kalter.rauch 10/31/02 2:47am speaks for such an organization, of course - - because "nothing can be traced on these boards".

Still - - what are the odds?

Made a posting here last night - and it wasn't entered here. That's fine. That's what board monitoring is for. I hope somebody noticed some of the checkable things in it.

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