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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.

wrcooper - 10:53pm Dec 17, 2002 EST (# 6817 of 6822)

When Nixon tried in 1970, with the Safeguard ABM system, his science advisers told him in top secret memos—recently declassified by the National Security Archive, a private research group at George Washington University—that Safeguard "will be obsolete within three to four years after it is first deployed"; even China's limited nuclear arsenal could saturate the system with such "penetration aids" as decoys or "chaff clouds." National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger advised Nixon that Bell Telephone Labs, the program's prime contractor, "wants to get out of the ABM business" because the system "cannot adequately perform the mission assigned to it."

None of this pessimism was made public at the time. In 1972, Defense Secretary Melvin Laird testified to Congress that Safeguard had "no technical problems which would affect a decision to proceed with deployment."

Jump ahead to the latest chapter of this apparently never-ending saga. In September 1999, the CIA's National Intelligence Estimate concluded that any country able to develop ballistic missiles "would also develop various responses to US defenses," including such "readily available technology" as decoys, chaff, or wrapping warheads in radar-absorbing material.

The program's managers know this. In 1997 they decided finally to confront the issue, devising a test plan that would involve shooting down a mock warhead surrounded by nine or 10 decoys, all of which would look like a warhead to the sensors of a heat-seeking radar. In 1998, the program was revised so that the warhead would be flanked by just three decoys. In 1999, plans were again altered; only one decoy would be required, and it could be a large balloon. Philip Coyle, then the Pentagon's test director, wrote a widely distributed report the following year criticizing this devolution. The balloon's heat signature, he wrote, was "very dissimilar" to that of the mock warhead, so the radar "can easily discriminate" between the two.

In other words, when Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said in an Oct. 24 speech that we are "moving forward on missile defenses" to the point where "we actually can hit a bullet with a bullet," he was uttering an irrelevancy. Hitting one bullet with one bullet is certainly a remarkable feat, but it's among the least remarkable feats that an effective missile-defense system must accomplish.

Incidentally, no tests have yet involved hitting, say, two bullets with two bullets. In one nominally successful test, after the interceptor slammed into the warhead, shards from the collision caused the radar on the ground to malfunction. If a second warhead had followed, the whole system would have been blinded. Despite these self-imposed limitations, the test program has been uneven. To date, five of eight tests have been successful. The most recent test, on Dec. 11 of this year, was a dud.

In June of last year, Gen. Ronald T. Kadish, director of the missile-defense program, said in hearings before the House Armed Services Committee, "I cannot overemphasize the importance of controlling our expectations and persevering through the hard times as we develop and field a system as complex as missile defense." The program's "test philosophy," he explained, "is to add step-by-step complexities over time. It is a walk-before-you-run, learn-as-you-go development approach."

Judging from today's speech, it seems that Bush wants his generals to run the New York marathon before they've mastered the 100-yard dash.

wrcooper - 10:57pm Dec 17, 2002 EST (# 6818 of 6822)

Here is the section that was cut off:

In 1961, Kennedy's defense secretary, Robert McNamara, ordered his own study, with similar results. The prospect of a "really effective" missile-defense system, the 55-page report concluded, "is bleak, has always been so, and there are no great grounds for hope that the situation will markedly improve in the future, no matter how hard we try." The main reason: "No one has yet suggested any solution to the problem of overcoming very simple, lightweight, non-discriminable decoys."

lunarchick - 11:14pm Dec 17, 2002 EST (# 6819 of 6822)

The Poster drops so many 'kiss the air' names:

Lip smacking
moi moi
Kiss Kiss
Kissing AIR

....

originates from the CHIMP

Chimp says ....

"Hi over there .. hello!"
meaning

'May i come over and groom the insects out of your fur'

Lip smacking
moi moi
Kiss Kiss
Kissing AIR

see book The natural history of the rich - a field guide

Shows that positive co-operation ... the removal of an 'itch' ... is worth a thousand bunkered missiles of negativity!

bbbuck - 11:20pm Dec 17, 2002 EST (# 6820 of 6822)
"You can't eat this, it's people, it's people"-B....."What about the cherry pie?"

Is that post supposed to make sense?

lunarchick - 11:27pm Dec 17, 2002 EST (# 6821 of 6822)

Moreso than the posts preceeding ...

Chimps might run a workshop on empowerment through 'social grooming' ... win-win - and live in improved circumstance

:)

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New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense