New York Times on the Web Forums
Resource
Area for Forum Hosts and Moderators
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.
(3833 previous messages)
rshow55
- 04:48pm Aug 20, 2002 EST (#
3834 of 17697) 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.
mazza9
8/20/02 1:29pm is an interesting post.
I never said that "aircraft and airborne weapons don't
work."
I DO say that we're planning to spend a trillion dollars on
aircraft we don't need, doing so in a way that places a huge
bet on technical conditions that can EASILY change - and
obsolete that huge investment very completely. People who
assigned me problems were very worried about that technical
change - and how close at hand it looked -- in the late
1960's.
People should worry about the same things now - because
after the work I've done -- the solutions are almost trivially
easy. The "hard part" that is left could be solved by any high
school math teacher who thought about it hard - that "hard
part" is getting much better x-y-z resolution out of radio
wave ranging than is now achieved. It is easily done.
Polynomial processing, including simple automatic calculus
and differential equations --is also easily done - and
computers are now 1000's of times faster than they need to be
to do the computations. Getting them faster makes no
difference to the jobs to be done.
What if air-to-air and ground-to-air missiles were as
well controlled as birds, bats, and human animals are
controlled?
With the actuators and thrusts we've had for fifty years?
Pilot facility counts for as much as it does - but not
more.
That's why the military has cared as much about plane
performance as it has. I was reasonably close to a
situation involving Kelly Johnson's skunk words that involved
the loss of seven planes and seven pilots in a row -- and I
was assigned some key problems as a result. Issues of mixing
and combustion were CLEAR matters of live and death. It wasn't
stupid for those pilots to risk their lives. The performance
(in this case, the performance of afterburners) was a BIG
military issue.
I'm trying to think how to respond effectively, and in the
national interest, to mazza9
8/20/02 1:29pm - - - one of Mazza's better postings.
mazza9
- 05:12pm Aug 20, 2002 EST (#
3835 of 17697) "Quae cum ita sunt" Caesar's Gallic
Commentaries
Robert:
Okay, I accept your involvment and expertise. My point is
that the meeting in Crawford is touted as a reevaluation and
redirecting of the military. We've already seen Rumsfeld
cancel the Crusader since it was the wrong weapon for the 21st
Century.
Massed tanks will have little or no effect on people who
use poison gas on dogs and eventually people. Manned aircraft
become less cost effective when today's virtual reality
control allows the Unmanned Combat Aircraft to control the
skys. No more G limits due to carrying the pilot. No parasitic
weight for ejection seats and oxygen/life support systems.
Want to address the Eisenhower farewell address, then you
develop the tools to meet the threat and not let the last
generation of military leaders, who move on to private sector,
waste our national treasure on last war's tools.
LouMazza
rshow55
- 06:02pm Aug 20, 2002 EST (#
3836 of 17697) 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.
"Want to address the Eisenhower farewell address, then you
develop the tools to meet the threat and not let the last
generation of military leaders, who move on to private sector,
waste our national treasure on last war's tools."
I have and am working on tools to meet real
threats.
Including military ones, and ones at the level of
negotiation.
Casey asked me again and again:
" You want to make peace? You want an end
game? I do, too. Find solutions. Solutions that
work. Solutions that you can explain."
The U.S. is planning to spend around a trillion
dollars on planes that, with easy changes, are easy to
shoot down.
People ought to know that.
It is in the national interest that people know
that.
I'm moving slowly, trying to be effective, and careful.
I need to be debriefed. To some extent it can happen
on this thread. If there's no other way, it has to. You might
think of more direct approaches, if you thought hard, maybe.
MD2850-2851 rshow55
7/3/02 10:36am
I believe that I am doing just what Bill Casey would have
wanted me to do, under these somewhat awkward circumstances.
mazza9
- 06:17pm Aug 20, 2002 EST (#
3837 of 17697) "Quae cum ita sunt" Caesar's Gallic
Commentaries
"The U.S. is planning to spend around a trillion dollars on
planes that, with easy changes, are easy to shoot down."
Robert, what are you referring to? Be specific otherwise
don't post your unsubstantiated speculations! Can't check
"easy changes", its a wishy washy statement
The Chechnyans shot down that behemoth Russian Helicopter
but Our current strategic bombers and fighters can handle
themselves well. Command control of the battlefield is
something we do well and others just don't have the
wherewithal to match.
Robert, I don't agree with your assessment. I've read
Aviation Week for over 40 years and have a fairly good idea of
what is happening. Your imprecision is SO non-mathematical!
LouMazza
(13860 following messages)
New York Times on the Web Forums
Resource
Area for Forum Hosts and Moderators Missile Defense
|