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Missile Defense

Russian military leaders have expressed concern about US plans for a national missile defense system. Will defense technology be limited by possibilities for a strategic imbalance? Is this just SDI all over again?

rshowalter - 11:41am Sep 30, 2001 EST (#10004 of 10023)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

MD9999 kangdawei 9/30/01 9:11am sounds like it might be a superb idea, but might work badly, depending on details of the real people and real circumstances involved - - circumstances I don't know enough to judge. It is a superb study exercise, and doing the exercise, whether the idea checks out, or gets modified or rejected, might be very fruitful.

The idea of encouraging

"the development of a highly competitive system of "testing companies". When you contract out a weapons system A to company A, you also contract out a "probing contract" B to company B. The more weaknesses company B finds in company A's weapons system, the greater the financial reward to Company B."

might need some modifications, so that cooperation might occur, as well as competition. It also might depend on stages or execution. After a point, some decisions have to be frozen if closure is to be possible. After such points, whole programs may have to be rejected completely, if rejection is necessary.

Something I've been trying to do is extend the family of things that can be calculated - - since paper exercises are fast and cheap (or should be) and actual execution much slower and less flexible. That's a big reason I've been interested in coupled circumstances.

What are the priorities, weights, of the total system involved?

Unless that's reasonably clear, getting a "beautiful" solution to a part of the problem, for one set of assumptions, may make for ugly consequences when something not assumed actually matters.

You DO have to start with, and work with, the people you have, the equipment you have, the connections you have and the weapons you have. And work from there, step by step.

I think a lot might be cleaned up - - but only if the real people involved, as they are, came to be comfortable with the changes (at least most of them.) Some things could be done in discontinuous ways -and sometimes there's no choice. But usually, step by step changes that are pretty seamless are the way things happen.

rshowalter - 11:48am Sep 30, 2001 EST (#10005 of 10023)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

I'm worried about a number of instabilities that happen because responses are VERY miscalibrated for stabilitiy under easily imaginable circumstances that could actually occur. Unexpected circumstances can't be expected in detail, but they do occur from time to time.

That's a good reason to have the facts pretty well collected, digested, interpreted, and variously checked, before making decisions involving big changes and big consequences. Everybody knows that, and that's how people do things, almost always.

And a pretty good reason to look at things from several views, with different viewpoints, and different scales, and different things emphasized and hidden in the different views. Automobile repair manuals are like that, and have to be. So are weapons manuals.

rshowalter - 12:18pm Sep 30, 2001 EST (#10006 of 10023)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

For example, let me tell a little story, that may be wrong - it is just a guess. But I mean it as a kind of parable.

Once upon a time, not so long ago, a bearded leader took control of Cuba, and for reasons that seemed compelling, America's leader tried to kill him, but didn't.

A while later, this Cuban leader, using ways of his own, managed to kill that American leader.

Americans were upset about this, and there was a commission that looked into the murder -- but concluded that "Oswald acted alone" because the truth, if they actually told it . . . . might force America to declare war on Cuba . . .

which would force the Russians to respond

. . .

which, they had reason to strongly expect, would end the world.

Naturally, the wise men in the commission declined to find and tell the truth.

Just a story. For now, doesn't matter if it is true, or not.

The point is that instabilities of that kind are highly undesireable.

These days, there are whole families of sets of such circumstances, laying around, and we need, it seems to me, to worry about that, and defuse some things that might go bang.

We should get rid of nukes, and other weapons of mass destruction, too. But only when we have reliable ways to make sure that prohibition of these nighmare weapons can be trusted.

That will take a rule change or two, and consideration of some current instabilities, it seems to me.

rshowalter - 12:27pm Sep 30, 2001 EST (#10007 of 10023)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Back in about an hour, maybe a little more.

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