New York Times on the Web Forums Science

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?

rshow55 - 07:55pm Jan 10, 2002 EST (#10727 of 10736)

C.I.A. Highlights China Missile Threat by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Missile-Threat.html includes this:

" Last month President Bush used the threat of missile attack by terrorists as a reason for the United States to pull out of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty with Russia.

` `I have concluded the ABM treaty hinders our government's ability to develop ways to protect our people from future terrorist or rogue state missile attacks,'' the president said.

" But the new report says terrorists aren't expected to employ long-range missiles to deliver nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction on the United States.

`` Ships, trucks, airplanes and other means may be used,'' it says. Hostile countries may employ similar means, it says.

" These delivery methods can be used covertly, are cheaper and more accurate than non-U.S. ICBMs, and avoid any missile defenses, the report says.

Nation states can can use these more straightforward delivery systems, as well as terrorists. They can deter with a vary wide range of non-nuclear means, as well. We need to move to non-nuclear deterrance.

We face major challenges. And missile defense, even if it was workable (and it is not) would not solve them.

Mass murder especially murder of civilians, is wrong. It is wrong at WTC scales, and at the much larger (100x, 1000x, million x) scales of nuclear weapons.

We need to reduce and prohibit nuclear weapons, and other means of mass destruction.

Americans can't even get our "allies" to turn Taliban officials over to us. We don't rule the world.

We have to live in a community of nations. We can, if we are only honest, and decently competent.

The "missile defense" mistake-blunder-fiasco-fraud gives us the worst of both worlds -- scaring other countries into threats to us they'd not otherwise make against us, for a "defense posture" on the part of the United States that does not and cannot work.

mazza9 - 09:25pm Jan 10, 2002 EST (#10728 of 10736)
Louis Mazza

Rshow55:

The ballons wouldn't be undetectable. The Perimeter Acquistion Radar(PAR) that was installed at the BMD site in North Dakota could differentiate ballon decoys. The Spartan missiles would be aimed at the warheads of the incoming wave. The nuclear warheads of the Sprint missiles would place a "curtain of fire and EMP" at the peak of the trajectory of the incoming wave. After the remaining targets begin their re-entry the decoys would tend to "bounce off the upper atmosphere while the war heads would "bore in" on a discernible trajectory. For these final targets the Sprint missile would be launched.

"To say Sprint was a phenomenal missile, is putting it mildly. A cone shaped missile that accelerated at 100g, achieved a speed of Mach 10 in 5 seconds, had an ablative coating to dissipate the heat that was generated from the fiction from the atmosphere and was so accurate that the radar had to be de-tuned during testing so that it would not hit incoming RVs. It was a phenomenal missile".

the system was operational and was closed when the ABM treaty was signed.

Today's sensors, radar and computers are so much more sophisticated that the cost to mask and incoming missile is much harder. Take a Look

LouMazza

rshow55 - 09:33pm Jan 10, 2002 EST (#10729 of 10736)

Radar detection and light detection are different. Balloons are "easy" to see with radar - with the resolution limitations radar has. An intentionally fraudulent and evasive response, "jawG".

Do you know what EMP was? And how it blinded radar?

There are good reasons why missile defense doesn't use nukes, these days.

More tomorrow.

lchic - 03:00am Jan 11, 2002 EST (#10730 of 10736)

The actions and antics of commanding men may be passed down to children through the centuries:

"Grand Old Duke of York"

Oh, the grand old Duke of York,
He had ten thousand men,
He marched them up to the top of
The hill and he marched
Them down again.

And when they were up they were up.
And when they were down they were down.
And when they were only half way up,
They were neither up nor down.
(repeat)
see

Listening to commentary on the Indian Pakistan border - a simmilar thing is happening today. The border separates Indian from Indian.

Now and over recent years the scarce resources of the dirt poor Indian Subcontinent have been abusively used to lay fields of 'land mines' along imaginary boundaries. The imaginary boundary is a line drawn in the sand and mind of peoples who are Indian.

So like the Grand Old Duke of York the soldiers are paid to lay landmines (that have a cost) and then to remove them.

Could the Mother Goose Nursery Rhyme songstress please put a rhyme to music regarding this, so that the 'infants' of the world can do an action dance of laying mines, lifting mines, with a few hop hop hop steps as their lower limbs are 'blown' away.

From the small land mine to the large nuclear missile ... the actions here might include all children falling down -- in reality most never to rise ... but those that do could follow the action words including the dance of the dying as their short lives are taken ... with weeping actions!

Yes - the Mother Goose stuff steeped in history is quite easy for children to appreciate and understand. YET the grown-men leaders of the world seem to have difficulty comprehending simple concepts.

It's ye olde rationalisation working that old black magic!

(6 following messages)

New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense