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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.

mazza9 - 03:12pm Jan 31, 2002 EST (#11146 of 11160)
Louis Mazza

The United States has had a first strike capability since 1945 when dropped the first and only nuclear weapons to be used in war.

Ask yourself, why hasn't the US used this capability since then? Maybe we have relied more on the Peace Corp and Foreign aid to impress our belief systems on the rest of the world.

Since 1945 how many people have died at the hands of the US? Now measure that amount against the millions in the former Soviet Union, China, North Korea, Iraq, Africa. Most of these victims died at the hands of a political system that doesn't subscribe to the freedom and dignity of people. Machettes in Rwanda, poison gas in Iraq, starvation and brutality in Cambodia, and on and on. Please be careful where you point your finger. I have no probelm with our performance. Yes you can nit pick our results but guess what? We know that we are not perfect but at least we try to live our life by the golden rule, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you". I believe that this explains the charity and bounty that we have given to the world.

LouMazza

rshow55 - 03:44pm Jan 31, 2002 EST (#11147 of 11160)

MD11137 gisterme 1/30/02 8:56pm cites another reference that testifies to how much money, emotion, and hope, has been invested in ABL . But the system can't work effectively against simple countermeasures.

MD11138 gisterme 1/30/02 9:05pm shows how very far afield "weapons research" has gotten. DOD's record on getting militarily effective hardware out of such "fishing expeditions" has been consistently miserable for fifty years (I've read some scathing, well documented reports, which I suppose I could find, but don't cite here.)

MD11139 gisterme 1/30/02 9:31pm cites an interesting reference -- that applies to xrays, with wavelengths 1/100th that of the COIL laser. The reference really shows that getting reflectance from gold's already high 98% to 99% or 99.9% looks pretty easy (for COIL frequencies, or any other chemical lasar frequency) . On thickness -- plastics and rubbers are flexible - and coatings of 100 micron or more would be practical, so far as flexibility goes (the 1 u limit quoted had to do with a brittleness constraint.

MD11140 mazza9 1/30/02 10:59pm Mazza's right that "laser's work" -- and like other things, they work for particular technical applications, in a context. For weapons, they don't work -- at least on anything even remotely on the horizon so far.
MD10997 rshow55 1/23/02 6:35pm cites numbers -- using evaporation of water, to put the "killer COIL laser" in a context -- depending on reflectance. (And, of course, heat sinking is important - but not difficult - which much of the ABL technology is difficult.)

BMD, in any of the ways that have been proposed, isn't functional in the realistic sense it has to be - - against realistic countermeasures. . (It hasnt been proved yet, even in the "never never land" technical world of no countermeasures, after many tens of billions of dollars spent, and an enormous amount of hard work done.) These evasive posts by gisterme , and mazza , combined with many more like them that can be searched, are wonderful evidence of how far-fetched these programs are.

I agree with many of the objectives of missile defense, and wish it was easy. But in the BMD sense, it isn't.

rshow55 - 04:13pm Jan 31, 2002 EST (#11148 of 11160)

MD1112 gisterme 1/29/02 5:58pm includes this:

"Once again I say, this laser stuff is all BS anyway since it has no bearing on the BMD system currently being tested."

I disagree with gisterme on this, and I think the evidence of some of his other postings indicates he doesn't discount the significance of the laser stuff either.

Last year, Russia hosted a meeting on the militarization of space - something like 104 countries attended. The United States did not. Laser weapons were centrally involved in the issues of concern. Take away the laser weapons, and the other offensive ideas for space weapons don't amount to much.

The Next Battlefield May Be in Outer Space by JACK HITT http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/05/magazine/05SPACEWARS.html

A quote in Hitt's article is worth noting, when judging space weapons - "it costs a bar of gold to put up a coke can." Remember that, and do the physics, and "smart rock" approaches, even if guidance were easy, wouldn't be very smart.

Reflective decal countermeasures (which would certainly occur to any engineer seriously thinking about defending against laser weapons) are so easy that these laser weapon systems, either on airplanes or in space - just don't make sense as weapons. Just "gold plating" is a fine countermeasure - - with increasing reflectance beyond that looking easy indeed, beside the costs of the laser weapons themselves.

Gisterme's quote above goes on as follows:

"Why do you keep trying to steer away from the promise that the system under test has been showing?"

I'm not. And the issues of geometrical optics, and other optical physics, that gisterme doesn't dispute are significant there, too.

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