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?

Read Debates, a new Web-only feature culled from Readers' Opinions, published every Thursday.

lchic - 02:35pm Feb 7, 2002 EST (#11332 of 11337)

La France

lchic - 02:48pm Feb 7, 2002 EST (#11333 of 11337)

Melting into time

vhurtado - 03:01pm Feb 7, 2002 EST (#11334 of 11337)

For a terrorist group or a developing country, a long-range ballistic missile is the least attractive option to attack the United States.

There is little incentive for a terrorist group or a developing country to use long-range missiles. Other means of delivery are less expensive, more reliable, and can deliver much larger payloads more accurately than long-range missiles.

Unfortunately, some are using September 11 to justify rushing ahead with defenses against long-range missiles. While the goal of defending the United States from every conceivable threat is understandable, national missile defense cannot protect us effectively anytime soon.

We must distinguish between the means of delivery and the weapon. Unless armed with a nuclear or biological weapon, a missile would have caused far less destruction than the hijacked airplanes aimed with pinpoint accuracy and carrying tons of explosive fuel.

As devastating as the attacks were, they could pale in comparison to the casualties caused by an attack using a nuclear or biological weapon. The United States should greatly expand its efforts to prevent this possibility, so in the future the world does not have to look back and ask what more could have been done to prevent an even bigger catastrophe.

True security requires international cooperation. The US needs Russian and Chinese cooperation on a range of non-proliferation and security issues. Getting that cooperation will be easier if the US does not proceed with a missile defense program that Russia and China find threatening.

The technology needed for an effective missile defense system still doesn't exist, and likely won't be ready to allow deployment for several years, despite the administration’s plans to have a rudimentary system ready by 2004. Moreover, the system that is the furthest along will offer little or no defense, since it can be defeated by simple countermeasures

gisterme - 03:24pm Feb 7, 2002 EST (#11335 of 11337)

lchic 2/7/02 2:35pm

I wonder if Minister Vedrine will be so smug after Paris gets blasted or slimed by Al Qieda.

I'm still of the opinion that the recent European epidemic of foot and mouth disease was a bio attack...probably from Iraq via the Al Qieda proxy. The sudden appeance of the disease simultaneously at so many different places is hard to explain otherwise. If that was an attack, I'm certain that it was intended to be both a demonstration of capability and a warning...a warning that our governments chose to ignore by denial. They didn't want to face the fact that our pants were (and are) down in the bio-threat arena. They did that by implicitly denying that there really are people out there who are willing and wanting to do such things. I don't think that was all that was ignored...there was flight 400, Egypt Air,...and others; but the events of September 11 were, at last, too much to ignore.

It saddens me to suppose that something like the WTC massacre will have to happen in Europe before the sort of complacency exhibited by Mr. Vedrine comes to an end. It won't be the first time...Europeans were in denial about what Hitler was capable of too. Does history repeat itself? I think so, especially where real evil is concerned.

I doubt that the next biological weapon attack will be demonstration against animals.

I just pray to God that it never happens.

(2 following messages)

New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense