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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?

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rshow55 - 05:40pm Feb 27, 2002 EST (#11896 of 11906)

This thread has made some progress. The "missile defense" programs are technically much less tenable than they used to be. I think the discourse on this thread has been part of that. Very serious efforts to defend BMD have been made here - and they have taken up much space, and involved many evasions. But they have made no specific and detailed technical points that have been able to stand about technical feasibility.

The "lasar weapon" programs have been significantly discredited -- because countermeasures are easy, because adaptive optics is not easy, and because a fundamental misunderstanding about the "perfect coherence" of lasers has been made.

" Alignment good enough for lasing" has been confused with the far more difficult alignment needed for laser beam coherence for destroying targets over long distances.

This has probably undermined every single BMD laser program in existence. (To be good enough for lasing, one needs alighnments so that the cosine of alignment angle is almost exactly 1 -- which is fairly easy -- to be good enough for aiming, alignment, already difficult for lasing - has to be thousands of times better -- probably impossible, even for a lab curiosity - certainly impossible for a high powered, tactical laser subject to system vibration.)

There are other key errors in the laser systems, too -- including a "feedback loop" in the ABL system without enough signal to function at all.

Whether these oversights have anything to do with a hostile takeover effort of TRW, I can only speculate -- but hostile takeovers are generally consistent with DOD policy.

The midcourse interception program that has taken up so much diplomatic space has always been vulnerable to extraordinarily easy countermeasures. This thread has reinforced points that should already have been clear. Points much of the technical community has long insisted on. It costs perhaps a ten thousandth as much to defeat the system as it costs to build it. Perhaps much less. Some facts are based on physics of the sending, reflection, and recieving of electromagnetic radiation (light, radio waves, or any other) are now well known, and inescapable.

Arguments on this thread recently have favored BMD as psychological warfare -- as bluff. In my view, the bluff is grotesquely more expensive than can be justified -- and fools almost no one, any more, but the American public.

lchic - 07:09pm Feb 27, 2002 EST (#11897 of 11906)

Bluff is associated with BLIND MEN!

almarst-2001 - 09:56pm Feb 27, 2002 EST (#11898 of 11906)

Americans would not settle down. There is another scandal being raised now, so short after the statement from the American president pertaining to the establishment of a special structure in the American administration for the foreign political propaganda. This time George Bush announced that the USA was establishing the new state radio station to broadcast in the Arab countries. Bush said that on Monday after he had visited the Voice of American headquarters - http://english.pravda.ru/main/2002/02/26/26669.html

almarst-2001 - 10:35pm Feb 27, 2002 EST (#11899 of 11906)

http://english.pravda.ru/main/2002/02/26/26654.html

In London, Tony Blair’s press campaign goes into top gear to try to convince an unconvinced population that a military strike against Iraq is justified. It is claimed in the Observer that there is documentary evidence that the regime of Saddam Hussein has a rudimentary nuclear programme, which includes “dirty bombs”. These are bombs charged with radioactivity, which are not able to produce nuclear fission but which would spread poisonous radioactive particles over a wide area.

Meanwhile Tony Blair is compiling a list of alleged terrorist links with Baghdad in attempt to convince his country, and his party, that an attack on Iraq is necessary. In a recent opinion poll, 86% of labour Members of Parliament declared themselves to be against such an attack, seven per cent were undecided and only 8% in favour.

Asked if they agreed to US military forces using British bases for a strike on Iraq, 78% of the MPs said “No” while only 18% agreed. Downing Street made its future policy on Iraq clear through a spokesperson: “We have always made clear that we share the United States’ determination to continue the war against terrorism. We share their concerns about Baghdad’s support for terrorism and its development of weapons of mass destruction. The best way forward is through close consultation with our allies, including the United States”.

rshow55 - 10:58pm Feb 27, 2002 EST (#11900 of 11906)

"The best way forward is through close consultation with our allies, including the United States”.

That sounds good to me -- if the consultations are respectful of facts, and of such a nature that the actions can be justified.

I liked the last line from http://english.pravda.ru/main/2002/02/26/26654.html

"At a time when the notion of diplomacy is being pushed aside, it would appear that the world’s diplomats have much to do, if they do not want to become redundant."

rshow55 - 11:02pm Feb 27, 2002 EST (#11901 of 11906)

It is important that diplomacy, and the rule of reason, not be redundant.

But where weapons of mass destruction are in question, force can have a reasonable role to play, as well.

I do not think that Hussien has a "right" to weapons of mass destruction.

We need to make the world safer -- not make mass murder easier.

In a complicated world, it is important to count.

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