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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 - 06:12pm Jun 9, 2001 EST (#4666 of 4673)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Things have to fit together -- the relatively few, piecemeal successes you describe -- especially considering time and money spent -- aren't very impressive in terms of the system needs that a missile defense system has to fit together.

MD 4427 rshowalt 6/1/01 11:54am ... reads in part:

"For the purposes of Missile Defense, Senator Levin comes from an uncommonly sensible state -- with a culture committed to technical truth, and disciplined investigation of it, for compellind reasons. Detroit Michigan is the automotive engineering capital of the world. All through Michigan, people, both white and blue collar, deal again and again with the stark, fantastically disciplined necessitities of making and designing automobiles, where things have to fit together and mistakes are matters of life, and death, both for people and for companies.

"Michigan is, probably more than any other state, the center of the culture of "industrial discipline." It is also a place where the Society of Automotive Engineers is held in great respect.

. . .

"A nuts and bolts consideration of what the US can and cannot do in missile defense, along lines I've discussed in this thread before, with professional engineers, with their licenses and reputations on the line, dealing with issues in detail -- would go a long, long way toward exposing the current missile defense initiative for what it is.

Maybe I'd be shown wrong. But my own view is that the MD initiative is a mass of overclaims, on a matter of life and death where people should be more serious.

rshowalter - 06:12pm Jun 9, 2001 EST (#4667 of 4673)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

There's also the question of purpose and proportion.

In MD4431 rshowalt 6/1/01 12:45pm ... I asked a key question:

" gisterme , if you have any example of a head of state so irrational as to commit suicide by launching a nuclear missile attack on the US, could you set that example out? Somehow, you're reasoning by analogy, but whatever examples you have in mind, that work for you, don't occur to me.

"The administration hasn't been very successful in getting other nations to agree that the risk you seem so concerned with even exists.

. . . .

"I'd like examples, based on real people under real circumstances, that support your position.

"Do I think there are terrorist dangers -- and dangers from hatred? Sure. But the Bush administration is magnifying them, it seems to me.

"As for the risk of a rogue nation nuclear missile attack on the US -- I don't see any REASON to think it exists. Except in the sense that anything anyone cares to "talk about" exists in the realm of ideas.

gisterme , much engaged in answering questions here, didn't adress the point. It remains a core question.

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