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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 - 09:00am Jun 4, 2003 EST (# 12299 of 12303)
Can we do a better job of finding truth? YES. Click "rshow55" for some things Lchic and I have done and worked for on this thread.

Here is a massive fact - and the basis of a massive contradiction-conflict that needs better exception handling than we have. The fact is set out in a quote is from Bill Weiss, speaking as the retired CEO of Ameritech - quoted in 1997 in The Leadership Engine by Noel M. Tichy - Harper Business - and it is from the leader of a company that has done disastrously badly. It is both true and false. - Useful and dangerous.

"The best way to get people to accept the need for change is to not give them a choice. The organization has to know that there is a leader at the top who has made up his mind, that he is surrounded by leaders who have made up their minds, and that they're going to drive forward no matter what."

Dwight D. Eisenhower knew a great deal about this "best way" of getting action. He also knew its limitations. And worried about those limitations - knowing that he often didn't have answers that he needed for good action.

If I've been indirect on this thread (and, looking back at the time I've spent on this thread, I sometimes bitterly regret not having been more direct) - I've acted on the advice - and with a sense of the problems and limits - that Eisenhower faced, and that Casey later faced.

As time has passed, I've been a little less indirect - and for me it was a big step when I named Eisenhower. I'd been forbidden to do so - had promised not to do so. But it was time. I think Eisenhower and Casey would both have understood and approved of my decision, and roughly approved of its timing.

A "motto" from the old 1950's Disney series "Davy Crockett" counts here.

" Be sure you're right. Then go ahead."

The job of figuring out what to do is different from the job of executing large scale effective action. In some ways, the jobs are "contradictory" jobs.

Both jobs need to be done well.

You need different people, different organizations, different rules for the different jobs - if they are to be done well. And systems of exception handling.

Sometimes it seems to me that this thread has been a disaster - other times I step back, and feel that it has gone very, very well. Problem is, I can't predict the future. But just now, it seems to me that things are consistent with me keeping my promises.

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