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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 - 11:09am Jun 8, 2003 EST (# 12401 of 12412)
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.

(#26 http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7a163/25 08:26pm Sep 27, 2000 BST seems worth repeating. It recounts things D.D. Eisenhower discussed with me in copious tactical detail. At the time I was working to increase US understanding of tactics, perhaps with some success.

"After the almost unbelievable agony and sacrifice Russia endured during World War II, The Soviet Union found itself facing American troops, actively prepared to use atomic weapons against the Soviets. These American soldiers had taken in many German war criminals (at this point, the Russians considered all German soldiers who had fought in Russia as war criminals) and used these Germans as thoroughly effective military teachers.

"So, with almost no time to relax, the victorious Soviets found that they faced a new enemy - Americans fully trained in all the tactics the Nazi Germans had actually used with success against them. Somehow the Germans had quickly become American friends. The Soviet Union, which bore the disproportionate burden of World War II, was the new enemy.

"There were reasons that the Americans acted as they did, including very good pragmatic military reasons. But this was a wrenching experience for the Soviets, whether one happens to like them, and everything they did, or not.

The Germans had a main tactical message for the Americans. It was that Russian soldiers were very brave , hated to lie , and didn't dissemble well.

When you threatened Russians, they'd practially always fight. So, if you threatened effectively and then stepped back into a tactical defensive position, you could butcher them as they charged you. The Germans had done a great deal of this during their time in Russia, and it had worked well for them. Most Russians died attacking Germans in tactically defensive positions (sometimes tactically defensive positions fashioned in seconds). Russians charged into well watched killing zones set up by Germans, and many more Russians than Germans died in the conflict, because of this pattern, which persisted at the tactical level all through the war.

Although training can mask this, Russians, at the level of culture, are very brave, and not quick tactical dissemblers. Which made it relatively easy for the Germans, who were skilled and carefully disciplined military liars, to kill them.

American battle plans depended on this knowledge, all through the Cold War.

The key thing to know, fighting a Russian, was how b brave the Russians usually were, and therefore how vulnerable to a force that could switch positions quickly, and take them down in order.

Our combined conventional, nuclear, and psychological posture toward the Soviets evolved assuming these things that the German officers had learned so well, and taught us so carefully.

For all the reasons one can understand, it remains very sad that the nation which, more than any other, saved the world from Nazi domination became our enemy so quickly, and hostility and distrust between our countries escalated so rapidly and implacably.

No matter how terrible the Soviet system was, no matter how monstrous Stalin was, no matter how ugly the Gulag was, no matter how easy it is to describe the Soviets, from a distance, as "the bad guys" and the Americans, from a distance as "the good guys" it remains true that our two countries, and generally subordinate allies, were in a continous standoff, without territorial change, for over forty years. All this time, we were posturing to each other, as militaries do, the war of words was continuous, and military deceptions were accumulating. Almost all this time, though there were switches of forces, and therefore exceptions, and though details were complicated, we were in a primarily offensive posture, with superior armaments, and the Soviet Union was in a primarily defensive posture, and usually outgunned. Our own pe

rshow55 - 11:14am Jun 8, 2003 EST (# 12402 of 12412)
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.

. . we were in a primarily offensive posture, with superior armaments, and the Soviet Union was in a primarily defensive posture, and usually outgunned. Our own people weren't told this. Our politicians may not have appreciated this, or been in much control of our core military decisions vis a vis the Soviets. But this was how it was.

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fredmoore http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.vfuUbcLye1A.952614@.f28e622/14034 asked if I could go back to 1938 - and talk to someone I might actually find a way to get to - who I'd choose. On reflection, it would have been somebody influential in Russian tactics - if I could get that message across. Though other suggestions in http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.vfuUbcLye1A.952614@.f28e622/14034 would be interesting, too.

What about doing something about terrible risks and tragedies that we face, and that are happening, today?

Sometimes I despair, but other times I'm hopeful.

If the New York Times and other great newspapers, perhaps in the US but certainly internationally, cooperated to do some checking - and some setting out of imporant facts and relations - the world would be a much, much safer place.

The Iraqi war needs to be put on the record, with facts clear. The whole Cold War (which should be over) needs that too.

It wouldn't be "technically" difficult - but some support from leaders of nation states - and some foundation support might be necessary to get that job done.

Courage would be required, too. But "the average reader of The New York Times" would be proud to see it happen - and the people on the paper, for the most part, would be, too.

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New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense