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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?

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

wrcooper - 12:45pm Oct 14, 2003 EST (# 14986 of 14994)

jorian319

Ha! WTF do you think you're doing on this bloody forum?

Let me explain it for you. Every single one of us sorry bastards is wasting precious time, addicted to a 24/7 cyber college dorm bull session, using rationales like "entertainment" (gisterme) or "saving the world" (rshow55) or "continuing education" (mine) or "laughing at the human comedy" (yours, I suspect). But the truth is that all of us are simply stuck in a rut, spinning our wheels, with our fingers glued to our mouses (mice?), unable to budge. Showalter could have written six PhD dissertations and 12 books by now with the amount of effort he's expended on these forums; I'd set my own bar at about two books. How about you?

Hey, dudes, this is not productive "work". If it ain't fun, then it's nothing. A-B-S-O-L-U-T-E-L-Y nothing!!! So stop taking it so bloody seriously. Admit you're a poor addicted sot and take whatever meager enjoyment you can from your drug of choice.

Oh, I know. This post will elicit a flaming firestorm of protest. Speak you yourself, Cooper! Ya da ya da ya da. But, hey, I'm smarter than you, and I know better, you besotted bloggers. What I say is always true, and what you say is always not. Get used to it. Bow down and kiss my digitals.

Oh, and by the way, lest anybody think this post is off-topic, I think Bush's missile defense system sucks. It's dumb. It's a waste of money, and anybody who disagrees with with me is dumb and stupid and/or insane. Got it? Good.

bluestar23 - 12:52pm Oct 14, 2003 EST (# 14987 of 14994)

Cooper:

"because the threat it allegedly guards against is not a massive pre-emptive first strike by a superpower,..."

Yes, at this stage, but wouldn't even a country capable of a large firststrike (Russia) be very concerned about a possibly much-expanded MD in the future? One with perhaps hundreds of MD rockets, thousands....that would degrade even a massive strike so severely that one could no longer be sure of its "counterforce" efficacy...thereby rendering one vulnerable to a devastating second strike anyway. So in my book MD is a threat to large strikes down the road somewhat...

bluestar23 - 01:05pm Oct 14, 2003 EST (# 14988 of 14994)

Cooper:

"Our adversaries will no doubt either add to their arsenals or else invest h eavily in technology to defeat our countermeasures."

This argument is constantly made, of course, and is the tried-and-true conversation piece of any anti-MD'er. To begin with...this argument must itself be subjected to the same analysis it demands of its opponent, something which is rarely mentioned.

No doubt some response to MD may be weighed by some nations. How one could actually define their level of anti-MD arsenal building within an arsenal that always naturally grows for strategic reasons..? All nations build better and more rockets over time. They have already strained their Third-World resources to the limit (one must imagine) on these projects....it is not reasonable to believe that China or India could sudenly boost their space programs to include the hundreds of new rockets to defeat MD. Other countermeasures, equally difficult or impossible to manufacture, would not be allowed to take the place of the basic rocket programs that confer such high status in the third world.

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