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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.

lchic - 08:11am Jul 23, 2002 EST (#3234 of 3339)

lchic 7/17/02 9:50pm

rshowalt - 10:13am Jul 23, 2002 EST (#3235 of 3339)

If you search lchic , and look at the links she cites . . . what a treasure !

Mazza asks for facts - - have to go back and do some searching - there are a lot of them back there. Mazza, what facts would convince you that specific MD programs can't be made to work, or aren't worth doing. Are there any such facts?

I'd like a response. Also would like to point out that the procedures set out in MD1076-1077 rshow55 4/4/02 1:17pm would permit closure , where this thread format, which is great for working out arguments to be organized and condensed later , isn't built for closure.

mazza9 - 11:20am Jul 23, 2002 EST (#3236 of 3339)
"Quae cum ita sunt" Caesar's Gallic Commentaries

Robert:

You use the word CAN'T with great aplomb. You never cite facts to support your OPINION! The BMD that was deployed in North Dakota to defend the Minot and Grand Forks missile fields did work. It scared the heck our of the Soviet Union and they were very willing to negotiate it away since their Galosh system would only protect Moscow. They traded one city for 300 Minuteman missiles. It was a good step for the time but that proves, to me, that BMD works.

I was the base Frequency Manager for Minot AFB and was privy to many of the operatonal aspects of that system.

I don't believe that youknow what you're talkin' about.

LouMazza

rshowalt - 12:19pm Jul 23, 2002 EST (#3237 of 3339)

mazza9 7/23/02 11:20am

"The BMD that was deployed in North Dakota to defend the Minot and Grand Forks missile fields did work. It scared the heck our of the Soviet Union . . .

Yes, in that psychological warfare sense, that old BMD system did "work."

(It did have key technical problems - relying as it did on nukes to knock out incoming warheads -- nukes that blinded the system's own radars. . . . The system was deployed for how long ---- was it 24 o4 36 hours? I forget -- a short time -- far shorter than would have been justified if people involved, high up, weren't "sending a message" about the system.)

But yes, as psychological warfare, missile defense was an effective part of our overall cold war strategy -- which was to get the Russians so afraid, and keep them so afraid, that they'd devote more resources than they sustainably could to military matters -- so that their system would collapse. As eventually it did.

A major part of the strategy of terrorizing the Russians -- a major reason that the Russians were scared of BMD was that they knew that, in order for BMD to make sense . we had to have a breakthrough.

Threats of that "breakthrough" were something I was involved with -- that led to a difference of opinion. (MD2116 rshow55 5/9/02 9:34am . . indented paragraph 3.

How does the psychological warfare help NOW ? Is the cost even remotely justified?

Who is being fooled? Just the American taxpayer?

No Need To Lie Hiding The Truth About 'Star Wars' http://www.tompaine.com/op_ads/opad.cfm/ID/5241

MD438 rshow55 3/13/02 1:42pm

The idea that "Star Wars is worthwhile, even though it is just a bluff" is dangerous. Lies are unstable . . . we have to do better than that.

rshowalt - 12:56pm Jul 23, 2002 EST (#3238 of 3339)

MD224 rshow55 3/5/02 4:34pm reads as follows:

MD198 rshow55 3/4/02 9:46am ... MD199 lchic 3/4/02 12:59pm MD200 rshow55 3/4/02 2:17pm

The more one looks at the technical situation on "missile defense" -- the clearer it is that it is nothing but a waste, tactically. Countermeasures certain to defeat it, or reduce its chances of a hit to a negligible value, may cost as little as a millionth of the cost of the system itself.

Though, as Stephen Weinberg points out in Can Missile Defense Work? http://www.nybooks.com/articles/15132 The New York Review of Books February 14, 2002 .. the system might work as a stunt. . The piece, which does not treat countermeasures very extensively, and therefore draws relatively "optimistic" conclusions about feasility nevertheless ends

" . . In seeking to deploy a national missile defense aimed at an implausible threat, a defense that would have dubious effectiveness against even that threat, and that on balance would harm our security more than it helps it, the Bush administration seems to be pursuing a pure rather than applied missile defense— a missile defense that is undertaken for its own sake, rather than for any application it may have in defending our country." (emphasis added.)

We have fictions here - - linked to circumstances that are dangerous, and not in the interest of the United States considered as a nation.

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