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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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wrcooper - 12:51pm Sep 2, 2002 EST (# 4132 of 4140)

rshow55 9/2/02 12:30pm

Well, hallelujah. That wasn't so hard, was it, Bob? Thank you. You guessed. Why couldn't you have just said that the first time I asked, instead of all this dithering and stalling around? Jeez!

Mylar balloons would be what experts have called "unsophisticated countermeasures." I would agree completely with you that their cost of development and deployment would be considerably less than the cost of building a BMD. How much less, I don't know, because you'd certainly have to figure in the cost of developing the ICBM delivery system that such an enemy would be deploying. After all, such an unsophisticated countermeasure would have to be incorporated as part of a very sophisticated and expensive weapon delivery system, right?

Now what about sophisticated countermeasures? It's not so clear that they'd be as cheap to develop and deliver. Lastly, the system described in the Coyle report is not the final system anticipated. How much evolution will have to take place in R&D to produce an "effective" system that would work as advertised under wartime conditions is not indicated. I suspect the cost would be a lot more than $32 billion, and it will take a number of speculative breakthroughs to achieve.

Once again, the point isn't really about the technical feasibility of an effective BMD system. It's about the wisdom of building it in the first place.

It isn't wise. If it worked, it would lead to geopolitical instability. And our enemies could easily employ other means of mass destruction not requiring ICBMs.

rshow55 - 01:15pm Sep 2, 2002 EST (# 4133 of 4140)
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.

wrcooper 9/2/02 12:51pm . . . in the real world, sophisticated countermeasure are the ones that work and are cost effective.

Technical feasibility certainly is a key issue - in any rational decision. There may be a number of reasons for not building MD systems - but the fact that they can't work in any sensible tactical sense is certainly one clear reason.

Money and engineering are scarce, and military decisions based on false hopes are dangerous.

What I said was that the cost of countermeasures to any given missile defense system was MUCH less than the cost of the MD system -- and my guess of 1000-a million times less was, and remains, reasonable.

Out for a while.

Thinking about Piaget, among other things. And, to some extent, how his work applies to you and Mazza.

4116-4117 rshow55 9/2/02 9:07am . . . still seems reasonable and important to me.

MD1999 rshow55 5/4/02 10:39am deals with a lot that this thread has done.

mazza9 - 04:12pm Sep 2, 2002 EST (# 4134 of 4140)
"Quae cum ita sunt" Caesar's Gallic Commentaries

lchic: You ignoramous! In the days before personal computers, there were mainframe computers which were the province of the Management Information Systems, MIS Department. As a graduate assistant in the School of Business at SMU I taught students how to "work with" the programmers in the MIS department. This was the time before Excel, Power Point or Access. The programmers did that "stuff" and the future business managers needed to know the lingo to "get a report" from the MIS Department. I taught the students how to operate mainframe terminals, operate card punch machines, and do simple BASIC and FORTRAN programming. I graded papers, worked in the computer lab, and on two occassions I proof read book galleys of MIS textbooks. I know I've dated myself but I try not to belittle and denigrate. You've shown the superior ability in this area!!!

Robert: A laser weapon has shot down a missile. Your balloon speculations would defend against terminal engagement of a warhead but the ABL and other theater weapons are boost phase weapons. During boost phase the laser weapon would not be defeated by such countermeasures since they could not be deployed. Indeed the booster plume would be an excellent heat source for initial aiming. Then the laser "bullet" would be aimed at the edge of the thrust chamber and deflect the plume causing the missile to veer off course or "blast" the engine nozzle and cause a complete malfunction of the rocket engine. Missile GO BOOM!

Cooper. To say the Al Quida can sneak a weapon into the US ignores China, North Korea, Iran and Iraq who are developing ICBMs and IRBMs. What is their intent? Who is their target? Do we preempt them? Interesting scenarios present themselves. Except for China who we can deal with diplomatically, the other regimes are lead by KOOKS!

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