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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 - 04:06pm Sep 25, 2002 EST (# 4530 of 4536)
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.

What Nash's 'Beautiful Mind' Really Accomplished By DANIEL A. GRECH, Special to The Times http://www.latimes.com/la-032202nash.story includes this:

"But price theory can't explain the abundant real-world examples of market inefficiency. Nash approached this problem by reformulating economics as a game.

"To most people, a game is a way to while away a rainy afternoon. But to mathematicians, a game is not simply chess or poker, but any conflict situation that forces participants to develop a strategy to accomplish a goal.

Nash approached the problem assuming a certain kind of "good information" in a terribly "oversimplified" and brutal world.

Real strategy and tactics were considerably different, and more "sophisticated" than Nash's math - because misinformation - psychological warfare, and deception, were central to what was actually done.

The "game" was to terrorize and exhaust the Communists into collapse. The objective of the people in control of US nuclear forces, never clearly explained to the American people, and perhaps not clearly explained to some Presidents, was not containment, or equilibrium.

The objetive was to defeat the Communists, using psychological warfare and terror, and survive while doing it.

When I learned what was actually being done, I thought it was an astonishingly risky strategy. I refused to take an assigned part which I felt was wildly risky - much too likely to end the world.

I learned that we really were trying to defeat the Communists, not just contain them, after I was told to claim to have solved the key problem of ground-air and air-air missile guidance - so that missiles would be as agile target interceptors as birds or bats, and seldom miss.

Manned aircraft facing these missiles would be "militarily obsolete". Some other missiles would be, too.

If the Russians thought we had that breaktrough operational, or would have it within months, my superiors felt, that might frighten the Communists into collapse. I felt sure that what they were asking for was likely to frighten too much - and lead, through patterns I'd thought carefully about, to the end of the world.

So I refused an assignment - there was some unpleasantness -- and I found myself assigned to Bill Casey.

I set out some of the story in reference to the movie Casablanca , in PSYCHWAR, CASABLANCA, AND TERROR http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7a163/0 Especially the core story part, from posting 13 http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7a163/12 to posting 23 http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7a163/22 There is a comment in #26 that I feel some may find interesting, as well...

An illustrated script of Casablanca http://www.edict.com.hk/movies/casablanca/casablanca1.htm

One can see more details in the links connected to Bill Casey if you click : rshow55 ".

I spend most of my time form 1972-1986 working on problems of optimal invention, coupled de's. mixing, combustion, and lubrication engineering. Working to make AEA successful for me and my investors. But I did some work on the logic of peacemaking, too. A problem "on my list" was this:

Suppose people did want to take nukes down? How could it be done?

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