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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 - 07:14pm Dec 20, 2002 EST (# 6863 of 6897)
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.

I thought The Secret Life of Henry Kissinger by NEAL POLLACK http://nytimes.com/2002/12/03/opinion/03POLL.html was a work of art, and funny, but the end of it gave me a little pause.

I've been interested in matters mathematical (or interfacial) myself. And was going to cite a link, that worked a few hours ago - to establish that record - a link I set out in The Worlds Nicest Equation ? #793 http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee81376/815 that worked when #793 was posted, but that has been removed from my web site:

http://www.mrshowalter.net/bhmath

Perhaps I can put it on at a later time.

Had I not been in an awkward position that Bill Casey put me in, some of the math issues involved might have resolved more cleanly. I'm proud of what was at http://www.mrshowalter.net/bhmath , and think it was a credit to The New York Times , as well.

Even so, the problems associated with the work, and its removal, seem to me to indicate that, even in the United States, there are awkwardnesses and inflexibilties that might be subject to improvement.

gisterme - 07:25pm Dec 20, 2002 EST (# 6864 of 6897)

wrcooper 12/17/02 12:44pm

"...Why would the U.S. decide to deploy a system that has not proven itself in tests to be ready for deployment? This makes no sense to me..."

Perhaps the US government knows more about the threat than we do. If I were the president and considering all the intellegence assets the go with said position became convinced that the United States is really threatened then it would be my duty to mitigate that threat to the maximum extent possible as quickly as possible.

Perhaps the president doesn't want to bear the responsibility for allowing the US to be sucker-punched again. Last time he had an excuse...he hadn't been there long enough to have had much influence on events that were already in motion and had built great inertia during his predecessor's term. The more time that goes by, the less ability president Bush will have to lay such blame. Perhaps that's why he's getting on the stick with the MD deployment.

Isn't it better to duck anyway when an expected punch is not thrown than to not duck when it is? Wouldn't it be harder to explain to those who bet on you why you didn't duck than why you did?

Another point...much of the long-lead ground-support infrastrucre stuff needed for the MD system is not the part that's being tested. It's not untried technology. That's stuff that can be prepared while de-bugging of the missiles themselves continues. So all an early-deployment decision might mean is that flight test results to date are encouraging enough to instill confidence that building the ground support bases concurrently with completion of the missile test/development program will not be a waste.

Five out of eight. Still not bad. Would we be heart-broken if five out of eight nuclear-armed missiles launched at us were destroyed? Of course we would; that would mean that three places got nuked. We would mourn for the three lost but we would also rejoice for the five saved. Especially in the saved places.

rshow55 - 07:42pm Dec 20, 2002 EST (# 6865 of 6897)
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.

If those are really the odds - then that would be an entirely reasonable decision.

This isn't the best of all possible worlds.

Gisterme , unless I'm stopped, I'm going to get the information someone deleted from http://www.mrshowalter.net/bhmath back up on the web.

There are some things that merit restriction - and it was only my "hallucination" that you're a ranking official that got me to ( finally ) post rshow55 10/3/02 8:14am and posting connected to http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7a163/364

Working very hard, and following Casey's instructions - it ought to have been possible for me to get the points across that were set out at length on a NYT Science Forum in 1998 (and deleted within the last few hours from http://www.mrshowalter.net/bhmath ). Points that ought not to have reasonably been classified or restricted. But points that did require me to be permitted to speak - directly and face to face - to someone capable of "navigating the system" when an exceptional circumstance had to be dealt with.

Had that been possible - I think a lot of things since 1998 might have gone better.

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