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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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steinkoenig - 12:07pm Jul 11, 2000 EST (#172 of 11858)

frankmz:

Hogwash! A system that doesn't work is not insurance. All any nation has to do to defeat a missile defence system is to build enough missiles to overwhelm the system.

Not even that, I think. The very nature of the decoy principle is to create cheap obfuscations to confuse even our sophisticated deep resolution radar schemes. I wouldn't imagine that it would be all that hard to mimic the metal skin of a warhead and characteristic EM signatures of the detonation circuitry. My understanding of our current NMD scheme is that the KKV itself has onboard electronics resembling a tweaked up guided missile. The problem is one of both speed and information here. At the high velocities necessary to hit a warhead at reentry, the generating the computing speed necessary to make course corrections alone is a feat. The phrase "hitting a bullet with a bullet" fits in here. I feel that we have probably come that far in ABM technology after our experiences with the Patriot, Arrow, etc.

What isn't being hit on is the difficulty in determining between a decoy, an actual warhead, and another KKV and making corresponding course corrections in the fractions of a second after the KKV onboard computer locks on to target. That's a rather sophisticated task, even for us. It means that we have developed rather sophisticated mass/radiation/EM sensors both small enough to fit in the nosecone of a missile and rugged enough to survive the G forces necessary for course corrections at velocities needed to match a MIRV warhead at reentry. It means that we have developed microcontrollers fast enough to parse the information from these sensors and make course corrections with incredibly slim margins of error in this snapshot of time. The tests demonstrate that we haven't done this yet. I seriously doubt that we're anywhere near it.

This doesn't mean that we won't get there after the gov't has pumped half a trillion into this project and harvested H1-Bs from all four corners of the globe to collectively smack their heads against our little math problem. I mean, I have patriotic faith that America can solve even the unsolvable. We can split the atom, put a man on the moon, and master the business cycle- but an NMD is on the level of all these things.

The very existence of a missile defence system promotes an arms race

Well, after we have built and successfully tested the thing, then we can worry about the technology leaking into the wrong hands. However, given America today, this has probably already happened and is happening as we speak. Expect the Chinese to unveil their NMD 10 years after we have built ours, maybe less.

This doesn't mean that having the first NMD won't be a praiseworthy feat- like being the first to split the atom or land on the moon. I would rather have a manned mission to Mars and simply ban nuclear weapons outright. Our conventional military is the best trained and most technologically advanced in the world as it is, so it would be an arrangement which would ultimately benefit us.

so we have spent hundreds of billions of dollars and still would not have a defence against an even bigger threat than existed to begin with!

Well, yes, there's also the additional expenditures necessary to maintain a tight enough technological "edge" on our end. The old issue of it being easier to destroy than create, to obfuscate than detect. By virtue of the American mission in the world, our enemies will always have this advantage in the NMD arena and other areas. It all comes back to MAD eventually (is this, perhaps, too fatalistic an assessment?).

frankmz - 06:17pm Jul 12, 2000 EST (#173 of 11858)

Although I touched on this in a previous post, I want to emphasize once again the role of complexity .

In any system, the more complex the system, the greater the likelihood of failure. Any complex comnputer system is prone to bugs. A missile defence system is very complex . The likelihood of failure in a very complex system is great.

Especially since this system cannot be tested under real-world conditions and must work right the first time.

armel7 - 03:09pm Jul 13, 2000 EST (#174 of 11858)
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jjones34b - 08:36pm Jul 13, 2000 EST (#175 of 11858)
GW Bush - How dumb is TOO dumb?

This latest test failure, which came as no suprise to anyone, is still more proof of our BMD technology's basic inadequacy. Ballistic missile defense is and will remain in the forseeable future nothing more than a military-industrial wet dream. To believe that we'll gain even a microscopic increase in our security by spending $60 Billion (with a "B" - have they no shame?) is precisely the type of thinking that gave the French their Maginot line and all its attendant consequences. And BMD is the cruelest of hoaxes because it's advocates won't see it's flawed reality until too late. Further, the Republicans' wild-eyed assertions of nuclear-armed troglodytes who are just itching to be destroyed in order to knock down the Statue of Liberty is nothing but leftover cold war hysteria. Or worse, it's a cynical attempt to play their "strong on defense" card before an election.

BMD is technologically and economically unfeasible. Perhaps the Air Force's airborne laser will be workable. But anti-missile missiles are definitly not that answer. Maybe in another ten, twenty, or thirty years. But for now, the war-headed Repubs are wetting their pants to throw $60 Billion of our money down a rathole. They should take a pill and try to figure out how to raise our schools' math scores. If they had done that twenty years ago, we could've now had a large enough group of domestic scientists (domestic, unlike too many of the ones working at Los Alamos) to produce their shiny new war toys.

evenbetta - 10:09am Jul 14, 2000 EST (#176 of 11858)

Americans (I being one) on this forum are way way to into the technology aspect of this debate. It comes as no suprise being this is a nation whose decision to use electricity in capital punishment was a worldwide display of technological prowlness,uniqueness and corperate competition The discussion above is really not about 'technology'. That debate is a lost one. I'm sure if we pump enough tax dollars into this dog and as time goes by-eventually he will bark. This discussion is about Nuclear Utilization Theory.How ones nations actions can destroy worldwide detterence for everyone else. So talking about 'technology'-is great for the layperson- but it really does not go into why this system offsets worldwide stability.

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