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Missile Defense

Russian military leaders have expressed concern about US plans for a national missile defense system. Will defense technology be limited by possibilities for a strategic imbalance? Is this just SDI all over again?

sumofallfears - 03:21pm Mar 29, 2001 EST (#1714 of 1732)

showalter - 02:58pm Mar 29, 2001 EST (#1713 of 1713)

All you do is blither to nobody all day long. Most of your rants are pointless and incorrect. Why not post one thing and wait for others to take an interest in your ranting. If nobody does, maybe you should consider why.

rshowalter - 04:54pm Mar 29, 2001 EST (#1715 of 1732)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

lunarchick notices. Almarst, who posts very pointed, factual, tightly argued posts, notices. All the same, I haven't responded to some posts.

What is pointless, and what is incorrect?

rshowalter - 04:54pm Mar 29, 2001 EST (#1716 of 1732)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Here's a very good post

eurocore 3/28/01 8:29pm a guy who seems to have used his real name, with a real emainl contact said something sensible.

"Use of a laser seems unlikely to me. You'd have to heat part of the structure to a sufficient degree to melt the metal or scramble the electronics within.

. . . . . .

"I'd be very interested if an economically feasible laser plan could be created to prevent relatively large numbers of (slightly altered) ICBMs arriving at there targets. I'd be surprised (currently), if one missile was shot down given the above analysis!

Me too - - - And you only BEGAN to list the number of possible things that might go wrong, or complicate matters.

rshowalter - 05:03pm Mar 29, 2001 EST (#1717 of 1732)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

based on past experience, I find myself inclined, perhaps unfairly, to neglect dirac.

He says things, for instance that because Newtonian mechanics is correct, it is easy to get trajectories, from radar data, to the accuracy needed, that are wildly wrong, for field equipment. ---- - -

But sumofallfears made some very good points, and I should have waited for him, and responded. I'm going back and reading them again.

lunarchick - 06:16pm Mar 29, 2001 EST (#1718 of 1732)
lunarchick@www.com

sumo_fall_fears reading from the same page is communicatively important ... did you read the thread through from at least the beginning of March (?) ... i'd have real fears regarding nuclear terrors ... worse that getting whopped in the intimate Sumo ring ... have you been to the far-east, or is it SkyTv that took your fancy re combat sports .... remember there is the physical-technical side to weapons of death .. and attitional to this is the fact that every death from such a weapon shows a communicative 'failure' ..... just the same as one would regard a country that dispensed with the death penalty as being far, far, far in advance of one that pushed the death score board tally in front of voters ... did I say America? ... perhaps I just did!

& ps does 'blither_ing' make you British .. we Aussies see Poms 'wingers' .. i suppose it's all much the same thing .. :)

eurocore - 06:23pm Mar 29, 2001 EST (#1719 of 1732)

>Use of a laser seems unlikely to me. You'd have >>to heat part of the structure to a sufficient >>degree to melt the metal or scramble the >>electronics within.

We just sold a system to Israel that will do >just that. Shoot down a jet or non-ICBM rocket >at 10 km. It takes about 10 seconds to do the >job.

Do exactly that? I haven't seen any reports that current laser technology could shoot down any object at 10km. You're probably right - I didn't know.

>As the object is fast moving through a cooling >>airstream,

Which in no way has the ability to cool it down. >Look at the very fast jets. They cook red hot. >The cool air has no effect.

On the air contact faces of the plane this is absolutely true (the air's relative kinetic energy means the effective temperature is high), but surely the large wings will be cooled by the near vacuum above the wing? I agree for a missile, cooling is impossible as the design is to be a slipstreamed as possible - I was wrong in what I said.

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