New York Times on the Web Forums Science

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?

rshowalter - 07:09pm Apr 24, 2001 EST (#2562 of 2567)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

possumdag 4/24/01 7:02pm that sound right to me. Military forces need, for compelling reasons, to show more self restraint, and discipline, than the Russians are reported as showing. And elementary fairness, too. Otherwise, the only reasonable objective for military action is impossible. That objective has to be setting up the conditions for workable, peaceful civil relations, since extermination is not usually possible and is so very undesirable.

rshowalter - 07:47pm Apr 24, 2001 EST (#2563 of 2567)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Who Built the H-Bomb? Debate Revives by WILLIAM J. BROAD http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/24/science/24TELL.html lead story, SCIENCE TIMES today was a piece I was VERY glad to see.

I've been saying something that seems inescapable to me and many others.

" Missile Defense, as it has been sold, and in any form that can reasonably be proposed, in any technically examinable detail, is a fake, a shuck, in Menken's phrase "as devoid of merit as a herringfish is of fur."

This is somehow unpersuasive to many people, including some motivated people on the right wing of the republican party. One can ask:

" How could such a thing happen? How could such a wrong idea come to be accepted? Is such a mistake possible? Is such corruption possible?"

Broad's story illustrates a good reason, connected to much detail, why it IS possible.

The "Star Wars" idea is the brain child of Edward Teller -- darling of the radical right -- "Dr. Strangelove himself." It was an idea that came to Teller after Teller was subjected to very heavy emotional stress, and felt a need for a redemptive solution.

The heavy emotional stress can't reasonably be doubted.

. What would it do to YOU, and your motivations, if you were depicted, in a way obvious to you and everybody you knew, as the madman in Dr. Strangelove?

It is easy enough to see how Teller would want missile defense to be practical. But the issues that would make it practical are far away from any expertise Teller ever demonstrated -- matters of control theory, and details of engineering.

rshowalter - 07:49pm Apr 24, 2001 EST (#2564 of 2567)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

The "missile defense" idea has never had solid engineering backing that can stand up to cross-examination -- but there have been people who would believe anything Edward Teller said -- and Teller pushed this idea hard.

And some very motivated (and, somehow, very well funded) idealogs backed the idea hard. And have done so for many years. Sometimes backed by organized academic support.

( I spent a good deal of time, years ago, reviewing the output of philosophers in Germany under the Nazis -- some academics, I concluded, could twist their conclusions behind anything that gave them money and a social place.)

I Teller, as much as anyone alive, was able to fend off checking -- and, as Broad's article makes clear, Teller is a man whose balance and personal honor has been often and persuasively questioned.

I'm grateful for Broad's piece, and the connections it opens up. Knowing Teller's involvement makes it easier to believe that the "missile shield" idea, however beautiful it might be in terms of the assumptions James Dao sets out in "Please Do Not Disturb us With Bombs" (Week in Review, p 18 Feb 11, 2001) is nonetheless without technical foundation.

The summary to Broad's piece tells a lot about the degree to which even the most basic things about nuclear weapons have been undetermined and hidden:

" Historians are grappling with a surprising twist to a dispute that has simmered for decades: Who should get credit for designing the H-bomb?

At the level of logic, as human beings use logic when they must act -- Broad makes a fine contribution to the discourse on missile defense -- explaining important things about how this strange idea originated, and came to have a following.

I'll speak of it some more, especially about the details it opens up. But first I'll say some things about what Dawn Riley and I are trying to do in this thread.

(3 following messages)

New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense