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 - 08:55pm Apr 27, 2001 EST (#2677 of 2681)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

A key thing about the '72 anti-missile treaty was that it was a technical escalation by the Americans -- on the presumption that the ability to actually hit missiles was "just around the corner."

"Just around the corner" meant that the mysterious mathematical gap between what animals could do, and what man-made servomechanisms could do, was going to be jumped.

At the level of tactical air, and anti-aircraft (air to air and ground to air missiles) the country that jumped that gap would have total air superiority. Probably just by retrofitting existing missiles with circuits built to a corrected differential equation.

Essentially, that jump was expected, by both sides, to be able to totally neutralize the air force of the side that didn't have it.

The anti-missile treaty, and the gut-wrenching negotiations involved with it, were in large part an exercise to indicate that we were "close" to jumping that gap.

Some of the background to the technical issues involved can be found on a paper I've had on the internet for years -- and expected to be read by the US -- http://www.wisc.edu/rshowalt/pap2 .

rshowalter - 08:56pm Apr 27, 2001 EST (#2678 of 2681)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Here's a piece of this paper -- that I put in plain sight, expecting it (and me) to be picked up, per instructions:

Polynomials are basic. People operating at the conscious, cultural level compute or define most functions above arithmetic by means of polynomials or infinite polynomial series. The existence of polynomial-manipulating systems in animals has long seemed likely. From an engineering perspective, it is hard to think about the performance of a bat, a bird, a baseball player, a ballerina, or a car-driving academic without concluding that these beings solve complicated systems of polynomial equations, and often solve these polynomial systems with stunning speed and accuracy.

rshowalter - 09:03pm Apr 27, 2001 EST (#2679 of 2681)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

That wouldn't have made an anti-missile system practical -- though it was a big step. The other (and with current number crunching, more basic and bigger) step has been on the NYT "Pi in the Sky" forum (now defunct) and elsewhere, also in plain sight, also (mostly) per instructions, as I attempted (per instructions)to "come in through THE NEW YORK TIMES" as William Casey had instructed me to do.

My judgement, now, is that even with all the math well done, because of decoying and operational problems, an ABM system will always be defeatable

(there are too many ways to decoy, and jive -- and the cost of any failure is too great to accept.)

But much better anti-aircraft, and enough controls so that shooting down incoming "world killing" asteroids -- that ought to be possible.

Plus a lot of fancy engineering -- including, and this is closest to my heart -- optimal design, and manufacturing engineering.

rshowalter - 09:05pm Apr 27, 2001 EST (#2680 of 2681)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

I'm knocking off for the night.

We ought to take nuclear weapons down -- before they kill us -- the systems are far less stable, and less well controlled than people think.

Nobody but crazies wants to use nukes anyway.

And there are ways to control the crazies well enough for us to ALL be safer than now.

Let me repeat some suggestions I made on September 25th.

rshowalter - 09:08pm Apr 27, 2001 EST (#2681 of 2681)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

rshowalt 9/25/00 7:32am
rshowalt 9/25/00 7:33am
rshowalt 9/25/00 7:35am
rshowalt 9/25/00 7:36am

New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense