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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?

rshowalter - 10:39am Jun 27, 2001 EST (#6130 of 6135)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

I can't prove that something doesn't exist beyond a wall - without getting a look. And so "we have it, but it is classified" is an answer that cannot be proven wrong, in the most direct possible ways.

Some facts are useful as guides to the possible, however. The Space Telescope, plainly a product of the digital age, and a calibration example gisterme mentions, has enough resolution to just tell the difference between a car 2000 miles away facing the telescope head on with one headlight, and a car with two headlights at a distance of 2000 miles.

Just tell the difference -- not get a clear picture -- that means just be able to tell the difference between a single blur, and two merged blurs.

(Source: Prologue The Hubble Wars by Eric Chaison )

It is useful to think of that resolution, when considering how "easy" it is to build space-based lasars capable of destroying missile warheads.

At 2000 miles, the tightness of the optics would have to be much better than the optics of the Space Telescope -- even if every aiming detail was perfect.

It is also worth asking -- how much angular resolution would a RADAR have, at 2000 miles, compared to the best possible optical system - (or Space Telescope, the highest resolution optical system that exists in the open literature.) The resolution of an electro-optical system depends on many things, but is limited by wavelength -- and radar waves are MUCH coarser than light waves. The resolution of the best radars may, therefore, be much worse than the angular resolution of Space Telescope.

Unless that radar resolution is much better, rather than much worse, aiming the lasar would be a problem for a lasar based anti-missile weapon, even if the lasar had perfect optics -- though one might argue "not an insurmountable problem" in some circles.

For boost phase, the problems with air diffraction add to the difficulties.

Impossible? Can't prove it. But it is very likely indeed that I can't do a 1/4 squat with 4,350 lbs. Even with hard work, and application -- that would be too much to expect of me. Some things may be too much to expect of the engineers and scientists in classified labs, for analogous reasons.

There are other problems with the notion that "space based weapons" are a panacea as well.

There's more to say about the great new powers, and old limitations, of our digital age. But the physical laws themselves, and the properties of physical materials and waves available, don't change when measurement systems and controls shift from digital to analog.

rshowalter - 10:45am Jun 27, 2001 EST (#6131 of 6135)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

However, the main stumper in "smart weapons" development over the last decade hasn't been based on physical laws -- and hasn't been helped much by the HUGE increase in computational power that has occurred over this last decade.

The main stumper has happened because the AI community funded by the military came up against a mathematical constraint that it was clearly warned against, ignored the warning -- and has been trying to make big progress along a line of work where big progress is provably impossible -- for a decade.

If checking had been morally forcing within that community -- the US would have better weapons today -- and a less frustrated and corrupted cadre of classified researchers, as well.

midmoon - 11:24am Jun 27, 2001 EST (#6132 of 6135)

almarst wrote:

" As I mentioned above, in my view, NAZISM was used as an ideology to unify the nation for the war. In a same way like any other ideology could. It was horrible. But was it more horrable then the war US waged against Vietnam? Using the anti-communist ideology. This time. Any war should be prevented. "

Natzism was a great threat to the free democracy and the communism was,too.

Natism was used as an ideology to unify the nation and the communism,too.

The major difference between the German Natzism and the Russian communism was that the former was based on racism(the superiority of the Arians) and the latter on nationalism.

The common feature of these two ideologies could be found from the apparent historical fact that both were merciless autocracy not going without the sacrifices and bloods of the mankind,the Jewish's for the former,the Russian's and East European's for the latter.

Both ideologies are the fatal enemies of the free democracy.

As for the Vietnam war,the horroble thing was that the US could not defeat the Vietcong.

The US must have won the war so long as it had involved.

As Hobart Rowen cited, it was the self inflected wounds for the US.

If it had been otherwise,the these day's rouge nations can not have any thought to dare to the US as we see now.

almarst! Why should the US let the NATO allies to give money to Russia for its junk missile technology ?

It does sound not so good a idea.Doesn't it?

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