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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?

smartalix - 07:37pm Jul 2, 2001 EST (#6433 of 6440)
Anyone who denies you information considers themselves your master

gisterme,

It seems you have the same deficiency in physics that dirac had.

The fact remains that you can train a laser on a target, but that pesky inverse-square law that Robert alludes to gets in the way. What do you think (or can post a source to) is the effective range of a laser powerful enough to destroy anything? The laser power diminishes in a ratio equal to the square of the distance. That does not even take into account clouds, decoys, or the atmosphere itself.

Let's talk decoys. An aerodynamically-identical dummy is still many orders of magnitude less expensive to fabricate than a nuclear warhead. You could machine the damn things out of solid gold, and they would still be cheaper than a functional warhead. I could use a 3-MIRV rocket, with 2 dummies for every real warhead, for example, and the ABM system would have to attack every warhead as if it were the real thing.

This does not address simple laser countermeasures like coating the warhead (or the booster) with mirrors, or ablative (if you don't know what the word means, look it up) armor. How long does it take a 1-megawatt (or let's talk science fiction, a terawatt) laser to burn through an inch of titanium that is mirror-polished with an inch of armor? While it is rotating? Don't forget a missile can still rotate on its axis while moving in a straight line.

This also does not even address the fact that a "rogue" nation would not launch an international "bomb me" sign via a missile plume. I think the terrorist option has been brought up enough that I need not belabor it further.

But let's digress to the laser boost-phase countermeasure. How close would the aircraft carrying the laser need to be to the country of oorigin to assure a reasonable chance of success? what would prevent a "rogue" nation from simply assuring that all suspicious large aircraft are not patrolling its border? How accurate can an aircraft taking fire or performing evasive maneuvers fire its laser?

I am not against research, nor am I against eventual deployment as a part of a larger international anti-nuclear peace initiative. However, to deploy a system that does not work unilaterally combines arrogance with folly.

almarst-2001 - 08:04pm Jul 2, 2001 EST (#6434 of 6440)

By throwing enough money and time into the process, a lot of technical problems can be solved.

What can't be solved are the evil intentions to abuse the military advantage in a criminal matter and the "unintended" consequences of such a technical triumf.

It is my fir believe, there are plenty of evil intentions clearly visible already today. And the "unintended" consequences are not far away behind.

I think the ultimate fool is the one who believes the US will be safer with MD then without one.

By the way, you should expect more rapings of the women in Okinava. That's the price the Japan has to pay for the "protection" (just like in good old days in Chicago;)

almarst-2001 - 08:14pm Jul 2, 2001 EST (#6435 of 6440)

ferruccio0052 "Instability in the Balkans" 7/2/01 3:00pm

"Who is this US envoy James Pardew telling Macedonia that it doesn't have the right to defend itself. Typical American hypocritical scum.

The real issue with the Hague is Yugoslav sovereignty not Milosevic. Is Yugoslavia a sovereign nation or is it a US colony made dependent on aid dollars from Uncle Sam? The US is desperate to focus on Milosevic in order to hide the fact that Yugoslavia is its first colonial conquest of the new century. Yes, US colonialism is alive and well in the Balkans. It is economic exploitation that drives the political and military actions.

We will know who was behind the breakup of Yugoslavia as US companies move in."

almarst-2001 - 08:19pm Jul 2, 2001 EST (#6436 of 6440)

http://emperors-clothes.com/indexe.htm

"Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception." -- Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger, 1916, Ch. 9

rshowalter - 08:20pm Jul 2, 2001 EST (#6437 of 6440)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

almarst , if the US sometimes contains conspiracies -- often enough, they are considerably less coordinated that you might think.

We don't have to like each other to make peace.

And though a lot of problems can be solved with more money -- a lot can't be.

But you make a good point.

Intentions are key questions.

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