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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?

frankmz - 05:36pm Aug 24, 2001 EST (#8115 of 8127)

I would agree on the rube goldberg comment. As someone who has had experience with complex computer systems, I have extreme skepticism of a complex system (and the missile defense system is extremely complex) that will work in real-time as it was supposed to, and on the first try,

rshowalter - 06:30pm Aug 24, 2001 EST (#8116 of 8127)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Right.

MD7178 rshowalter 7/18/01 10:32pm

My old partner, the late Professor Steve Kline, of Stanford, told me that when he was a grad student at MIT, the Dean made a point of gathering students together, and telling them about a story. The story was Jules Verne's TWENTY THOUSAND LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA .

In Verne's story, a Captain takes 10,000 tons of steel, glass, wood and other materials

--- he makes careful drawings

-- gets a team of workmen together

-- the team makes the pieces according the drawings and puts them together . . .

and off the Captain and the workmen go -- cruising 20,000 leagues under the surface of the sea.

The Dean made sure that this lesson was very clearly made --

" In the whole history of engineering, NOTHING LIKE THIS HAS EVER HAPPENED." Things go wrong. Pretty often. For everybody. You have to test.

No MIT engineer was to leave Cambridge without knowing that lesson.

the Coyle Report, . . . NATIONAL MISSILE DEFENSE DEPLOYMENT READINESS REVIEW 10 August 2000 . . . . http://www.house.gov/reform/min/pdf/nmdcoylerep.pdf shows that the lesson does apply to missile defense programs -- to a great degree.

We're nowhere near far enough along to justify junking the ABM treaty.

. . . .

At the level where rational decision making should be - things seem strange.

rshowalter - 07:17pm Aug 24, 2001 EST (#8117 of 8127)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Superb Doonesbury cartoon !

http://www2.uclick.com/client/nyt/db/

lunarchick - 09:45pm Aug 24, 2001 EST (#8118 of 8127)
lunarchick@www.com

So much American commentary re the progress of Bwsh is theatre critique. Just for interest, i'd like those Texan_Kids to sit around in a studio and discuss this Sheild matter. I wonder what concepts each individually had of the Sheild - from their diverse backgounds, pre Bwsh peptalk ... had they heard of it? Wonder what they understood when Bwsh put the policy matter to them. Wonder how they'd relate it, if they'd understand anything at all. Wonder how many come from paid up members of Greenpeace families. Wonder if they'd be more entertaining on The News Hour than the Bwshophile from the Wall Street j :)

If the kids made their stock-in-trade paper aeroplanes to launch around the studio .. would they see, in the practical sense, the shortcomings of the paper tiger?

almarst-2001 - 09:50pm Aug 24, 2001 EST (#8119 of 8127)

There is a wide-spread suspicion in Russia that a real aim of the NMD is to ensure the US military domination.

The good will toward the West was lost when the bombs started falling on Serbia.

http://www.mediamonitors.net/gowans23.html

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