Let’s let those who think the Pentagon’s missile defense system will work fork over the money to pay for it.
Better yet, let’s get a 24/7 prayer vigil going in order to protect us from missiles fired by rogue nations. I think that would have a better chance of actually working than the Pentagon’s project.
I heard some religious personage has already volunteered to get the prayer vigil going.
Granted the missle defense will not work, we’d be better off just waiting for those rouge nations to try and attack us. We could just nuke them then. prayer would be useless, I mean look at the Jews, they’re supposedly God’s people, and look where prayer got them for over 3000 years. Nothing. Believing God will help us out, one of the most sin infested countries, is just a load of bs
I don’t see any reason why, with enough engineering, it can’t work.
I don’t think the threat of rogue states shooting ICBMs at the USA is so clear and present that I would have made it a priority, but I certainly don’t think it’s beyond our technology to achieve.
What makes you think it’s so impossible?
What Chaim said.
I think it’s silly, and a waste of money. But it certainly seems to be technologically feasable. Why wouldn’t it be?
Has anyone else noticed a lack of informed opinions in GD lately? Take it to IMHO or the Pit, newbie.
As for the OP, I’m gonna jump on the bandwagon, and say that it’s too expensive and unnecessary, but that it could work. Preparing for WWIII was the military’s business for decades; why couldn’t they handle it again?
If you throw enough money at it, of course it’ll work. The question is whether it is the best way to protect us from nuclear attack (without pissing off China).
We are much more susceptible to attack from within via terrorism… that’s where the money should be going. I don’t see anything being “faith-based” to be applicable here.
A lot of the skeptics seem to think that because we haven’t figured out how to make the system work by now, we never will, which is absolutely ludicrous. After all, didn’t Thomas Edison try hundreds of light bulb designs before finding one that worked?
Throwing money at it sure worked for perpetual motion!
Well, yeah, but you gotta throw money at it perpetually! 
As to the OP,
Offer that deal for everything the federal government does. You will have no problems whatsoever getting the Republicans to agree.
Be careful what you wish for.
Knocked down any straw men lately?
AFAIK, most critics of the missile defense system dislike it because they
(a) don’t think it’s an effective way to combat terrorism (as others have pointed out, NMD won’t stop terrorists smuggling in a bomb in the back of a U-Haul truck), and
(b) point out that the current prototypes need a lot of work to be effective (I seriously doubt any “rogue nations” lobbing bombs at us will put tracking transponders in their warheads, do you?).
Nobody says that a working NMD can’t be developed eventually – we just don’t think it’s a good use of money now.
Er, R.J., it’s not a strawman if it’s an argument from the OP.
Until we find out what Mr. Duality had in mind to discuss, all we have to go on is his OP.
The USA never agreed to spend $60,000,000,000+ on a lightbulb prior to the existence of a working model.
What rjung said.
The problem isn’t that Bush wants to fund research on a missile defense. Every Administration since Reagan has done the same. The problem is that he is acting like he is planning on deploying one. We aren’t anywhere close to an effective missile shield but the military has proven they are not above fielding a system that doesn’t work ( the Patriot Missile ).
Just my 2sense
It take it you are not an engineer? I am, and I disagree. But I guess that depends on how you define ‘work’ doesn’t it? There are certainly plenty of problems that we can’t solve no matter how much engineering we put into them, so it’s naive to say that it can be made to work until you have done it or proved that making it work doesn’t depend on solving an intractible problem.
Non scientists often look at all the marvelous things that science has created and come to the conclusion that they can do anything they want. But this is not the case, the more science you know, the more you become aware of limits.
For instance, if solving the problem meant that you had to make a missile capable of moving at mach 100 in the atmosphere, then you have an intractible problem.
Or if you could knock out missiles, but only by hitting them hard enough to trigger their warheads, that would be a cure as bad as the disease.
NMD, depending on how you define success, is on the hairy edge between what is possible though enormous effort and what is simply not possible.
If you define missile defense as:
*Be able to destroy a 1 foot in diameter, 6 foot long tapered cylinder spinning on it’s axis in near space or high earth atmosphere as it is falling back to earth, given 20 minutes notice and approximate knowledge of its location prior to launch of the interceptor. *
Then we have a good shot of solving the problem. I call this Weak missile defense, because it misses the point of what missile defense should do.
On the other hand, if you define missile defense as:
Be able to destroy virtually all missiles targeted at the continental US up to some total number of threats (say 100).
Then it’s clear that all proposed formulations of NMD will fail to live up to that goal. In fact, any time the success of missile defense is defined as safety from threat then it isn’t an engineering problem anymore, it’s an arms race problem. Safety requires us to always be ahead of the other guy. And this we cannot do because the other guy has a much much simpler problem to solve.
Defeating NMD by adding countermeasures to missiles is a both cheaper and easer than modifying NMD to counter to countermeasures. In an arms race where one side perpetually has an easier problem to solve, they will always win unless the other side has enormously more resources to devote to the problem.
Also, in order to counter the countermeasures we have to know what they are. Thus safety becomes as much an intelligence problem as engineering problem.
For instance, merely by painting the warhead matte black you dramatically change what it looks like to a visible light sensor. This costs them a few dollars, could be done in almost total secrecy, and yet it would probably defeat the current sensor package being tested.
By merely inflating a 10ft diamter mylar balloon around the warhead once it above the atmosphere, we make the missle easier to see, but HARDER TO HIT. If the missile occupies only 10% of the volume of the balloon, then you have a 90% chance of generating a miss. A bit like waving a red cape in front of a bull.
Now, in most cases we DO have enormously more resources than the other guy, but if their counter is 1000x cheaper, then we would have to have 1000x more resouces. And we don’t have a single threat, but many potential ones. To address ALL of their possible countermeasures just isn’t doable.
We can probably manage weak NMD. But why bother? Weak NMD is more of a sieve than a shield. It doesn’t allow us to change our policy and operate from strength because with weak NMD we can’t trust the sieve to do the job.
Strong NMD isn’t possible unless we somehow prevent our opponants from ever improving their missiles. Which means, of course, that it isn’t possible.
caveat: Strong NMD is probably possile using particle beam weapons rather than missiles as interceptors. But we have no idea how to make beams of the necessary strength, so I’m ignoring that as a practical consideration
Now, if we restrict NMD to battlefield defense, this is at once a much simpler problem and more useful. Having the assurance that Iraq coundn’t nuke our troops in the field would be invaluable and much simpler than protecting the USA because in a battlefield defense, you don’t knock out the warhead, you knock out the launch vehicle. No decoys, huge heat signature to lock onto, and solid ground radar support (assuming you own the skies), and no need to tell harmless targets from threats. You just knock down everything going up that isn’t your own.
It’s a shame they aren’t working on that instead of national NMD.
Bulb design was never a problem. Edison spent all of that time trying to find a filament which would last.
From what I’ve heard, the missile defense program won’t protect against a certain type of missile, not used by the third world, which spirals differently than a first world ICBM. And what about if they send gasp more than one missile at us at a time. (This is an honest question) Will the defense system be able to stop more than one at a time?
If we get past that, how is the missile defense going to protect against a nuclear bomb in the back of a Ryder Truck?
I think our money would be better invested in nuclear disarmament treaties.
That should read "not used by the first world.
2sense, IIRC, the patriot missile system wasn’t designed as a missile defense system. It was designed to shoot down aircraft, but it was STILL able to hit targets it wasn’t designed to hit (Scuds in Desert Storm).
Make of that as you will.
To reiterate what I have said on the other NMD thread here, if people can bring in tonnes of drugs into the US, why can’t a belligerent government bring in a nuclear weapon or two or three and denotate them without the need for sorting out missile technology.
In fact, some German journalists are reported as having run this scenario (based on a novel by the Frenchman who wrote City of Joy) by Qaddafi in the 1980s. He was apparently quite struck with the idea, and said that if it ever happened, the journalists would know who to blame (ie themselves).
The US should be concentrating on its border defences, not on spending billions of dollars on anti-missile technology.
By the time of the Gulf war the Patriot was modified specifically to serve as a defense against short range ballistic missiles. It failed miserably for many reasons. They’ve spent some more money on it since then, so maybe it works like a charm. NMD would be an easier sell if they’d just release some hard data to show that they’ve gotten the kinks out of the simpler theatre defense system.
Has anyone seen such data, or are we to assume that Rumsfeld et.al. won’t produce it for “reasons of national security” ?