How to stop missile defense shield?

Today I read in the news Bush plans to break the ABM treaty
to build a missle defense shield in a matter of months. I
am quite concerned that the world will consequently be
moving quickly down the path to nuclear destruction.

What can be done to stop this? Can congress stop it? If
so, who should I write in congress? (I don’t think Bush
cares about the world, or even the average U.S. citizen, so
forget about writing to the white house.) If not, what are
the other options?

Well, personal views on the missle defense plan aside(I like the idea of one, but disagree with a ground-based anti-missle missles as currently being proposed,)
Congress could stop it, they write the funding bills. I do not think Bush would actually violate the treaty, as there are provisions for either side to exit it with a six-month notice(and it will be more than six months before such a project can be deployed). As to who to write, find your local Congressperson or Senator and contact them.

but it’s worth it.

You know, half the gig of being a moderator in GQ is chasing after people admonishing them for starting Great Debates where the OP didn’t want one.

Not today.

Death_Mage, you could have bit. You were tempted (I can tell, it’s ok!). But you didn’t bite. You gave a reasoned, factually correct answer to a question whose premise you disagreed with.

Thank you very much for that. And thank you for helping to eradicate ignorance today.

Would you believe it? As I was driving home from work today I decided that I would post this very question!

I used to work “in defense” and was involved in radar data for the ASAT program. While the program seemed to be enjoying some success (I wish I had the radar plot of the ASAT hitting the target in space), I think this “missile shield” is a waste of money. What’s to stop us “defending” ourselves against decoys? Even if we can identify the real warheads, two of the three tests failed.

Being in California (for now), I hope our Democratic senators will fight this plan tooth-and-nail.

I think it would be a wonderful technology and safegard with spillover into other fields. And also think that you are selling Bush short (I would guess he is more likely then the former occupent of the White House to answer yoru letter). And if you are going to the effort writing congress why not CC Pres. Bush?

I think that part of your problem is that some people beleive that such a shield will help the average US Citizen (and the world) while others (like you) think the opposite. So when you write to a supporter to the shield you come off as the one that doesn’t care about the average US citizen or the world.

Here’s a little missive from the Union of Concerned Scientists. Their summary:

Also, here is a great summary of the technology, equipment and some of the politics involved, from the Federation of American Scientists.

Isn’t this the same thing that the Reagon Era “Star Wars” pr SDI system but with a different name “Missile Defense Shield”? This was debunked many times. There is no way you can have a huge laser in orbit and other things they are talking about similar to what they wanted to do with “Star Wars” with Reagon. I think it’s a Bush hoax.

I do not normally take sides in politics but something like this has to be stopped. I didn’t believe George W. Bush lost his marbles until now! This shows us that he ain’t thinking straight. As posted above, it will not work. SDI was a joke, now GWBush believes it will work :{

Congress can stop the continuation of the ABM project, or any project at all, a number of ways.

First, Congress can simply not fund the project. That means that there’s a big zero in the appropriations bill in the column where the project’s name appears.

A cousin to this is something commonly known around the office as a “little f*@ker”. That’s an amendment to an appropriations will which quitely alters funds and winds up reading something like this:

SEC. 386. On page 452, line 23, strike the number “$1,258,692,000” and replace with “$0”.

However, that’s not much of a safeguard. Remember that 90,000 square foot NRO building that appeared out of nowhere on Rte 28 outside of Washington? That’s a perfect example of an unfunded project (actually, in that case an unauthorized project) being completed through the use of left over funds scraped together from other projects.

Congress has a solution for that, too. Here is a recent example from HR 2217, this year’s Interior Appropriations bill, which (for reasons which should be dreadfully obvious) is rife with such clauses as this:

SEC. 109. No funds provided in this title may be expended by the Department of the Interior to conduct offshore oil and natural gas preleasing, leasing and related activities in the eastern Gulf of Mexico planning area for any lands located outside Sale 181, as identified in the final Outer Continental Shelf 5-Year Oil and Gas Leasing Program, 1997-2002. (my bolding) (you can view the bill at http://www.congress.gov )

A third way Congress could prevent a project is to simply create a new bill which prevents further research into the project. This, of course, must be signed into law by the President or his veto must be overriden, neither of which is likely at all right now, but which could be possible in, say, 2003 if the 108th Congress turns out to have a notably different membership.

A fourth way to get the message across is to insert a “Sense Of” message into an appropriations bill, or any bill. This essentially expresses the opinion of Congress without carrying the weight of law. It has been used in the past as a very effective warning to the Executive Branch: “don’t do this, or we’ll make you wish you hadn’t by restricting your authority to do so in the future.” Once again, it requires a clear majority in one of the wings of the Capitol to do any good, and right now that ain’t the case.

Perhaps not entirely coincidentally, the Defense Appropriations bill hasn’t really gone very far in Congress this year. Neither has the appropriations bill which covers education, which I’m sure has our Education President all tied up in knots–“leave no child behind” and all, don’t you know. When the two bills come up for consideration at roughly the same time in the newly-Democratic Senate, some very serious horse trading is going to have to occur to get all those fine education initiatives passed. Something from the Defense Department might have to be dropped. Your suggestions are welcome.

No, really, your suggestions are not only welcome, they’re essential to the political process. As an American citizen, you have the right to contact your own and any other Members of Congress asking for whatever you like, which is probably why a quarter of a million dollars was spent on researching caffeinated chewing gum not too long ago. You may also submit “suggested language” for insertion into any bill. Or, you can team up with other like-minded people and join or form–God help you–a lobbying group.

Every member of Congress has a webpage, and every webpage has contact information. You can start with http://www.house.gov and http://www.senate.gov .

Perhaps some other bottom-feeders–I mean lobbyists–will come in and give some tips on how to most effectively make your opinions known to your delegation. If not, I’ll save that for another post. Right now, it’s night time, and I smell chicken liver coming down the current from up there on the flats.

The Bush plan is something different. Reagan’s plan was a far-fetched sci-fi scheme that had no basis in reality. The Bush plan will supposedly use land and/or sea based missiles to knock out incoming warheads. While we don’t have the technology necessary yet, it could possibly be built in the near future. The cost is probably so extreme that Congress will vote it down.

FYI: A successful test has just been completed a few minutes ago. However, this different from a real situation because the military knew when and where the incoming warhead would appear.

Nearly all of the current research is being done in the field of kinetic energy weapons, aka hit-to-kill. Miniaturization and signal processing power available today allows a much more intelligent missle than was possible 15 years ago. The ballistics problems inherent in intercepting a re-entry vehicle with what is basically a rocket-powered dart are now considered solvable. Traditional missle interceptors relied on proximity fuses meaning that they only tried to get close, then explode. In the 60’s (when my father was a range officer at White Sands) this pretty much implied nuclear warheads. Today it means no warhead at all. It is my belief that the military will continue to research this field of weaponry, since it applies equally well to protecting troops on the battlefield, regardless of any decision by Congress or the Bush administration on its application toward strategic defense.

Given this is still going ahead after the lukewarm to adverse reaction from other world leaders, I think you can probably rule out international lobbying as having any material effect.

Derailing this one is a US domestic political issue.

This looks hopeful:

What exactly could the military do to oppose the missile
defense shield?

Nothing. The Joint Chiefs serve at the President’s whim. Opposition to administrative policy is a sure way for a general to be retired. There is ample precedent for this.

With a history of two previous failures, are we sure that the military didn’t rig or fake this test so that they’d have a success to brag about?

Even if the test was a legitimate success, it was under highly controlled conditions that would not exist in a real-world crisis. A real missle strike would probably come without alot of warning, we wouldn’t know the missles’ courses or destinations, and who’s to say that the enemy wouldn’t attack the missle defense systems first? This missle defense system will just give a false sense of security; congress should kill it now.

I think you’re missing the point of developing hit-to-kill weapons: THe systems can remain in an automatic mode at a high level of readiness at all times. If a target is detected by radar on an inbound ballistic track (a pretty unique doppler signature, not at all to be confused with an airliner or such), the missle can be fired without human intervention with little worry of collateral damage since there is no explosive warhead. The energy of the collision between missles will destroy them both. This principle has been in use in tank guns for decades now. Kinetic energy penetrators are extremely effecient if enough delta-V is available and an inbound warhead at 10000 m/s provides a hell of a lot of delta-V even if the defensive missle is virtually motionless.

Lobby, lobby, lobby.

And don’t forget, any nation that is willing to spend millions developing a missile that could reach the United States could smuggle in a nuclear warhead for a fraction of the price.

I’ve always figured that a Cessna could dump a warhead out the door with a parachute attached, and still get far enough away before the blast that it wouldn’t be a suicide mission.

I’ve heard the “smuggle a suitcase bomb” a couple of times now.

Yes, it’s possible. It would also be less damaging due to the necessary restriction in size (you do know that a certain amount of radioactive material is required, and those materials are uniformly very, very heavy, as is the shielding) and offers more opprotunities to be caught before detonation (air or ship travel, immigration or customs centers, etc.)

However, I find the argument spurious. Do we ignore the possibilty of ballistic missiles to focus on the smuggled suitcase bombs? Do we ignore the suitcases to focus entirely on the missiles?

Of course not- both are possibilities, and as such, both should be utilized.

And yes, the technology is limited. So is the technology of decoys (the use of which degrades both the overall range and accuracy of the incoming ballistic missile) as is the “foreign country” missile technology in general.

When we- the US- first started placing missiles on submarines, they were crude guided missiles with barely 700 miles range, and required a second surface ship to operate a guidance radar. Later technology got us away from the need for a seperate radar, and later still, gave the missiles a true ballistic intercontinental ability. Now our biggest and best missiles have a range exceeding 6,000 miles and a CEP of a quarter the expected blast radius.

Early air-to-air missiles were little more than metal fireworks. Later they became crudely radar guided, and later still they gained their own radar and a fire-and-forget autonomy.

During the Korean War, what missiles there were flew in straight lines and had short ranges and small payloads. After a lot of development and refinement, we now have cruise missiles that can follow terrain, avoid obstacles, and deliver a thousand-pound payload a thousand miles away.

Yes, today’s missile-intercept technology is primitive. But like it or not, the possibility of a “rogue nation” development of a true intercontinental missile is all too real.

The money spent today on the early version means fewer bugs to work out tomorrow.