This comparison is obviously fallacious. No one is deploying an AIDS vaccine claiming it works on the basis of rigged tests.
Technical Realities: An Analysis of the 2004 Deployment of a U.S. National Missile Defense System
Feasible? Who cares, the system’s already deployed. Of course, it doesn’t work:
And that’s the problem here. We’ve deployed it, and it doesn’t work. We’re deployed, and we’re still messing around with fairytale boost-phase systems like the kinetic energy interceptor. This willingness to go ahead with half-measures, and pie in the sky schemes gives me no confidence that NMD will ever get on track. What exactly is the track anyway? WHICH THREAT are we trying to address, and when? We sure can’t address all threats in all ways, but that doesn’t seem to stop us from throwing money at doing so.
On the other hand, we have the theatre defense systems, which despite some bumps and cancellations, seem to be making steady progress. Maybe the way to go is to get those systems working and deployed, and then, and only then, see if we can ramp up proven systems to provide the country with a reality based ABM umbrella.
Honestly, your equivalences beggar belief sometimes. In this case, billions are being invested in a massively unlikely search for a cure for a disease which has only had two incidences in world history (caused deliberately by the ones now seeking such a cure), which in any case is far more likely to be transmitted by a vector against which the cure has no power.
Right?
Ah, apologies: when you said “battlespace” I parsed “space defence”!
Thanks, I try. 
No, I am applying exactly the same standards to AIDS research that you are using to judge SDI.
Do we have a system that will stop 100% of all missiles? No.
Do we have a system that will cure 100% of AIDS cases? No.
Do we have a system that will prevent missile attacks on the US? No.
Do we have a vaccine against AIDS? No.
Are there other things we should spend money on instead of SDI that will work better? Well, apparently you all think so.
Are there other things we should spend money on instead of AIDS vaccines that will work better? Sure, condoms.
Is it technically feasible that we can achieve 100% success in SDI? We haven’t so far, and therefore none of you want to try.
Is it technically feasible that we will be able to cure AIDS? We haven’t so far, and therefore…
Regards,
Shodan
You and your non-sequiturs. AIDS and SDI have three letters in common: does that mean they’re alike in terms of whether they should be funded also?
Again, to continue your strained-way-past-breaking-point analogy, what is happening now with NMD is that billions are being spent not on research regarding what might work, which is understandable (and vastly cheaper), but on a real system which doesn’t and will not work. The equivalent is not AIDS reasearch, but trillions of actual tablets which don’t cure.
An AIDS cure has not been deployed before it was proven successful. Are you saying NMD deployment should be held to the same standard?
Shodan: *AIDS has been in the public consciousness about as long as SDI. And we have spent billions on it.
We have never cured anyone of AIDS, and there is no vaccine. And these are decades away from discovery, if they are even possible.
Therefore, all spending on AIDS was a waste, and we should not attempt to cure the disease. *
Another problem with Shodan’s highly fallacious comparison is that AIDS research has developed strategies for the treatment of HIV/AIDS that are far more effective than our attempts at a missile defense system, even though we haven’t yet found a vaccine or a cure.
If we had a “partial” missile defense system that could successfully delay the impact of an enemy’s missiles for ten to twenty years after they were fired at us, in the way that anti-retroviral therapy significantly prolongs the useful lives of AIDS patients, I’d say fuck yeah, it was worth the money! But, of course, we don’t have anything like that.
To sum up the issues that Shodan feebly attempted to compare:
HIV/AIDS:
- Global pandemic of debilitating, inevitably fatal disease, spreading rapidly
- Tens of millions of people currently infected, tens of millions more already dead
- Billions of dollars in research spent over the past 20 years
- Effective cure or vaccine still at least a decade away
- Most scientists believe cure or vaccine to be biologically and technologically possible
- Powerful treatment therapies proven to be effective in slowing disease and prolonging life
- Side effects of research include advances in understanding immune system and fighting other diseases
National missile defense:
- Potential danger to hundreds of millions from multi-missile nuclear attack against national target
- Attack of this type has never yet happened, is not currently happening, and may never happen
- Billions of dollars in research spent over the past 20 years
- Solutions to even minor technical issues still at least a decade away in many cases
- Most scientists have, at best, grave doubts about whether basic goal of effective multiple missile interception is physically and technologically possible
- Tested systems perform extremely badly unless tests rigged for success
- Nothing remotely resembling a truly effective system is even on the drawing board, much less deployable
- Side effects of research include stimulating nuclear arms race to increase offensive threat capacities, undermining disarmament efforts, and diversion of resources away from much more realistic threats
Therefore, spending on AIDS research is far more productive than spending on national missile defense.
Right?
And to continue Shodan’s mind-boggling analogy still further, the entire direction of the SDI research is clearly nonsensical. How many experts would need to tell you that you will not find a cure for AIDS in, say, homeopathy before you pull the plug on that line of research?
By the standards you apply to SDI, yes.
But you fail to apply that same standard to AIDS.
There is no system of SDI which will intercept all missiles. Therefore, it is beyond doubt that SDI will never work, and should not be continued.
There is neither a cure nor a vaccine for AIDS. Therefore it is beyond doubt that AIDS cannot be cured or prevented, and the research should be discontinued.
Same problem. Partial “success” with AIDS = AIDS research is a good idea. Partial “success” with SDI = the whole program is a complete waste of time, and will never, ever work no matter what.
Again, the fact that SDI is not an unqualified success means that the entire direction of research has been wrong. The fact that AIDS research has met with equal levels of “success” means that it is a great idea.
100% failure for twenty years - this is an encouraging portent of future success? Why only for defense programs is this true?
Regards,
Shodan
Shodan: Partial “success” with SDI
Cite, please? What “success” are we having with SDI that is even remotely comparable to the success already achieved in developing AIDS treatments, and seems anywhere near as likely to produce further success in the future?
You are trying to recast the discussion in terms of some absolute, binary standard of “success” versus “failure”, so you can equate AIDS research and SDI research on the grounds that neither one is “100% successful.” That won’t wash. It’s the comparative differences in what they’ve achieved, and in what they’re realistically likely to achieve, that make the difference in their respective usefulness.
I’m not. You are trying to change the standard by which you judge the viability of programs depending on whether the end-goal appeals to you or not.
You are the ones who classified SDI as an absolute failure, and have resisted the same classification when applied to AIDS research. Despite the fact that both have failed to achieve their goals.
So far.
Regards,
Shodan
But only one has been deployed, despite these failures. Which one is that Shodan?
This is the real rub. By the time you’ve developed a system that can deal with the thread, your opponents have developed ways of mitigating your defenses, either by overwhelming, spoofing, or using a different method of delivery.
ABM might have made sense in the late '50s and early '60s when:
[ul]
[li]We had one strategic opponent,[/li][li]a disarming first strike was a valid possibility, and[/li][li]the purpose of the system was to contribute to deterrance by allowing enough time for a counterstrike, not protecting from eventual destruction.[/li][/ul]
NMD doesn’t protect against weapons delivered by post, or small boat, or otherwise “under the radar”. It won’t stop a determined strategic attack (and we can run through the numbers in more detail if you like, but given any reasonable assumptions the defender is playing a losing hand), and deterrance isn’t really effective against stateless opponents or bouncing-off-the-wall-and-howling-at-the-moon dictators like our friend in North Korea. It is installing an armored, three foot thick steel door with reinforced hinges and blind locking bolts but leaving the windows wide open. It encourages your opponent to find a way around the system, and all the money you’ve spent on this, that could have been more profitably been spent on human intellegence, signal interception, diplomacy efforts, et cetera, is all gone to waste.
Back in the late '50s and early '60s, when command, control, and integration systems had significant lag times between discrimination, launch decision, and actual receipt of orders by the launch facility, and when “warming up a bird” required a half-hour of priming and prep, a disarming first strike was marginally plausible. By the late '60s and the deployment of the Minuteman solid fuel booster and launch times more accurately measured in seconds than minutes combined with effective early warning detection systems and much improved communications and command integration, a strategic first strike just wasn’t possible, and the question wasn’t “winning” a nuclear exchange but mitigating the damage and survival by incremental attrition, i.e. the discussion was “Blue Team down by 100 million versus Red Team down by 130 million”. (When you start digging into studies on nuclear exchange between US and USSR you find a lot of estimates and strategies that are eerily similar to the War Room scenes in Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb.)
The then-Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara repeatedly made the case against Nike Zeus/Nike X/Sentinel/Safeguard, which kept mutating in scope, focus, and percieved threat until the limited implementation, in 1975, and (four months later) decommision of Safeguard. (Good info and timeline here.) Note that the problems with Spartan and Sprint weren’t functional; (in fact, though it was designed as a nuclear-tipped short-range intercepter, Sprint actually demonstrated the potential as a hit-to-kill vehicle), but that the cost of the system, in comparison to its effectiveness/deterrance potental, didn’t make it viable to maintain. The system could be defeated by decoys and countermeasures, and in fact the need for redundancy and reduced installation costs drove both the US and the USSR into MIRV (Multiple Independantly-Targetable Reentry Vehicle), which increased proliferation of actual weapons.
There are threats, they need to be addressed, prepared for, and pre-empted if possible; but both the methods and goals of the current NMD programs are unrealistic and politically, rather than strategically, motivated and in any case, fail to take into account both the costs and necessary development time and effort to develop the technology to maturity.
IMHO, of course. 
Stranger
Shodan: *You are trying to change the standard by which you judge the viability of programs depending on whether the end-goal appeals to you or not. *
Nonsense. The goal of having a truly effective shield from nuclear missile attacks appeals to me a hell of a lot. Probably it’s at least as appealing, on a personal level, as the goal of a cure or vaccine for a not-very-contagious disease that I’m personally at very low risk for.
The standard by which the viability of AIDS research programs is so vastly superior to that of SDI research is sheer feasibility and effectiveness. AIDS research has been far more successful, and has far greater likelihood of further success, with far fewer negative consequences for the problem it’s trying to address, than NMD research does. Simple as that.
Still waiting for that cite of yours, by the way.
There have been several links in the thread on the performance of various SDI-like and missile-defense systems. Start with those.
Regards,
Shodan
Well to recap, there’s this, this, this, this, and this on NMI/strategic missile defense.
But you might want a cite that supports your position.
Stranger
Could you direct me to a peer-reviewed technical article by three highly respected authorities on the subject of AIDS research entitled “Why AIDS cures won’t work”?
Here is the difference: SDI has shown such extremely poor results to date that highly respected authorities claim that it will never work and is a waste of money. To then suggest that “Ah, but it still *might[/]i work” (just like AIDS treatment already does compared to no treatment at all) is, sadly, absurd equivalence-drawing that is all too common in US politics these days on both sides of the partisan divide. Your entire comparison is an example of arguing from ignorance.
Well, your cites are extremely contradictory, and it would be next to impossible to divine your views on the subject merely be reading them.
The first one says NMD will be expensive and labor intensive, if it is possible. The next says it isn’t possible at all. The last urges a focus on weapons that aren’t based around kinetic energy.
The other two cites are from highly political groups that, in fact, call for total disarmament. No wonder they oppose NMD.
Can you get your story straight, please?
No.
Since I am not the one arguing that (sometimes) complete failure shows that a system cannot possibly work and (sometimes) it means we should forge ahead, I don’t need to.
No, the difference is that in one case, such as an AIDS vaccine, the results are lower even than for testing SDI - namely zero.
Regards,
Shodan