I was just reiterating the cites that were already made in the thread, per Shodan’s tacit suggestion (post #36) that cites had already been quoted to support his position. I don’t see a single cite that supports the notion that NMD, and in particular the GMD system that is already “deployed” (although sans a C[sup]3[/sup]I system) is sufficiently tested to be considered operational.
My story: the OP was intended to address NMD/strategic systems (which I didn’t really make clear). Theatre-affective systems, while clearly not ready for implementation and requiring substantial development and evaluation before they are mature enough to implement, have a definite tactical mission against short- and intermediate-range tactical ballistic attacks against battle groups and installations.
However, AIDS treatmeants that ‘sort of’ work are much much more useful than an SDI system that ‘sort of’ works. i would even venture that an SDI system that is only partially effective is useless.
Ah, the old Shodan game of “Hey, I’m not saying anything - you guys are!”. We are debating here. You are taking the position that there is no reason to fund the search for an AIDS cure which does not apply to the search for a nuclear strike cure. We are taking the position that there are all kinds of important differences. When we point them out, you ignore them or say “no - there is another difference which I am saying is the only one of relevance here”.
I will ask you a direct question: do you think AIDS research shoudl spend billions on reseaching homeopathic cures, given that that entire approach has been fundamentally condemned as unfeasible by respected authorities?
Slight hijack: The Cardinal of the Kremlin was a good Tom Clancy novel. If you’re looking for the bad ones try Rainbow Six, Red Rabbit or The Teeth of the Tiger. YMMV of course…
You seem to be asserting that SDI violates some fundamental law of nature, like accelerating to the speed of light or perpetual motion. It is, in other words, inherently impossible to work in even a limited way. Which physical law does it break?
With all due respect, I think the entire “AIDS ~ SDI” argument (introduced by Shodan, #17) is getting way off point. While research for a HIV vaccine may be a superficially apt analogy to missile defense research for the sake of illustration, the comparison breaks down in the details. For instance, there are numerous, independent, privately-funded projects taking different approaches to an HIV vaccine. Another is that HIV is a virus which isn’t going to respond to attempts at developing a vaccine by suddenly and radically changing its method and vector of attack.
To get back to the point, re: the feasibilty of strategic missile defense versus current and conceptual future opponents, can Shodan or someone else demonstrate evidence that the current system, or systems feasible in the near future, can [ol]
[li]Be functional against ICBMs, and;[/li][li]will still be an effective deterrent against likely opponents?[/li][/ol]
A cite would be a good start to argue from.
Let me rephrase Shodan’s position - since we are unable to prevent people from dying eventually, all of modern medicine must be considered a failure.
Stranger, is there an expectation that theater defense systems will be able to scale to national levels, or that the technology developed for theater defense systems will be directly usable at the national level? This is not to imply that theater defense systems aren’t useful in their own right.
I’d just like to point out that we know with absolute certainty that AIDS will kill 10s or 100s of millions of people, perhaps even a billion or more, if we do nothing to stop it. Do we know with absolute certainty that anyone will die from nuclear ballistic missile strikes if we don’t deploy NMD? No, we do not.
Some risks are more likely to be made manifest than others. The likelihood of any given risk surely must be a part of any rational allocation of resources spent to insure against it.
Actually, it fails mathematically: the complexity of the problem is not bounded - or, the upper bound can change willfully at the hands of our enemies.
Anyway, it’s perfectly fine to judge two things differently, especially if they are as different as these two topics. No heuristic is appropriate for all situations.
That’s a good question, to which I’d guess the answer is a qualified “maybe”. Again, it depends upon what your goal for strategic defense is. The promise, from Reagan onward, was this protective umbrella that would defend the population, which I regard as a fantasy. Overwhelming or spoofing countermeasures will allow some attacks to slip through the best defense unless is has a failure rate measured in tiny fractions.
Theater defense is, as Mr. Moto is careful to point out, a whole nother beast. It is, first of all, addressing a tactical threat, which doesn’t have the political implications of strategic ABM. Nobody was ever offering up Patriot or AEGIS, for instance, on a negotiating table. Strategic ABM (against a strategic enemy, e.g. the former USSR, China, Pakistan) has implications far beyond its effect on battlefield planning. Second, it is defending a single installation or battle group, whereas BMD is supposted to protect an entire country…hell, most of a continent. Third, I don’t think anyone has any illusions about being “safe” in a ship of war or a military base in a combat zone. The bombing of the USS Cole demonstrated that technological defenses are no good against some types of threats. Now the Navy keeps commerical shipping and small craft well away from Naval ships to address that threat.
Whether theater-affective ABM can be adapted to strategic-scale or “homeland” defense depends on how well you can scale up the system to longer range, faster moving, less predictible incoming threats. There has been discussion of adapting THAAD, for instance, to scale up to intercepting ICBMs, but this means adding a much heavier exoatmospheric kill vehicle, which calls for a larger booster, which calls for a larger launcher, and so forth. Some things don’t scale too well, especially when you are going from a single-stage booster to a three or four stage rocket, or working exo as opposed to stratosphere. Simililarly, the Navy’s KEI program was at one point concepted as an upgrade of the Standard missile, but the complexity of the system (larger diameter, multistage booster, non-local C[sup]3[/sup]I) makes more than a linear increase in difficulty.
What I object to most, in the promotion of NMD, are the smoke-and-mirror routines about deployment schedules and effectiveness. We recently deployed some of the GMD birds in Alaska and the administration is championing it as a success, whereas it is known, even (or I should say especially) among people working on the booster and command programs that the program is nowhere near meeting its deployment specifications. You can honestly make the case that theater defense, while more complex and slower in development than planned, has at least made some strides, while strategic-level has failed in gatepost after gatepost without the kind of progress necessary for confidence in near-term implementation, quite apart from the other strategic considations.
Like I said, IMHO. I have some small amount of specific knowledge of the difficulties due to my employment but my conclusions are really drawn from the larger, outside view and freely available information. Unless the Bavarian Illumiinati are developing a secret, super-advanced system that is decades ahead of what is publically known, I don’t see the system as being viable or cost-effective.
Shodan:There have been several links in the thread on the performance of various SDI-like and missile-defense systems. Start with those.
An impotent evasion. I asked you for a cite specifically supporting your assertion that the “partial success” of SDI is comparable to the achievements of AIDS research. What capability that has been developed by NMD systems is even remotely comparable in importance and reliability to the success already achieved in developing AIDS treatments, and anywhere near as likely to produce further success in the future?
Since you can’t seem to come up with an actual answer, I’m concluding you got nothing.
(1) Is the current national missile defense system in a state where it should be deployed? This is so much of a no-brainer to answer that I haven’t even seen anyone in this thread directly try to defend the Administration’s position.
(2) What is the likelihood that we will be able to create a practical missile defense in the future if we continue research? This question is a question about which there can be a little more intelligent disagreement. However, there are some fundamental obstacles because the situation tends to fundamentally favor the offense over the defense. First of all, as Union of Concerned Scientists and others have documented (and noone has really very convincingly disputed), it is easy to come up with rather simple countermeasures…usually a lot less expensive and technically difficult than countering the countermeasures. Secondly, the best countermeasure is probably simply to not use an ICBM to deliver the weapon at all, an additional advantage being that other delivery techniques don’t come with as nice a return address label that says, “Here is where you can deliver your massive return strike of nuclear weapons.” Thirdly, it is debatable what is gained by having a defense of unknown reliability. The usual argument about missile defense involves giving the President more “freedom of action” to pursue a course of action despite threats from the enemy that they might fire a WMD at us. However, it is downright scary for me to contemplate the idea of a President inviting an adversary to “Bring it on!” because he believes in a faith-based missile defense system!
Also, as a practical political matter, there seems to be a fairly bipartisan political consensus in Congress to continue funding research on national missile defense, however much of a Black Hole it might be. So, the political question is largely concerned with (1).
Well, technically speaking, it may not violate a fundamental law of nature. However, there are some fundamental laws of nature that put severe physical constraints on the various systems that will likely make them unworkable. For a discussion of this in the context of boost-phase missile defense systems (which the Bush Administration has talked of reviving and even a few skeptics of the current system, like Richard Garwin, were more optimistic on), see this report from the American Physical Society. Their basic conclusion: There is barely enough time in the boost phase even under some fairly optimistic assumptions against countries that use liquid propellents. And, by the earliest time we might possibly be able to deploy something along these lines, more of our potential enemies would be able to change from liquid to solid propellents that would allow for even less time, making it likely impossible from a time-perspective.
Actually, what I listed as the basic conclusion of that APS more properly should be termed as one of their basic conclusions. I recommend reading the executive summary for more details. There are other issues too such as “munitions shortfall” whereby we might only succeed in knocking the warhead off-target but not prevent it from hitting some part of the U.S. or other countries.
Not talked of reviving; is actually pursuing: see the Kinetic Energy Interceptor, the Navy’s boost and ascent phase hit-to-kill interceptor.
I don’t see that there is really any distinction to be made between liquid- and solid-fueled threats; although liquid is more maintainence intensive, the reasonable assumption is that you won’t be aware of the specific threat until launch. The logistics of having a ship in place (downrange) at the right time and going from threat discrimination to launch in the window of spare seconds you have to make a successful intercept are dubious to say the least.
But if you read the cite you’ll note that every major defense contractor has a finger in the pie. That’s the important thing.
As others have said, it is precisely because SDI seeks to guard against a human danger that, if it is largely useless, then this is nigh equivalent to complete uselessness, and certainly not worth the billions which respected authorities are calling a vast waste of money.
If the US wants to waste money, I personally don’t feel too strongly beyond a vague frustration that it could be spent on other things. And it is an eminently worthy goal - I would have only a few reservations about a future working system, which would likely not outweigh the advantages of such.
But read this article again, and the detailed posts of jshore and Stranger. This multi-billion program is fundamentally flawed in a way which other multi-billion R&D schemes are not.
Actually, the proposed budget makes serious cuts in NMD. See here, here, and here.
Whether these cuts will survive a final budget round is another question. Quite a few congressional districts get major money from GMD, including (in no particular order) California, Virginia, Washington, Pennslyvania, Alabama, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Alaska. He may be submitting it as a proposed cut knowing that it will be shot down.
On the other hand, now having served his purpose (to give him an argument that he’s “strong” on defense) he might just dispense with it without breaking a sweat. The ironic thing is that these programs are still funded enough to keep limping by, but probably not enough to make any progress, even if that were feasible. Word is that MDA is going to continue to fund development and cut costs on infrastructure, emplacement, and testing.
