missle defence sheild

if we built one, what would act as the trigger?

would it be automatic? manual? would someone sit and watch a screen 24 hours a day? would it be an automatic radar thing?

it seems it would have to be a semi snap desicion, or would it be detecting the missles an hour before they hit?

would it possibly end up a 99 red ballons sort of thing? bugs in software flash the message something’s out there?

A missile defense shield ould require 24/7 monitoring y live human beings. Probably something like NORAD. Automated defense might have problems with teh thousands of aircraft flying about at any given time.

FTR a ballistic missile takes about 30-45 minutes to reach its target from anywhere in the world to anywhere else.

As to goofs I have read a few stories of misreads that nearly led to war. Both the US and the former USSR have actually gotten within minutes of full-on counter-strikes against the other country due to mistakes in what they were seeing. IIRC one instance came down to one guy somewhere in Russia who decided not to let his birds (missiles) fly. Kinda scary…if he chose otherwise it would have been WWIII.

I did a quick search for cites for that one but nothing turned up…I’ll keep looking.

Here’s a brief account of the 1983 incident: Remove the Hair Trigger

Thanks Squink…that sounds about right. I think I’ve heard of other instance as well including the US goofing but how many screwups do we need?

Still, it goes to shoe you need a human in the loop. Given your cite and a computer making decisions rather than a human I think it’d be safe to say WWIII would have occured by now.