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I’ve aleady spoken about what I thought of Reagan’s “Star Wars”. FWIW, I don’t think it ushed the Russians to bankrupt themselvs trying to out-do us. The Russians weren’t hat stupid, their own advisors said in public repeatedly (and believably) how it wouldn’t work, and nobody – not even a partisan of this scenario – as ver even made a plausible case tht SDI brought down the USSR.
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I’ve always said that I agree with R&D for defence, including “Star ars”, nonetheless. I just haven’t seen anything to convince me that we ever had deployable realistic system. Even now.
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Assume that you have constructed system hat lets you shoot down one or two missiles from “rogue states” (I hate that term – as far as I can tell it means “somebody we don’t like”), and that we have so many orbiting platforms/ missile equipped subs/whatever that we can strike down such threat from anywhere in the world at any time, night or day. How much warning do you think we have to do something about it? How much time to decde if this is a hostile launch or a weather satellite going up or a meteorite strike being misinterpreted? Even if the ruler of HateUSAland has announced his active displeasure in the past month, how long to get the necessary information from the observers/system to the Prez or whoever is authorized to activate the system? I bring this up because of the past cases where it has taken a long time to determine the reality of a threat or to clear the response.
People talk about defence planners “choosing MAD”, as if it really were a choice. I think that the harsh logic and reality of MAD as forced upon them when they realzed how impossible any other strategy was.One could argue that it’s now no longer “impossible”, merely very difficult and expensive (I still vote for “impossible”). But I don’t see that the situation has changed that much.
Aparently, you (And Michael Kelly) have not been paying attention. The people who have been telling you that missile defense will not work, never said that one of the tests wouldn’t succeed.
Missile Defense is impossible, NOT because we will never be able to hit a bullet with a bullet in a test scenario. But because we will never be able to count it it to work when shots are fired in anger and the bad guys who have the initiative have had time to create countermeasures.
Countermeasures which will cost only a fraction of what a missile defense system will cost.
No it is not incredible. This is quite a technological achievement, but not really that amazing. We’ve known for years that this part at least is doable, when we know ahead of time where the target is going to be and all of the parts work perfectly.
Of course, that’s the objection. That all of the parts must work perfectly for the system to have any use at all.
One of the problems, however, is that the parts DON’T always work perfectly. This time, they reported that the failure was in the ground radar that handles target tracking and kill confirmation.
Then again, they lied initially about the results of the 1999 test. What makes you so sure that now, when it’s do-or-die time they aren’t lying again?
My suspicious mind suggests that if they DID have a complete failure and needed to cover it up, it would be necessary to discard or discredit all of the data collected by the the kill confirmation radar.
Isn’t it convenient, then. That that’s the only componant that ‘failed’ this time?
tj
I guess you’re thinking of China… 
Sorry, I don’t have a cite for this, but I seem to recall the US military admitting that the Patriot anti-missile system wasn’t what brought down most of those SCUDS during the Persian Gulf War, and that, in fact, the majority of the missiles they claimed to have shot down simply fell apart in flight!
So, let’s see here, assuming that’s true, then if they can’t even defend a small portion of the Middle East from some crappy Soviet-era rockets, WTF makes us think that they’ll be able to defend the entire US from a nuke strike? I’m not bettin’ any money on this thing workin’ any time soon.
Just a couple points:
The US (and likely other countries) will perfect a missile defense system. It might take 20 or 30 years, but it will happen; it’s a natural progression of military/industrial technology, MAD or not. Believe it, the Russians et al are doing their damndest to develope it also.
It’s the NEXT BIG STEP.
The question is whether the world will survive this leap into the next era of military technology. I have no doubt that within not so many years, a terrorist will smuggle a “suitcase nuke” or bio-bomb into the US, and successfully detonate it.
That is not the point of SDI. Military planners know they can’t stop the “suicide bomber with a baby nuke on a ship in New York Harbor scenario”; They don’t even consider that. A “defensive umbrella” has been a dream of these guys for 75 years.
Sure, no SDI system will be perfect, but as I say, given time, it WILL work to the point that maybe the 20,000 or so warheads on the planet will become useless. (hopefully MAD will change to MUD; Mutually Unassured Destruction)
Note: My figure of 20,000 warheads is an “off the top of the head” guesstimate. I welcome any correction.
So you’re saying we should build it because it might eventually work? By that logic, why not pour billions of dollars into developing Buck Rogers-style force fields, or Star Trek transporters? At least those pie-in-the-sky doohickies would have everyday use, in addition to providing defense from nuclear missiles.
As others have said already, it’s hard to take the latest “kill” seriously because of all the ways the test was tilted in the interceptor’s favor. Remember, the interceptor knew in advance where the target would be coming from, when it would be launched, its approximate speed, size, and coloration, that only one decoy would be used, and that a suite of geosyncornous satellites would be monitoring the test. And remember, even with all these advantages, one of the high-bandwidth ground-based radars (used to report if the target was destroyed or not) actually failed the test – a fact that the Pentagon didn’t bother mention in their exuberant celebrations. Heck, one of my co-workers(*) mentioned today that the target warhead had a transponder attached to it as well, so the interceptor would know how to find it. If that’s true, I can’t even begin to imagine how anyone could objectively call the test a success.
(* = I should note, BTW, that I work for a major aerospace/defense contractor, so I certainly could stand to benefit in job security if a major SDI initiative was pushed forward. However, that doesn’t prevent me from saying that it’s a cockamamie boondogle that’s nothing more than “President” Dubya repaying his campaign supporters in the defense industry)
rjung wrote:
Because, dum dum, this is the Star Wars program! We should be developing light sabers, and landspeeders, and X-wing fighters! And those nifty flying bikes from Return of the Jedi. Man, those things looked fast. Vrrrrrreowwww!
rjung, actually that is precisely what I mean.
Way back when, Eugene Ely landed an airplane on a “ship”
Later, Billy Mitchell proved airplanes could sink ships with bombs. The “Battleship Admirals” had to rethink their whole doctrine.
“Eventually” naval air power came to dominate.
Now, if you look at my OP, I said 20 or 30 years. I am just saying that it will happen. We are taking baby steps now.
The planet is on the verge of the next techno leap. It might not be in you or I’s lifetime, but shit will change. That’s why I said 20 or 30 years.
“Eventually” we will perfect a missile defense system.
I fail to see why you cannot accept that it will happen, given enough time.
Agreed that right now it is lame at best. However, screwing up never stopped us before. You give me the impression that somehow technological advances re: SDI are not gonna happen.
I disagree; any young technology has growing pains, but it eventually works.
I am not here to debate the politics, just the science, and I would go as far as to say the science will prevail.
I’m not sure that the aircraft carrier analogy works entirely. Tanks revolutionised the 20th century battlefield, but then came anti-tank weapons. Aircraft redefined warfare, but then came SAMs and AAA. Every offensive or defensive technology developed sparks development of another technology to penetrate it, fool it or deflect it.
The technical feasibility of NMD is not in question as far as I’m concerned. However, to say that one day a defence will be perfected is to assume that the threat does not change. In reality, however much you invest in developing a missile shield, someone else will be investing in missiles that can penetrate it or fool it.
The question is whether it is wise (economically and politically) to invest in such a system, given that its effectiveness cannot be known (since we don’t know how long it’ll take to ‘perfect’ or what the future threats will be). We’ve already seen that it can’t defend against other forms of attack – suitcase bombs, chemical and bacteriological weapons and so on. Of course, an imperfect defense is better than none at all – but when public money is paying for it and diplomatic ties may be at stake, it’s not that straightforward a decision.
Oh, I’m sure it will, eventually. Just as I’m sure we’ll eventually get safe nuclear power, personal force fields, and hand-held laser weapons (the above is not meant as sarcasm). As a technologist, I do believe that scientific advancement will prevail.
However, as Crusoe said, that doesn’t mean I’m in favor of our (un)elected government spending billions upon billions of dollars on the project, at the expense of everything else. I especially don’t think junking the ABM treaty and pissing off Russia and China at us is a smart move. And I’m outright insulted by Dubya’s repeated (bogus) assertion that we need a missile defense system right now to protect us from “rogue nations” like North Korea and Iran, who can’t even lob a nuclear warhead at us right now even if they wanted to.
Sure, the technology will be sound eventually, but having the administration do a gung-ho push for a NMD system right now – and jepoardizing world stability in the process – is not the way to go.
This whole thing reminds of something David Langford says in War in 2080, “There goes the supertechnological soldier, staggering cumbrously forward to wreak destruction on anyone he can entice within range . . . Meanwhile, the despicable enemy has opened fire with an old-fashioned but extremely cheap and efficient sub-machine gun.”
Meaning, of course, that if you’re going to spend lots of money on a weapon, it had better kill a whole lotta people if its going to be worth the expense. One of the reasons we beat the Nazi’s is that we were able to throw more stuff at them than they could at us. Even though the Germans had some of the best engineers on the planet, they couldn’t design anything that could compete with the sheer volume of stuff we threw at them.
The stealth aircraft, which we were told were invisible to radar, have turned out not to be quite so invisible after all. Hell, the Aussie’s have found a way to detect an approaching stealth simply by the interference it creates in TV signals! What’s there to make us think that the “enemy” won’t find some similar way of defeating the NMD whenever it gets deployed? Oh, wait, they already have. Its the suitcase nuke, the “bio-bomb,” and simply attacking us where we’re vulnerable (i.e. truck-bombing our embassies).
Well if one can say star wars will eventually work I can say that the Maginot line did also work in France:
http://www.smithsonianmag.si.edu/smithsonian/issues97/jun97/maginot.html
The much-maligned Maginot line did “work”, just like the star wars proponents think the shield in space will work, but they don’t mention the “rest of the predictable history”.
To get around that shield Germany needed to build a better army so Dubya…. Sorry, Hitler decided to ignore the treaty of Versailles from 1936 on and rearm.
When WWII started, France did advance and even took control of German territory! But when Germany stopped playing with Poland the French reverted to the master plan of defense behind the Maginot line. Sneaking trough Belgium, Hitler hit the weakest point of the line and so, the best shield history has seen, saw virtually NO ACTION in WWII. Tactics and technology had changed, and I believe that the incredible cost of the development of the Maginot line cost the French untold millions of francs and to be unprepared in other ways. (The numbers of soldiers in the French army was more than the Germans at the beginning of the war. if only they had more planes and tanks rather than a big barrier! Oh well. . .)
History teaches us that other nations are, even right now, finding ways to get around star wars. We maybe will be safe soon, but the enemies will change their tactics and on top of evading the shield, our sons and daughters will be the ones that will pay for it, in many different ways. Some say that we will get better technology? For star wars yes, but it will mean less money for other new weapons and tactics.
And as for trusting new hurried up technology in a critical time: do the phrase “obviously a mayor malfunction” ring any bells?
Here is a different idea, mind you I’m not sure of how High interceptions are to be made.
Lets say that this system could work as intended. Every time a weapon is successfully intercepted (even during tests) we run the risk of trapping our species to the planet.
NORAD and a few other Cold war Tracking stations are now used to track the Junk spinning around our planet.
In the last 50 odd years we have managed to put up quite a number of items out there. All of it travelling tens of thousands of KM per Hour. It has become so bad that even collisions with flecks of paint can cause major damage.
Imagine an upper atmosphere interception throwing debris out there striking a large object (say a satellite) this collision could cause a chain reaction which could surround the planet in a large ring of debris making it impossible for future generations to even enter a low orbit let alone leave this planet’s orbit.
ok seems a little far fetched but this just shows the short sightedness we as a species tend to have.
GIGObuster, I didn’t mean to imply that the Germans never saw the Maginot line as a threat. My point was, that it certainly didn’t work as planned. If I’m not mistaken, the Nazi’s used an early version of a hang-glider (or maybe it was a parasail) to drop elite troops onto the top of the Maginot line who then stuffed grenades and other explosives into whatever opening they could find (you’re in a “bomb-proof” room and someone tosses a grenade in, what’s the odds of you getting out alive?), thus taking out sections of the line and making it easier for the regular troops to slip through.
why not spend the money improving society? I’m sure the billions squandered by Dubya in the SDI would work wonders in the health care sector or in education. Instead he wants to build a Pie in the Sky.
Call me bleeding heart liberal, but he should look at the threats to society on the ground before he takes to the skies.
GIGObuster wrote:
Giuliani?
Well, doing the whole prequel thing for Star Wars was probably a good idea, but Jarjar Binks was a bad idea and doomed Episode I to failure.
Star Wars…Bad idea but probably not cetain doom.
Bad Idea simply because it will almost assuredly not work to any effective degree. In the well over 20 years of research (and who knows how many billions of $$), the technology hasn’t really progressed all that much. We can now hit ONE incoming sometimes if know exactly when and where it will be. To work, an SDI system would have to locate, track, and destroy thousands of warheads. What’s more, it would have to work perfectly the first time it was ever used. Given defense contractors less than sterling track record with comparatively simple weapons (the M-16, a freaking RIFLE, worked like crap in its early days), I’m not willing to bet too much on it. It may very well be possible to do in 20-30 years, but what’s the cost/benefit? Seems the money would be much better spent elsewhere.
On another note, the idea that early 80’s SDI spending is what brought the USSR down is a popular myth. In interviews with former Soviet leaders and in declassified documents, the USSR never really put much stock in SDI for two main reasons:
- They never thought it would work.
- even if it did, the most obvious (and cheapest) response would have been to double or triple their nuclear arsenal to overlaod the system.
To make a short reply long, put me in the “huge waste of much needed funds” category