Still Opposed to Missile Defense?

Great Debates
41

This is ridiculous. The latest test doesn’t mean that NMD is assured to work in the current state of R&D.

However, a lot of you are failing to understand that this test does add more credibility to the fact that technology can be developed to implement a NMD, and that each test gives us more information necessary to develop it.

Why some people are opposed to researching and testing NMD systems “because it doesn’t work” right now is beyond me. Why in the world should we stop researching, testing, and development?

Further, it may be correct to say we don’t need NMD right now. But what about 3, 4, 5, 10 years down the line? Can any of you say we won’t need it then, that MAD will continue to work fine on it’s own (a ridiculous notion as it is already)? Gee, maybe if we keep researching and testing NMD prototypes, we could possibly come up with something 3, 4, 5, 10 years down the line when we might need it?

42

Golly Monster could it be 'cause the OP wants us to see, now that it’s had yet another successful test that it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread??

As I linked, even the Defense folks aren’t crowing to the extent of the OP.

As has been pointed out, while lots of time, money and resources (all finite) are being spent on this one system that might someday prevent some missiles that somebody might have and aim at us from hiting a target.

However, it would have done less than nothing to prevent the real attacks that we’ve so far sustained (car bombs at embassies and here, 9-11, Oklahoma City, the attack on the Cole etc.).

43

I can’t speak for the rest of the people here but my beef with NMD isn’t so much doing the research.(Never know what you can learn by researching.) It’s just that it seems like the pres is starting to base our defensive strategy on the expectation we’ll have this thing very soon.(IE within 10 years) Basically why pull out of ABM or do other things with that expectation if it’s going to be awhile before we have a decent system.(Unless the treaty doesn’t allow research.) I mean to me it’d be like basing energy policy on the expectation of the perfection of fusion very soon.(Which would be great once someone solves that problem but I wouldn’t base my energy policy on it now.) Well that and the idea that NMD might work better if you didn’t tell everyone that you have it.(But that’s another issue.) Of course there’s another issues and many of those have been raised but this is my big one for now.

44

The Maginot Line worked perfectly. The Germans didn’t even think about trying to penetrate it. So they simply went around it instead.

The Reagan Memorial Missile Shield cannot work perfectly, and it would have many, many ways around it available.

So its shoot-down rate might be y% instead of only x%? So what?

45

Wring, while it is good to know that we can actually hit a target, I completely realize and agree that it is nothing more than a very basic test, not something simulating a real launch and counter. Not disagreeing with you there. I’m not even sure if we should implement NMD any time soon, but I feel it would sure be nice if we have a few years of solid modern R&D already completed if we do encounter a nuclear missile threat a few years down the line.

All I’m saying is just because it doesn’t work now doesn’t mean we should stop researching and developing new tech “because it doesn’t work right now” (not only could we come up with a feasible NMD, who knows what else is developed?). While money, time, and other resources are finite, I believe at least a portion should be used on this kind of research (what that portion should be, I don’t know).

Dave_D, I agree, mostly, but I think the ABM does prohibit NMD R&D.

In it’s current incarnation, sure, it won’t work perfectly. But who made you the expert on what can and cannot work perfectly a few years from now? :rolleyes:

46

Sam Stone, your apparent patriotism shows me why the China’s and Russia’s of the world question our judgements.

Jeez, they weren’t worried we were sending large numbers of troops into their back yard, were they? Or should the U.S. just be allowed to dictate world-wide policy? I’d like to add that the threat of China throwing more of its conventional might into the Korean war had a lot to do with how it was fought, maybe even more than the threat of going nuclear.

That threat works two ways and we’ve been using it for the last half century. But of course, we’re right and everyone else is wrong.

I’m not out-and-out against missile defense. However, given limited resources, my opinion is that we are spending too much on a less credible threat. There are bigger, proven threats that could use an influx of half the $$ spent on missile defense.

The North Korea’s and Iraq’s of the world are credible threats, and we need to continually assess future threats and how to defend against them. Perhaps missile defense might be the answer, or at least an answer. But it also puts us in the driver’s seat worldwide, and there are an awful lot of countries which don’t like how we drive - and not all of them are enemies.

47

Monster, I’m sure you can name many examples of technological systems of anywhere-similar complexity that do work “perfectly” now, after many more years of development. :rolleyes: Right?

I’m still impressed by the degree of quasi-religious faith that so many have in this vision of Saint Ronald. Me, I prefer to deal with reality.

48

A missile defense only ‘puts you in the driver’s seat’ against countries that want to launch missiles against you. Our friends shouldn’t care, especially since we are very likely to offer them those defenses (and it’s very much in our interests to do so). Hell, Reagan was willing to give SDI to the Soviets.

Incidentally, Europe is going to fall under risk of missile attack a lot sooner than the U.S. will, because Iran will have a missile capable of hitting them in just a few years from now.

And frankly, if someone’s going to be in the driver’s seat, I’d much rather it was us than Saddam Hussein.

So many of these arguments are straw men. You guys start out with the assumption that the military is a bunch of drooling idiots, then use that as proof that they will make bad decisions with respect to missile defense.

The fact is, if the system is only X% reliable, then they will take that into account in formulating policy. This is nothing new. We constantly formulate policy based on threat analysis, estimates of likelihood of success of military actions, etc. Remember the Gulf war? Remember all the talk about how it would be a quagmire, and how Saddam would manage to draw Israel into the conflict, which would escalate the war to the entire middle east? Those were all possibilities. And the smart people in the Pentagon weighed them all and then made their decision. They will continue to do so.

No one is about to go, “Yippee! We are invulnerable now! Let’s push everyone around!”. If the Bush administration wants to move to operational deployment of the system, it won’t be because they are a bunch of deluded idiots with unrealistic expectations. It will be because they think that a defense that is even X% effective is better than nothing, or because they want to use the threat of deployment as a negotiating tool, or whatever. But at least give them credit for being intelligent, educated people. I daresay that Paul Wolfowitz, Colin Powell, and Donald Rumsfeld have more information and more experience than the denizens of the SDMB.

And yes, I’m aware of the threat of smuggled nuclear weapons, and the government is too. In fact, they issued several alerts to that specific risk in the near past. That’s another strawman. It’s like saying that we don’t need to develop aircraft carriers because the enemy has submarines, or that we don’t need tanks because we have airplanes. Different threats, different tools.

If the U.S. is forced to completely close its borders, or if it develops the strategy and technology to effectively prevent large weapons from being smuggled into the U.S., then ballistic missiles will be the only way to get those weapons to their targets, and you want to have a deterrant against it.

A good defense is multi-faceted. NMD isn’t a universal shield, it’s just one more weapons system in a very complex, interlinked arsenal.

49

Well, if that were the case, we would have been breaking the treaty for years. In fact, it gives extremely broad latitude on R&D…It mainly just prohibits deployment. Of course, Bush et al. have come up with a convenient excuse of something they want to do that would violate the treaty but I don’t think anyone seriously believes this to be a real motivation. Phil Coyle, head of testing at the Pentagon during the Clinton years, says that we are years away from realistically needing to do something that would violate the ABM treaty: http://www.cdi.org/dm/2001/issue5/dm503.pdf

50

The ABM treaty did not forbig R&D, but it did forbid certain kinds of operational tests. So it’s much the same thing, because without the operational tests you can’t move to the next phase of R&D.

I suspect that the prohibition against operational testing had reached the point where it was seriously hindering development and further research.

All that’s moot now anyway. Bush pulled out of the treaty, and none of the dire consequences that many of the opponents on this board were predicting came true. It didn’t spark another cold war, it didn’t lead to proliferation, and it didn’t hurt our relationship with the Russians. They blustered a bit before Bush did it, in an attempt to get him to change his mind. But once it was done, the world yawned and no one cared. It’s a non-issue, and now the U.S. is in a much stronger position to develop its own defenses than it was before.

Is anyone still willing to argue that getting out of the ABM treaty was not a smart thing to do?

51

Bush isn’t pursuing this on a R&D track. He is firmly committed to deploying NMD within the next few years. To do so, he has committed trillions of dollars towards NMD.

I am not arguing against R&D here. But there is a difference from pursuing this at an R&D level, with small projects that are allowed to fail, rather than one or two projects that must work or it is political disaster, with a goal of deployment in a few years. That is where we are right now. One can’t do science in such an environment, as systems which are not working to potential are kept around because there has been a ton of money spent. Or, it becomes prohibitively expensive to deploy widely, like the stealth bomber.

The only thing this will lead to is several trillion dollars spent on a system which is suboptimal, undependable, and not a realistic deterrence to a threat which may in itself not be realistic. Instead, we could commit 1/10 of the money going to NMD on things like uranium/plutonium buy back programs, social development, support for opposition parties, support for reform minded NGOs, etc.

52

And you suspect this based on what exactly?

There are two problems here, Sam. First, I think you are exagerating what opponents claimed pulling out of the treaty might do. Noone that I know was claiming that it would spark another cold war. Second, it has only been 4 months since the pullout was announced and it hasn’t even taken effect yet…it is way too early to see the long term effects on things such as proliferation and our attempts to make progress on things such as the de-alerting of Russian missiles, as well as the relations with our allies, etc.

53

That, and the utterly specious reasoning. There just might be another explanation for why our allies didn’t freak out or stopped freaking out about getting out of the ABM treaty. I’m sure if Sam did some research, he might run across it.

Two other problems:

First, from a simple power politics POV, U.S. “friends” will most definitely take notice of any NMD system. The fact that it’s US developed will mean that not only does the US control the technology that is supposed to (theoretically) protect all these countries, but the US will inevitably have the most advanced system protecting its own borders. If the US was trying to deploy a worldwide system to block any attack on anybody else it might be different; it’s not. Allies will also note that any freedom of action that the U.S. gains against its current opponents will also be gained against its current allies, which brings up huge questions of national sovereignty (which the U.S. doesn’t have a good track record of respecting). The same country that can use military force against Iraq can use military force against France. The only check on the United States’ conventional might is nuclear, and pretty much everybody in the world knows that.

Second, that 10% hole, or even a 1% hole, means just one thing: more missiles. Removing all but 10% of 10 missiles is a credible threat. Removing all but 10% of 100 missiles is somewhat less so. Removing all but 10% of 1000 missiles is laughably useless. Barring a guaranteed 100% kill rate (which is utterly impossible) any NMD system can be overcome simply by lobbing more missiles and/or investing in (or buying) technology to fool the defense system: technology that will likely cost less than the technology required to defeat such tactics.

Third, this month’s Foreign Policy was pretty clear about Saddam: he ain’t nuts. He loves foolish gambles and often misreads situations badly, but he isn’t insane. It’s a common argument that the leadership of two of the “axis of evil” countries is insane, but I’d prefer to see evidence that actually proved that either man was psychotic, as opposed to merely power-hungry and blind to the suffering of his people. The former may perhaps not be deterred by MAD; the latter quite easily. Which is it, exactly?

54

“two” other problems.

Sigh.

55

Point of information: As I understand things, the ABM allowed each side to deploy anti-missile defenses for one city and/or one missile field.

Experts, feel free to correct me!

56

lucwarm: Yes, that’s true. But the U.S. never did deploy such a system. The Soviets did. They had an ABM defense around Moscow. But something that people may not know or are overlooking in all this is that the Soviets were in violation of the ABM treaty since 1972. They had a radar system employed in Krasnoyarsk which was in violation of the treaty. The U.S. used to bring it up from time to time during arms negotiations. So complaints from Russia were more than a little suspect.

JShore: Sigh. This is common knowledge. This is what frustrates me. You guys keep trying to claim that I’m out to lunch, but when I bring up the most basic points I get these comments that make it clear to me that you aren’t even that familiar with the debate. The prohibition on testing outlined in the ABM treaty was one of the major reasons the administration pulled out of it, and was mentioned as such in most stories covering the debate.

For the record, here is article 5 of the ABM treaty:

57

Sam:

(1) The U.S. did in fact choose to deploy an ABM system. Here is the info on it from that article by Philip Coyle that I linked to previously:

(2) The claim that the Administration made at the time Bush announced the withdrawal that they were being constrained by the ABM treaty seemed to be rather vague to me, which is certainly the way I was have made it if I knew I didn’t want to get into a detailed defense of my position. It also pertains to the fact that they want to deploy something in 2004 even though there is nothing effective yet to deploy. So, sure, if you want to deploy something that is ineffective and not credible then the ABM treaty is constraining. If you want to actually continue research toward perhaps someday deploying something credible then it is not constraining.

(3) Just as a point-of-fact that may be confusing people when they read the text you quoted from the ABM treaty that seems to prohibit testing: note the use of the word “mobile”…Nothing in the treaty prevents the testing of land-based systems that are not mobile such as the planned mid-course interceptors that are the only things being actively developed at this point.

(4) To quote the beginning of Phil Coyle’s article (which you really ought to read),

For good measure, here is another analysis from those folks that I know at UCS—this is a summary but contains a link to the full report as a PDF file: http://www.ucsusa.org/security/abm_analysis.html Here is a quote:

So, Sam, your “common knowledge” claim just doesn’t cut it for me.

58

I was responding specifically to the claim that the ABM treaty does not interfere with testing. Clearly it does. The only type of system that can be tested under the treaty is a fixed, land-based missile system that is not reloadable or multi-launch capable. The U.S. has a number of systems in the proposal stage, many of which could not be developed under the treaty.

And your source is claiming as fact that other systems can still be developed in the research phase. That is disputed, because the ABM clearly prohibits development, testing, and deployment. R&D is development.

59

Missile defense will work. The problem is that it will be a Maginot Line defense against terrorists and rogue nations, the reasons being mentioned before.

60

All of the other tests (save one) were initially reported as ‘successful’ and it was only after the data were made available to independant scientests, did we learn that the tests were rigged. like this

So having 3 decoys only makes the job easier because it gives the warhead lots of bright objects to lock onto until it gets in close and it can see the dimmer warhead.