"Star Wars" missile defense - practicle?

John_Frazer · 2002-12-17 19:35:13

To be fair, I'll add this.
I'm still moderately in favor of trying to build a field-deployable system of missiles, but I see no cause for the rush that our pal Shrub is in. Every time -every time the techies are rushed by teh politicians & money-men, things don't work, and they never listen to the techs.

http://slate.msn.com/?id=2075605
Bombs Away
Bush's indefensible missile-defense plan.
By Fred Kaplan
December 17, 2002
And so it begins?or, rather, begins all over again. President Bush announced today that he has ordered Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to start the process of actually deploying the long-awaited "missile defense" system. By the fall of 2004, Bush wants 10 anti-missile interceptors (i.e., missiles designed to shoot down incoming missiles) fielded at the new test site in Ft. Greeley, Alaska, with another 10 by 2005 or '06 and many more beyond then. Defensive missiles will also be put on the Navy's Aegis cruisers, while missile-detecting radars will start going up on the ground, at sea, and in outer space.
What the president did not say is a) that we've been through this before, many times, with equal exuberance, enormous investments, and no returns; b) that as recently as 18 months ago, the program's top general said it was still at an early stage and warned against rushing things; and c) that, no matter how good defenses might get, any "rogue" with enough sophistication to build and launch a ballistic missile can easily maneuver around those defenses. On this last point, it is worth noting that U.S. weapons scientists and intelligence analysts have known about these maneuvering tricks for more than 40 years; that no one has the slightest idea how to deal with them; and that Bush's current test program does not even attempt to do so.
One common fallacy, propagated by some officials who know better (as well as many who don't), is that the case against missile defenses has been purely doctrinal in nature?a reluctance, on the part of arms-control theorists, to give up the policy of Mutual Assured Destruction. During the Cold War, holding each other's population hostage?the essence of MAD?was seen as the way to deter either the United States or the U.S.S.R. from launching a nuclear first-strike. Mounting a defense against nuclear strikes, some argued, might erode deterrence. The Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972, which sharply limited (and, in later revisions, banned) missile defenses, is viewed in this light as the apotheosis of MAD. Bush perpetuated this notion in today's speech: "The United States," he said, "has moved beyond the doctrine of Cold War deterrence reflected in the 1972 ABM Treaty."
In fact, though, MAD was never actual U.S. policy or the motive behind the treaty. The U.S. nuclear war plan has always emphasized destroying Soviet military targets and, from 1961 on, featured options that explicitly avoided hitting cities. The United States (and the U.S.S.R.) gave up on nuclear defenses?not just ABMs, but also nationwide fallout shelters?not out of obeisance to deterrence theory, but because the calculations were clear that offense would always beat defense. And because the technology seemed out of reach, the effort seemed fruitless, in any case. That's why Richard Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev?neither arms-control softies?signed the ABM Treaty.
The treaty reflected an acceptance of analysis conducted over the previous 15 years, not by doves but by Pentagon engineers and White House physicists, many of them hawks who despaired over their findings. The process began in 1958, under President Dwight Eisenhower, when a Pentagon technical panel concluded that the Army's Nike Zeus, the first ABM system, could easily be defeated by multiple warheads, decoys, or clouds of metallic chaff that could confuse the system's radars.
In 1961, Kennedy's defense secretary, Robert McNamara, ordered his own study, with similar results. The prospect of a "really effective" missile-defense system, the 55-page report concluded, "is bleak, has always been so, and there are no great grounds for hope that the situation will markedly improve in the future, no matter how hard we try." The main reason: "No one has yet suggested any solution to the problem of overcoming very simple, lightweight, non-discriminable decoys."
When Nixon tried in 1970, with the Safeguard ABM system, his science advisers told him in top secret memos?recently declassified by the National Security Archive, a private research group at George Washington University?that Safeguard "will be obsolete within three to four years after it is first deployed"; even China's limited nuclear arsenal could saturate the system with such "penetration aids" as decoys or "chaff clouds." National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger advised Nixon that Bell Telephone Labs, the program's prime contractor, "wants to get out of the ABM business" because the system "cannot adequately perform the mission assigned to it."
None of this pessimism was made public at the time. In 1972, Defense Secretary Melvin Laird testified to Congress that Safeguard had "no technical problems which would affect a decision to proceed with deployment."
Jump ahead to the latest chapter of this apparently never-ending saga. In September 1999, the CIA's National Intelligence Estimate concluded that any country able to develop ballistic missiles "would also develop various responses to US defenses," including such "readily available technology" as decoys, chaff, or wrapping warheads in radar-absorbing material.
The program's managers know this. In 1997 they decided finally to confront the issue, devising a test plan that would involve shooting down a mock warhead surrounded by nine or 10 decoys, all of which would look like a warhead to the sensors of a heat-seeking radar. In 1998, the program was revised so that the warhead would be flanked by just three decoys. In 1999, plans were again altered; only one decoy would be required, and it could be a large balloon. Philip Coyle, then the Pentagon's test director, wrote a widely distributed report the following year criticizing this devolution. The balloon's heat signature, he wrote, was "very dissimilar" to that of the mock warhead, so the radar "can easily discriminate" between the two.
In other words, when Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said in an Oct. 24 speech that we are "moving forward on missile defenses" to the point where "we actually can hit a bullet with a bullet," he was uttering an irrelevancy. Hitting one bullet with one bullet is certainly a remarkable feat, but it's among the least remarkable feats that an effective missile-defense system must accomplish.
Incidentally, no tests have yet involved hitting, say, two bullets with two bullets. In one nominally successful test, after the interceptor slammed into the warhead, shards from the collision caused the radar on the ground to malfunction. If a second warhead had followed, the whole system would have been blinded. Despite these self-imposed limitations, the test program has been uneven. To date, five of eight tests have been successful. The most recent test, on Dec. 11 of this year, was a dud.
In June of last year, Gen. Ronald T. Kadish, director of the missile-defense program, said in hearings before the House Armed Services Committee, "I cannot overemphasize the importance of controlling our expectations and persevering through the hard times as we develop and field a system as complex as missile defense." The program's "test philosophy," he explained, "is to add step-by-step complexities over time. It is a walk-before-you-run, learn-as-you-go development approach."
Judging from today's speech, it seems that Bush wants his generals to run the New York marathon before they've mastered the 100-yard dash.
Fred Kaplan is the Boston Globe's New York bureau chief, its former military correspondent, and the author of The Wizards of Armageddon.

CalTech2010 · 2002-12-18 15:41:17

It's not really a true "star wars" plan, with the space-based interceptors. Satellites track the missile, and US based Patriot type interceptors launch from the ground. I suppose its easier that way... you don't have to track all of those kill-vehicle satellites, and the Patriots can be placed in a handful of places to cover the whole country.

soph · 2002-12-18 15:49:08

yet another test failed a couple of days ago. did someone already mention this?

Josh Cryer · 2002-12-18 15:54:42

soph, proponents probably wouldn't mention it.

Anyone care to mention that the US Military eats up more than half our national budget each year?

The US military is the biggest bureaucracy we have.

CalTech2010 · 2002-12-18 16:24:52

Would you like to be shaken awake in the middle of the night with your neighbor saying:

"Josh! Grab your shotgun! The Russians just invaded Alaska!"

soph · 2002-12-18 16:33:09

wont happen. the russians cant support a military invasion without US money.

CalTech2010 · 2002-12-18 21:08:08

Soph, I was being absurd to make a point. I'm saying that to defend our nation to the extent we need to, we have to spend a generous amount on our military spending.

Without that budget, we would have to have militias ready at a moments notice. And I was trying to demonstrate how nice it is to be able to sleep at night knowing our nation is so well defended.

I guess that kind of slipped by that 187 iq, eh?

soph · 2002-12-18 21:19:35

our military budget is bloated. its wasted. you want to talk about the defense department? shoot. ive got personal ties to the defense industry. we build nothing new. we make a lot of spare parts for old planes. we build a new carrier every few years, but thats pretty much it.

most of the money goes into a bottomless pit of "R&D." the most lucrative thing thats come out of this for the past 10 years has been the F-22, a whopping 5 year production program that gave us less than 100 planes.

increasing the budget isnt the answer. reforming the department of defense is a much better idea.

Josh Cryer · 2002-12-18 21:31:22

Most of our military spending is wasted in terrorism...

CalTech2010 · 2002-12-18 21:32:45

You forget all of the money required to maintain our facilities, machines, weapons, and that 2000 nuclear warhead arsenal of ours. Then you have to pay the troops, buy supplies, yadda-da-dadda-da-dadda... the list goes on.

As for no new technology, all I have to say is...

Daisy-cutter, tactical nuclear weapons, SDI, urban combat apparatus, infrared snipers, B-2 Bomber, Stealth helicopter, 1' resolution spy photos (at least enough to see if you're bald, and possibly enough to read the newspaper you're holding)... the list goes on and on.

We NEED all of that money not only to create many new innovations in the military, but to maintain the substantial force we already have. Reform in the defense department is in order, but that money does go towards some very important causes.

soph · 2002-12-18 21:36:13

Daisy-cutter, tactical nuclear weapons, SDI, urban combat apparatus, infrared snipers, B-2 Bomber, Stealth helicopter, 1' resolution spy photos (at least enough to see if you're bald, and possibly enough to read the newspaper you're holding)... the list goes on and on.

heh. everything but SDI is old tech. and SDI....wont work. tactical nukes are years old. urban combat apparatus, uh, vietnam? snipers, im speechless...vast improvement. B-2 bomber is over 10 years old, and is hardly produced, if at all, any more. stealth planes arent really made anymore.

my point was, all this useless research is in addition to what we need to spend.

Josh Cryer · 2002-12-19 00:34:19

Reform in the defense department is in order, but that money does go towards some very important causes.

Sure, like blowing up water filtration plants and civilian weddings.

No, seriously. How would taxpayers feel if it was forced down their throat that a ton of their tax money went to blowing up non-military, strategically unimportant targets?

Phobos · 2002-12-19 01:36:22

Anyone care to mention that the US Military eats up more than half our national budget each year?

Yeah socialist countries and third world dictatorships aren't big on dumping insane amounts of funding into their own militaries. I guess that explains why the Soviet Union slaughtered 50,000 Afghanis and conquered most of Eastern Europe and that China just must be jesting when they threaten to blow away Taiwan if it officially votes to declare independence from Taiwan and invaded Vietnam for a short while in the late 70s. Yeah, and I guess China and every other country on Earth doesn't have big military budgets. Only the evil USA would put so much money into such a thing. I'm sure Saddam cares more about his own people then building up his own military and dreaming about attacking sovereign countries. That little incursion into Kuwait must have been just training exercise gone awry or it was invoked by some evil American conspiracy. Maybe we should just hand the whole Middle East to Saddam on a silver platter, cuz you know, he's just a nice guy.

soph · 2002-12-19 05:31:41

yes, but the way our civil service and government bureaucracy works, theres a lot of pork. im sure you know what this is. ill bet at least 10% of the military budget goes to crap every year. thats a lot of money. if they gave just 2% of that budget to NASA...we might see actual progress in space too.

Shaun Barrett · 2002-12-19 07:57:27

Now, now Phobos!!

That's entirely beside the point. You can't go listing the transgressions of other countries when we're being lectured on the evils of "The Great Satan"!! Especially if any of the countries are of a socialist frame of mind.

Do try to concentrate on the brain-wa .., er, sorry .. I meant the lessons we're being presented with!
I tried to bring up the roughly one million Iraqis slaughtered by Saddam, but quickly realised the error of my ways when I was adjudged too "dramatic"!

Our teachers have determined that the world is essentially a good and moral place. The former Soviet Union, China, 1930s Imperial Japan (don't mention Nanking, whatever you do! ), the Pol Pot regime, Libya, Iraq, etc., have been found blameless - all innocent victims of imperialist American aggression.

With regard to Iraq, in particular, our learned instructors have deduced that Saddam Hussein has never had weapons of mass destruction, has no desire to ever possess such weapons, and would be horrified if the use of such weapons should ever be suggested, even in jest. He is a man of peace and justice, whose only wish is to be left alone to carry on serving his beloved people ... who, incidentally, have recently proven their love for him by giving him 99.98% of the popular vote.
The 0.02% of Iraqis who didn't vote for Saddam were unavailable for comment after the election.

Anyway, the point is to understand clearly that you can never hope to learn your lesson thoroughly, that America alone is the fount of all things despicable, if you allow lies and fabrications about atrocities in other countries to cloud your judgment.

You know those stories about Stalin killing 20 million of his own people, about Japan killing 300,000 Chinese civilians at Nanking, about Germany incinerating 6 million jews, about that other socialist hero, Mao Tse Tung, killing untold millions of his people, about our socialist friends in the Khmer Rouge butchering 2 million of their own kind, about the odd half-million East Timorese in recent years missing-presumed-killed by the Indonesian military .... All lies!
It never happened. It was all trumped up by the CIA to divert attention from their own thieving and killing!!

Not everybody would believe that!

Josh Cryer · 2002-12-19 14:13:14

Phobos, holy crap, how you could even make such a silly comment? China doesn't even come close to our budget, comparatively. Our military budget is bigger than the next nine or so countries military budgets combined. We spend nearly 2 billion dollars a day in our military. Can you fucking imagine?

No country on the planet spends as much as we do on military. I think the cloest is China, and they only spend like 1% of their national budget. We spend more than half.

Did you hear about that time McDonnell Douglas was selling the Navy nuts, (yes, nuts! twenty cent nuts) for $2,043 each?

An interesting fact is that while the US accounts for 22% of the world economy, we account for 37% of ?defense? military spending. The US military is the worst bureaucracy on the planet, for gods sake. We lose billions every year because when you're talking about that kind of money, it disappears really easily.

Phobos, if China has a ?big military budget? then what on earth do we have? What's bigger than big, because we certainly have it?

Why in the #### do you guys insist on criticizing a fact as if I'm trying to ?demonize? the US? At least come up with a counter argument instead of going off on inane tangents. Jesus.

I am just saying that we have a huge, unnecessary military. Anyone care to dispute these facts rather than twist everything around like little children, as if I'm trying to defend dictatorships?

Phobos · 2002-12-19 14:24:35

Aye comrade. How I forget that absolutely everything that goes wrong in the world is the fault of those imperialist bastards... oh I must count to ten and take a deep breath!
Yes we must find that .02% of Iraqi voters who didn't vote for Saddam. There's a CIA plot involved and we're going to get to the bottom of it! The shame must have driven them into underground! :0

soph · 2002-12-19 17:22:59

actually josh, youre wrong. chinas military spending is hidden from even the cia...nobody knows quite how much they spend. i wouldnt be surprised if their spending equals, or surpasses ours. their military is quite huge too.

their military spending can also be covered up as "technology" research spending, which isnt done here, because we analyze every comma and period of the budget.

Shaun Barrett · 2002-12-19 18:18:02

Josh writes:-

... as if I'm trying to 'demonise' the US?

Josh, if you've had no intention of demonising the U.S., then it's the most remarkable accident of verbalisation in literary history that you've managed such a good job of it without meaning to!!

My intention here isn't to dissuade you from criticising America, and I'm reasonably sure Phobos probably thinks along similar lines.
There is no doubt in my mind that numerous ill-advised, immoral, and odious acts of bastardry (an Aussie expression! ) have been committed by U.S. politicians and generals ever since 1776. There is absolutely no such thing as a wholly 'good' country. They've all got skeletons in the cupboard and I have absolutely no candy-coated illusions about America in that regard.

We're all stuck with having to choose among a plethora of evils in this world ... a sad and sorry situation to be in.
It's just that I, and others like me, have learned to become heartily sick of dogmatic left-wing mantras that attempt to prove the moral bankruptcy of western civilisation - as though only white, anglo-saxon, protestants, in particular, epitomise all things nasty!

Such views are painfully naive and unsophisticated to those of us who've been around long enough to see the bigger picture.
???

P.S. No offense intended. And please excuse all my heavy irony! ... A poor literary device, I agree, but I've always had a weakness for it!

Josh Cryer · 2002-12-19 19:54:45

soph, since we don't know for certain China's expendatures, we can't go off and make baseless assumptions (in fact, I would rather assume that such hidden expendatures are myth, I would need more evidence than hearsay by the CIA factbook). The only thing we can go on is what they tell their own people and what we know for sure. And even then, even if we take the assumptions given by the CIA factbook, China is still dwarfed by our own spending.

Shaun, how could what I said be interpreted as demonization? I'm suggesting that the US military is a huge bureaucracy, and doesn't really do much in the way of defense. This is to say that the whole SDI idea is totally ridiculous, and just a friggin pork deal that will never be useful, ever.

Really, what does blowing up a wedding help with defense? Seriously. It does nothing. All it does is piss off people. There are some Muslim cultures that never forget that sort of stuff. Revenge for them is generational. Sort of a, if you kill my father, my grandson will come back and kill yours, deal.

Blowing up water filtration plants? Totally stupid. The only way that approach works is if you go through with it, do a regime change, force people to live under your set guidelines, and replace whatever you destoryed in a relatively short period of time. Kind of a burn down a house to get at the rodents, and rebuild it sort of deal. And even then, it's highly inefficient- diplomacy would work much better. The only thing blowing up unnecessary targets does, is either piss people off, or in the case of water filtration plants, make them stronger, and more supportive of their government / dictatorship / whatever.

You really think all those Iraqi's who voted didn't want to? You think they had a gun to their head? Most likely not, and even the ones that aren't happy with their conditions, were propagandized with all this crap about the US invading, so even if they disliked the dictatorship, they voted in spite of us.

Is that really what our defense spending is supposed to go to?

I'm sorry I offend you and make you think that I am demonizing the US. I'm sorry your knowledge of US foreign policy is so lacking, you can't even begin to dispute these facts, either.

US military = unnecessarily inefficient bureaucracy.

And BTW, most of your ?heavy irony? was lacking fact. For example, none of the situations you cited resembled socialism in any reasonable degree. The Nazi's were right wingers, Stalin rejected democracy (democracy is a key part of socialism- what is ?social? about a dictatorship?), and as we know, Japan had nothing to do with socialism.

Reminds me of a quote by Pinochet, ?Democracy is the breeding ground of communism.? Oh yes, remember him? His Chilean coup was managed by the CIA, remember? Want me to link to you the declassified documents?

Your poor criticism, and fear of ?left-wing dogmatic mantras? does show us one thing, though. That people have a hard time accepting undeniable truths when confronted with them.

soph · 2002-12-19 20:00:00

josh, its far more dangerous to underestimate than it is to overestimate. and we have reason to believe that our current knowledge doesnt begin to cover their true program.

and i agree, as i have said, the military is a huge bureaucracy. but 100% of the vote seems a little, suspicious. if youre going to rig an election, do it right. and i wouldnt be surprised if the elections included select people only, or were supervised by the military.

Josh Cryer · 2002-12-19 20:09:56

soph, hmm, I'm just coming at it from a scientific point of view. If the CIA knows something I don't, I take their word for it, but if they can't divuldge that information to the common man, how can I trust it? The CIA hasn't really been trustworthy in the past, now.

Also, though I hugely doubt most Iraqi's support Saddam; because really, they'd rather have nice water filtration plants under a highly capitalistic economy where corporations told them what to do, and so on, than be starved to death, and lack medical facilities due to inhumane sanctions. But since Iraq is coming to another crisis, they feel almost obliged to support him. And this is without guns being pointed to their heads.

And don't think a 99% vote is impossible. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that Cubans support Castro 99%, and this is obviously without guns being pointed to their heads.

soph · 2002-12-19 20:15:50

go through the poorer areas of cuba and see how much support castro has.

Josh Cryer · 2002-12-19 20:25:20

He gets support from the poorer areas due to propaganda that the US has sanctions on them. It's an excuse. And probably a good one.

I think the last elections had a good 99% turnout. About 98% voted for him.

Shaun Barrett · 2002-12-20 08:07:21

Hi Josh!

I think you really do struggle with this notion of voting in totalitarian countries, don't you?!

You've been brought up in the luxury of free elections in a free country for too long. The system you criticise so roundly does have its advantages doesn't it, Josh?
But where you fail to comprehend reality is in the actuality of life without the niceties of western civilisation - the actuality of real oppression.

People really do go missing in these countries, Josh. There really is a secret service even more deadly and even less answerable than the American agencies you love to hate.
Do you honestly and seriously suggest that the 0.02% of Iraqis who didn't vote for Saddam just turned up at the office on Monday morning and said to their colleagues: "Well, that's one in the eye for that moustachioed scheisskopf! Boy, did I tell him what I thought of him?! You should have heard me down at the polling-booth giving that sumbitch a mouthful of abuse!! He'll know not to mess with me in future!"
Wake up and smell the torture chamber, Josh!!

Get it? This is the bigger picture you're not seeing. The knife cuts both ways and justice is very very rare in this world. You can dream about a better world than western democracy - and I encourage you in that dream, I honestly do - but right at this moment, in the stark, ugly world of reality, what's your choice?

I don't doubt that you, and probably AltToWar, have your heart in the right place. The system we have is seriously flawed and we have a duty to change it for the better. But ... (the inevitable but! ...) when it comes right down to the crunch, western democracy is the best shot most people have had at a decent lifestyle since ... well .. since Adam played quarter-back for Eden!

Basically, Josh, you and I are on the same side. We both want a better world than the one we've got. Your only problem is the idealism of youth and the impatience that comes with it.
Democracy is a fragile flawed gem. But, in the absence of perfection, be careful how cavalier you are with it! It's all we've got!
???

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Re: "Star Wars" missile defense - practicle?

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