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Isn't it pretty clear that STAR WARS Missile Defense doesn't work?
Last summer, the Star Wars system failed again -- $100 million was spent so that one missile could try and shoot down another. The rocket carrying the intercept missile didn't deploy, and ::flush:: went the toilet.
Fifty Nobel Prize winners (21 of the Nobel Prize in Physics) have written to this nations' leaders, asking them to abandon national missile defense. They say it won't work. If we do try this, both Russia and China will embark on an arms race to overwhelm our missile defense.
Big issue: countermeasures. How our enemies could defeat Star Wars. Guess what? It can be done by decoys! Place a warhead inside a Mylar balloon and launch a hundred of decoy balloons. So far, the system can't discriminate against live and decoy targets.
What is wrong with deterrence? Our advesaries have had nuclear weaponry for 50 years, and they've never attacked. We've never had "Star Wars." Why haven't they attacked? They've been afraid of the response -- massive retaliation, suicide for small countries, Mutual Assured Destruction for a superpower. This system has kept the peace for two centuries, let's not try and go with something that wouldn't work.
------------------ Star Trek Gamma Quadrant Average Rated 6.27 out of 10 Smileys by Fabrux (with four eps posted) *** "Oh, yes, screw logic, let's go for a theory with no evidence!" -Omega 11:48am, Jan. 19th, 2001 **** "The candidate who slimed John McCain in the primaries and smeared Al Gore in the general election is now the president who pledges to elevate the nation's tone and bring civility to our discorse. Kind of like Michael Corleone brought peace to the mob by killing the heads of the other four families." --Paul Begala, Is Our Children Learning?
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Silly primitive nuclear weapons. Once my weather machine is working, i'll lay waste to my enemies with hurricanes! mwhahahahahahahahahahaha, let's see you shoot down a storm with a missile.
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Of course Star Wars wouldn't work. I was taught in college history class that it wouldn't work. Logistically, you can't create an impenetrable shield around the Earth via "killer" satellites that would instantaneously destroy all nuclear missiles launched. It ain't gonna happen.
I still wonder to this day if Reagan actually believed that it would work, or if it was just an overblown and overspent way of reassuring the public that the U.S. would survive and be victorious in a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. Of course, that wouldn't happen either. Just watch "The Day After."
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This is a very complex issue, and to examine it properly I think we need to identify the strengths and weaknesses of both systems.
MAD pros: Satire of popular films and television shows of the day. Occasionally humorous cartoons.
MAD cons: Lame.
Star Wars pros: Nice score. Fun effects.
Star Wars cons: Written entirely by lemurs.
I think the obvious solution would be some sort of combination of the two, with special emphasis on the Mad side of the equation. Now, while I was too young to experience the Mad version of Star Wars, if their send up of the Star Trek (Star Wreck, Star Blech, etc.) family is anything to go by, those Russians had better watch out. Once they read a comic strip depicting their favorite telelvision show as "Who Wants to Eat Dinner?", they will become too demoralized to launch a strike against us, nuclear or otherwise.
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I still wonder to this day if Reagan actually believed that it would work, or if it was just an overblown and overspent way of reassuring the public that the U.S. would survive and be victorious in a nuclear war with the Soviet Union
A third possibility is that he was using it to convince RUSSIA that we'd survive in a nuclear war. Another factor in their spending themselves into oblivion.
Socialist economies simply can not support arms races. Let China build up its weapons. They'll simply destroy themselves, like the USSR did.
------------------ Disclaimer: "All references to vices and of the supernatural contained in this game are for entertainment purposes only. _Over_The_Edge_ does not promote satanisim, belief in magic, drug use, violence, sexual deviation, body piercing, cynical attitudes toward the government, freedom of expression, or any other action or belief not condoned by the authorities." - `OverTheEdge'
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Why, out of curiousity, did you capitalize Russia? At the time, it was the USSR. Just wondering.
Star Wars is bad. MAD is good. Well, MAD is mad, but Star Wars is just plain insane.
Maybe Reagan would've had 'em convinced if he actually got Star Wars working, but as its unworkable and impossible to get to work, I doubt the Soviets ever believed that we'd all survive. You know, that's the thing about MAD = Mutually Assured Destruction.
------------------ Star Trek Gamma Quadrant Average Rated 6.27 out of 10 Smileys by Fabrux (with four eps posted) *** "Oh, yes, screw logic, let's go for a theory with no evidence!" -Omega 11:48am, Jan. 19th, 2001 **** "The candidate who slimed John McCain in the primaries and smeared Al Gore in the general election is now the president who pledges to elevate the nation's tone and bring civility to our discorse. Kind of like Michael Corleone brought peace to the mob by killing the heads of the other four families." --Paul Begala, Is Our Children Learning?
[This message has been edited by JeffKardde (edited February 19, 2001).]
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Star War is not as simple as you think, it's not only about projectile interception, it's also about global intel and early satellite warning and detection.
As for the interception of enemy ICBMs, projectiles are one of the low tech methods in the entire system, US military have effectively developed and demonstrate the ability to intercept using laser, plasma cannons, etc and plan to intergrate them into the Star War project.
And yes, the identification of decoys are also part of the main objective of Star War project. US miliary now has the ability to detect low radiation coming from the MIRV warheads, therefore effectively target the real one from the fakes.
And further more, Star War project have real life application, the technologies that's been developed have also help the advance in various technologies which we use in our everyday life.
------------------ What is the difference between a terriorist and your girlfriend? - With terrorist, there is a chance of negotiation.
quote:Socialist economies simply can not support arms races. Let China build up its weapons. They'll simply destroy themselves, like the USSR did.
Cocky? Oh, yes...
------------------ "People have the right to discriminate based on religion." "There is no "seperation of church and state" in the Constitution" -Omega, Jan 26 and 30, respectively
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Gee, well, since Star Wars currently can't tell between live weapons and decoys, lets hope they just don't fire a shit-load of decoys and mix a real nuke or two in with 'em.
------------------ Star Trek Gamma Quadrant Average Rated 6.27 out of 10 Smileys by Fabrux (with four eps posted) *** "Oh, yes, screw logic, let's go for a theory with no evidence!" -Omega 11:48am, Jan. 19th, 2001 **** "The candidate who slimed John McCain in the primaries and smeared Al Gore in the general election is now the president who pledges to elevate the nation's tone and bring civility to our discorse. Kind of like Michael Corleone brought peace to the mob by killing the heads of the other four families." --Paul Begala, Is Our Children Learning?
1. The USSR did not spend itself into oblivion trying to match the US's SDI development budget. The US themselves haven't really spent that much developing it. SDI's crucial contribution to the collapse of the USSR was that merely keeping up their side of the MAD threat was enough to bring them to the verge of bankruptcy. In the end, they could either attack before the US became invulnerable, or they could just give up.
2. I've noticed that it's ALWAYS the USSR or China who are assumed to be the ones who'll start a nuclear war, never America. Why? Both of them have/had far superior conventional forces (numbers-wise, anyway). These are/were socialist nations, they wanted conquest, introduction of the capitalists into the socialist paradise, resources. All we capitalists wanted was to sell them stuff. We were the ones saying "better dead than Red." And I don't know why I'm saying "we" anyway, the rest of NATO was never gonna have any say in the decision to go nuclear - no wonder a common feature in WWIII fiction is America's abandonment by her allies. . .
3. The only nuclear attack you're likely to suffer is a terrorist one. You gonna particle-beam Arab immigrants from orbit?
Anyway. SDI is a pipe dream - to be able to accurately plot thousands of incoming targets with multiple vectors, velocities, orbits, then sort out which ones are dummies (and what do you do with them? A dummy baliistic missile is still going to make a hell of a bang when it hits; assign it a lower priority in the threat assessment/target schedule?), then match all interdiction resources with targets, then coordinate a successful rendezvous for each? And how are they going to sell this to the American people, given 100% coverage may not be possible for years, and priority protection is given to strategic targets (cities, military bases, areas which vote Republican and are rich)?
------------------ "I rather strongly disagree, even if I share the love of Dick. Speaking of which, that would be the most embarrasing .sig quote ever, so never use it."
Why, out of curiousity, did you capitalize Russia?
Emphasis. Russia, as opposed to the American people. I keep forgetting about italics.
Lee:
In the end, they could either attack before the US became invulnerable, or they could just give up.
Funny thing, though. I seem to recall that we offered to share the frikin' thing with them, and they refused.
no wonder a common feature in WWIII fiction is America's abandonment by her allies. . .
You ought to read more Clancy. "Red Storm Rising" rocks. And we (NATO) kick the snot out of Soviet Russia.
Read "The Sum of All Fears" while you're at it. Good insight into MAD.
I also notice something about the concept of a dummy rocket: if the rocket was going to hit the US, it would have to be headed here in the first place. Thus it would have to be installed on an ICBM. The problem there is that ICBM maintanence is one of the most expensive components of any arms race. Those Russian weapons probably wouldn't even fire if they wanted them to, due to lack of maintanence funding. Yes, building the nuke in the first place would cost a large amount of money, but getting that many decoys ready, and keeping them so, would cost far more. Their economy would colapse before they could launch.
------------------ Disclaimer: "All references to vices and of the supernatural contained in this game are for entertainment purposes only. _Over_The_Edge_ does not promote satanisim, belief in magic, drug use, violence, sexual deviation, body piercing, cynical attitudes toward the government, freedom of expression, or any other action or belief not condoned by the authorities." - `OverTheEdge'
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