Missile Defense update...(being prepared, & how far?)

It seems to me that we have a lot more worries facing us from poverty, health care, poor education standards, crime and other things than we do from global thermonuclear war. I'm not saying it isn't a concern. But, if we live in a society where we can't afford healthcare, have children homeless, have sub-standard education and are overrun by crime, seems to me that a case could be made that the society itself isn't worth the billions poured into protection from an attack.

As for personal protection, I try to be pragmatic. I'll store up water and supplies for myself and my cats knowing that hurricanes happen and we are on the Gulf Coast. But, I have no interest in stockpiling weaponry or worrying about protecting my homestead. I think, given the infinatesimal statistical probability of the need to protect my homestead with weapons, my money is better spent elsewhere.

But, I understand the fear. Hell, I'm more likely to be struck by lightning twice than I am to die in a plane crash, but it doesn't make me any less nervous about flying.

 

Not to say defense isn't important but I had to choose between getting health care for my kid or buying an AR15, I'd probably choose getting health care for my kid. Everything is important, but what seperates most of us politically is what our priorities are.

I would spend my money on my kid's college fund before I spend money on my second or third gun. Not to say protecting my family isn't important, I just have different priorities at the moment.

 

From what I understand. building new nukes and new testing which the US has done is clearly a violation of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty to which we signed.

I know this is of no concern to the hypocrites in the Bush Adminstration at the same time they are hassling Iran for what is clearly lawful behavior under the NPT. They are worried that eventually Iran might cross the line, while they are flagrantly and publicly doing actual violations.

This type of hipocrisy makes the world less safe as it just encourages a right make right approach to foreign affairs. It encourages ohter cuntries to proliferate.

 

That's not quite accurate. The only test ban treaty the US ever signed and ratified was the original NTBT that only banned atmospheric and surface tests. It never banned underground testing. Currently, the US has a unilateral moratorium prohibiting all nuclear testing but its just a unilateral decleration. The US signed but never ratified the comprehensive test ban treaty and as a result the US can still test weapons.

As for building new weapons, that is functionally prohibited by a section of the NPT that calls for all declared nuclear nations to take all necessary steps toward total disarmament but that's the closest there is towards an actual prohibition on new weapons.

That being said, new nuclear testing and building new weapons is just plain idiotic. There's no real reason to do that and before 9/11 Bush made that clear when he signed the deal with Russia to make deep cuts in our arsenal (only then to cave into pressure from his base and instead of actually destroying weapons that were being disarmed, he instead put them on hedge meaning they can actually be reactivated) America still outnumbers the world when it comes to nuclear weapons and there's no reason to build more. Instead of wasting time building more weapons, the government should be putting more money into the stockpile stewardship program which is the computer simulation system designed to test the reliability of nuclear weapons without physical testing. However, over the last 5 years or so, we've consistently cut off money from the SSP.

As for NMD, the technology just isn't there and we're wasting our time. Tests have consistently failed while wasting billions of dollars. Nuclear weapons aren't like traditional missiles which can be deterred by patriot missile batteries. They move much quicker and operate at heights that make them difficult to hit. For example, missile systems that carry nuclear weapons go high enough to where clouds mess up the laser targeting systems that NMD missiles rely on. Also, it's extremely easy to set up counter-measures that fool NMD interceptors. If we've been unable to consistenly shoot down dummy missiles in test conditions on cloudless days then there seems to be little hope that this system can work. We're years away from anything remotely capable of shooting down nuclear missiles.

 

No offense to anyone personally, but I think Bush's missle defense shield is pretty damn r****ded and 20-25 years too early.

It's just another extension of the arms race clouded with a passive sounding name.

We find ways to blow up one launched missle, the other country launches two...

Plus there are decoys, stealth systems, and missle evasion systems that the other side can build cheaper than our invisible security blanket.

To top it off, we want to build small bunker busting nukes.

How's that for irony....

 

But we're funding the wrong approach. Bush's system is nonsensical as it is now. We're creating land-based interceptors that are designed to take out a missile in the most difficult manner possible. The results aren't improving at all and I'm not sure what you're citing. One day they have a successful test and the next day they miss entirely. There's no consistent improvement despite the fact that we've been testing this technology for nearly a decade.

I'm not necessarily opposed to an NMD system but the current system just doesn't work. If we want a system to work, we should be funding a sea-based system built off of the Aegis missile system. The advantage of that would be that we could hit missiles in their "boost-phase" which is the period just after launch when its trying to elevate rapidly. This is the easiest point to hit a missile because it is at its slowest and is on its most predictable path. Even an Aegis based system is 20 years away but it shows more potential than the current approach which has been dictated more by lobbying from defense contractors than common sense.

At some point, the billions of dollars wasted on a non-functioning program outweights whatever minimal security benefit that theoretically could be derived from this program.

 

If N Korea obtains Russian or Chinese technology (officially or from unofficial contractors) designed to destroy our defense shield capabilities, wouldn't we be back to square one? Decoy rockets, radar/laser/gps jammers, and multiple warhead systems seems less difficult to sneak in than materials needed to build a nuclear bomb...

In the meanwhile, other powers are getting nervous of this program in addition to our strategic nuclear ambitions, so they're building more ways to bust our current defense scheme. Call it trickle down economics for warlords....

We could even scrap our program and buy the Israeli's defense shield. At least we'd save billions by cutting our losses early now and buying the tech later.

 

ROX, could you post what the "72 hour survival kit," is? If it's not too long? I'm curious, but I don't want to click on a link that might put me on a Patriot Act surveillance list. And I'm not kidding.

For those who think that the odds of needing more than what we should all have for a Katrina-type natural disaster, I suggest reading a truly excellent novel, based on hard science, that takes place in the very near future...like within 5 or so years. The title is Forty Signs of Rain, by Kim Stanley Robinson. It's out in paperback, with a sequel in hardcover (it's a trilogy) The premise is based on something that occurred before, and brought on by sudden, or abrupt, climate change... the stalling of the Gulf Stream.

This actually happened 13,000 years ago, during the Younger Dryas, when we went into a relatively brief "frigid period" after the end of the last ice age, when the salinity of the North Atlantic decreased enough to prevent the cold water dropping to the depths, and continue on in the Gulf Stream, which is actually part of a current that circles the world. Instead, it is believed that the sinking of the cold water of the North Atlantic moved much further south, where the salinity was enough to keep the "engine" going. The results were catastrophic for the temperate zones where most of us live.

We are currently seeing incredible melting of the Polar Ice Cap, the ice cap of Greenland, the Antarctic, and glaciers all over the world. We very well may have reached a "tipping point," which is leading us to disaster. It used to be believed that this sort of climate change took hundreds, or thousands of years. The onset of the Younger Dryas, as discovered by examining ice core samples in places like the several thousand foot thick Greenland ice cap, show that the climate change occurred in as little as three years.

Chew on that for a while! Being prepared may be an excellent idea, if you consider the consequences were this to happen today, or next year, or five years from now. This isn't based on some silly premise in a Hollywood movie. This actually happened, and could happen again.



Keep D&D Civil.

 

I've seen several studies that estimate the point of no return as being sometime between 2015 and 2020. Of course as with everything else having to do with the climate, the systems are too complex to make truly accurate predictions.

Why is a stove necessary for the survival kit? Over the course of three or four days it seems like extra weight for a little luxury.

 

Doesn't the idea of might happen in ten years a bit frightening? Especially in light of the news circulating now.

Maybe the nation needs to create its own survival kit by securing technologies that generate cleaner water and implementing agricultural standards for potential climate shifts.

Does that sound crazy or prudent?

 

Sounds prudent. Now if we could just convince the short term thinking capitalists who control this country, that they could maximize their short term rate of return while doing so, we could do something about it.

 

if katrina taught us anything it is that we can no longer expect our government to protect us when the poop hits the fan. whether or not that is intentional is another topic, i suppose. it could be another natural disaster, a terrorist attack or the cheney administration deciding to impose martial law on us, but we need to be prepared to take care of ourselves. the government has pretty much let us know that we are not their responsibility in times of crisis.

it definately opened my eyes and i now keep 3-4 days worth of food and water in my closet - i rotate my water out every month or so though. in the wake of katrina i purchased my first gun. i was already an avid backcountry camper and have the equipment and the knowhow to pack it up into the hills/mountains for a few days. i dont let my car get below half a tank anymore either - never know. basically, im prepared to get the hell out of town within minutes and get all rambo out in the woods or i can hole up in my house and go down in a branch dividian style standoff. either way, im sure it will be a blast!

 

Putting aside the merits of this action for a second...

Do you actually believe that there is any chance that this will happen in the specified time period?