This missle defense program isn't the way to do that. A strong military deterrent, foreign policy that helps keep them in check is another better bet than trying to pour money into a system that will be obsolete before it is created. The patriot missles have a horrible success rate, and they are already employed in the field. Trying to stop a nuke with a similar type system is silly, and a waste of money.
which, given the pathetic state of our missile defense program, despite the cash throw at it, is billions, and likely trillions of dollars and decades away -- from being able to stop 1960's technology. Then of course, there's a little thing called MAD and a little thing called, terrorism that doesn't need billion dollar missile systems. Hello? Cost-benefit analysis?
Except that the airborne laser is designed to intercept during launch stage to be effective that would mean that we would need to have a plane within range within about a minute of launch. Once the missile gets into flight stage it gets harder and harder to stop. On top of that offense using decoys and other countermeasures is always going to be much easier and cheaper to do than defense. Especially when we can't even get it to work in rigged tests.
is it just impossible for you to step outside of the GOP and critically evaluate anything? This problem isn't with the military, I think they are doing the best they can with this project. The problem is that Bush has rushed this project to deployment before the testing program is even close to being done. They had to strip down the testing problem and use that money for deployment. This is why we've only had 2 tests in 2+ years. The testing program calls for like 30-40 more tests. We liberals are calling out the President for yet another poor decision that only wastes taxpayer money on a system that doesn't work. I would be saying the same thing if it were a Democrat doing this.
That would indicate GWB showed poor judgement in the extreme, which we all know can never be the case.
People have been saying 'impossible' about what technolgy can do pretty much forever. Funding a program that makes nuclear ICBM warfare obsolete is not, IMO, a waste of money. Its true that its not functional. And... Which wouldn't stop, for instance, an accidental launch. Wouldn't stop a rogue despot or regional warlord about to lose power from launching. Wouldn't stop a religious zealot more concerned with the afterlife from launching. And... compare the WTC to an obliterated NY. 3,000 dead vs 8 million dead. Hello? When you take into account the failing counterproliferation policies of the nuclear powers, the threat increases exponentially. Of course your cost-benefit also doesn't include the tech spin offs that come with this R & D: Computer engineers have incorporated SDI optical technology to produce a generation of inexpensive supercomputer that works 1,000 times faster than ordinary models. A laser-treatment process orginally developed for the SDI program is now used to wash blood supplies of diseases such as herpes, measles, hepatitis-B, and AIDS. Temperature-resistant carbon fiber developed for SDI is being tested for use in car engines. Air traffic control systems have improved immeasurably, as have telecommunications, robotics, and endeavors in astronomy. I'm not advocating that these systems are on line or functional, nor that the airbourne laser is going to be the system that ends up being functional. However, as I pointed out above, the 'can not's' have been around since the beginning of time, and have been proven wrong more times than we can list.
i don't know how anyone can be so actively rooting against this, frankly. just for political purposes?? we've sent a man to the moon...we've unlocked the cell and the atom...we're cloning animals...i'm betting we can shoot a missile out of the sky. the technology may not be there yet....but it will be. and when it comes about, we will have eliminated or significantly reduced the doomsday fears our parents and grandparents lived under for so long. that seems like something that's worth trying to me.
You Falwell Pat Robertson crazy militarist right wing nut case baby killer! Edit: I forgot to throw 'neocon' in there as well. So there!
Yet, I see no liberal on the other side. The ones in this thread seem happy about the prospect of continued failure. I don't know if the current plan is good or not since I haven't devoted research to it. I doubt most on this board have done enough research to critically evaluate this issue and are responding on where thay think money should go. GOP - defense. I do think the US needs a missile defense better than MAD. I expect failure in any project that has never been done before. MAD only works if the person in control of the nukes has something to lose. Small country X takes over small country Y, an ally of the US. Small country X has nukes. US can't use conventional forces because dictator of X knows he'll lose and use nukes as he exits country.
I fail to see how nobody can grasp the cost-benefit analysis of this. Missile defense wasn't a tangible reality in the 1980's. It was a bluff. It is not tangible now. It has not worked. We have spend hundreds of billions of dollars on it and we are not close to getting it to work. What part of "not work" do people not understand? Could it possibly work if we devoted staggering amounts of money to it? Sure. But so could a lot of things. Is that a justification for doing them? No. The amount of technical writing from people who worked on the program about its negative prospects is staggering. http://www.fas.org/ssp/bmd/ But it's not just the accounting cost, it's the opportunity cost that is troublesome What is the number one national security threat? Unless you live under a rock, it's terrorism. What is the most devestating possible terrorist attack? A nuclear one. What is the most likely means of a terrorist delivering a nuclear attack? Let's see, an ICBM program which requires billions of dollars and years of testing that is impossible to conceal? Or via the nation's ports and largely unguarded land frontier? 98-99% of 5.7 million cargo containers entering US ports every year is NOT SCREENED. That is probably enough storage space for at least 5.7 million nuclear bombs to enter the country, in highly populated areas. However, in 2003, Bush's initial budget allocated all of $0.00 for port security. All told since 2001, we have appropriated some 400 million for port security, total. That is 5% of one year's worth of Missile Defense funding. I could go into it with other things but I'm not sure how necessary this is. I could go on all day; but suffice it to say, pursuing missile defense given what we know is pretty much the opposite of rational action in an economic sense. We could double or triple annual funding for port security - then take the remaining 9.5 billion for missile defense, put it on a raft in the middle of the ocean, sink the raft, and still have a better outcome; you and I would be safer, and we would have more effeciently spent the 10 billion. As for accidental launches or suicide launches - they would be a problem. But then again so are asteroid strikes. But of course, with asteroid strikes, the technology is many times more feasible.
Uh, no "celebration" of failure from this "liberal." You think I don't want some system that works? And Max, I'm not rooting against it. I'm rooting for common sense and (again and again, if it still exists in our great nation) accountability. Look, when the military wants, their research projects are the best run on the planet. I know this for a fact. They impose strict quarterly milestones, and when those milestones aren't met, contractors are sent to the curb and new talent is allowed to tackle the project. DARPA runs like this all the time, and their expectations are brutal. Absolutely brutal. Their results are commonly phenomenal too. But this missile-to-missile defense has looked to many people from within and without the DOD as a boondoggle from its inception. Want to convince me its not? Fire the current contractors, put some government lab time devoted to it (hello -- Los Alamos, Argonne, et al), and open up a new contract to open bidding from all contractors. These big-donor, low-talent contractors are bad for DOD (and NASA, honestly). Just my take. By the way, saying I'm "rooting against" a project like this, or against the military, is like telling me I hate all Enron employees because I think Ken Lay should be in jail. It's just like that.
Sam -- those are great arguments. seriously, they are. i just think they're short-sighted. right now we say, "terrorism is our big concern." we said the same thing about the Soviet Union in 1988....by 1989, we changed our minds. it seems to me that the threat of ICBMs from places like Iran or N. Korea are far more concerning long term...and the benefit side of the cost/benefit analysis is ridiculous, as the payload of a missile attack as opposed to a suitcase attack is much more substantial. we certainly should be working to prevent that sort of terrorist attack...but i don't think that means we should turn an eye away from trying to develop technologies that make "push a button and watch the fun" nuclear war an impossibility. the chain of events...the ramifications for the entire world...in a missile-driven nuclear war are so awful, that I'd argue it's worth investing lots of resources to prevent.
B-Bob ...i'm not calling you out, personally. but i see from the right and the left an active rooting against things that might be good for this country as a whole, just say they can say, "see, i told ya so!!!" when it doesn't work. that's very natural in the team sports game our political system has become. it sucks.
Wrong. You can fit a lot more nuclear material in a cargo container that is the size of my apartment or the back of an 18 wheeler than in a warhead that is the size of a sofa. But anyway, that analysis is pointless given the scale of destruction involved. A .001% chance of a 20 megaton attack is worth worrying about more than a 5% chance of a 75 kiloton attack? I don't think so. If you can destroy Manhattan, does anybody really give a sh-t whether or not you destroy white plains also? The overall scale of damage is too massive at a certain point for the marginal cost to matter much. Anyway, the chances of a rogue nation developing a sufficient ICBM fleet to deliver that sort of tonnage are slim as well Armageddon might be awful, as would a giant asteroid strike, but you reach a point of diminishing returns. I don't consider an America that, in 2059, is able to save 75% of its population due to the effectiveness of its missile shield, leaving only 200 million dead, to be an America I want to live in. Just blow my ass up if that is the reality. Anyway, nobody said we should turn an eye away from it entirely- but to invest billions yearly in it , and maybe close to trillions when it is all said in done, for a government in serious deficit, when we leave the front door (ports and land crossings) open 99% of the time, is just plain r****ded.
Or we could appropriate 500 million for port security, duh. They aren't mutually exclusive. You cost/benefit is simply skewed. From the Nov/Dec issue of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists: It's likely that nuclear-bent terrorists would take the path of least resistance, which makes theft or purchase of an intact nuke or self-fabrication of fissile material very unlikely. A dirty bomb would be perhaps the easiest, and least harmful, "nuclear" attack... There are too many different ways in which terrorists could perpetrate some kind of nuclear attack to mention in this limited space. But keep this in mind: There have been zero cases of nuclear terrorism--neither nuclear nor radiological. There are no known cases of theft or purchase of an intact nuclear weapon, so a terrorist attack with one is more than unlikely. There has not been any documented theft of enough fissile material for a crude nuke--although there have been attempts. There has never been a dirty bomb attack. There has never been a case of nuclear plant sabotage. If there were, it would be awful--but not the end of humanity. The sum of all fears? So far these nuclear doomsday scenarios have focused on terrorism. But the most destructive of all nuclear threats is nuclear war. After all, eight nations have nuclear arsenals, but a terrorist group would have to work feverishly to get their hands on a single warhead, or enough material to make one. Is an incoming nuclear missile attack plausible? Yes, but unlikely. The Cold War is over, and the ballistic missile threat from nuclear-capable nations is extremely minor. In February 2001, the Defense Intelligence Agency listed Iraq, Iran, and North Korea as "countries of concern" that might someday field long-range, WMD-capable missiles, and Russia and China as nations expanding their long-range missile programs. One presumes Iraq is now off the list. As to Iran and North Korea, both nations have decent missile capabilities, but Iran cannot strike the United States, and most analysts believe the same about North Korea, despite its boasts. On the other hand, North Korea has nuclear material, and Iran is believed to be working toward a nuclear weapons capability. China has a whopping 20 Dong Feng missiles that can reach America. (The United States has close to 6,000 operational strategic nuclear weapons, as the Bulletin's May/June "Nuclear Notebook" reported.) Russia's capabilities are more comparable to America's, and Russia is expanding its capabilities, according to the July/August "Nuclear Notebook," but a planned attack from Moscow is extremely improbable. Boo-boo nukes What's more likely is an accidental nuclear attack. Both Russia and the United States still maintain nuclear-armed ICBMs on high alert and adhere to "launch-on-warning" policies, as Alan Phillips and Steven Starr wrote in the May/June Bulletin. Launch-on-warning means that if either Washington or Moscow thinks it is under attack from the other, it will launch a retaliatory strike before the supposed incoming missiles can do any damage. A false warning could mean the start of an accidental nuclear war. Keeping launch-on-warning policies alive is "inexcusably dangerous," Phillips and Starr wrote. "Launch-on-warning has exposed the world, for at least 30 years, to the danger of a nuclear war caused by nothing but a coincidence of radar, satellite sensor, or computer glitch, and a temporary human failure to appreciate that the message signaling attack is false." So far, there have been no false launches--but there have been many false warnings. Nuclear terrorism would be horrific, but nuclear war would be far worse. As Lynn Eden reported in "City on Fire," fire damage from nuclear explosions has been vastly and systematically underestimated--a move that allowed early U.S. war planners to demand a much larger nuclear arsenal. As Eden wrote, a single 300-kiloton nuclear weapon detonated above the Pentagon on a clear day would engulf the surrounding 65 square miles in firestorms that would "extinguish all life and destroy almost everything else." And that's a conservative estimate. Let's recap. An attack from a weapons state is highly unlikely; an accidental nuclear launch is far more worrisome. As remote as the possibility is, all-out nuclear war has the potential to end human life on the planet--still the true doomsday scenario.
please show me where anyone is rooting against this thing to fail? how do you see a call for accountability as rooting for failure?
Well, some like SamFisher are calling for the program to be scrapped. That sounds like the same thing to me.
so in your view, we must support everything the federal govt does? Sam never said he wants us to spend trillions and fail, he wants us to NOT spend the trillions on missle-defense but on other, more worthy goals that is not the same thing as rooting for failure
And you're rooting for the massive boondoggle of a program to continue. Ergo, you are rooting for MASSIVE GOVERNMENT WASTE or ACCIDENTAL MISSILE LAUNCHES, and ALL OUT NUCLEAR WAR.
I don't think anyone is arguing that there isn't a threat from nuclear missles. The arguments with system are that Missle defense isn't the way to combat the threat. The other argument is that it shouldn't be near the top of the priority list while more pressing concerns are at hand. Hayes- You say we can do port security and missle defense. Maybe, but we already don't have enough money to pay for what we are doing now. Currently the greater threat is terrorism and port security but it is vastly underfunded. The program doesn't work. It is easy to get around the program should it ever work. The only similar type program we have now to intercept missles, is highly ineffective. This program is the epitome of government waste, and is surpassed only by the growing debt.
