🚀 go-pugleaf

Gregory Toomey wrote:
> 
> The federal government looks like it will take part in the new anti-missle
> defence system.
> 
> In the mid 1980s, one of the biggest proponents of Star Wars, David Parnas,
> became one of its biggest critics based not on political but technical
> grounds. I remember him on his Australian lecture tour.
> 
> Parnas' argument was that the software for such a system is untestable. Just
> develop tens of millions of lines of code, add a few "fighting mirrors" and
> lasers on satelites, and bingo you have missile defence. All you need to to
> test this is get China to send up a few missiles and a couple of hundreds
> decoys. The software has to immediately identify the real missiles from
> fakes and get the lasers to shoot them down.
> 
> But China isn't going to help, so the largest software project in history
> cannot be tested. There is only one chance for this to work for your
> trillion dollar investment.
> For more info see: http://www.nctimes.com/news/042600/k.html
> 
> In reality, this project is being pushed by the defence contractors. Naive
> politicians will believe anything, especially Bush, Howard and Co. Ridding
> the world of missiles is a great idea, but this is not the answer.

Welllllll, while I actually I agree with your sentiment, I think what
you're talking about WRT China is pretty silly, as they don't have very
many ICBM's and thats the point.  The Son of Starwars isn't intended to
defend against thousands of incoming warheads or decoys but rather the
supposed "rogue state" which has one or two and lobs them in a fit of
irrational pique.

Now, while the publicity is on defending the continental USA, in reality
the system is centred primarily around defending US forces overseas,
when deployed in facing down this "rogue state" in a Gulf War type
scenario.   Its intended to be a "theatre" defence system, rather than a
continental one, for many of the very reasons which you've outlined
above.  However, in order to sell it to the politicians and the more
gullible of the US's allies upon which the system will rely because of
its need for satellite downlinks (ie "us"), its being sold as something
it isn't.

This concentration on defending the US from the one of two possible
"rogue states" which might contemplate doing something as stupid as
firing a ballistic missile equipped with a NBC warhead at a US city,
does though, make one question as to why the US has its massive
preponderance in strategic nuclear forces.   If they aren't there now to
deter such a move, as they have always claimed to be there to be doing,
then why are they there?

Strategically it makes little sense.  Why not simply make the threat
that if someone does this stupid act, then their country gets turned
into radioactive slag (ie the strategy of "massive retaliation")?  It
worked quite well for a good part of the Cold War for both the fUSSR and
the USA.   While the US government might claim that the likes of Saddam
Hussein or Qaddafi might not be deterred by such a threat - they forget
that the primary consideration for such dictators is not striking at
their enemy but the preservation of their powerbase.  Something which is
rather difficult from inside a fallout bunker.

Then we have the problem of developing true ICBM's which would be
capable of threatening US cities - not an easy task and not one which is
usually given away.  Such beasties are rare and far between outside the
fUSSR, France, China and the USA.  Therefore we are again forced to
wonder what this thing is in reality intended for.

No, its more than likely intended to actually produce something which
can shoot down a SCUD type SRBM or IRBM, rather than PATRIOT which was
shown to be singularly incapable of doing so in the Gulf War.