🚀 go-pugleaf

In <1993Jan07.203533.10511@eng.umd.edu> sysmgr@king.eng.umd.edu (Doug Mohney) writes:

>You're being silly. If you're going to treat the nuke as "just another
>weapon" you don't need the Clancyesque plot. Just nuke the friggin' carrier
>and be done with it. It's only full-scale war, after all, right Ed? 

Well, Tom Clancy at least understands the technology and how it works.

Just finding a carrier at sea, let alone hitting it, is not easy.
Don't believe everything Dan Rather tells you.  It's a moving
target, which will probably move out of the target area between
the time you launch your ballistic missile and the time the warhead
lands.

Hitting a satellite is almost trivial by comparison.



>It is not for nothing DARPA has a love with microsats and ways to get them
>quickly into orbit. And what DARPA is doing is in the sunshine. 

Microsats are incapable of replacing photorecon satellites.  The
laws of physics prevent it.  To get adequate resolution, you need
a large mirror (or large radar).  Black programs use the same laws
of physics as everybody else.



>Of course. So why did we get the UN to rubber stamp it first? C'mon Ed, 
>stop helping me out here. We really didn't NEED to get the UN's blessing, 
>did we?

Of course we didn't.  The United States has gone to war numerous
times in the past.  It has never needed permission of the United
Nations before.  It was George Bush who set that (dangerous) precendent.



>>Besides, your claim was that "international public opinion" would
>>*prevent* nations like Iraq from making hostile acts.

>Prevent a degree of hostile acts. Why didn't the Iraqis use chemical weapons
>against allied forces in Desert Storm? 

Not because he was afraid someone would say something bad about
him at a UN cocktail party.

Hint: the people who planned the initial airstrikes were not
complete idiots.