Missileleading defense system

[vakkotaur]

or But it IS rocket science!

This may surprise some, but I disagree with the decision to start deployment on a anti-missile system. While the treaty aspects and how the world will react to it can be pointed to, that is not the whole problem, nor the major part of it.

The thing about a shield from missiles, presumably with nuclear warheads, is a very simple statement: It must work.

My problem with this is that there has yet to be a truly honest test of the proposed system. Components have been tested, but that says nothing of a system built of them working, only that any cause of failure won't be directly attributable to any given component. This thing is complex, and complex systems work in complex - and not necessarily expected - ways.

There are three problems that must be solved: Eliminating false positives, eliminating false negatives, and the actual intercept and disable.

A false positive would trigger when there was no need. This would result in things like wasting an intercept missile on a peaceful research rocket. A false negative would allow an unfriendly missile through, without even trying to deal with the threat. The actual intercept - the part that gets the most press because it's easy to point to and hard to hide - needs work, to put it mildly.

The idea, I suppose, is to force things ahead and get a system built. But building something without having it proven, or as proven as it can safely be, is foolish. "Make it so!" is line used by a fictional character. Perhaps some folks would do well to remember that. Simply giving an order for something to happen does not make it happen. It makes people go through motions that might or might not cause something to happen.

I don't have a problem, or much of one anyway, on continuing research and getting to a workable system. I do have a problem with saying "We have missile defense" when it just ain't so.

Comments

[pharwarner.livejournal.com]

I was rather dismayed by Donald Rumsfeld's latest comment on the deployment of Missile Defense and its present shortcomings, which ran something along the lines of "We've never developed a weapons system that hasn't gotten better over time". I'm sure we could pull examples where that hasn't been the case, but in general, he's quite right... But in cases where the design has been sound since day one!

When thinking of missile defense, my mind always turns to the the development of the Nike family of missiles in the late 1940s. Raytheon did a remarkable job of producing a missile capable intercepting a high altitude bomber while under time pressure, and their sound work on the Nike-Ajax lead on to the more powerful and accurate Nike-Hercules. As the threat of nuclear attack by intercontinental bomber faded Nike was turned to missile defense, as the Nike-Zeus. A sound system of the type Rumsfeld would have us believe the current ABM missile is. But is it?

P.S. The last series of US atmospheric nuclear tests was of the Nike system in an ABM role.

[shelbystripes.livejournal.com]

Well, the thing is, they're in a win-win situation here... nobody will ever, ever get to tell them "I told you so!" Mainly since when the system fails, nobody will be left to.

I have an ideological problem with missile defense, myself. There's no way it could ever be usefully deployed against a terrorist attack. Terrorists 1) are more creative and 2) typically can't afford ICBMs or to stay in one place long enough to build a launch site if they could. They'd put it on a boat, or in the back of a Ryder truck, or on an airplane, or find ways to use those kind of things as weapons themselves. 9/11 proved that this kind of defense system is fairly useless; we're going to be vulnerable no matter what. Building a shield isn't going to stop terror attacks, it's just going to give us an artificial sense of invulnerability at a time when we really don't need it.

What this system is good for is preventing a large-scale attack on the United States, and this is really why I don't want to see it built. A large-scale missile defense system would have one real purpose: To allow us to engage a nuclear power (such as Russia or China) without fear of nuclear annhilation. They're breaking M.A.D. down. It's that very fear that kept things sane after WWII; otherwise the U.S.S.R. would surely have at some point invaded West Germany, if we didn't invade eastward first. Or nukes would have been used in combat in Korea or Vietnam, or Cuba, or somewhere. We didn't do that because if we did, we'd get a bunch of nukes lobbed at our citizens and we'd pay for it.

Now, suddenly, we'll be able to say, "It's okay for us to use force against [China/Russia/anybody], since we can shoot down any nukes they throw at us." Combine this with our new first-strike policy we're using against Iraq, and things can get very scary very fast. And if even one part of this system fails... well, no system works 100% flawlessly, and the efficiency of this defense system will, one day, be measured in human lives.