US Missile Defense Test Fails 317
KingRobot sends news that a recent test of a US missile defense system has failed. The test of the Groundbased Midcourse Defense interceptor apparently had a problem with the sea-based X-band radar. Both the target missile, launched from the Pacific, and the interceptor, launched from California, performed as expected. "Yesterday's test was intended to quell doubters of the entire missile-defense approach, with the target missile deploying countermeasures. Critics of the GMD programme say that tests thus far, which have not included such spoilers, have been too kind to the intercept tech. The [military] isn't disclosing whether the intercepting kill vehicle had simply failed to reach the 'threat cluster' of warhead(s) and decoys, or whether it had reached the cluster but hit a countermeasure rather than the actual target."
Anonymous Coward (Score:2, Funny)
Fire Zee Mizzilez!!!!
Re:Anonymous Coward (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Anonymous Coward (Score:4, Funny)
(for those terribly confused: http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/end [albinoblacksheep.com])
"fails" (Score:3, Insightful)
"Now Commander, that torpedo did NOT self-destruct. You heard it hit the hull, and I was never here."
Sure it failed.
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"Now Commander, that torpedo did NOT self-destruct. You heard it hit the hull, and I was never here."
Another example of the movie sucking ass compared to the book.....
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...
Wow, I really need to read the book then
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The story I heard is that an admiral told Clancy he wished Clancy would take something out of the book. Clancy offered to, and asked what it was, and the admiral told Clancy he couldn't tell him.
What I most admire about his writing is his ability to give detailed explanations, sometimes of technical things, while keeping the reader riveted to the page.
No surprise, really (Score:2, Insightful)
There is exactly one instance of missile defense working that I'm aware of, namely combating Iraqi Scud missiles back around 1993.
But the important thing to realize about this version of missile defense (and its predecessor, Star Wars) is that they don't need to work to accomplish their real purpose, which is funneling large sums of taxpayer cash to defense contractors.
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I've often thought that the common citizenry like ourselves should be bludgeoning in the heads of people who manufacture and sell weapons with rocks when we see them at the mall or out walking their dog. Is that what you mean?
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We should also just get rid of guns because not all bullets are effective.
I've often thought that the common citizenry like ourselves should be bludgeoning in the heads of people who manufacture and sell weapons with rocks when we see them at the mall or out walking their dog. Is that what you mean?
No, but that's exactly why I have no problem with open carry laws. :)
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We should also just get rid of guns[...]
Sounds great!
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Actually, taking out missiles before they reach us isn't all that important, because anyone with missiles that can reach the United States (a fairly short list: China, Russia, Britain, France, Canada, maybe Mexico and Cuba) knows about Mutually Assured Destruction, and isn't completely suicidal.
Re:No surprise, really (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, you're wrong.
In the first place, the Patriot missiles were only partially successful. Since they weren't intended for the purpose of defending large areas, that is acceptable, and they've been improved since them. But the Patriot missiles are a short range defense.
There have been previous successful tests. A simple google search turned up the following:
Reuters [reuters.com]
Military Defense Agency [mda.mil]
Heritage Foundation [heritage.org]
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No really, the thing is a joke (Score:3, Insightful)
This system has been failing since at least the late 90's (That's when I first started tracking it in the Marine Corps). The few successes it has had have been predefined configurations where they had a known flight path and pre-set intercept path. The entire thing is staged. And what's worse is that it fails even the majority of these staged intercepts.
People balked when Obama talked about dropping the missile shield in eastern Europe but honestly, these missile defense systems are a joke. They would do sq
Re:No surprise, really (Score:5, Informative)
Funny you should mention that. The effectiveness of Patriots in Gulf War I is hotly [fas.org] contested [fas.org].
Both sides rely on subjective arguments about what constitutes a "successful intercept", neither have any hard data on how many (if any) Scuds were actually downed, and the folks that were having the Scuds aimed at them said that they were getting through pretty well, so I'd have to conclude that the preponderance of evidence is that Patriot was a propaganda weapon in Gulf War I.
I should note that plenty of money has been thrown at defence contractors since then, and there's certainly no technical reason why AMBs can't work. It's just that nobody has shown that they do.
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and there's certainly no technical reason why AMBs can't work
Sure there is. A dumb missile is always going to be a couple orders of magnitude cheaper to build than an interceptor. All the enemy has to do is keep firing until we run out of interceptors, or fire a volley with enough targets that we can't accurately track them, or saturate the radar installations with attacks until one finally gets through (a >90% success rate would be pretty incredible, and it only takes one well aimed missile to take out a target).
A missile defense system can only ever work again
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That may be true, but this is the best kind of corruption the military-industrial-congressional complex can have: defense R&D. I would much prefer seeing my money spent on scientists and engineers in the states than on offensive, unnecessary overseas wars.
We don't need a large standing army. Having a small group with the best technology at their disposal is the better way to go.
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I see.
So because this is hard and expensive, it's worth it...but space exploration is hard and expensive as well. Do you see that as a waste?
(yes, I'm making assumptions here...my apologies)
Whoopy Doopy (Score:2)
Oh no!
The government has a glitch with an insanely complex missile system.
Good to know, but *Yawn* "Film at 11" me and wake me when it's fixed.
Failed test or failed missile? (Score:5, Insightful)
Did the test fail, or the missle? The difference is that a failed test means you don't get any useful information about the device under test, whereas a successful test means that you found out whatever you wanted to know about the device under test.
Example: a test to determine whether a cellphone fails when immersed in water. If you find that your water has been shut off, you have a failed test, because you can't even try immersing the phone in water. If your water works and you immerse the phone and it stops working, the test is successful and your result is that the phone failed. If it still works, then you have a successful test and a phone that didn't fail.
</pedant>
Re:Failed test or failed missile? (Score:4, Insightful)
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a recent test of a US missile defense system has failed.
Both the target missile [...] and the interceptor [...] performed as expected.
Reading those two lines, I think the missiles failed to fail?
Why it failed (Score:5, Funny)
Few people know the real story behind this, which is quickly being covered up. The sea-based X-band radar failed because it stopped mid-test to install a Windows update. As all available bandwidth was consumed by the critical IE6 patch, the message "Please wait while Windows installs your updates. You will be able to resume your hostilities at the conclusion of this operation."
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I know you were being funny, but it's kinda sad how close your comment is to reality.
They actually had to reboot their machines before they were able to continue.
Forced Upgrades (Score:5, Funny)
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Hehe... One reason the Iraqi Scuds were so hard to bring down is that they broke up and tumbled on the descent, throwing out all sorts of debris and also making their descent hard to predict.
It's damn hard to bring down a missile in flight (do the math on the approach velocities and the accuracy required). It's easy to spew out debris and confuse the defense. High tech can't really take on low tech in some things.
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Who still uses X band? Ka band and Laser are used (Score:2)
Who still uses X band? Ka band and Laser are used more.
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Who still uses X band? Ka band and Laser are used more.
The "X" makes it sound cool.
you can't defeat iranian missiles with this (Score:2)
mainly because iran employs a diabolical tactic that no american interceptor can defeat: if a missile of their's is shot down, they merely photoshop some more:
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/07/10/iran-you-suck-at-pho.html [boingboing.net]
however, i would encourage american military planners to adopt iran's own dark tactics against it, and photoshop lots of missile interceptors. that should do the trick
and if the combined powers of fark photoshop and 4chan were militarized, we could bury iranian internet warriors in sheer vo
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Did he transfer to the Rebel ground forces or something? I thought he was in command of a fleet, not an army.
i can't answer your comment because (Score:2)
"it's a trap!"
Good Grief (Score:2)
Good Grief!
Not all missile defense sucks (Score:4, Informative)
Too hard...let's give up. (Score:2)
So if the missile defense system doesn't 100% work on the first try with a realistic test, then the entire program was a waste of money and we should give up immediately? By that logic we should have canceled the Apollo project after Apollo 1...
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But we don't. Those dollars could go to something that actually might make us safer, like better detection of people trying to ship a nuke (or bio warhead) into a US port on a container ship. Or to better fighting the Taliban in Afganistan. Or to better satellite surveillance of hostile nations. Or improved HUMINT in countries where we have very few assets.
Or perhaps just to reducing o
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First of all, one has to give up the idea that missile shield is somehow a weapon of defense. It is only useful if you plan to attack first.
The original cold-war idea of a missile shield is an attempt to block a retaliation strike. No shield would withstand a full-scale missile attack from Russia, but if you successfully attack them first, you may have to block only a handful Russian missiles. That's where the shield shines, it reduces retaliation damage. That's why Russia is so keen on building mobile laun
Shrug (Score:4, Insightful)
I dunno, isn't it more credible if some tests DO fail?
It's a government contract - of COURSE it's rife with collusion, padding, selective data, etc. Doesn't mean we shouldn't try to develop the tech.
It will never work. (Score:2)
This is the equivalent of shooting a bullet out of the air, with another bullet.
And that's just not possible.
This whole idea should never ever have passed the first smell test. The only question people should ask now is "Who is benefitting from this?"
Any project with a budget as large as ... well, the amount that's been wasted on this, needs to be able show proof of concept, set targets, meet them, and have a fixed deadline. Otherwise, you're just pissing away good money after bad.
This system never has worked (Score:2)
Probably sabotaged. (Score:4, Funny)
The NMD was probably sabotaged by leftists in league with the Obama administration. They want the USA to be a giant and defenseless nuclear target so all the third world people can take their revenge upon the evil Americans. There would be nothing that would make the leftists happier than a bunch of white cities in ruins.
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Re:Sneaky. (Score:4, Insightful)
You make an interesting point.
However, I'd like to make the irrefutable counter-argument that missiles and rockets are cool while inspecting ships, planes and trucks is boring.
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That must explain why Iran and North Korea are so busy working on cargo ships [wikipedia.org] and airplanes [wikipedia.org] as delivery systems......
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The chances of a sovereign state attacking the USA with one of these missiles is very small. If terrorists get hold of a nuclear device or dirty bomb, or a rogue state wants to attack the USA and make it look like a terrorist attack, then it will not be launched from their country.
They might sneak it into an unpopulated area of another country, but once you have it secretly transported it is probably just as easy to take it to a port or airport in the West.
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I really have to wonder if the N. Koreans know what the name of their missile sounds like in English.
I really can't say it's an inappropriate name for a missile, though.
Re:Sneaky. (Score:5, Funny)
Wow, is that really a quote from Wookieepedia to explain to Slashdot readers the story in Return of the Jedi?
You really know your audience...
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I loved that documentary!
SPOILERS! (Score:2, Funny)
Jeepers dude - give away the whole story why don't you...
Re:Money (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe if the US stopped wasting money on boondoggles like this, they wouldn't have had to cancel plans to return to the Moon.
Not to mention the side benefit of generating productive tech, instead of just destructive tech. The problem with the moon missions is that the big defense corporations running the US [wikipedia.org] just can't justify such large profits with moon missions. The population (or its politicians) are much less willing to fund if there is no fear factor [wikipedia.org]. Fear does not drive the moon mission development like it does for military expenditure unless you try and use the fear of China doing it first to our exclusion, but even then it's still not the same kind of primeval motivation == less profit.
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Agreed. Fear is a major factor in military spending. Hell, just look at the shopping spree after 9/11...
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some of the biggest gains in tech come during war or threat of war. this technology will undoubtably have beneficial technologies used for non military things. GPS was first created for military purposes. now look at it. just because you don't like the idea of being able to survive/defend against a missile attack because it's some how bad form to live when your enemy wants you dead, doesn't mean that there will be no other gains from it. i'm pretty sure that there is moon shot technology used by the militar
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"...The population (or its politicians) are much less willing to fund if there is no fear factor. Fear does not drive the moon mission development like it does for military expenditure..."
The solution is to somehow paint a moonbase as essential to planetary defense, as in from a "global extinction" event asteroid that just happens to have been recently discovered (wink, wink). Fortunately, its expected impact is just far enough in the future to allow us to build and stock the base....
Yeah, that might work.
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The obvious course of action, for those
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The problem with the moon missions is that the big defense corporations running the US ... just can't justify such large profits with moon missions. The population (or its politicians) are much less willing to fund if there is no fear factor.
I call BS, to an extent. The thing about moon missions is that it's not a high-volume, medium-skill production, unlike, say The C-17 [politico.com]. If space travel was well-refined, and high volume, the story might be different. Instead, Congress is pointing funding at programs t
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* World military expenditure in 2008 is estimated to have reached $1.464 trillion in current dollars (just over $1.2 trillion in 2005 constant dollars, as per above graph);
* This represents a 4 per cent increase in real terms since 2007 and a 45 per cent increase over th
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Your post is truly ironic.
Yes, I would like to see developments for production sake, but so many production developments came from war/destruction spending.
For example, aren't the rockets that get us into space descended from the ICBM research?
Likewise, automobiles were designed to be productive, weren't they? But without them, we wouldn't have tanks.
It's a two way street. Given the flaw listed here, I can see improvements to GPS as one potential benefit coming out of this system. Maybe it could improve roc
Re:Money (Score:5, Interesting)
***Maybe if the US stopped wasting money on boondoggles like this, they wouldn't have had to cancel plans to return to the Moon.***
Naw. Returning to the moon, while feasible, is pointless, and the chances that you were going to get to Mars were pretty close to nil. That's my idea of a boondoggle ... if not yours. If you ask me, the US manned space program has been stuck on a wrong track for four decades. First, you learn to build cheap reliable transport -- which may take half a century or more. Then, and only then, do you start seriously putting people into space.
This test, on the other hand is a test of a DEFENSIVE system, not another tool for getting into trouble. As a result of stuff I did many years ago in another life, I actually knew something about this stuff at one time. I personally think that it is probably impossible to build an effective anti-missile system -- at least for use against significant opponents. It's simply cheaper for the guys building the missiles (them) to create and deploy countermeasures than it is for the defenders (us) to overcome the countermeasures.
But we don't know that for sure if that's true if we don't do our R&D. And that's what this is -- Research and Development.
What is a boondogle IMHO is the Bush administration initiated deployment of "operational" anti-missile systems that almost certainly would not work worth a damn if called into action. If you ask me (and no one did or will), that never even rose to the level of stupid.
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Well, if the missile defense system *doesn't work*
To quote Jean-Luc, "Things are only impossible until they are not."
The only real question is whether or not protecting our cities from madmen in Tehran or Pyongyang is a worthwhile investment. I tend to think that it is. Do you really want to live in a world where the United States is held hostage to nuclear blackmail and our only choice if they murder millions of our citizens is to respond in kind?
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As poorly as these leaders are portrayed through the use of propaganda, please bear in mind that they are the leaders of their nations (regardless of whether you like them or not). T
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Honestly, do you really think that in a time of peace (and probably even at war) someone in charge of running a country would be foolish enough to authorize a nuclear missile strike against another sovereign country?
Yes, I do. Is there some rule that says nation-states always make rational decisions? History suggests that they don't. Japan went to war with a nation that had twice her population and almost six times her GDP. Germany went to war with virtually the entire world -- she was fighting twenty times her population and nearly five times her GDP by the end of 1941.
Any logical observer could have predicted the outcome of those choices. Indeed, many people in the defense establishments of both countries warne
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None of that, even if true (the Pearl Harbor bit is blatantly flase) has any bearing on my point that nation-states do not always make rational decisions.
Nice attempt at changing the topic though. I'll consider that your concession of the previous point.
Re:Money (Score:5, Insightful)
Umm, no.
A couple of things. First, one must consider that "countless" innocent civilians were NOT killed by the two atomic bombs. About 240,000 total was the count (over a period of several months - the immediate casualties of the bombs were closer to 150,000). Note that more were killed in one night of routine bombing of Tokyo than in both atomic bombings combined.
Second, the assertion that "Japan was finished by the time USA dropped the bombs". Remember Okinawa? Two months before the atomic bombings, and the Japanese managed to inflist 50,000 American casualties for one small island? Now, imagine extending that to the invasion of the entirety of Japan...
Third, if Japan were indeed "finished" before we dropped the bombs, why didn't they surrender after the first bomb was dropped? It's not like we dropped them on the same day - plenty of time to get to a radio and cry "uncle" if they were so inclined.
We won't even go into the oddity that both cities (and several others) were spared conventional bombing for years. The AAF wanted, if we actually used the Bomb, to get information on the effects of the Bomb on undamaged cities. So they made a list of military targets (Hiroshima's Naval Base comes to mind) that were put off limits for bombing. I understand that the AAF brass had to do quite the song and dance to justify to their subordinates not bombing those cities for years....
Re:Money (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, the reason the Japanese did not rapidly surrender immediately after Hiroshima is more complex. Bureaucratic inertia insured a pretty slow response. (The leaders did not even meet for two days following the attack, and debated the issue for half the day) The Emperor himself had been pushing for peace for some time following the Japanese defeat at Okinawa, but the Allied insistence on unconditional surrender, as well as political subterfuge by Stalin (who played on Japanese hopes of Soviet assistance while preparing his own attack against Japan), fed fire to an already heated debate among Japanese leaders. In an all-too-familiar story, political infighting prevented the country from taking prompt, sensible action.
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Yeah, you guys are so compassionate, ONLY killing 240,000 innocent people.
There are no innocent people in a total war.
Re:Money (Score:4, Insightful)
Did I say it was a 'self evident thing'? All I said was that Germany was fighting twenty times her population and five times her GDP by the end of 1941.
Whatever else you might think of the German war plan, declaring war on the United States after Pearl Harbor was the height of insanity. It allowed FDR to get a free (in terms of political capital) pass to fully enter the European war and to implment the "Europe first" strategy that condemned the Third Reich to a slow death by a thousand cuts.
Had I been in Hitler's shoes I would have condemned the Pearl Harbor attack and done everything I could to muddle public opinion in the United States. Imagine FDR trying to explain why he was prosecuting an undeclared war in the Atlantic with resources that could have been used against the Japanese. Imagine trying to sell Congress on the notion of sending supplies to Stalin while the Philippines were being overrun and the West Coast was perceived to be in danger of coming under attack.
The other side of the coin is the Japanese stupidity in going to war with the United States. By most accounts we defeated them with just 15% of our war production, the rest went to Europe. That should give you an idea of just how great of a disparity there was between the Japanese and American economies in the 1940s.
You can say that they were banking on a quick victory and a negotiated peace, but it seems to me that you've already lost if you are relying on your enemy to throw in the towel when he has the resources to beat you. It also ignores history -- the United States had proven itself willing to fight a total war against it's own people during the American Civil War (see Sherman's march to the sea and Sherdian's valley campaign), why would the Japanese or Germans make the assumption that we wouldn't be willing to do the same against them?
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One other thing, sorry to reply twice, but wars are decided by Quartermasters. There's a saying in military circles, "Amateurs study tactics, professionals study logistics." Having the best military technology and tactics in the world means absolutely nothing if you can't supply your troops with fuel, food and bullets.
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Third point (I guess I'm trying to set a record for most replies to a single post), but it's debatable that Germany would have won the war if she had prevailed in the East. For one thing, 'prevailing' on the Eastern Front isn't possible in the conventional sense, unless you can convince Stalin to throw in the towel or fight all the way to Vladivostok.
More to the point though, the Manhattan Project was never aimed at Japan. It was aimed at Germany. The German atomic weapons program was a joke -- they wer
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Insightful? Really? Are you saying Leaders of nations only make rational decisions? Explain Hitler.. or Stalin, or half the Monarchy in Europe back during the dark ages. Just because your in power doesn't mean it's because your smart. Hell isn't the next leader of North Korea going to be his son? It isn't because the guy is smart enough. A LOT of leaders of countries in the past are both fools and madmen.
Sorry.. but no.. Expecting the other guy to play nice / civilized is nice in a perfect world, bu
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Alternatively i will just find a dumb ass thats prepared to set his underwear or shoes on fire. Saves on getting a nuke too, or even working explosives.
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We can't afford this. (Score:4, Informative)
Two decades and what have we got to show for it? A bunch of rich industrialists. We've needed to cut spending for decades, let us start here. There won't be much to defend if the government taxes us to death to pay for these useless toys.
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The only real question is whether or not protecting our cities from madmen in Tehran or Pyongyang is a worthwhile investment. I tend to think that it is. Do you really want to live in a world where the United States is held hostage to nuclear blackmail and our only choice if they murder millions of our citizens is to respond in kind?
The problem that you aren't considering is that a non-functional or unreliable system is worse than no system at all, because it increases the likelihood that an attack will be launched and will be successful. It emboldens our leaders to make rash decisions that will anger potential enemies while assuming that the ABM system will protect our cities. It convinces potential enemies that a strike with large numbers of missiles is necessary to ensure success.
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Here's the deal (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, here's the thing. You can't just wave your hands and say "of course it's a worthwhile investment". Whether it's worthwhile depends on 1) how much it costs (including opportunity costs - in other words, what other good things could be done with the money), 2) how effective the defense system is, 3) how likely the threat is, and 4) the consequences if t
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Since no defensive system will be 100% perfect and there are other delivery systems (cruise missiles, aircraft) for nuclear weapons, I'd say that you don't have to worry about that.....
Re:Money (Score:5, Insightful)
Funny but that world existed for about 20 years. The US pretty much could have nuked any nation on earth at will from 1945 until around the mid sixties.
The old Soviet Union had no effective to deliver a nuclear weapon to the continental US until the early to mid sixties.
The USSR could have hit Europe, Japan, and Alaska but odds are that maybe one or two bombers might hive gotten through to the US and the few ICBMs the USSR had would have been destroyed on the ground. That is one of the reasons that the USSR put missiles in Cuba so they could have a workable threat to the US.
Re:Money (Score:5, Insightful)
If the USSR couldn't deliver a nuke to US soil, then it is unlikely that the US could've done the reverse
Key difference: The US had forward operating bases. You can't reach the USSR from North America with 1940s/1950s bomber technology but you can reach it from Turkey, the UK, Japan, Italy, Iceland, Norway, etc, etc.
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*sigh*
A mere decade ago, I'd have laughed at your statement. Today? I almost agree with you - and I'm a US citizen! Bush changed things an awful lot when he launched that preemptive war on Iraq. Afghanistan, not so much, but Iraq certainly.
Re:Money (Score:5, Insightful)
ICBMs are cool as symbols of military/industrial/scientific might and are, for the moment, the last word in penetrating the borders of a hostile power; but they are tricky to build, extremely expensive, and (even if difficult to intercept) trackable back to their source.
They are pretty much exactly the weapon that you would expect as a culmination of the US/USSR "two nuclear superpowers staring at each other across well defined, and substantially closed, lines" period. In a period of relatively open trade, assorted third parties, and general proliferation, though, it isn't at all clear that you can expect the next warhead to come by ICBM, rather than by Fedex...
Even if it actually worked, a lot of this missile defence stuff reeks of wrinkly old guys shoving money at their contractor buddies in order to finally have the weapons systems that they wanted during the cold war.
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Consider the number of major cities around the world that are near, or have grown around, their airports. Airports that have large numbers of passenger and cargo flights going in and out every day. Flights that, in many cases(discoverable with the aid of any flight-tracking website, or a pair of binoculars and some patience) travel over densely populated, economically important, and/or symbolic areas at an altitude where a nuclear air-burst would seriou
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Having said that
Maybe letting the military play with these toys and the wrinkly contractors pocket a few bills yields a technology that might be useful at some indeterminate future point?
Has that ever happened before? Maybe more importantly
Speaking sentimentally (my father was military turned wrinkly contractor)
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Both threats will always exist. You think ICBMs are too complicated to make? I mean, India has a space program, China wants to go to the moon, do you really think these countries can't build ICBMs, or won't be able to in the near future?
Nuclear weapons are also complicated but countries like North Korea have them, and Iran is well on its way.
I'm not trying to exaggerate the threat, but the idea that the future of war is purely low-tech is just absurd. There will be low-tech threats from terrorists, and high
That's like saying... (Score:2)
Nuclear van
Saying that because a missile defense system cannot protect against every possible delivery vector is like saying that we may as well not bother with greenhouse gas controls because coal mine fires are doing it anyway.
It's just a non-argument.
You fail. (Score:4, Informative)
US medical spending is over $2.5 trillion http://www.medpagetoday.com/PublicHealthPolicy/Washington-Watch/13016 [medpagetoday.com]
US defense spending is $685 billion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States [wikipedia.org]
Free your mind
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You're missing the point. First, your own link says that total military expenditures totaled a trillion dollars. But the fact is that if we got rid of the total military expenditures, and gave it all to medical care, you would be able to provide care to everyone. That's what the guy was saying.
Re:You fail. (Score:4, Informative)
That's spending by the entire nation, not the budget allocation of the federal government. If you look at the recent NYTimes graphic, spending on defense in this budget almost exactly equals SS spending, and is greater than government health care spending. But think of what we get for it!
Re:You fail. (Score:5, Informative)
$685 billion is the base. Then through the course of year the defense gets more money from congress.
We are spending $10 Billion/month in Iraq. We have already spent over several Trillions dollars are the Iraq fiasco alone!!
Get a clue moron, defense spending is the largest part of the US expenditures. The deference is it's not an entitlement program, it just acts like one.
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Reagan is dead, his "Starwars" waste of money should join him. We could easily have free medical care for everyone if we cut the defense department to a reasonable size.
I hate to break it to you but nothing is "free"......
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Indeed, and the word "care" lacks definition as well. We have free medical care today, if you define care as whatever you can manage to do for yourself.
When the price of ANY service is TRULY free, there is no way that ANY society that exists could truly afford to provide it. Demand will be infinite, and so will cost. No "free" healthcare system is truly free. Now, it might be lower cost than it is in the US (I'm not fan of the status quo), but don't be under any illusions that there are no tradeoffs.
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We could easily have free medical care for everyone if we cut the defense department to a reasonable size.
Even if we ignore that there's no such thing as "free" medical care, it still remains that most people can pay their way for medical care. At least with anti-missile systems, the government does something that can't otherwise be done and it is a lot less waste (by two to three orders of magnitude) than "free" medical care for people who don't need it.