From: Michael S. Lorrey (retroman@turbont.net)
Date: Wed Jun 14 2000 - 12:40:41 MDT
John Clark wrote:
>
> Spike Jones <spike66@ibm.net> Wrote:
>
> >Reentry vehicles do not change much with time,
>
> Cruse Missiles.
Attackable with conventional aircraft and surface to air missiles (even of the
shoulder fired kind).
> Stealth technology.
Submillimeter radar. new generation IR sensors.
> Cheap balloon decoys.
To do what? they have distinctly different ballistic characteristics and radar
signatures.
> Armored warheads.
Added weight reduces the total number of warheads you can carry, and makes the
warhead either larger, and thus easier to hit, or else denser, and thus a much
hotter and easier to spot target.
> Warheads in orbit.
Easily detectable with xray and gamma ray observation platforms. Allowing
warheads in orbit automatically allows you to put warhead powered xray lasers in
orbit, which are far far cheaper and more effective than any other laser
technology. Every bomb you use as an xray pump can kill 50-200 targets at once.
> Electro Magnetic Pulse Bombs.
SHielding.
> Suitcase Nukes.
Definite concern, but detectable with satellite technology when unsheilded.
> And most
> important of all, quantity.
i.e. money. Everyone that hates us is generally dirt poor, with budgets of at
most a few million or a few billion bucks. Defending against an expansionist
China in the next 40 years is the real goal of SDI. They have this problem about
maintaining face which makes them much less tractable than most others. You
basically have to drive them into the condition North Korea is in to get them to
change anything significant.
China's primary targets will be its neighbors, plus Australia, Hawaii, India,
and the western coast of the US, plus possibly some Siberian targets as well.
When US leaders say 'rogue states' they make it sound like North Korea, but in
their hearts they mean China.
>
> >I suggest that these ABM systems cannot be easily defeated by
> >massive redundancy [ever more warheads] because the laser systems can
> >also be multiplied arbitrarily.
>
> No, not arbitrarily. You've already admitted that defense is much more expensive than
> offence so just building more defense is simply not going to work unless your resources
> are infinite. They're not.
They aren't however, so long as your cost of defense is less than the cost of
potential losses from attack, then you come out ahead in the end.
>
> >>Me:
> >>if I just buy some paint at Home Depot and paint my warhead white you'll have to
> >>increase the power of your LASER about a hundred times.
>
> >Awww, c'mon John, humor me just a little. Do you really believe that
> >those who dream up these systems have not anticipated this?
>
> I'm sure that somebody involved in the project had taken Physics in High School so the
> idea must have been tossed around. However they concluded, quite correctly, that it had
> nothing to do with the main function of the system, to provide employment for themselves
> and their friends. I mean, if the system is ever actually needed nobody expects to be held
> accountable afterward when it fails to work as promised.
I would expect they would. A failed system will kill some 1 or two out of every
three family members. How pissed do you think the survivor is going to be toward
those who promised the system would work? The system is very much a threat like
the Chinese did last year toward their airline execs, saying they all had to be
in the air on new years eve... With SDI, every day is Y2K, and we are all living
on the clock.
Mike Lorrey
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