From: Michael S. Lorrey (retroman@turbont.net)
Date: Sun Jun 18 2000 - 14:56:39 MDT
"Terry W. Colvin" wrote:
>
> The press said that antiballistic missile system they'd like, no need to
> build would intercept in the ascent stage of the missile's flight, NOT the
> Reaganesque Star Wars bubble that would stop the rain of Soviet warheads on
> the way down.
>
> Consider this. A ship full of illegal chinese immigrants runs itself
> aground on the shore of New Jersey. (old news) The Navy didn't intercept
> this ship, the Coast Guard didn't intercept this ship, the spy satellites
> didn't detect the ship (in time, but probably had pics seen later of its
> course, speed and final location stuck on the beach) and there are literally
> thousands of ships plying the coasts of the US and oh by the way, the coasts
> of all of our Allies. What about them?
What makes you think nobody saw it there? That was a surface ship, not a
submersible object or vessel.
>
> All a so-called rouge nation, faction, or religous group fundamentalist
> Christian group or otherwise, need do is pull up to the coast of a nation,
> errect the very short range missile launcher on its deck and push the
> button.
Very true.
>
> Batteries of the latest and greatest Patriot, ABL, GBL, even Texas Air
> National Guardsmen shoulder to shoulder with Stingers would likely not bring
> it down. It would go where, or close enough to where ever they wanted it to
> go with NBorC warheads. And believe me a small cell of fundamentalists
> trained, educated and who had just vacationed in the US with their latest
> GPS locator, will not feel "put out" by the US government funding an ABM
> system. Their goal is not like the former Soviets to go toe to toe with the
> US, it will be to make a point. And they'll give it their best Midwest
> University try and they won't care if the first one doesn't hit pay dirt.
GPS is not currently usable for navigating supersonic devices very well
at all. It takes a few seconds to lock onto all the necessary satellite
signals (you need more than the standard number because you also need
altitude information), and by the time you have data, you are now
several miles away from where you were when you started, so the locks
you get on each satellite signal are over a large foot print several
miles in diameter. You could actually be anywhere within that foot
print.
>
> Terrorism (read rouge nation) is a different animal than world domination by
> a totalitarian government system. They aren't sweating a national economic
> situation on their homefront. They have funding sources like BinLadin and a
> dream of rocking the world, not taking it over.
No, I don't think you understand the motivations of terrorists. They are
almost exclusively nationalists: palestinians, armenians, serbs,
afghans, pakistanis, irish, etc. and their goals are very nationalistic
in scope. Bin Laden's objectives personally are to get the US out of
Saudi Arabia. Being as that they are nationalists, they DO have a
homefront, and they DO have safehouses and home bases. These concrete
locations can be attacked in reprisal if they are so stupid as to try
anything (as seen by US attacks against Libya, against Hezbollah in
Lebanon, Hussein in Iraq, as well as many attacks against iranian oil
platforms in the Gulf that were used in the late 80's as mission launch
platforms against wester oil ships, and against Bin Laden in
Afghanistan).
>
> Get off the Star Wars dream, this is not the 70s, 80s, or 90s. It is a
> different world. Spend the money and devote the research elsewhere. Design
> a stealth patrol car for the Kansas State Police.
The last thing police need are stealth patrol cars.
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