From: Brian D Williams (talon57@well.com)
Date: Thu Jul 19 2001 - 13:41:12 MDT
>from: hibbert@netcom.com
>While not frivolous, it doesn't remove the threat. If someone
>tries for nuclear blackmail, (or wants to take vengence on
>civilians) being able to stop 90% of their missiles won't stop
>them if they have a few. And while it would reduce the
>casualties, it wouldn't reduce the value of the threat, or
>significantly reduce the quality of the revenge.
Assuming we have ten ABM's available, the odds are good at stopping
10 or less in a 90% successfull system.
The current defense plan is not designed to be all encompassing as
"Star Wars" was, but is designed to handle a limited number of
launches. It is not designed to be a defense in a superpower
struggle. However in a superpower struggle even a limited defense
may win the day vs no defense.
I think they ought to consider renaming it.
>That said, there are still many cases in which having a
>not-perfect defensive shield encourages attacks, and many in which
>it encourages potential attackers to invest in an arms race. I
>haven't seen anything in this discussion to make me think we're
>much closer than 20 years to creating a near perfect interdiction
>system given the approaches SDI considers. If we (the gov't) save
>the billions of dollars that SDI proposes to spend on deploying
>partially effective systems in the short term, we (the people)
>will have more money to spend developing technologies that may
>make this whole approach obsolete.
As I said, the current plan isn't for an all encompassing defense
against a superpower, it's a limited defense against a few rogue
missiles.
Brian
Member:
Extropy Institute, www.extropy.org
National Rifle Association, www.nra.org, 1.800.672.3888
SBC/Ameritech Data Center Chicago, IL, Local 134 I.B.E.W
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 08:08:54 MST