From: Jeff Davis (jdavis@socketscience.com)
Date: Mon Jul 24 2000 - 12:48:58 MDT
John Clark wrote:
> > U.S. Shoots Down Cruise Missile in Defense Test
>
>This has nothing to do with ABM's and frankly I don't know what all the
excitement
>is about, if you knew its flight path and knew where to stand you could
shoot down
>a Cruise Missile with a rifle.
Despite the fact that Spike is a pal of mine, I have to go along with John
on this, as well as the larger view that the whole anti-missile business is
a huge military-industrial pork/welfare ripoff.
The cruise missile is slow and, as far as I know not equipped to perform
any evasive maneuvers. The only thing going for it is its ground-hugging
capability so that once you have the ability to pick it out of ground
clutter, it's not that much more difficult to hit than a float in the Rose
Parade. Not much of an accomplishment that.
And, to take my skepticism a bit further, I am suspicious about the timing
of this "accomplishment", coming as it does so quickly on the heels of the
"real"--ie, NMD-- shootdown test failure. Is it possible that the public,
ill-equipped to distinguish the non-missile cruise "missile" from the real
thing, is being fed a bit of pro-pork-suckers boosterism?
Show me that this test was scheduled long in advance.
I could go on, but I couldn't do a better job than John has of showing this
for what it is: an exercise in brain-dead, post-cold-war opportunism.
Best, Jeff Davis
"Everything's hard till you know how to do it."
Ray Charles
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