John Clark wrote:
> Do you really think that's a reasonable position to take? Don't test it even
> one time, just assure yourself that theoretically it would work in a anechoic
> chamber sitting in a lab and start spending hundreds of billions of dollars of
> other people's money.
They will test it all-up, after they have acheived a calculated system
reliability of a certain minimum number. It isnt there yet. It will get there.
>The obvious reason is that it doesn't work worth a damn.
This sounds too much like a physics teacher arguing that heavier-than-
air flight is impossible as the Wright Flier passes overhead. Without
missing a beat, he observes "No stewardesses, no in-flight movie,
hell, we dont even have AIRPORTS! This will never go anywhere."
Lets give it a chance, shall we John?
You know, tho, this whole thing puts me in a dilemma of sorts.
The whole issue is that the pentagon wants to buy something
that they cannot talk about and cannot reveal how well it works.
As an information freedom advocate, you can see where I am
in a tight spot. {8-] This is the nature of warfare, and this is
why war must be stopped. It is wasteful beyond imagination,
unspeakably tragically wasteful. It must be stopped. For the
first time in history, we may be able to do just that. spike
Heres a coupla stories that came over the news wire today that
pretty nicely sum up our debate:
SCIENTISTS TO TELL CONGRESS CLINTON MISSILE
DEFENSE PLAN IS FAULTY: An array of scientists will tell
Congress Monday that the Clinton administration's proposed antimissile
shield is flawed and should be shelved until the Pentagon can prove
it works. Organized by the Union of Concerned Scientists, about 40
physicists and engineers will join a growing number of experts who
say the $60 billion defense system is incapable of defending
the U.S. from even a limited missile attack by countries such as North Korea
or Iran. "What's on the books at this point is simply not adequate, and
never will be," said Lawrence Jones, a physicist at the University of
Michigan in Ann Arbor. Critics say the Pentagon has intentionally
simplified tests to disguise the system's inability to tell an incoming
warhead from a decoy. Air Force Lt. Col. Rick Lehner, spokesman for
the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, said the critics lack the
information needed to understand the system. (Wall Street Journal)
COCHRAN REBUTS SCIENTIST's CLAIMS ON NMD
PERFORMANCE: Sen. Thad Cochran on Friday criticized
reports from a Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientist that the
national missile defense (NMD) systems now being tested could be
easily defeated by simple coutermeasures. Ted Postol, an MIT scientist
and one of the leading critics of the Pentagon's missile defense program
and Raytheon's Patriot missile's performance in the Gulf War, also
recently alleged that the Pentagon's Ballistic Missile Defense Organization
(BMDO) altered the NMD flight test program to cover up problems.
Cochran, who chairs the Senate subcommittee on international security
and proliferation, took on Postol on several accounts in a Senate floor
speech. For example, Cochran said that Postol said he found the fatal
weakness in the BMD system after studying BMDO data from the NMD
Flight Test 1A conducted in June 1997. But, Cochran said, Postol never
mentioned that test was not intended as a warhead intercept test or that
the kill vehicle now being used for the program is built by a different
contractor. And, Postol also claimed to have discovered in the data
from Flight Test 1A that the vehicle will be defeated by the simplest of
balloon decoys, Cochran noted. "The fact is that in Flight Test-3, on Oct.
2, 1999, exactly the opposite happened, when the EKV disregarded a
balloon decoy and successfully destroyed its target" Cochran said.
Cochran also said Postol made similar disparaging remarks in the past,
all of which were proven false, about Lockheed Martin's
Theater High Altitude Area Defense system and Patriot. (Defense Daily)
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 27 2000 - 14:13:12 MDT