John Clark wrote:
> 1) Heavier than air flight does not become more difficult as time progresses...
Nor does it become more difficult to stop the nukes that have already
been built, which will likely find their way into the international market
at bargain prices in the next few years. The Grand Poobah of Outer
Butfukistan will be shopping for sure. Many are the potential customers
who can afford only one missile, and have not the sophistication to
actually modify what has already been built.
> an effective ABM system does.
Only for sophisticated nations. SDI is not designed to deter them.
> 2) In 1903 the Wright brothers did not claim to have the technology to start a
> supersonic transatlantic passenger service in 2 years.
Nor do we need that. We have demonstrated, with *current technology*
the ability to hit a warhead with about 50% probability with a single ABM.
It would be easy and cheap to stop development now, deploy a bunch
of them and provide a modicum of protection against single missiles,
fired accidentally or in anger. Thats with todays tech.
> They did not demand government money to make it happen either.
John, the *government* is *asking* its defence contractors to build
these things. Your comment makes it sound like the contractors are
begging or demanding the government to pay for their pet projects.
The contractors would far rather make fighter planes, thats where
the *real* money is, not these missiles. Missiles are *cheapy cheap*
compared to state of the art planes.
If anything, the defense contractors would rather not make ABMs
because they make fighter planes obsolete. A couple weeks ago a
PAC3 took out a drone fighter plane which was using all the radar
jamming, chaff, flares, evasive maneuvering etc, that we have today.
Tradition fighter planes are now helpless against the Patriot missile. spike
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Fri Oct 12 2001 - 14:39:49 MDT