Re: SDI (was rooting for the Americans)

From: John K Clark (jonkc@att.net)
Date: Sun Jan 19 2003 - 09:06:15 MST


"spike66" <spike66@attbi.com>

> The only two places? What about from 10km with a B747 ABL,
> the airborne laser?

That might work very well against short range scuds and would have been
helpful in the 91 gulf war, but it's of no use against a ICBM because Russia
won't let you fly your 747 around Siberia 10 km from the launch point.

> would give the attacker some real headaches, especially considering
> he knows he only has 35 minutes to live after squeezing off
> a missile.

Huh?

> Missile defense is certainly a difficult problem, but we
> should not declare it impossible.

As long as it take a dollar's worth of defensive hardware to shoot down 5
cents worth of offensive hardware a practical ICBM defense will be
impossible and I don't see that changing anytime soon because shooting down
a ICBM is fundamentally more difficult that sending a ICBM.

> the Muslim extremists would be tempted to deliver a nuke by missile
>if at all possible.

I can't imagine why they would want to go to all the trouble of delivering
their nuke by missile when they could send it by Federal Express. The
problem is not missiles the problem is nuclear bombs. Every day thousands of
huge cargo containers enter America and almost none of them are searched in
any way. Searching them all would be enormously expensive, perhaps 2% of
what has been proposed for SDI, but would increase national security far
more than that boondoggle.

    John K Clark jonkc@att.net



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