Interceptor Missile Fails Test Launch 1039
jangobongo writes "The US missile defense system suffered a serious setback today, just 2 weeks before it was scheduled to be activated. A target ICBM was launched from Alaska, but crashed harmlessly into the ocean as the interceptor missile based on an atoll in the Pacific Ocean shut itself down due to an unknown "anomaly". The cause of the failure could have been anything from a software glitch to a major hardware malfunction."
Is it worth it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Bliss is having no idea how much my federal government spent on the rest of the program leading up to this test. Just let me worry about this ICBM lying on the bottom of the ocean.
How? (Score:5, Insightful)
The performance of this program really does make one wonder what we are getting for our tax dollars and investment given all the dramatic failures this program has endured.
Why can't we all just get along? (Score:2, Insightful)
Waste of Time (Score:2, Insightful)
And so... (Score:5, Insightful)
And let's all speculate aimlessly until we know which.
Correct me if I'm wrong (Score:1, Insightful)
My concern (Score:3, Insightful)
'failed to launch due to an unknown anomaly'
What kind of engineering is this? With all of the possible metrology, the system 'shut down' due to an unknown anomaly? If the scientists and engineers can't grok what causes a 'shut down', then they need new jobs...possibly in the NYC sanitation department.
The system 'shut itself down'...ergo, a failure condition (anomaly) must have existed. I fail to understand how the 'system' knew about a problem that was bad enough to shut itself down, yet somehow the folks running said system aren't able to discern exactly what that was? Hell, even Windows has 'event viewer' and kernel dumps.
This cash cow needs to have her neck severed.
Some perspective is needed (Score:5, Insightful)
Meanwhile, the thousands of cargo containers entering American ports everyday are rarely inspected.
Meanwhile, tons of radioactive materials are left unsecured in the former USSR.
And more nations are pursuing nuclear weapons as a bargaining chip to keep the U.S. from invading their countries.
Someone want to educate the current administration on asymmetrical warfare? And how the next threat is likely to be immune to missile interceptors.
Re:Is it worth it? (Score:2, Insightful)
What about the $200B we are pissing away in Iraq? Makes you feel good?
Cost versus Benefit? (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed (Score:5, Insightful)
Doesn't matter. It isn't needed. It tries to address a threat that is not there now and NEVER will be. Even the most hare-brained dictator knows that lobbing ICBMs at the U.S. mainland isn't going to work and will just result in the "liberation" of their country.
At least some of the world is trying to abandon the path of large-scale war and high-tech weapons as a means of resolving disputes and protecting your interests. Financial war can be messy but at least you don't get this [nejm.org].
Re:How? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Correct me if I'm wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
The Bushies claim that treaty is now moot as the USSR no longer exists. Moscow didn't see it that way. The US was open about it's plans and if I recall correctly that would have matched protocol for leaving the treaty.
I may have that last part wrong. It all happened in the early part of the Bush presidency when he was withdrawing from, ignoring or unsigning a major international treaty every couple weeks.
Re:Why can't we all just get along? (Score:3, Insightful)
Simple. Because you and I have different views of what getting along is. Now multiply the number of people who have different views by the worlds population.
Re:And the better course of action is? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Some perspective is needed (Score:5, Insightful)
Just like there is no alquaeda in Iraq, there will be no falling ICBM.
It will come through the ports on a container ship that isn't inspected and detonate somwhere down the road.
So you're right, it will be immune to missile interception.
Meanwhile countless americans don't have healthcare.
This is "morals and values" for you folks.
Re:Why can't we all just get along? (Score:5, Insightful)
Americans and Europeans are ignorant of their own history if they think they have treated the rest of the world respectfully and justly. American foreign policy for decades has been to exploit weaker countries, manipulate international politics to their advantage. This is documented; it was explicitly outlined by presidents.
England has spent most of its history conquering people, overthrowing cultures and screwing around in places they don't belong.
All people want to live in peace. Hostility does not appear out of thin air. Respect others, and they will respect you. Nobody wants violence. Do you think these are crazy ideas?
Probably a Good Thing (Score:5, Insightful)
As others have pointed out - no two-bit dictator with a nuke is going to launch it at the US (or any of our allies that might be geographically closer) because they know it is a sure ticket to "liberation."
But, what the US military, and anyone who bothers to think about it for 30 seconds, does know is that if the US premptively liberates a country from its two-bit dictator, then any nuke that guy has at his disposal will be launched just as soon as he can hit that red button.
Ballistic missile defense is designed to neutralize that retaliatory threat and thus make it "safe" for the US to liberate a country like Iran or North Korea. That's the reason all the talk about how "it will never work" because of decoys and whatnot doesn't make an impact on development - they don't (plan to) need to deal with a well-funded and well-planned attack, only the last-minute, "if I'm going down, I'm going to take as many of them with me" kind of attack.
Speaking as a US citizen and a WORLD citizen, I tend to think that the less free the US feels to throw its weight around, the better off the planet is in the long run.
Re:How? (Score:3, Insightful)
How about don't spend it, its my fucking money in the first place.
Its too bad that many (The Right) would rather divert your attention than address the stupidity of the plan.
Re:How? (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyway, defecit -> debt -> devaluation of currency -> inflation -> redistribution of wealth. You see, it is the poor that will loose it all in inflation times. Why? Because the "rich" will move their money to Euros or gold and thus bypass the inflation. Hence they emerge richer in comparison to the poor living from paycheck-to-paycheck.
People don't give a damn about the deficit. They buy sound bites "strong dolar", "tax cuts", "strong economy", "strong military", "arrogant french", "liberate iraq", "terrorists will get you" and the rest of the bull shit. People have no idea what these issues mean. They just care that the slogans sound good.
Most people don't know what "the market" means as long as it has a word "free" in it, then it must be good. It kind of reminds me of what people thought of Nuclear Magnetic Resonanace. Simply put it, people freaked out about "nuclear" without understand what actually happens. So, NMR was renamed to Magnetic Resonance Imaging and people are happy, still ignorant, but happy.
You see, you don't understand why national budgets are run the way they are because you don't have a clue about the backdoor deals, "scams" (borderline legal, hence quotation marks) and "favours' that are done. Why? Because it is not *their* house. They are only there for a few years and end up "on the street" regardless. In the time that they run the house, they will do whatever they have to to forward *their*, not *our*, best interrests. If all politians wanted to forward *our* best interrests, there would be no wars. Heck, there would be no need for national military and the $450 billion dolar waste that goes into it because it has nothing to do with *our* interrests.
But this is not the fault of politians. This is the fault of our entire society(ies). It is always "us vs. them" or some other bullshit. People need to realize that there is no "them". It is only "us" on *our* little blue planet. </rant
Re:How? (Score:2, Insightful)
Step two: Stop thinking of the government like it's a private citizen with a credit card. That analogy leads you to conclusions that aren't just wrong, they're really, really wrong.
Step three: Contemplate the cycle of investment in this country. For decades, United States bonds have been a sound investment, particularly for people who are at or nearing retirement and who don't want to take risks with their money. What would happen if the government eliminated the national debt? All those bonds would disappear, paid off in full, and there would be no more available. You'd end up with literally trillions of dollars in 401(k) plans, IRAs and pension plans and no low-risk way of investing it. Retirees would be forced to either make higher-risk investments (like in the stock market) or give up on the idea of ever making any money off of their savings.
We have Treasury bonds for a reason. Step three, after you've mastered steps one and two, is for you to understand this.
Re:Agreed (Score:3, Insightful)
China and the United States don't really compete over resources. Yes, the US would love it if China would open up its markets more so we could sell our products there --markets are the most important resource of the 21st century --but it's not a big problem at this point. It's a small thing in the grand scheme of things.
That was also true of the USSR, but there's a critical difference between China and the USSR: The Soviets were ideological exporters. They had a policy of trying to export totalitarian communism -- by far the greatest evil of the 20th century --to wherever they could: Europe, Central Asia, Latin America, whatever. The possibility that the USSR would attempt to solve the Berlin problem once and for all by rolling tanks through the Fulda Gap was very real, and the war plans were all carved in stone. Nuclear conflict was seemingly inevitable.
That's not the case with China. They have chosen, if anything, to be ideological importers. The situations with Tibet, with Hong Kong, with the ROC are far from perfect, but they're also far from unstable.
China, as of this moment, seems to be a gentle giant. It would take something drastic, like a huge plague or a huge famine or a military coup d'etat, to change that.
All these big weapons.... (Score:3, Insightful)
What really frustrated the military and Busg about Sept 11 is that they had nobody to point the might of aircraft carriers at.
Re:How? (Score:5, Insightful)
I dont think there is any intention to pay for any of this (at least no intention to pay it off). The idea is that the States should become bankrupt. This would make it easier for global corporations to more directly run the country (world) without needing to answer to democratic institutions.
If you think that the public has to much power, then how better to put the unwashed masses under control than by bankrupting the only institution which must (at least partially by way of elections) answer to it.
When the government spends billions of dollars on this or that defense project, (it doesn't matter which one) who do you think gets most of the money? (answer: privately owned global corporate conglomerates).
Sure it creates a few "temporary" jobs. Just as any government spending project creates jobs. But it creates a lots of profit.
It doesn't matter if missile defense works, as long as it costs a lot of public money.
Not only should taxpayers expect to pay more (not less) taxes during war, but corporations should be compelled to contribute to the war effort by providing services and goods(for the war effort) AT COST. no profit (from those war based earnings). This is morally equivalant to the draft (except that morally corporations do not have rights, whereas the soldiers we compell to fight do)
War should not be a profit making exercise, and if this makes investers shy of going to war, perhaps it would be for the best. War should be waged because it is morally necessary. Not for profit.
welcome to the new defense department (Score:5, Insightful)
There were several tests of the missile defense system some of them succesful some not, but there were certainly not enough tests to ensure that the system would be operational. Yet the DoD decided to go ahead with building the system before testing was complete.
Now we know there is some kind of problem but we can't make major design changes because the whole thing is already being build. Lets just hope it is a software glitch.
Now everyone knows that a system as complex as that cannot work on the first time, but that is why you do tersting before you actually start depoying. This way you can iron out the bugs before you spend several billion dollars on a bunch of hardware that might turn out to be useless.
Re:Is it worth it? (Score:2, Insightful)
That's total bullcrap. You do things like climb Mt. Everest because "you can". You don't send countless billions of dollars to a hostile country when you're already trillions in debt.
The reason we're dumping all of this money into Iraq is to save face. Our leaders made a colossal mistake. They invaded a country on based on inaccurate or fabricated pretenses (don't give me any revisionist reasons; I remember full well exactly what reasons were given prior to the invasion), and now they're trying to cover their asses.
Re:No surprise there (Score:1, Insightful)
The purpose of a weapons system is to blow something up -- an enemy soldier, a city, an incoming missile. But the higher purpose is to cause the enemy to alter his plans before carrying them out.
Re:Shameful misinformation (Score:2, Insightful)
The first writethru was even worse. And don't even talk to me about Jim Wolf's story for Reuters. That was just a mess.
Earth to Twirlip... (Score:2, Insightful)
This is yet another catastrophic attempt by the Bush Administration to circumvent the laws of physics and human nature. And like the other attempts, it is a (really, really, really expensive) failure. Why do we in the US put up with this? Boy, are we dumb.
Re:Is it worth it? (Score:2, Insightful)
Iraq had water and electricity fine before the US invasion. Saddam Hussein's government didn't let schools and hospitals fall apart. The schools were running fine, albeit under Ba'ath rulership, and the hospitals crumbled under UN and US sanctions, regardless of what the Iraqi government tried to do. The hospitals would never get their medication until Saddam Hussein was overthrown, that was the whole point of the sanctions, to encourage that to happen.
Your last sentence is wrong, and sorta chilling if you think about history of the last 100 years. Italian fascists claimed that reason for invading Libya, and France had that attitude when they ruled Algeria, and the UK had that in mind when they controlled Iraq. I could go on with a list of others.
Re:How? (Score:5, Insightful)
You're right. Unlike a credit card, the government can just print its way out of any economic dilemma. It's a great strategy, and I'm glad we're finally using it. Just look at the what the Weimar Republic was able to achieve!
Don't spend it (Score:3, Insightful)
This debt was run up under Republican presidents and it is now skyrocketing under a Republican president and congress (while it decreased under a Democratic president and congress). There's no longer a Democratic red herring in the mix to throw people off the scent.
The big problem is that corporations are a lot more moblie than people are. Manufacturing is relocating overseas, but our workforce just can't do that. Guess who's going to be stuck at home to pay off the tremendous bill?
Re:OBSOLETE (Score:5, Insightful)
and you dont have to triple strategic force
really all you have to do is cram more junk in a multiple warhead missile. Still relatively cheap compared to the effort required to detect all the junk and determine which piece of junk is a nuke and which is merely junk.
Re:Sooo funny (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Is it worth it? (Score:2, Insightful)
Errr Hello ?... what does September 11 have to do with Iraq Invasion ?
Re:Is it worth it? (Score:2, Insightful)
Iraq under Saddam Hussein had basic infrastructure.
Here's another one: Note that the second quote is from October 2003, but remains just as true today.I'm not going to cite these because anyone can find them on google in 2 minutes. That's how long it took to disprove your lies.
Re:Is it worth it? (Score:2, Insightful)
WTF, dude? Do you seriously think that GWB has anything to do with the thing failing? All GWB said was that he wants a missile defense system and pushed to have the money appropriated. he has absolutely nothig to do with the thing failing. Get your head out of your ass.
And Slashdot moderators give him +4: Insightful. Seriously.. WTF?
And to the parent of this whole thread.. Money gets spent to advance our society along. Money is spent in research and development. That is what happens. Nothing comes out of the blocks working 100%. Yeah, missiles are expensive when compared to the salaries of men. Compare that to the money appropriated to national defense and its but a drop.. not even a drop. More like a bit of mist. Why don't you complain that NASA spent billions of dollars only to have a few rockets explode on the launch pad? How about the money "wasted" in developing the nuclear weapon? How about the money "wasted" on SCRAM jet technology? Remember one fo them blowing up?
Re:Cost versus Benefit? (Score:5, Insightful)
But we still need aircraft carriers and interceptor missiles.
Foreign Aid, 2003: $15 Billion [globalissues.org]
Military Budget, 2004: $399 Billion [cdi.org]
Which one of these is a black hole again?
Re:Is it worth it? (Score:5, Insightful)
SCRAM jet technology actually has uses. Missile defense systems on the other hand, for all their marketability, are trivial to beat. I can think of at least four methods to render them useless offhand, and I'm not even a rocket scientist.
But while they're useless against an enemy, they're excellent for transferring taxpayer money into desired pockets. Guess why monkeyman and his merry band of chimps like them?
A wasted ICBM is just a christmas bonus for the contractors.
Re:How? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not an expert on military hardware or capabilities, but it's practically certain that the US has the ability to detect a rocket launch from anywhere in the world. I say that it's a practical certainty because, without that capability, the principle of mutually assured destruction couldn't have been effectively implemented against the Soviets.
The bottom line is that, before an ICBM even hit American ground, the source would be known and a barrage of missiles would be headed there. A nuclear attack on an American city would be met with a counterattack of unimaginable lethality.
Given this, there is no conceivable scenario under which the US would be attacked by a ballistic missile. Supposing that Kim Jong-Il is completely insane, he's still a dictator, and dictators generally aren't interested in presiding over a scorched radioactive wasteland.
The US nuclear defense policy must be aimed at non-state actors, principally through the control and monitoring of nuclear material everywhere in the world.
Re:Is it worth it? (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't science. Real scientists have said again and again that the whole missile defense system doesn't work and won't work for the forseeable future, and even if it did work it'd be trivial to defeat and confuse with new missiles. People working for the Pentagon call this "Job Security".
Personaly I think it'd be cheaper and at least as useful to buy everyone in the U.S.A. Alex Chiu's Immortality Rings [alexchiu.com]. Scientists say it doesn't work, but then scientists say there's such thing as Global Warming, so what the hell do they know? They obviously don't care about American lives.
Re:Is it worth it? (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, right. It wasn't.
Petty that so many Bush voters thought so. [pipa.org] Sorry that's a pdf, but questions 13, 14 and 16 explain a lot about why people supported this war and voted for Bush.
Re:How? (Score:3, Insightful)
We're shouldn't be talking about how much money has been poured into this thing this year, we should be talking about how much has been poured into it since at least the 80s, and probably before that.
The rest of the world is thinking "the more the better". Seriously, if the US has one more expense channel to have to pour money into, it means the rest of the world can watch the US deficit grow ever larger. Ultimately, superpowers bring themselves down. It's history lesson number 1.
Re:Is it worth it? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Is it worth it? (Score:4, Insightful)
Clinton wasn't planning to invade Iraq. He kept a lid on Saddam without committing ground troops and had no reason to believe that would change.
Yes, if we had more armor, fewer troops would have died. But we didn't. You go to war with the Army you have.
If you choose to go to war, you have no one to blame but yourself if your army is not up to it. Invading Iraq wasn't a military necessity, and even if you think it was, Rumsfeld et al had over a year to plan it, and build or fit more armor, amongst other things (like training prison guards, getting people who can speak Iraqi, etc).
Re:Is it worth it? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Probably a Good Thing (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why can't we all just get along? (Score:5, Insightful)
Americans and Europeans have just done what humans have done to each other throughout history, they were just better at it.
Before the Europeans took control of other countries were they all peaceful and loving? No, they were killing each other. The Spanish destroyed the Aztecs with the help other local tribes that the Aztecs had conquered. The world's largest empire was created and ruled by the Mongols. Just look at the history of Africa or Asia and you will find plenty of wars before the nasty white Europeans showed up.
Just look at Africa now and you will find plenty of fighting, often driven by tribal or religious differences.
It's trendy to blame the white guys for playing "conquer the other guys" better than everyone else, but everyone else was playing too.
The idea that people just want to live in peace requires a wilful ignorance of human history. Humans naturally form groups (tribes, nations whatever). A person may not want violence, but a society tends to fear the other, and groups of humans have always turned on each other. Fear, greed, anger, prejudice, remembrance of past wrongs real or otherwise. Hostility may not come from thin air, but it comes easily enough.
Then there is the issue of respecting others. To respect someone, they have to behave in a way that earns it. Should we have respected the Taliban controlled Afghanistan and the way they treated people? Just chalk it up to cultural differences and ignore it?
If you believe Iraq offered the US no harm your (Score:1, Insightful)
Sure Iraq's military wasn't a threat to the US. However Iraq's money was. Just as Saddam was paying the families of homicide bombers in Israel he was sponsoring terrorism elsewhere.
Where do you think most terrorist come up with their cash? Bake sales? No, they are sponsored by governments.
Your ignorance is only outdone by your anti-American screed. France invaded New Guinea (?) I believe without UN authorization. Did a fair job of helping the wrong side when they did. Russia has been in Chechnya for how long? Russia has also been indirectly causing problems in Georgia and Ukraine as well. China still throttles Tibet and threatens Thailand all the time.
So the US invaded Afghanistan, is it better off than Tibet or Chechnya? How about all the countries in the former Yugoslavia/Chech areas? Are they better off after US action in the 90s of which the UN didn't approve?
The UN is a joke mainly because of countries like France. How many times do you see the UN condemn Russia of Chechyna? The UN is simply an anti-Israel and anti-American institution. It turns its head when homicide bombers kill civilans in Israel and then condemns Israel for striking back. It condemns America for invading Iraq but gave Saddamn a free pass at murdering his own people. It gives Sudan a free pass in genocide just like it ignored Rawanda.
Sorry bub, but the world sucks and most of it is not the fault of the US. It is the fault of countries that face away from genocide because they are afraid to get their hands dirty. Ignoring problems like the UN has done is far far worse than the US being in Iraq.
Re:Is it worth it? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't give a damn how outnumbered you are, there are plenty of perfectly effective guerilla military fighting techniques which don't involve targeting of civilians. Once you target civilians, especially if it's for them being easy targets, you are a terrorist.
Re:Is it worth it? (Score:1, Insightful)
When your country forks over some cash or land or something else strategic, you can be protected too.
In the end I don't really care a whole lot about people in other countries unless if affects my interests. I'm sure they can defend themselves. They don't need us, we're the Great Satan remember.
Allahu Ackbar!
In case you couldn't tell, that was sarcasm...
Re:Is it worth it? (Score:2, Insightful)
Whilst ensuring that there is less money to pay for things which might actually be of use to the taxpayers who contributed the money in the first place.
Guess why monkeyman and his merry band of chimps like them?
As well as drawing attention away from matters like US foreign policy creating enemies in the first place. Sometimes with no obvious benefit for anyone...
Re:Is it worth it? (Score:3, Insightful)
Find a missile defense system that can find which truck on the freeway is carrying a nuke, and then destroy it, and maybe your argument would work.
Re:Is it worth it? (Score:4, Insightful)
You defend the government technology programmes as tech hothouses. Where are you when people propose the government invest in wireless networks, rather than bombs? Elsewhere, you probably scream about welfare and communism, while you hunger for more useless corporate welfare. How about some body armor for our troops, who you no doubt "support" with flags and stickers? How about spending $85M on a covert operation to hunt and kill terrorists in Pakistan? They've already spent over $100B on Star Wars, and all it does is suck more money, and justify laxity in the diplomacy and human military/intelligence preparedness that actually defends us.
You are not qualified to talk about "Science" when you conflate it with expensive engineering boondoggles that make us less safe, in the name of "defense". You are qualified to talk only about your selfserving greed, your thirst for bigger bombs, your profligate waste of the people's tax money on corporate welfare. You can talk about evil, because that's what you know.
Re:Is it worth it? (Score:2, Insightful)
We define terrorist as we please. It doesn't matter if we used some of the same tactics before, because then it was on our side. Do you see where I'm going with all of this? The world isn't fair, especially when dealing with other countries. If none of them are looking out for us before them, then why should we give that to them?
Re:Is it worth it? (Score:4, Insightful)
Face it, no-one is going to launch missiles at you.
The reason I said it like I did was because you said that the USA would use it so that they have NUKES and are able to use them, and their enemies do not. In reality this would not be the case, because their are many other attack vectors which an ICBM shield cannot stop (truck, boat, cruise missile, plane, etc).
How about we just agree that as far as things have been going, the whole program is a waste of money?
Re:Is it worth it? (Score:5, Insightful)
how much would you be willing for your taxes (or the cost of your new car) to rise by to prevent 100 of the 42,643 annual deaths on US roads? (Figure for 2003, source [usatoday.com].) 500 of them? 1000? 10,000? Unless your answer is "unlimited", you've just put a price on American lives.
Or, consider that courts award compensation in wrongful death suits. That is, by its very nature, putting a price of people's lives.
Just because you don't like to think you put a price on people's lives, doesn't mean you (or rather, your society) doesn't do it.
Unnecessary and obsolete - think ships (Score:3, Insightful)
However, answer me this: If you had an atomic bomb, wouldn't you agree that this is an easier and cheaper way to destroy New York City than to aquire, arming and sending off an ICBM?
Re:Is it worth it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Bush, however, didn't just call for more testing, he called for implementation. Back in 2002, he promised to have the beginnings of the system - the system everyone (except him, apparently) knows doesn't work right - in place by the end of this year. As a result, testing halted while production pieces were rolled out. Now, we see that not only do the revised test systems not work, the production pieces that are already in place almost certainly don't work (actually, this is pretty much a forgone conclusion because they never DID work and now they STILL DON'T work).
So, yes, this is directly Bush's fault because he halted development in favor of putting a known-useless system into production. If you are a Bush supporter, I fully expect a bizarre, otherwordly excuse that only a mentally retard lemur would believe to now emanate from your general direction.
Re:Is it worth it? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Is it worth it? (Score:1, Insightful)
Screw you. I ain't no stinkin' American. I resent being called that.
I wish people would adopt USian or something more clarifying.
Try these out for size:
North American for US, Mexico, Canadian.
Canadian for a Canadian
Mexican for a Mexican
American for somebody from the USA.
Seems pretty clear to me.
For your added convenience, you can call people South America, South American. To claify it even further, there are Brazillians, Chileans, and a whole bunch of others too!
Crystal clear to me.
Re:Is it worth it? (Score:2, Insightful)
Hmm, so all those rocket scientists and computer scientists, especially the ones with Ph.D.s, who are working on this project, they're not real scientists? Sounds like your definition of "real scientist" is "any scientist who agrees with my political leanings."
As for the system being trivial to defeat with new missile, well, duh, it's called the march of technology. The answer isn't to keep your head in the sand and say "this works for now", but to keep pushing ahead of the competition, forcing them to play catch-up with us. By the time someone has come up with a new missile that'll get past this system (once the system is working, that is), then we'll be ready to move on to its successor.
It's just like anti-anti-ship missile tech. Interceptor missiles worked great, until the French developed the Exocet. Sea skimming missiles come in too low to be stopped by most interceptor missiles. So the US developed the Close-In Weapon System (CIWS, "R2D2 with a hard-on"), designed specifically to track and destroy sea skimmers. And on it goes, as different groups seek technological advantages over the other. Work that is accomplished by scientists, real scientists, using science.
Re:Is it worth it? (Score:1, Insightful)
example: there is a somewhat dangerous intersection where someone is killed once every year or two. do they put a stop light in, which would stop this from occuring. no because that would cost several hundred thousand dollars. you have now put a price tag on those lives, the cost of putting the traffic lights in is more than the cost of the lives that would be saved.
(this isnt an absolute example because the deaths could still happen, but im sure you know of a dangerous intersection that should have a light and would solve problems)
Excellent (Score:3, Insightful)
The Reds now own the congress and the executive branch--they're the ones responsible for funding this stillborn dog. We've poured boatloads of cash into this stupid program that, as someone else pointed out, can be easily circumvented (all it takes is one direct hit for the US to lose, whereas the defense system must be accurate 100% of the time. Good luck with that 100% from any govt. program). No serious, respected scientists have ever claimed that this was a viable program, but Ronnie Raygun got it into his pointed head that he was Luke Skywalker, defending truth, justice and white, blonde virgins from the Evil Empire. The rest is history.
Oh, and nice way the Grandparent tried to spin this out as having some kind of residual benefit. He is correct, it will be residual, but unlike actual legitimate research programs, the nuggets of knowledge we can salvage from this POS will be worth much less than the amount of hard-earned taxes we paid into it.
You know, these tax-cut and spend Reds are really annoying. I wish there was a party that was all about fiscal responsibility.
Re:Is it worth it? (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, not yet you're not. But give it time. NAFTA was only phase one.
Oh, and for those who get upset with calling Americans "American", remember that only the United States of America uses "America" in the long form of the country name. Just like the citzens of the United Mexican States are typically called Mexicans, and the citizens of the (former) Dominion of Canada were called Canadians. You might live on the North American continent, but you are not an American.
Seriously, when someone talks about "death to America", do you honestly think they're talking about you?
Re:Excellent (Score:3, Insightful)
We must spend time outside our own comfortable media enclaves. Visit some boring Red State chat room, and set a good example of acceptance of differences, appreciation of the exotic, and self-confident pleasure in thinking for yourself. Engage your friends' friends, in the hopes of hitting someone who hasn't yet found the chance to live a real, free life, without the monolithic social oppression that breeds alienated, aggressive rightwing dupes. We have a lot going for us, a lot of history of beating the fascists in America with a spring in our step and a song in our hearts. That doesn't mean we can't be angry when they piss us off, or we have to pretend that we love them selflessly when we don't. We just have to feel our connection to them, like it or not, and evoke their own communication with us, and each other. Instead of letting their untapped anger at anything get channeled by the media masters that use them against themselves, and against us.
Re:Is it worth it? (Score:2, Insightful)
"I don't need anyone to send this message to the Feds, since they're reading it right now on Echelon."
How is monitoring/filtering volumes of communication/satellite recon easier than tracking large metallic objects speeding through space and hitting same with essentially a large bullet?
The technical knowledge that is being gained from this program is certainly going to filter out to the mainstream tech world eventually and will be useful. Suppose, for example that a small asteroid-like object about the size of an ICBM were approaching the earth from space and the calculated impact point was somewhere in the US.
The object detection, identification and destruction technology needed to remove the threat from the asteroid is no different than what is being researched through the US ABM programs.
Anyhow, when it comes to spending US tax dollars to defend us against threats the position of the left wing (and seemingly a majority of slashdot posters) is that if the threat is from space they want to spend freely but if the spending has to be done by the US military the response is negative.
Bob said it best (Score:5, Insightful)
In order to understand why NMD is so stupid, it helps to take a look at global strategy-making in the nuclear age. During the Cold War, the prevailng idea was deterrence based on the principle of Mutually Assured Destruction (the acronyms just keep comin'!). That is, Russia had missiles and America had missiles, so if one launched an attack on the other, he knew that he himself would be wiped out by the retaliatory strike. Nobody wants to commit suicide, so nobody launches that first attack.
Now, with the emergence in the minds of many of America as the sole Superpower, we're out of MAD and into just AD: Assured Destruction. Anybody who attacks America with a missile will be wiped off the face of the Earth. Deterrence, it seems, has become total and one-sided; under these strategic conditions, who would possibly launch an attack of this kind that would require an NMD to shoot down? The stated bad guys are "rogue nations", by which we mean North Korea or Iraq before we took over or whoever gets on our shit list this week. These are nations, suposedly, run by out-of-control lunatics who could at any moment decide to obliterate themselves and their nation in a futile stab at the belly of the Beast, or something. The problem is that the people who run countries tend to have stakes in remaining alive, so the principle of AD means they're not gonna be launching any surprise attacks on us.
Now, there are some people out there who have demonstrated that they *are* willing to kill themselves in order to stab the Beast, those few thousands of people out there who actually fit the label "terrorists". They'd love to launch a missile attack if they could, but they don't run countries so they just don't have any nuclear missiles. If they had a nuke they could very well try to sneak it into a harbor on a boat or something, but there's not much a faulty system of anti-missile-missiles in Alaska is going to be able to do about that.
So why do we need a missile defense system to shoot down missiles nobody's gonna shoot at us? Because make no mistake, the Bushites are rushing the job on this. Incredibly, they're even suspending experimental and test requirements that are supposed to determine if these things actually work in their haste to get some kind of system up and running by, I think, 2005. They're desperate to deploy these systems, insisting on getting stuff that doesn't even work in place as soon as possible, just so they have something. Why? Part of it is simple Greed, of course. Those billions go into well-connected pockets and it's easy to keep the money tap flowing. But I think there's more than that; they really think they're going to need to be able to shoot down missiles somebody's fired at them. But where are those missiles gonna come from?
The stinky secret is that there *is*, in fact, a use for NMD in Bush's sick interpretation of the Assured Destruction world. By the principles of AD, nobody is going to launch a pre-emptive attack on America. Nation leaders have too much to lose and terrorists don't have them. So who would ever fire a nuclear missile at America? Why, somebody who'd already had a nuclear missile fired at them, of course. Deterrence will ensure that nobody launches an attack on you, but if you've already attacked them you can't really expect to deter them any more. The purpose of NMD is to provide a shield, not from pre-emptive attack, but from retaliatory attack from an enemy or its allies. It's to preserve America's ability to use nuclear weapons without fear of consequence.
Despite their ideological fixations and internal history-rewriting, the Bushites must be capable of understanding that America's conventional military is stretched rather thin at the moment. They're bogged down in Iraq, their soldiers are exhausted, and they just don't have a lot of conventional muscle to throw around right now. If something flares up and threatens their interests in a new l
We would... (Score:1, Insightful)
> in a while...then we might get there faster.
We would...
When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. And don't hassle your neighbour to dig faster.