Re: Oh, any Patriot didn't destroy any Scud. You must have missed the entire Gulf War on CNN and all the major networks
It was fun to watch all that on TV, and very inspiring, but a serious review several months later revealed that few SCUDs were destroyed. Most of what showed up as successes on TV were just the patriots blowing up.
The scuds that were affected were mostly diverted a little from their initial path. Almost no warheads were actually destroyed, and, even more tragically, the worst incident involving Americans (I think it was 18 people in a hospital) was where one of those diverted warheads landed.
Those people wouldn't have been killed if not for the Patriot missile system.
While the proposed defense system would be much more capable than the patriot system is, those SCUDs were basically World War II issue German V2's. The missiles the SDI has to deal with would reflect 60 years of progress - and we couldn't even do much more than shove the SCUDs aside.
The notion of having a system that could save us from a single accidentally launched missile is appealing, but building such a system would be an extremely provocative act, and stands a good chance of forcing the Soviets to perform a first strike to prevent us from getting into a position where we could threaten them, but they couldn't threaten us. Recent changes in the leadership of Russia make it imperative, IMHO, that we not begin to assemble this threat to their security.
It isn't just the technical aspects of the SDI that I question, it's also the political aspects. Regardless of whether or not an effective missile defense system could be built, I don't think we'd be able to build it without first suffering the nuclear strike we're trying to avert - and after such a strike we may not need it anymore.
Dan |
