Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Windsock who wrote (130354)	1/3/2001 8:43:04 PM
From: Daniel Schuh	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1572719

The fact that $100 billion was spent with no workable system in sight is also discouraging. But is it as discouraging as spending hundreds of billions more to deploy a system that isn't workable? Because that's where W's heading, Real Soon Now. Pete will technobabble you to death on how it's all a really good idea, though. Cheers, Dan.

To: Windsock who wrote (130354)	1/3/2001 9:58:56 PM
From: pgerassi	Respond to of 1572719

Dear Windsock: Re: ABM comments How do you know it can't handle decoys? That is the first assumption you make. The second assumption is what is in the test plan. The third is the capabilities of the decoys to prevent discrimination of them. Now from various sources, the decoys are lightweight "tin foil" replicas. You can have a lot of them but they only decoy during the coast phase, before reentry. After reentry starts, the decoys quickly lose shape and disintegrate. There are a few ways to perform the discrimination before reentry, one is to see which ones have low mass by various means. Another is by looking for radiation as the decoys do not have any. Third, checking thermal mass properties. Fourth, heat generation (fissile materials and electronics generate heat, decoys generally do not). Fifth, chemical properties from a spectral scan or other method. Some methods could use some of these types in combination or some other method not yet known. Much of SDI R&D initial projects were home run type interception systems, various lasers, neutral beam weapons, rail guns, etc. Each of these were high cycle rate, quick retargeting, highly scalable systems. A breakthrough here would have radically changed the effectiveness and cost of the system, ie: the cost to kill an ICBM is much less than the cost of the units required to reliably defend against it thus, over time, reliable defense is cheaper than reliable offense. Only those R&D projects that should be counted in this project are the targeting systems, command and control systems, and schrapnel based fast boost interceptor vehicles. So the current project has not cost anywhere near $100 billion. That cost is for the deployed system. Additional R&D time only makes deployment possibly more expensive (systems are cheaper or more effective per unit vs inflation). As for a test of multiple missiles, this should occur when all the pieces are in place and reliability of single missile kills are high, say over 80%. You must learn to walk before you can marathon. Pete