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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (206130)	10/16/2006 8:08:32 PM
From: GPS Info	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

So you count whom you can count and argue about the rest. This is such a very good point. Why do we need such a tight count? Are we so worried about overspending on the homeless?! If the problem is too big, should we move on to something more manageable? Speaking of the homeless, I think there is something to be said for spending some money on BMD. I had a thought from a previous discussion of his topic: getting a few interceptors that could be targeted at a rouge missile (from N Korea, for example) allows us to avoid nuking the originators into rubble and then turning the rubble into ash. A “working” system doesn’t necessarily mean thwarting a full-scale launch by the Russians or Chinese. Back in the ‘80s, the thinking was that if we ever actually got near that point of a “perfect” BMD system, the enemy would need to launch their missiles first because if they waited, we could then “perfectly” defend against a counter strike. Oddly, we wouldn’t want a perfect system. If one missile had a 50% chance of hitting the target, one would send up 3 or 4 to make sure. This seems much preferable to the alternative. I don’t think we could realistically discuss the viability of a small system because so much of the capabilities are classified. However, there was one successful test back in 1984. From my recollection, they tried to get a cheaper version of the system – something like $1m per missile. They got nowhere, AFAIK. I think that they’re trying again because of the computing power available in modern CPUs and better technology in infrared CCD cameras. The basic question is one of cost, and not the underlying algorithms or physics of the problem. I will concede that they could squeeze every nickel out of the program as possible.