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

To: i-node who wrote (376429)	4/5/2008 4:18:48 PM
From: bentway	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1576768

"More ignorance and foolishness. There are thousands of Patriot systems--a direct outgrowth of SDI, in use today, and they are NOT "minimally operational". " I know these are inconvenient, liberal-reality facts Dave, but scuds travel sub-orbital at around 5000 mph. Strategic ICBM payloads arrive at 25,000 mph, and a Patriot won't stop them. ============================================================== PATRIOT'S SUCCESS WILL NOT SPIN-OFF TO SDI PROGRAM Charles E. Bennett Member of Congress siliconinvestor.com (WASHINGTON, D.C.) The success of the Patriot missile defense system in the Persian Gulf is unlikely to help the beleaguered "Star Wars" program, a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee said today. The congressman's remarks came as the committee began its secret review of weapons performance in the Gulf War and just days before the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO) is expected to ask Congress for a massive budget increase for the coming year. "We can all be proud of the Patriot system," said Congressman Charles E. Bennett (D-Fla.), "It is the kind of practical, workable anti-missile system we should be producing. But those who are trying to piggyback their own pet programs on the back of this success story are sadly misinformed. Here are the facts about Patriot and SDI: * The Patriot program has nothing to do with SDI. It is funded and managed by the Army Air Defense Program Office and has not gotten a penny of the $23 billion given to SDIO. * SDI has little to do with defeating tactical ballistic missiles. Congress has tried for years to get SDIO to focus more on this threat, but without success. * In 1990, the SDI program spent $130 million on tactical ballistic missile defense, out of a total budget of $3.8 billion. * Congress has for the first time directed the SDI program to spend a specific amount on anti-tactical ballistic missile defenses, but that is only $180 million for fiscal year 1991. * The small portion of SDI that deals with anti-tactical ballistic missile weapons is researching ground-launched systems, such as ERINT and THAAD. These would be comparatively cheap compared to the Brilliant Pebbles' plan to launch thousands of weapons satellites with debatable ability to reach down and defeat the low-altitude tactical ballistic missiles. * The Patriot missile system has followed a careful evolutionary approach to developing the capability to shoot down tactical missile; whereas SDIO proposes a huge leap to the much more technically demanding problem of shooting down intercontinental ballistic missiles." Bennett points out that Congress has tried to prod the SDI program to pay greater attention to the threat of tactical ballistic missiles. In 1985, as Congress passed the first Defense Authorization Act providing a major increase for the SDI program, the statement of mangers accompanying the bill noted: "The conferees question whether adequate emphasis is being given within the SDIO to near-term options...the conferees would like information on the plans for defending against the Warsaw Pact's tactical and theater ballistic missiles armed with conventional, chemical or nuclear warheads. In general the conferees desire information on the relative balance between the funding requirements and technology challenges associated with comprehensive defenses and those associated with near-term options." (DOD Authorization Act, FY1986, p. 403) Bennett notes, "I was a conferee on that bill and I can tell you we never got a satisfactory answer from SDIO. They have continued to push a system that would require us to launch thousands of space-based weapons and to abrogate the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. There is a broad consensus in Congress that we should never breach the ABM Treaty." "The Patriot," says Bennett, "evolved from an air defense system directed against airplanes to one capable of shooting down tactical ballistic missiles. Tactical missiles are about the size of a large truck and arrive on target at about 1 kilometer per second. We know we can shoot them down. ICBM warheads, on the other hand, are about the size of a man, fly in 4 to 5 times faster, arrive in a barrage of up to ten at a time, and may be hidden among dozens of decoys. These, we do not know how to shoot down." Bennett concludes, "We should explore upgrading the Patriot further to give it the ability to protect wider areas and interdict more capable tactical missiles. As for SDI, we should re-orient the program much more towards developing follow-on systems to the Patriot, preserve its research on future technologies, and abandon its plans to orbit space-based weapons in violation of the ABM Treaty. SDI funding must be balanced against our other, more pressing conventional defense needs".

To: i-node who wrote (376429)	4/5/2008 4:45:24 PM
From: combjelly	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1576768

"There are thousands of Patriot systems--a direct outgrowth of SDI" Talk about ignorance. The development of the Patriot system started in the 1960s. It was first deployed in the mid-1970s. The goal of SDI was taking out ICBMs. The Patriot system operates in a totally different regime. Two completely disjoint sets of problems. "But more importantly, the progress you mention is nonlinear -- and neither has been the funding." There has been funding for almost 30 years. And not at a low level either. "But the ultimate goal of securing the nation against missile attack is achievable and will be done in the next decade or two" Or three or four... Think of it as the new fusion. "We are 20 years from practical fusion". That has been true for 50 years. Why haven't we turned the corner on fusion? Because, while the science is well understood, there are all kinds of twists and turns before implementation. The problem of protection from IRBMs and shorter range missiles might be solvable in a few decades. Might not, but there is a chance. Scenarios where IRBMs are used is a much more constrained problem. Stopping ICBMs is a different class. For one, no one sees thousands of IRBMs being used in an attack. Stopping 90%(to pick a figure) would hurt, but wouldn't be fatal. For another, some of the counter measures aren't possible for IRBMs. They are more likely to be visible from the target in launch phase, making decoying more difficult. The type of ICBMs that SDI was supposed to counter is a much, much more difficult problem. Decoying is a lot easier. And killing them either kinetically or through direct energy weapons is a lot more problematic. In addition, the numbers are much higher and stopping 90% is not much better than stopping none. Even 99% doesn't help a lot. And that is where Uncle Carl got it right. The numbers kill us. And decoying makes the task even more difficult. Not to mention other counter measures. While "physically impossible" is an exaggeration, it isn't off by all that much. Edward Teller was a brilliant man. But, he liked to latch onto simple ideas. The heart of his proposals on SDI were nuclear pumped, X-ray lasers. Which, you know, are really neat. We just don't know how to build one. All attempts have failed. Without these things, his SDI proposals couldn't work. Really, given your enthusiasm, your ignorance is appalling. You show no signs you actually understand the problems, much less the scientific or engineering challenges. It seems like your support is totally faith-based.