Missile Defense Program Faces Cuts Under Kerry

The maginot line was obviated, but against the threat it was designed to face it worked.

The missile shield can't even do that and it's technology, which is now the aggregate product of what, in present terms, likely equates to close to 100 billion dollars of inputs, can be folled by a 10 cent decoy balloon. It couldn't swat missiles like flies unless we invested truly ridiculous sums of money on it, as in like a 100 billion a year or so, and built interceptors literally every few square miles.

Costs >>>>>> benefits.

 

I know it couldn't - but I argue that even in a best-case scenario, the missile defense program would be a Maginot Line-like flop.

 

B1 is such a waste of money... it'll never work yadda yadda and Carter canned the program... yet without it, we would be relying on a total of 76 B-52's that are currenly 40+ years old and a whopping 21 B-2's
Reagan saved the day by revising and reviving the program and as such the 96 B-1b's are the big hammer of our current airforce

point being, technology improves, threats change and imo this is a terrible time to kill a project that carries the potential to one day end the threat of global annihilation... anyone reading this thread remember hiding under your desks at school, wondering if the world was going to end??

say, hasn't North Korea been testing missiles for the past 6 years or so and isn't it widely believed they have nuclear capabilities right now
http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/asiapcf/east/02/24/nkorea.missile/

though I would definately take a second look or three or four before the "Widely believed" part flies with me these days... I do agree, however, that the deployment of the system is premature and possibly politically motivated and diplomatically irresponsible... who really knows?

Most importantly... What makes you guys so sure that we will never be attacked from a small country that has no hope of defeating us in a conventional war?

Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it

 

There you go again inventing more "facts" ---- please check again Mr. Iroc it.

 

the US was attacked by missles or airplanes?

 

Nice attempt to cover Iroc, but North Korea has never tested a nuclear weapon.

Next.

 

We have a defense system - it's called "If you launch a nuke at us, we will wipe you off the map". That's why if someone is going to attack us with nuclear weapons, they won't use ICBMs.

And that's why this is a 21st century Maginot Line - whether or not it works : it's deployed against the wrong threat.

 

all i responded to was that line about history repeating
the fact is we have never been attacked by missiles
so how can history repeat itself?

the last time this administration was so focused on missile defense was it's first 8 months in office, ignoring the real threat.

 

It wasn't even an unarmed test, it was a ballistic missle launch

 

It was a haphazardly thrown to together scud built with 3 stages --- only 2 of which actually worked.

Just for the record.

 

4 aircraft carriers completely neutralized the US Pacific fleet, had the Japanese chosen, they could have taken Hawaii right then and there... Only 2 of three attack waves were launched, saving the dry dock and allowing our ships to be rather quickly repaired-- anyway

the point isn't how the attack was carried out but that we were completely unprepared

 

And then we would have built some new carriers and dislodged the Japanese in 7 years rather than 5, or else we would have built more a-bombs, etc.

But anyway that's beside the point.

The "we're unprepared" argument can be use for a lot of things with huge costs and small chances of success.

Look at giant meteor strikes: Tunguska, 1912, Cretaceous period, Flagstaff crater. Yet I don't see anybody rushing to build an anti-meteor shield, even though the chances of it being successful, given the fact that you have months to do it, rather than minutes, at any point in the next 25 years are far greater than that of a missile shield being successfully used to foil an attack.

There's also a half empty half full argument -- a partially effective missile shield could save a hundred million lives or so -- but would you want to live in an America where 100 million people were incinerated and most major metropolitan areas were gone? I sure wouldn't -- might as well blow the whole freaking thing up, I have no desire to live in a MadMax scenario.

Based on the liimited resources that we have and the nature of the various threats to our national security, as well as its effectiveness of what we've got -- this approach just makes no sense, and neither does pouring tons of money into it.

 

i agree. who would want to be a lawyer with an unhealthy horse obsession?

 

LOL, I actually even wrote it like his name instead of the movie too, didn't I?

That reminds me of a funny story, way back when, one of my first assignments at work was to go collect documents for a client that were at Belmont & Aqueduct raceways. We were hanging out with their security people all day long, and the security director, who might have been just pulling my leg, claimed that their most frequent security problem wasn't cheating or fixing horses or anything like that, but people having sex with horses!