The Ship Model Forum

MAD seemed to work, however perverse it was. Even Kim Il-Jong isn't whack enough to want to see N Korea glow for the next few thousand years ( although I will give you that people like al-Qaeda wouldn't care one way or the other so long as they got in the first shot).

My premise is that there's easier and cheaper ways of zapping us with a nuke than an ICBM. We should be reliably countering those instead ( container ships, [u]ad nauseum [/u]). That, and buying them off or corrupting them, which is cheaper ( and more profitable ) in the long run than developing military systems. One can always counter a military development with another, but even the Soviet Union couldn't long endure an assault of Big Macs and Madonna ( to be flip about it).

I don't hate Reagan. In certain respects he was a very important president. But he gutted the economy ( as testified by David Stockman ), and absolutely should have been impeached for Iran-Contra.

BTW, these kind of politico-oriented threads are better enthusiatically debated over on the Warship Discussion Forum's Off Topic section. Come on over and dive in.

The only possible adversary which claims MIRV capability right now is Russia. It's only current MIRV capacity is on seaborne platforms which are old and have abysmal launch success. Even the brand-new missile "Bulava" has a much-less than 50% launch success rate in testing.

On the basis of the near collapse of it's strategic missile program, Putin was probably well-advised to complain about the placement of the "primitive" US system on Polish and Slovakian soil.

Militarily this system makes enourmous sense. It is clear how unsetteling it is to the United States (or any other major military power) that it could be deterred by a pocket arsenal thus rendering moot its very extensive investment in its own systems. We must be able to protect army groups, HQs, local allies, and carriers from crippling nuclear strikes thus allowing them to keep their edge over a otherwise lesser adversary. Obviously this is an area where the attack has held an absolute advantage over the defense for some time, and now we see a possibility of a shift towards balance. Ballastic missles and their payloads will only continue to proliferate and maybe then it is to be a fact of the 21st century battlespace that ABMs rise to meet them. Fire must be fought with Mach 7 fire.

However, I feel this is a little more extreme then the age old struggle of arrow verse armor. With the swiftness and absoluteness of these weapons (ICBMS) the work should move towards limiting them, not stimulating knew ways to increase their effectivness to defeat a missle defense. To say that this system will create a protective shield seems great and inspiring now, but the Maginto line was also the greatest thing since sliced bread once. I do not speak of failures of sensors and systems, those I feel as Werner says will mature over time. I do feel however that the offense will not remain static. MIRVS, FOBS, cruise missles, and lord knows what else could likewise be pushed to knew limits. New missles to defeat new missles is one thing, but when we deal with the ability to destroy so utterly and terribly where is the responsibility? One only needs to look at the headlines to know we don't live in a world where happy thoughts and good intentions will bring peace, but we do live in a world where mutual security breeds respect and possibly in time cooperation. I feel this system reassures the security of some, while leaving the more already irrational (sorry dictators) a reason to stew new paranoia.

Enough of my $0.02 for one day, better get back to gluing plastic to plastic. Happy Modeling All!!

Ok, Gerard, I'll bite.

What other system would you build to protect the Northwest of the USA from one or two Korean ICBMs?

Seems to me you are one of the primary beneficiaries of this system.

Also, you have to crawl before you walk. The SM-3 has been demonstrated to shoot down several targets simultaneously. The SM-6 will have an autonomous terminal capability borrowed from the AIM-120, which means shooting down your MIRV cloud (which has NEVER been demonstrated due to treaty) is much more likely.

It's OK to hate Reagan. Don't let that cloud your judgment.

Baloney. "Just as easily" shoot down an incoming MIRV'd missile as a satellite in orbit? I don't think so. Which is what Ronnie Ray-Gun meant by SDI. Cheney loves to gives these kind of sonorous comments that later turn out to be not worth a hill of beans.

A single missle or two being shot down? Yeh, OK. Mayhaps. And would the money spent on developing even that countermeasure system have been better spent elsewhere on preventing more credible and likely threats to the country's security? History will judge; this voter already says yes.

[quote="Investor's Business Daily"][b]Fire When Ready
[/b]

Strategic Defense: We don't know who might pick up that 3 a.m. phone call, but 25 years ago Ronald Reagan made sure that if it's about an incoming ballistic missile, the order will be: "Shoot it down."

Speaking at a Heritage Foundation dinner last week celebrating the 25th anniversary of the beginning of what Ted Kennedy derisively called "Star Wars," Vice President Dick Cheney touched on the debate between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton as to who is better qualified to pick up that phone in the middle of the night.

"In the ongoing political campaign, there's been discussion recently about 3 a.m. phone calls," Cheney said. "We all hope that a commander in chief never has to pick up the line and be told that a ballistic missile is headed toward the United States."

On March 23, 1983, President Reagan announced the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), telling the nation that the days of mutual assured destruction, or MAD, were over, and that the U.S. would be defended by the ability to shoot down incoming ballistic missiles, not merely retaliate in kind.

He asked: [b]"What if free people could live secure in the knowledge that their security did not rest upon the threat of instant U.S. retaliation to deter a Soviet attack, that we could intercept and destroy strategic ballistic missiles before they reached our own soil or that of our allies?"[/b]

Today we can. In 2004, the Bush administration deployed 10 interceptors to launch sites at Vandenberg AFB in California and Fort Greely in Alaska. More are being deployed. Aegis missile cruisers and destroyers are being added to our fleet and the fleets of allies such as Japan. By 2011 we will have 11 Aegis-capable ships in the Atlantic and 16 in the Pacific.

Last month, the Aegis missile cruiser USS Lake Erie succeeded in shooting down a dying U.S. spy satellite, the National Reconnaissance Office's NROL-21 Radarsat, before it could strike the earth with its deadly hydrazine fuel tank nearly full. It could just as easily shoot down an incoming nuclear warhead.

Vice President Cheney told the Heritage audience that President Bush had kept his promise of building a national missile defense. That defense will expand to Europe with the installation of interceptors in Poland and a radar system in the Czech Republic.

Former Russian President Vladimir Putin has gone ballistic, no pun intended, over the proposal and warns us of dire consequences if we proceed. When Reagan and Soviet Secretary-General Mikhail Gorbachev met in Reykjavik, Iceland, in October 1986, Gorbachev, similarly agitated, demanded we drop SDI. Reagan refused. In a few short years, the Cold War would be over. We won, they lost.

We no longer face what Reagan had labeled the "Evil Empire" on March 8, 1983, just two weeks before unveiling SDI, but we do face a resurgent Russia flush with oil revenues and a China arming to the teeth.

The vice president noted that in 1972 only nine countries had ballistic missiles. Today at least 27 countries do, including those with hostile intent and those that actively support terrorist groups.

Cheney specifically mentioned North Korea and Iran as nations that could one day strike the U.S. with a nuclear-tipped ballistic missile. He mentioned Syria's acquisition of missiles and technology from North Korea and its support of the Iranian puppet terrorist group Hezbollah, which recently rained missiles on Israeli cities.

Cheney advised that we proceed with the continued robust development and deployment of our active national missile defense in case that early morning call is about an incoming nuke. But thanks to Reagan, the next president will be able to give the order, in Cheney's words, to "blow that missile out of the sky."

Happy anniversary, Ronnie.
[/quote]

[i]Scientific American[/i] of the 1970s and 1980s invariably led off the semi-scholarly articles with an extremely left-wing editorial thinly disguised as another article.

Reagan's [i]Strategic Defense Initiative[/i] was rich fodder for their left-wing rants. The logic of these articles reflected the desperation of the liberal authors. The upshot from each successive article was:

[list]
[*]It's impossible;
[*]The amount of software involved will take decades to develop and implement, and even then it will be full of errors;
[*]It will be unlikely the sensors will give sufficient warning;
[*]Space-based interceptors and warning systems are illegal;
[*]It will be dangerously destabilizing for international politics.[/list]

At least they got the last one right, as the people of the Warsaw Pact, The Ukraine and much of Asia can now agree without looking over their shoulder in case a [i]Checkist[/i] is within earshot.

SDI, or "Star Wars" is the way military programs ought to be conducted. The President said "do it", and then the political apparatus stepped back and let the military achieve the task. I doubt they could recreate this project today because too much interference from special interests and money grubbers in both parties would literally suck the project dry.

Thank you Ronald Reagan.