US hopes of one day shooting down hostile nuclear missiles, long dubbed the "Star Wars" project, seemed to crash and burn after President Barack Obama cancelled US plans for missile defence in Europe last week. But Star Wars is not dead. Instead, Obama has a new plan that may finally make it realistic.
News link: here
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42 Responses
10.13.2009
The technology to make it available was basically in the far planning or theoretical stages at that time. A lot of the technological ideas at the time were not feasable due to the size and power of components available in that day. Today, it’s a lot more feasable, and a lot scarier. Google the "Rods from God" proposal, concrete encased tungsten rods the size of a lightpole launched from orbit onto a target that cause massive damage from kinetic velocity alone.
10.13.2009
I have the belief that Japan is working on their own "Star Wars" missile defense program under the guise of a solar power array that easily has enough concentrated energy to eliminate missile threats from countries such as North Korea: physorg.com/news172224356.htmlI like the Japanese approach much more than the Reagan Star Wars approach because it can provide clean energy to 300,000 homes while it is in standby mode.
10.13.2009
I’m sorry, you lose all credibility by discrediting valid info because of a perceived spelling error you are indeed wrong about. If the meaning is the same its better to not waste your time calling out spelling errors if the facts are in order. Well the true facts. Or just get a job as a proof-reader and you can spare of us all of this dastardly tragedy.
10.13.2009
ruse to get Russia to spend itself to death? someone’s been drinking the revisionist kool-aid again. look up the national intelligence estimates and the CIA reports of the time. Russia was already going bankrupt because their version of communism was simply unsustainable. We could have done nothing and the Cold War would have still ended.
10.13.2009
Before you correct someone, you should make sure that you’re actually right in your correction.Treble, as well having meaning in musical terms, means triple.
10.13.2009
Wow way to tell the English how to use their own language, you’re one of those people who says their native tongue is "American" aren’t you?
10.13.2009
hey everyone, americanoboy is trolling again. how expected. *yawn*
10.13.2009
"The US then plans to upgrade Aegis, moving it ashore and improving sensors to treble the area they cover by 2015"The only issue is the use of the comma, which has nothing to do with the use of "treble". I don’t see what they did wrong with that term.
10.13.2009
That is correct… Reagan was made to believe that the technology could actually be made to work.Reagan did not like the mutual assurance of destruction (or mutually assured destruction) doctrin that maintained the nuclear balance of the day and wanted something that would negate the USSR’s nuclear deterrent.Star Wars was the supposed answer.Star wars worked more effectively than even Reagan could have dreamed off in that the USSR bankrupted itself trying to respond to the consequences of the possible nullification of their nuclear deterrent.Like Reagan, soviet scientists were led to believe that the US had the technology and was willing to spend the money to make the Star Wars shield real and effective. The collapse of of the Soviet Union was (in part) an unintended consequence of how the Soviet Union chose to respond to the Star Wars program, and not the result of a planned and deliberate outcome that popular folklore makes it out to be
10.13.2009
You’re being a douche. "Defence" is just the British spelling. dictionary.reference.com/browse/defence askoxford.com/concise_oed/defence?view= …
10.13.2009
The writer of the article is much more interested in jerking off Obama than missile defense and it is perfectly clear that he knows a hell of a lot more about jerking off Obama than missile defense.
10.13.2009
The "Star Wars" missile defense system never worked at all in any way,shape, or form. The creator of object oriented computer programming, David Parnas, shredded it at a conference over 20 years ago and the improvements since then are nominal. Tack onto that the fact that the radars need to read on an x,y, and z axis with the trajectory of the missile known before launch to effectively stop another missile and you get more problems. I know this is normally where people preach about Patriot missiles, but ***** that too. They read in binary and the information is sent to them in base 10. There is a character round off at a certain point, so a LOT of the tracking data is lost. This is why they fire Patriots in volleys of 10 or so instead of a single missile.I will grant you missile defense is not only possible, forms of it have worked and work current. But its a money pit from hell and its still years from working properly. Double that last sentence when you think of how many lives are lost each time it does not work properly. Think of the death terms an ICBM with a nuke could cause. That’s a lot of death to spend money on for a system that does not properly work.This article shows they are growing in smarter ways to make this system work properly, but I just want to see more improvements that are EXPLAINED in an article. Not really front page worthy.Non-ICBM missile defense I think works alright. ICBM defense seems like we are putting money at a system that doesn’t work just to make people feel better or debate a useless system.All I am saying is I wish someone would tell us about great advances in the required tech than talk about "solutions" they do not explain. I really wanna see a high functioning version of this and be told how it works in a way I will believe.I still dugg the article though.
10.13.2009
Hah, hah, why would we want to stop nuclear weapons from hitting us? This money should be spent on a bridge.
10.13.2009
actually shooting down ballistic missles isn’t science fiction and we’re doing it now. <A youtube.com/watch?v=j5O2EWVGe4U&fea …</A>
10.13.2009
"Sound like some good President-ing to me."I agree with this part. Obama is definitely not perfect but he is good. This was a quick, logical, decisive decision to correct an earlier mistake that was rooted in a cold war mentality. We have issues and differences with Russia but they are not now and never have been the real threat. There is nothing to be gained from feeding their paranoia.As for the rest of your post, I don’t really like the tone. We’re suffering from too much political animosity right now so why add more?
10.13.2009
So where are all the Obama critics? We heard ‘coward’ and ‘idiot’, among other, when in reality he is choosing a CHEAPER alternative that actually addresses our concerns while avoiding unnecessary tension with Russia. Where are all the Reaganauts applauding his fiscally responsible decision at the very least?Sound like some good President-ing to me.
10.13.2009
Dugg for really neat trick. Japan’s one of my favorite countries, and this only makes me love them more.
10.13.2009
While you are correct in treble means triple, it does not work well in this context. Just saying triple would have been much clearer. Also, as is noted in the comment following this one, there are other errors such as spelling mistakes that should have been addressed.
10.13.2009
Some British spell it "defence" so I don’t see the problem. Well, I may have a problem with British spellings in general, but I respect their rights to spell words however they want to.
10.13.2009
Why would you have a problem with British spelling? Surely British English is the original and other English speaking countries have simply made their own adjustments?
10.13.2009
Well, my problem comes from the fact that I use Fedora Linux, which has a British dictionary. So when I spell some words according to my learned spellings, I get little red squigglies that make me think twice before pressing enter. It’s just a little annoyance is all.
10.13.2009
^^ [citation needed] ^^
10.13.2009
you honestly think the Cold War would have just "ended" had the US not done a thing? and you are calling me the history reviser?wow.
10.13.2009
Ultimately Star Wars will be used to combat aliens according to Wernher von Brown.The reasons they would use to sell it to the public he said would be: Communism > Terrorism > Astroids > Aliens
10.13.2009
At least "Defending europe from missles" is in the constitution…
10.13.2009
That’s an arguable point. Would you drive a car that only worked half the time? I wouldn’t….the unreliability could get you killed just as fast as some other driver.
10.13.2009
10.13.2009
well isn’t a system that works half the time better than the current system… the one where everyone dies a fiery, irradiated death, because there is no defense in place ?i don’t think anyone is stupid enough to fire an ICBM at the US, or any NATO country for that matter, but if these defenses are possible do you really want to fall behind in the tech race ?
10.13.2009
First of all, the tone was nothing more than pointing out what was said and how the facts don’t add up to those comments. And then I ask why the same people who criticized him poorly and with no class or facts but rather name calling won’t be there to support a decision that seems to fall in line with their ideals.Is it that I said Reaganauts? Because thats a term I use because it is not only accurate but funny to me. And I doubt any Reagan disciples have too much of a problem being labeled as followers of the person they love to tell everyone they follow.And besides… I am indeed tired of being the fair even ones while they get to be aggressive, incendiary, and just liars while the liberals are supposed to be ball-less and just take it up the ass. Maybe its time to get hard and just win instead of allowing ourselves to walked all over and lose because of manners. I would much prefer a world with civil public discourse but what are we supposed to do when the GOP chooses to sabotage our country because they want their opponents to fail? They chose this climate and if we don’t answer it they will just win again as always. Besides the tone was completely benign. If you have a problem with the tone in that post you are looking for it and it really kinda makes me laugh that you take the time to call that out as looking at the tone that is in most every post makes this one look like a love letter. This feels like texting with my girlfriend, they love to misinterpret tone.
10.13.2009
It doesn’t work half the time. It doesn’t work. That’s kinda my point here. There is no proof it will work. I researched the Bush BMI for years and it was a direct rebuild of SDI (aka Star Wars). I think this is putting the cart before the horse and that SUCKS because we really need the horse.
10.13.2009
Buried for inaccurate and un-informative. None of this stuff is even Obama’s doing as he’s steadfastly cutting the defense budget substantially.
10.13.2009
@flytrap: The Russians were scared, because star wars was NOT effective. They knew it would only work under ideal conditions, which means, it was only useful when the US could pick the time, when they would need it. So they thought, the US might be preparing a first strike.
10.13.2009
So let’s see, the missile system didn’t work yet Russia was paranoid of it, now we are building a NEW system that can be parked on a battlecarrier and theoretically we could park our ships in the Baltic Sea right next to St. Petersburg.Really either there is more to this story than they are letting on or the Russians need to grow their sacks and worry about more important things like their future civil wars in the Caucuses brewing up.
10.13.2009
Hilarious Star Wars joke goes here.
10.13.2009
Star Wars was a ruse to get Russia to spend itself to death. It worked, but you can’t keep using the same trick over and over and expect it to stay effective. Here is an interesting/terrifying article re Star Wars, and Russia’s Doomsday Device: wired.com/politics/security/magazine/17 …
10.13.2009
I am a douche. We had to have a war with the British so we could spell ***** the right way.
10.13.2009
It’d be interesting if we had the components to let it work today. Our sensors, computer systems, and targeting technology has gotten far more advanced in the past twenty years.However, it would also eliminate one of the principal conditions of Mutually Assured Destruction, which is the invulnurability of nuclear weapons from interception.
10.13.2009
This article is in some pretty desperate need of copy editing. Apparently the new land based Aegis system will have "treble the area".
10.13.2009
star wars was a program that allowed a certain few to steal billions of dollars from american tax payers. it was first justified as a measure to combat the threat of communism (the same neoconservative trash also stole billions in iraq war — using a different -ism to scare the uneducated rednecks). when it was obvious that star wars was a failure, reagan tried to trick people into believing that it was all just a diversion "to get russia to spend itself to death."even today there are still a few idiots like enantiodromia who believe the star wars thing. a dead give-away is the lack of ability to distinguish russia from soviet union. this kind of mentality is common in kids raised by uneducated parents from middle america. typically, these kind of people live in trailers and have sexual intercourse with farm animals.
10.13.2009
‘Reagan was delusional and believed the technology was available to make it work.’ As Kennedy was delusional and believed the technology was available to make it (going to the moon) work? so we are going from a missile system that is ‘unrealistic’ and ‘outdated’ because its meant to protect us, to one that is meant to protect countries on another continent, all while slapping the face of allies that have always supported us (Poland) to appease soviet style Putin who assassinates people openly. yeah, good work
10.13.2009
<Sigh>Buried because they couldn’t spell "Defense" correctly. I’m sorry but you lose a lot of credibility when you misspell the most important word in the article. image.orientaltrading.com/otcimg/42_1349.jp … ^ Don’t take it literally.
10.13.2009
Does Obama’s plan involve using the force? Because otherwise, the logistics of shooting down hostile missiles is still pretty much impossible.