Post #9,364
9/16/01 10:49:42 AM
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Missile attacks, like terrorism . .
. . have to be stopped at point of origin.
The "Star Wars" system hasn't a chance in hell of stopping a missile attack. It can't stop a bomb in a shipping container, and it can't stop one on an ICBM. It doesn't work, it won't work, and if it were anywhere near working, missile designs would be changed so it didn't, at negligeable cost.
The military has confessed that this last test, the first "successful" one, succeeded only because the warhead was fitted with a homing beacon. I don't think warheads come with that standard.
Wasting a huge amount of money on Star Wars makes less sense than the French spending money on the Maginot Line (at least heavy guns were known to hit tarkets sometimes). It did them not one bit of good, just gave them a false sense of security.
We laugh at the French today, just as others would laugh at us if we depended on an anti-missile defense.
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Post #9,371
9/16/01 2:41:24 PM
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Co-Resident Cheney on TV just now..
I willingly give the man credit - he speaks English more than adequately. I deem this also makes him as responsible for the veracity of his statements, as their intentionality.
ABM was brought up by talking head, in context of these other new expensive priorities. He does not remotely get-it re the need, priority, possibility of utility of ABM. That or, he is able to close ears and extemporize with the best of them. Or says.. he doesn't get the counter arguments.
As with Ronnie's Morning in America series, we shall be sold on the obvious idea that - yes, it would be Nice to have a functioning umbrella, thus to be able to pretend that the two oceans: permit us to retain the illusion that wars don't happen IN Murica, they are acted-out somewhere Over There. It's a nice Dream; we live amidst so Many dreams here.
I acknowledge it Would be Nice. IF doable.. while also not ignoring the needs of the 95% who do not control the wealth of Murica, incluing the tens of millions working at so-called 'min-wage' who, with more than one job: live below 'poverty level' (both highly manipulated numbers to fit highly lobbied faux-definitions).
IF doable at all. My career in big science, direct conversations with those - earlier - doing classified research on the problem(s) and Just Plain Physics tells me, it is close enough to what you said.
I've met Teller - a brilliant sociopath. One Lester G. explained 'hardness' and its implications, well before that concept was well enough understood by military: to realize WHY the MIGs of that era used vacuum-tube electronics.. (about which 'we' were prone to laugh!). We stopped laughing when we looked closer at our transistorized militarized PlayStations du jour. There's more..
IF significant progress were ever made in the intractable problems of boost-phase time, accuracy, numbers of launch stations and very much else -- indeed the obvious response ever WILL BE -- simply focus upon the inevitable loopholes. There are *SO MANY*.
IF Cheney truly does not comprehend this last, he is much less astute than his polished rhetoric, or even more cynical re incresing the wealth concentration among his cronies - than most would have suspected.
We'll see how large is the nose-ring in the Congressional voters on this fantasy, won't we? Much may occur in any next.
Ashton
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Post #9,381
9/16/01 4:10:37 PM
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It's a popular idea because . .
. . it's a solution to yesterday's problem (disregarding the liklihood of it working). Yesterday's problems are always easier to understand and solve than today's.
It's like the aircraft carrier - hero of World War II in the Pacific. Because carrier operations were so successful, most of our admirals came up from the carrier force, and would hear of nothing else as a strategic weapon against the Soviet Union, China, etc.
Meanwhile, the younger officers circulated the formula that "One aircraft carrier + one submarine = one submarine". ***
During the Vietnam War, Marcus Aurelius Arnheiter did not get into so much trouble just for bringing his destroyer too close to shore, he got into so much trouble for bringing his destroyer too close to shore because he was the author of a paper that conclusively proved the above formula, which greatly offended senior officers.
Aircraft cariers are still a fine weapon to use against people who don't have submarines and don't have close friends who do, but aircraft carriers work, Star Wars doesn't.
*** Back in the '70s there was some debate in the Proceedings of the U.S. Naval Institute over a paper that claimed to have mathematically proven that two fixed wing anti-submarine aircraft working together were 6 times as effective as just one, and that three working together were twice as effective as 2.
A retired submarine captain commented that he had studied the mathematics in detail and confirmed they were sound. He added: "However, from my point of view, 12 times 0 is still a very small number".
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Post #9,426
9/17/01 9:02:57 AM
9/17/01 9:04:25 AM
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More not-so-fuzzy math
*** Back in the '70s there was some debate in the Proceedings of the U.S. Naval Institute over a paper that claimed to have mathematically proven that two fixed wing anti-submarine aircraft working together were 6 times as effective as just one, and that three working together were twice as effective as 2. Similarly, another study about the efficacy of the "flying house" (aka the F-15/F-16) showed conclusively that, when taking on an F-5 modified to look and act like a MiG-2x (which is to say, the f-5s had their radar and other avionic detection systems disabled), the F-15/F-16 downed the F-5/MiG every time. However, when 2 F-5s took on the F-15/F-16, the F-15/F-16 won only 50% of the time (the other 50%, the F-5 downed the F-15/F-16); when 3 F-5s took on an F-15/16, the F-15/16 was killed every time. The F-5 cost 1/5 of the cost to build than an F-15/16 (and that includes the cost of the avionics that were disabled during the "test"). Do the math. And the decision makers that decided that the F-15/16 was a better plane than the f-5 because its "wow-factor" is higher are the same people who are touting (and stand to profit from) the so-called "Star Wars" defense. Andrew is right. jb4
(Resistance is not futile...)
Edited by jb4
Sept. 17, 2001, 09:04:25 AM EDT
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Post #9,429
9/17/01 9:40:47 AM
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Lack of "Wow!" factor
The most effective machinery we used to womp on Iraq were items that the military never wanted (because of lack of "Wow!" factor) but in some cases were actively campaigning to get rid of.
A prime example is "Warthog", which the Air Force didn't want in the first place and had almost succeeded in getting scrapped just before the war started.
The Navy most certainly didn't want the fast deployment freighters that carried the gear, nor did the Air Force want the big transport planes that hauled some of the lighter loads.
All these "Plain Jane" projects were forced on the military by Congress. Many were Carter administration projects and none were particualarly high tech or particularly expensive.
Star Wars has more "Wow!" than you can shake a stick at, and a price tag that gives defense contractors a throbbing erection, but it doesn't work, will never work well enough to use, and is aimed at a target of fading importance.
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Post #9,439
9/17/01 12:11:47 PM
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And now for some downright bad math
My favorite math mistake is the flying wing design.
In the 50's they asked the question, "What plane design would get the maximum range?" They set up their equations, solved for all of the partials being 0, and came up with the flying wing. Then they built it at the cost of billions, tried it, and it sucked.
Turns out that if they had checked the second derivative, they would have found it was the absolute worst possible design. (Basic max-min problem, the first derivative tells you where to look but doesn't tell you if you got a max, min, or inflection point.) But by then billions were invested, careers on the line...and they still build them.
And another high-tech, low-tech issue.
One reason to prefer high-tech is fewer casualties. However given current events, it is likely that the US will want a much larger military force about as quickly as it can ramp up, and has just become much more tolerant of potential casualties. Which means that anyone in the military with brains is probably reviewing their possible designs and selecting ones which they can ramp up production on fairly rapidly. And that means a lot more low-tech...
Cheers,
Ben
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Post #9,498
9/17/01 3:40:18 PM
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Not quite so simple in practice.
Do the math.
And the decision makers that decided that the F-15/16 was a better plane than the f-5 because its "wow-factor" is higher are the same people who are touting (and stand to profit from) the so-called "Star Wars" defense.
I knew someone who worked on radar systems for many military planes. One of his last projects before he retired was working on a "radar simulator".
Do I hear you say, "Eh?"
As I understood it, it feeds simulated radar signals from various planes into radar receivers so that they can be tested, tweaked, etc., and so operators can be trained on the receiver equipment.
You may be thinking: Why do that when you can simply fly the planes and use the receiver on the plane? Why spend X hundreds of thousands of dollars, or more, on such developing such a piece of equipment? Even the data collection for the simulator must have been very expensive. Surely it must just have been a boondoggle project to get more money into the military industrial complex, eh?
No.
Most of the time the military isn't at war. It's waiting around, and training people in case of war - trying to stay ready. And in peacetime (and probably in wartime too) one of the biggest expenses the Air Force has is the cost of fuel. Pilots have to fly to keep up their skills, etc. and its expensive. It's also expensive to fly a bomber or tanker or cargo plane around to test its radar systems, train radar operators, etc. There are big payoffs in using simulators to reduce the amount of flying time that has to be done. It reduces noise. It reduces pollution. It's safer. Etc.
Similarly, replacing a F-16 with 5 F-5s isn't necessarily cheaper. Maintenance costs are likely much higher on the older planes than the newer ones. Maintenance costs are also a high percentage of the Air Force's costs. The cost for keeping 5 times as many pilots trained, flying them around, etc., would also be much higher than the F-16 in just fuel. And how good would an F-5 be at being a platform for stand-off weapons?
This isn't to say that often times projects are started which don't make much sense, and projects are ended for the wrong reasons. That has happened and continues to happen.
But most of the people making these decisions aren't idiots. They can do back-of-the-envelope calculations as well as anyone. Most of them have dedicated their professional careers to doing the best job they can with the constraints they have.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
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Post #9,710
9/19/01 1:40:08 PM
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What kind of test?
Was it a dogfight? Or a (nore likely?) scenario of interception?
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Post #9,815
9/20/01 8:44:13 AM
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Re: What kind of test?
As I recal (this was some 10 years ago...) the test was a simulated dogfight, where the F16 was to have flown into "enemy territory" and was engaged by the F-5s
jb4
(Resistance is not futile...)
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Post #9,833
9/20/01 11:15:36 AM
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Re: What kind of test?
In that case, I think winning against 2 to 1 odds in 50% of the cases is an amazing feat. All that beatiful electronics won't help you when the other fellow is on your tail.
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