March 18, 2004
Science Fiction and Fantasy
The Strategic Defense Initiative has been science fiction from the start, and for the time being looks to remain that way. At first it was X-Ray lasers, ignited by nuclear bombs. They’ve actually been used… In a novel by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle called Footfall. Should technologically advanced elephant-like aliens ever invade, we’ll know exactly what to do.
Then they switched genres to fantasy. Here, the magic forces of the Reagan and Bush administrations manage to bankrupt the Russians simply by overspending on defense. The magic part of it is the Russians never increased spending on their end. It reminds me of the Aztecs sacrificing human beings to ensure that the sun came up again the next day. Makes as much sense, too.
Of course, the Republicans can't coast on that forever. Which is why we've switched back to science fiction again. This time though, the lines are blurrier. We're dealing with predictions that may be a few years, not decades down the line. But in the end they are telling us we should fund efforts to put their masterpiece in the air, so it can protect us. Problem is, even if what we got over our heads wins the Hugos and the Nebulas, it's not going to be able to protect us.
It's what they call hard science fiction, really- it's in the realm of possibility, but it's not yet a reality. Instead of the highly hairy, and impossible to test X-Ray lasers, or any such particle physics claptrap, it's a kinetic impact device.
Translation: The missiles had better hope they've got their collision insurance paid up. Idea being, you hit the missile in ballistic phase, when it's coasting out of the lower atmosphere, and just making like a rock catapulted over a castle wall. We come in with our impactor, we send them at them and Wam the brute force of a craft hitting the warhead at thousands of miles an hour leaves a nice souvenir the enemy can fit in a shoe box. At least, that's the idea.
That creates several problems. The targetting mechanism must be able to tell the warhead apart from everything else. It has to be able to aim for where this object will be with extraordinary precision, as it travels thousands of miles an hour towards the target. If it doesn't do this, a whole city is leveled, and hundreds of thousands, if not millions die.
That's what they're saying. But what they're doing is trying to sell the taxpayers a system to prevent this, that currently has no hope of succeeding at this.
Oh, they can hit targets. Prearranged, non-random, sometimes even programmed targets. They can even do this while being remote controlled.
What about random targets, though? If Bush doesn't think rogue states will be nice enough to gives us notice on when they plan to use their weapon, how do we expect this weapon to work? The whole point of a missile shield is to deal with a surprise attack, and this won't do it.
We want these systems autonomous. But right now, the technology isn't up to it. It's blind and stupid, yet another example of the irony of the term Artificial Intelligence in this day and age. If these things can't hit the target, they're just expensive defense department paperweights.
Some will insist that we give it its chance, but this isn't the movies, this isn't some script or book somebody wants to get published, this is a device meant to actually protect us from ICBMs and their warheads. If they can't actually do that job, it's negligent to put them up there. Perfect the technology first, because doing it any faster is not doing it at all.
Posted by Stephen Daugherty at March 18, 2004 12:47 AMInteresting piece… part of the appeal of SDIis that it even if it’s deployed without being fully predictable and foolproof, it would serve as a powerful—perhaps paralyzing— psychological weapon against launching a nuclear first strike against the United States.
Does it work? Doesn’t it work? Do you push that button or not, Kim Jong, knowing that if you do your missles may or may not get through before you and your entire country gets incinerated by American ICBMS? Even if SDI is worthless, I think it’s worth it just to keep that calculus running in the minds of potential attackers.
Posted by: Martin at March 18, 2004 01:10 AMOh please. It’s not the Kim Jongs you have to worry about. It’s the well funded terrorist who deploys a small device at Grand Central Station. SDI can’t do a thing against a tactical nuke deployed locally. The best strategy is non-proliferation, but the Bushies have dropped the ball on that. How else could Pakistan be granted full ally status? So they killed a couple dozen of their own people recently in the hunt for bin Laden. They’re still the ones selling nuclear weapons tech to anyone with the cash to buy it.
Posted by: Michael at March 18, 2004 11:22 AMIt’s not the Kim Jong’s we have to worry about?
Well, I’m sorry but we do. We have to worry about a lot of things, and each potential problem may require a separate solution.
Unless North Korea has ICBM’s to deliver nuclear warheads, then SDI is useless against any nukes North Korean currently has. But you seem to think that it is alright to waste money deploying unproven technology that is still years away from being perfected.
Posted by: Michael at March 18, 2004 03:50 PMMartin, there are cheaper ways to deceive an enemy, also ones that don’t lull the American people into a false sense of security. We should not be lining the pockets of defense contractors for equipment that doesn’t do it’s job. I doubt you’d be so cavalier if it were a tank or jetfighter involved. Why be so with a missile defense system.
Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at March 18, 2004 04:30 PMExcellent point Stephen. I believe the French learned first hand about the cost of a false sense of security when the Germans bypassed the Maginot Line by marching through Belgium.
Posted by: Michael at March 18, 2004 05:57 PM“But you seem to think that it is alright to waste money deploying unproven technology that is still years away from being perfected.”
With this attitude, we wouldn’t even have airplanes—or any other technological achievement for that matter. After all, there was a time people thought airplanes were just a crazy idea that would never work. All research costs money, and yes, it can take a while to work out all the kinks. I suspect the same is true of SDI.
But there are no threat of ICBMS from the likes of Korea? Not yet, my friend. Sometimes you prepare for a threat before it’s actually on your doorstep—especially when that threat is nuclear.
Posted by: Martin at March 18, 2004 07:33 PMMartin, the Wright Brothers would disagree with your philosophy. It wasn’t pluck and luck that got them where they did, it was a skeptical attitude towards the data, and the fact that they didn’t risk everything on the real thing until they had worked out the kinks. When they were looking over Glider pioneer Otto Lilienthal’s data, they found flaws in the data, discrepancies they knew couldn’t be right. So they did their own tests. But they didn’t go full scale to do this, consuming valuable resources. They instead built one of the first wind tunnel machines in the world, and tested models until they had their data and their design, and when everything was said an done, the thing they built to fly flew.
I don’t know what sane principle of development dictates that you put defective products on the market or out in the field as fully useable when they’re not. At best, that’s negligent, and worst that’s fraudulent.
As for NK ICBM threats or whatever kind there are, my position is similar. Problems that may be out there are one thing. there are a million of those possibilities, few of which actually come to pass. Though they are nice to entertain on occasions when one just wants to get a feel for what’s not being entertained, it’s a hideously random way of going about things, and a poor foundation for a foreign or military policy.
We are better off figuring out what the real and developing threats are, to see signs of how things are, and act on that. We can come up with a million academic theories as to how to arrange a foreign policy, or we can arrange it to deal with the issues that define our real situation. Any solution or policy, regardless of elegance or compelling presentation, that fails to align the correct solutions to the existing problems is doomed to failure.
The easiest way to do this, because of it’s deceptively compelling political appearance is to take an approach of paranoia, of pre-emptive action, and cowboy diplomacy. Nobody can claim you aren’t doing your damnedest, at least.
But it’s a kind of foreign policy where the leaders become cocooned very easily in their own analysis of the situation, and alienate those that could correct their erroneous assumptions. They respond to threats that aren’t there and put strains on the finite resources of their government. In essence, the wish to see the worst before it happens becomes the inability to see beyond one’s own opinion of what that is. It becomes a vicious feedback loop of distorted perceptions.
This combined with an ends justify the means mentality can produce a foreign policy that degenerates out of control in terms of the quality and the morality of the actions taken, eventually ending in a paralyzing kind of moral malaise. It is here, usually, that one sees the retreat of any kind of active foreign policy towards engaging threats. The excesses of the previous era leave hardly any stomach within the public for more problematic interventions, for good or ill.
This is where I fear the country going, if we take Bush’s direction- sickened by a string of debacles, no longer caring to do what we have to defend ourselves. That is, until the next time.
I want a foreign policy we as Americans can feel proud to stick to, and that meets the problems as they are, instead of merely as our fears, prejudices, and incomplete perspective would have them. Nothing less, nothing more.
Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at March 18, 2004 11:20 PM
