Comments on: US Missile Defense System Aces Test

By: Monkey Corp

Monkey Corp — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 06:14:25 +0000

There are limits to how small a nuclear warhead can be. Inert bullets can be much smaller and so you can imagine a MIRV missile with a dozen dummies being shot down with a similar MIRV-like missile except that upon approach it explodes firing out a 1000 bullets or ball bearings that easily overwhelm the number of dummies and warheads able to be lifted by an attacking missile. Anti-missile tech has the potential to change the world. Offensive deterrence is intrinsically unstable as it generates extreme security dilemmas, and that was with just 2 players. A defensive arms race may be one of the most important things to happen to humanity.

By: Phillip Huggan

Phillip Huggan — Sun, 11 Feb 2007 00:14:12 +0000

Paying off? Dummy missiles with cheap little ceramic heaters are orders of magnitude cheaper than a missile loaded with a warhead. If someone (who?!) rogue attacks the US with aq nuke they will surely launch a dozen dummy missiles as well.
Missile defense is a hundreds-of-billions/trillions $ grant to military contractors.

By: Kaj Sotala

Kaj Sotala — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 21:35:41 +0000

I’m not so sure about missile defense systems being “stabilizing”. It would seem to me that the existence of nuclear weapons and the prospect of MAD has prevented many wars in the past: weakening the risk of total annihilation when attacking a foe can only reduce stability, not increase it.

Not to mention that these kinds of systems won’t help one squat against suitcase nukes, which would seem like the ones that terrorists are the most likely to use.

By: randpost

randpost — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 05:50:16 +0000

And now they just develop anti-anti-missile systems, and U.S. respond with anti-anti-anti-missile systems and so forth. War technology is never the answer.