NASA Sends One Up; DoD Shoots One Down

drbrain writes: "They seem to have succeeded again, their Helios is their first success of a remotely, solar self powered aircraft. Looks kinda weird. They plan to use it for research and the military." Meanwhile, Guppy06 and many others sent in stories about a successful test of the Star Wars missile defense system, which will protect us from all those ballistic missiles that foreign nations don't have and would be silly to use, when you can just drive down from Canada with a suitcase nuke.

Comments

Re:paying attention?

[Danse]

I don't think you're understanding. Yes, China and Russia have nukes. So do India and Pakistan now. So does North Korea. But none of them want their entire country to glow in the dark. So they don't attack us. This has worked pretty well for the last 50 years. Now Bush wants to go and fuck it all up by giving us what looks to everyone else as an edge in the MAD (mutually assured destruction) game.

They'll continue to quietly build (under cover) until they have enough arms to be a significant threat.

They already have more than enough to annihilate us and most of the rest of the world. Russia has thousands of nukes. The US has over 10 thousand. If either of us launch, the world is fucked. Get it?

At least instead of developing more nuclear arms, the US is now trying to render existing arms less effective. Umm.. you mean render EVERYONE ELSE'S existing arms less effective. And they will respond how? By building MORE EFFECTIVE missiles, of course. Plus, they'll be a lot more likely to use them if they feel we're gaining the upper hand. We'll be back in the 50s again waiting in fear for someone to finally push the button.

Now, as things stand today, we're really not in any danger of another country launching a nuke at us. At least not any more than we've always been. As the previous poster pointed out, it's much more likely that a nuke will be smuggled into the country and detonated. It would be a lot easier to do it that way, and a lot harder to track the source. This system will do nothing to protect us from terrorist attacks, which is the bogeyman dejour these days. Then there's the little problem that the system will not likely be able to deal with more than a few missiles, and if those missiles have even rudimentary countermeasures, it will probably completely fail to hit them.

Oh, the bullshit is painful

[tbo]

I'm so fucking sick and tired of Slashdot "editors" making blatant political statements when they're supposedly reporting the news. To add insult to injury, the statements are quite often false or misleading. Let's dissect this story's editorial comments:

protect us from all those ballistic missiles that foreign nations don't have

China has 20 or so CSS-4 ICBMs targeted at US cities. Don't think they'd use them? This is the same government that has executed more people in the past three months than the rest of the world has in the past three years (yes, that includes Texas, save your lame jokes). Then there's Tiananmen Square, Tibet, Falun Gong, and a whole host of other human rights breaches in China.

Then there's North Korea, which is quite close to developing the ICBM technology to hit the US with nukes or biological or chemical warfare.

Then there's Iran and Iraq, with weapons programs of their own, and possibly also an interest in buying from North Korea, China, or Russia.

when you can just drive down from Canada with a suitcase nuke

First of all, you have to get a suitcase nuke. They're not exactly easy to make (remember how big the first atomic bombs were?), and only a few countries in the world can make them (Russia, US). In other words, you probably have to buy one from Russia.

Second, you have to get it in to Canada. While we do have huge unguarded borders up north, you're going to have a hell of a time getting it from the Yukon or wherever to the 49th parallel. Also, the US is pushing for increased Canadian border security and unified policies on security and entry into North America. I think they're aware of the issue.

Third, you have to cross the US border. While I don't know for sure, I would bet there are hidden radiation detectors at all the border crossings. Liquid scintillator column-style detectors are incredibly sensitive, and it would be nearly impossible to shield the near-critical fissionable material in a bomb from the detectors (the gamma rays produced have too much penetrating power). I happen to work at a particle accelerator with just such detectors on the shipping gates (to prevent accidental removal of contaminated material), and you wouldn't know they're there if there weren't signs. They just look like part of the fence posts. Of course, it would be silly for the government to make the existence of such detectors public knowledge, because that would mostly defeat the purpose, which is to catch terrorists.

Finally, suitcase nukes are low-yield (as in around one kiloton). The man-with-the-briefcase approach also doesn't have the same political or military effectiveness that a working ICBM has. Rogue Country X has to actually use a suitcase nuke to convince the world that they have the capability, and then they'll get blown to smithereens by the US. Not much is accomplished besides killing a few hundred thousand Americans (worst-case), and getting Country X's population reduced to single digits. On the other hand, if it becomes known that X has ICBMs in hardened silos, then they're suddently part of the Nuclear Club, and they get to play with the big boys. After all, look how nice the world is being to China, what with giving them the Olympics and all (worked really well in Berlin in 1936, didn't it?).

Re:paying attention?

[marcsiry]

On the contrary- Saddam Hussein thought he had the tacit approval of the entire world to invade Kuwait, thanks to some vague language employed by our ambassador to Iraq at the time (April Glaspie).

He was surprised when we got all hot and bothered about what he considered to be a local dispute.

More to the point: an enemy ICBM launched toward the United States has a big, flaming return address stamped on it. Any nation foolhardy enough to attack in such a manner would, for all intents and purposes, cease to exist thirty minutes later.

Even the most hardcore nutjob is likely to think twice in that situation. Most attacks against United States property and citizens come in the form of guerilla, surprise terrorist attacks... why should a nuclear attack be any different?

Missile defense is resources misspent in a manner that's just going to piss off our nuclear peers (Russia and China) and fail to address the real threat of terrorist nuclear attacks.

RE: Star Wars

[legLess]

A few points thoughts, just for the hell of it:

• We have no proof that the test actually worked. The U.S. military is not known for being open and honest about its failures (e.g. Gulf War "smart bombs"). All the reports I've seen said that two missiles were launched, then there was a bright flash of light. No collision was taped or witnessed. Granted, this would require some pretty gnarly cover-up and/or conspiracy, but it's food for thought.
  
  
• GW Bush has said that he'll go ahead funding these tests whether or not they work. William S Burroughs once said, "In government, if something doesn't work, that's the best reason to keep on doing it."
  
  
• This system as conceived (e.g. interceptor missiles and/or Magical Space Lasers Of Death©) cannot work. A priori. In order to "work," it must intercept 100% of the incoming targets. If 1, or 5, or 100 nukes are launched at Washington DC, only 1 needs to get through for the attack to be 100% effective. Even the military, creaming their uniforms in ecstacy at the return of Republican pork-barrel funding, don't claim that this system can work 100% of the time.
  
  
• As a general strategy, prevention is much more effective than interception (e.g. the War on Some Drugs©).
  
  
• The whole thing reminds me of a Bloom County cartoon from the Reagan Star Wars era. Opus the penguin submitted a grant application to the government to stitch $100 bills together by hand and deploy them in space as a missile shield. The grant was accepted, of course, and they started mailing him boxes of $100 bills. (I don't remember what he actually did with the cash - donated it to PETA, knowing Opus). Same idea, though. This whole fucking mess is just one monstrous pork-barrel: it can't work, it won't work, it'll never be finished, and the only end-product will be another house in the hills for some military contractor.
  
  
• There are generally two types of countries with nuclear capability: civilized and uncivilized, or if you will, amenable to rational negotiation and not emanable. What the U.S. is doing here is pissing off and scaring literally every country in the world, and has tossed us squarely into the "not amenable to rational negotiation" pile; we're keeping company with Iraq on this issue. "They're our bombs and we'll do whatever the hell we want, treaties be damned." Christ that scares me.
  
  

"We all say so, so it must be true!"

Splitting hairs

[legLess]

That's splitting hairs, and you know it. The political fallout from giving 6 months notice and giving 0 months notice would be identical.

Here's a news flash: agreements between heavily-armed parties are a Good Thing. Breaking those agreements is a Bad Thing. In this case, everybody loses.

"We all say so, so it must be true!"

paying attention?

[br4dh4x0r]

which will protect us from all those ballistic missiles that foreign nations don't have and would be silly to use

Michael, are you naive enough to believe that NO foreign country has, or is in the process of developing, ICBMs?

Wouldn't most people say that Saddam Hussein was "silly" for attacking Kuwait when he knew he'd have half the world kicking his ass?

I get kind of nervous when I think about nutjobs running countries that might shoot missiles at us. But maybe that's just me.

love,
br4dh4x0r

Re:paying attention?

[cheinonen]

Nutjob or no nutjob, people are in charge and running those countries because they love power. They like having control over everyone, and what they fear most is losing that power. When your country is below the US, it looks great to your people to attack them, hold them up to ridicule, and try to act like you don't fear anyone, but when push comes to shove, is anyone going to stand up?

If any of these rogue countries like Iraq or Afghanistan or North Korea ever did get the balls to launch a nuclear missile at us, they have to know that their life is over. Their power is gone. There is nothing they can do to save themselves at that point. For these leaders that thrive off power, do you really think they are going to throw it all away? What will this acomplish for them? Even if, somewhow, they destroyed the United States, don't you think that another country that is an ally (Great Brittian, France, Germany, etc...) would jump in and destroy them? Firing a nuclear missile at the United States has NO political gain for any other country.

However, a rogue terrorist group does have something to gain. They don't have a country you can nuke. They don't think as logically since, where Saddam Hussein might order his troops to death and he will never see a bullet, these terrorist leaders often get involved in the actions themselves. Far and away the most likely ways for them to attack us is to get a bomb into the US the same way people get drugs in, or to fire a missile from a boat off the coast and fly it in under radar. Can our missile defense shield protect against this? No way. Can it even defend against a large volley of nukes, like North Korea could possibly offer? With our current results, no way.

Lots and lots of people are making lots and lots of money off this plan. I'm sure lots of those people making money gave lots of money to the Bush/Cheney campaign last year, and now they are reaping the rewards. Of course, I'm sure they would have given the money to Gore/Lieberman as well, since they all sell out to the all mighty dollar here. If you really look at this plan, though, the countries that can send missles at us really have nothing to gain, where the wack jobs would never use a missile, they'd just get a suicide bomber to deliver it for them.

Re:No nukes?

[IdahoEv]

does Michael honestly believe that other countries DON'T have strategic ballistic missles

Actually, they dont.

Point one:
A few other countries have NUKES. But probably only half of these have ICBMs that can actually reach the US. China has a few dozen, Russia has a lot. The other few are our european allies. India is close enough to space tech that they could probably build one. Maybe North Korea, adopted from China. Iraq if they work really hard for a decade. (Remember how proud they were of the SCUD, which had ~300km range? ) The Taliban doesn't even have electricity in 90% of their country.

Point Two: Why the hell would you launch it at the US even if you had one? A suicide bomber is one thing: you lose one guy and you blame it on a sect you can't control. But launching a missile? In 45 minutes, the US turns every city you have into a nuclear wasteland.

Point Three. If you want to nuke the US, you get or make a small bomb, like one of the infamous soviet suitcase nukes - dozens are unaccounted for. You send a single suicide bomber to carry it across the border from mexico or canada by hand. You lose one guy, there's nothing for the US to shoot down, and you don't have to develop any rocket technology. And a nuke leaves awfully little forensic evidence.

The rogue nation theory is FUD and W knows it. This is an excuse to get a start on something that could eventually be a full SDI shield and W, Russia, China, and everyone else knows that, too.

The real problem, of course, is that it breaks treaties (as if the rest of the world didn't hate the US enough already) and could start a new arms race with China, whose nuclear deterrent of ~40 rockets *could* be threatened by an ABM shield. An arms race is good for no one.

Except for W's friends in the military. And his friends in the companies that make the weapons. And himself. The truth is, the arms race with China will help Bush because .he needs a big bad enemy.

Suitcase nukes

[The Ultimate Badass]

You are making a false assumption that it is easier to bring a small scale nuclear weapon into the US through canada than it is to bring it by sea into a North Western state. The sad fact is, our Northern friends have a much better record of policing their borders than we have of policing ours, having an estimated ten times the amount of successful interceptions to quantity of illegal contraband ratio as we do. Furthermore, the concept of a "suitcase nuke" is absurd. Such a weapon would have a relatively insignificant explosive yield. For a nuclear device to be worth the effort of transporting it to the US, it would have to be about the size of a smallish crate. Finally, if I were Osama Bin Laden, and I wanted to seriously upset the US people, I know exactly where I'd detonate a bomb. I'd place a large one in a cargo ship, and send it to Pearl Harbor. He wouldn't even have to wait for customs to check the ship out before he detonated it.

Re:Oh, the bullshit is painful - Yep IT IS

[q-soe]

Do a bit of reading - a suitcase nuke can be made for as little as $100k and requires no special equipment - it would be dirty and you might get radioactive poisoning but if you are on a jihad you wont care.

Yes they are low yield - you could get up to 10kt - BUT they are DIRTY - you would pack the outside of the fissionable device with More Uranium or spent plutionium (say an old fuel rod which would be easy to buy on the international market)

The point is you dont want high power in a city bomb - you want LOW yield to cause damage on a scale BUT also illness and sickness (Hence the dirty bit) thus overloading Emergency Services and causing maximum fear and panic)

this aint hard - as i said do a bit of reading

http://www.fas.org/nuke/hew/Nwfaq/Nfaq2.html
http://www.accutek.com/~moistner/nuclear1.htm

and others

PS - US still have NUC weapons targeted at all major Chinese and Russian Targets - so your point is invalid and a little redundant as despite the media hullaballo about the plane to the contrary the China and the US have a number of treaties, North Korea cant feed their people and their weapons programme has proven to be a lot of bluster, Iraq hasnt got the money left to make bombs anymore - they are the most spied upon nation on earth, and the US border is so easy to get thru its a laugh - go for a drive to canada, last time i was in the US we went back and forth across the border a number of times and it was all on backroads with NO sign of any customs (oh look were in Canada Again !)

And last point - I AM NOT TROLLING BUT - dont poke off at China's Human rights record - The US is also criticised (as is my country of Aust) for its record as well, im not going to be seen as US bashing but you have some questionable things as well.