How well does it intercept bombs in standard 40 foot shipping containers? Thats the "delivery vehicle of the future".
Other than the fact that such a delivery system is useless and unattractive as a delivery system to a nation state, sure. (Or IOW, no, except in the ill informed fantasies of the ill informed.)
Reason(s) to smuggle a weapon into a city: prevent advance knowledge of an attack prevent identification (cause misidentification) of the source of the attack create a massive clusterfuck related to the previous point.
Reasons *against* smuggling a weapon into a city.
- It removes the weapon from a secure environment and from the command and control network. - It removes the weapon from positive control. - It must be deployed weeks in advance of the attack. - It provides little to no deterrent effect.
The latter is particularly important, as nuclear weapons are far more instruments of statecraft than weapons of war.
Also, like any ballistic weapon, accuracy gets worse as distance increases. On a missile with multiple warheads, the "bus" (basically a spacecraft with thrusters and very sensitive navigation systems that carries the warheads) does all the maneuvering and targeting for the warheads, releasing them one at a time. For accuracy, it needs to do this pretty close to the target.
Actually, the bus releases them pretty early - almost immediately after the last booster stage burns out. Why? Because it both increases the size of the potential MIRV footprint and decreases vulnerability to interceptors. It also decreases the amount of time the gyros and accelerometers in the guidance package have to drift (which reduces accuracy) and minimizes the amount of electrical power required thus allowing the use of a smaller and lighter battery.
Disclaimer: Former USN SLBM missile fire control technician.
Future attacks will not come from missile launches where the country responsible for the launch can be annihilated.
Future attacks will most likely come from an unprotected shipping container in an American port.
You state that as if it were a fact - when it is anything but. It's an ill informed fantasy with little or no connection to reality.
Shipping containers are in no way attractive to nation states. They require the weapon to be away from their command and control for weeks at a time and provide absolutely no deterrent effect. There's a a reason why North Korea and Iran are building IRBM's and exploring ICBM's.
Advocate group publishes report that promotes/detracts from whatever the group promotes/detracts from. Are we seeing a pattern here?
Yes, the pattern of labeling those who have the audacity to think for themselves and point out the dangers and flaws of something as a radical group along with something profoundly negative such as kooks, fundamentalists and religious freaks.
Ah yes, of your are 'pointing out the dangers and flaws [as you see them]', you are 'thinking for yourself'. Which of course explains the Tea Partyer's and Climate Change deniers neatly - they, by your definition, must be among the smartest people in the world.
Oh, wait...
Sadly for your dogma, pointing out the dangers and flaws [as they see them] may be the result of someone thinking for themselves - but thinking for yourself and being a kook are decidedly not mutually exclusive. Not even close.
From there, you use those negative labels you just added to them as some sort of basis to downplay and ignore each and every point they make, without ever doing anything to disprove the points they make
As above, it's because so many of them are kooks - and no matter how often you disprove their points, they just keep coming back. After a while, it isn't worth the effort.
Well, submarines are neither cheap, nor easy.... And if the bad guys do go that route - well, that's what the Navy is for.
Submarines are certainly cheap *enough*. Remember, Colombian druglords have already used crude diesel-powered submersibles that *their men* constructed to smuggle drugs into the US. Some have been intercepted (they're usually able to scuttle them and destroy the evidence before being picked up), but not all.
The 'submarines' used by smugglers are actually semi-submersibles, not submarines in any sense of the word. They're air breathers that run awash and cannot submerge. They're also roughly as analogous to a cruise missile launching submarine as a Cooper Mini is to a main battle tank.
That makes submarines, not ICBMs, the critical attack vector (or whatever security experts call it), so we should not be spending much for defense against ICBMs until we have our submarine defenses shored up.
Other than the elephant in the room - there are nations developing and possessing ICBMs. There are not (at least not publicly known) any nations developing the required small nuclear warheads, cruise missiles, and submarines or semi-submersibles.
Well, submarines are neither cheap, nor easy. Nor are cruise missiles launched from them.
Sorry, not only can they be launched from submarines
Ack, that should have read "Nor are the".
they have been launched from submarines since the 1991 Persian Gulf conflict
Actually, they've been launched from submarines since the 1940's. The first such launch from a surfaced submarine was from the USS Cusk in February of 1947. For modern missiles, the Tomahawk was being launched from submerged submarines back in the early '80s.
That it can be misused has roughly precisely zip point nada to do with whether or not voluntarily providing a sample should come with an expectation of privacy.
It's worth pointing out that, despite the anti-terrorism/Homeland Security spin currently in fashion, the Navy has been working on using marine mammals for underwater security since at least the 1960's, with preliminary work going back into the 50's.
The general idea is that it's rough and dangerous to send people into the water, E.G. to inspect the hull of a submarine moored in the 50 degree water of the Hood Canal, so it's better to use animals evolved to survive in that environment. Trained animals can also provide 24/7 coverage with greater detail over a larger area than humans can.
It's voluntary, so there is no invasion of privacy going on, when you give up your DNA willingly you can't be expected it to be held very strongly in confidentiality.
Well, I'll agree that voluntarily (if it's truly voluntary and not semi-coerced as in 'we won't let you do $desirable_but_not_mandatory_thing until you 'volunteer') providing a sample isn't an invasion of privacy. But your notion that doing so willingly means I can't expected it be confidential is utter hogwash. I willingly and voluntarily give up credit card numbers, medical information, etc. etc... on a daily basis with every expectation that they will be held confidential. I see no reason why DNA should be any different.
This has been predicted so many times all throughout the years, it's hard to take it seriously.
Unless you actually use Usenet and have noted the precipitous drop in traffic over the last few years. Usenet may not be legally dead, but it's much closer than it was and decaying almost daily.
And I hate to say it, but I think slashdot has played its part in steering posting fora towardes this decline. Slashdot has also done some things to try to stem it, like the grading of both articles and posts, but it's an afterthought that doesn't solve the problem, but created karma whores instead. The moderators too are unlikely to see good posts deep into a thread that isn't on the front page, no matter how good they are. So they never get moderated up to the point where others see them either.
Not that the moderators need to even bother, 90% of the time, after the article drops below the fold, the users aren't posting comments anyhow.
This is why you DO WANT nuclear energy in space! OK, Voyager 1 and 2 have RTGs, but even those are considered politically incorrect these days
[[Citation needed]]
Seriously, not many nuclear powered probes have been launched because there aren't that many missions requiring them. Despite that, we've been launching them at a fairly steady rate.
The real problem with them over the last twenty years has been that their fuel is actually a byproduct of nuclear weapons production and processing - an activity that has greatly declined since the end of the cold war. The number of protesters/lawsuits has been dropping steadily with each launch - and there hasn't been a peep to date over the upcoming launch of the nuclear powered MSL rover.
Finally, joke about Windows all you want... if you do a default installation of Windows and you don't install any additional drivers or software, it is extremely stable and will just sit there for ages happy to do nothing but tick away.
Hell, my (from the OEM) installation of Windows XP has had additional drivers and software installed and it ticks away just fine. It locks up/crashes/blue screen roughly once annually, more than stable enough for most ordinary purposes. (Hell, the computer I used in the Navy to control the launch of nuclear tipped missiles crashed every month or so and was considered more than reliable enough for the job.)
My installation of Windows 95/98 was a trifle less stable, but still more than stable enough for ordinary purposes.
Of Window 3.1, we shall not speak - except to note that machine was unstable under DOS too.
But the difference is, I know how to install and uninstall things and how to run registry cleaners, etc... etc...
(1) Basic geometry -- you have to station a slew of defensive missiles every 20 miles along your borders. That's because you are not going to hit anything going Mach 12 across your path-- you need a close to head-on intercept angle.
Which is why these missiles are designed for long range intercept, so we don't need one every twenty miles along the borders. But this is just basic geometry and you forgot to mention it.
(2) Cheap and easy countermeasures. Even if you bankrupt your country setting up (1), the bad guys just switch to using sub or boat launched cruise missiles. Or low-trajectory ICBM's. Or put the bomb on a freight or passenger plane. It's mighty foolish to spend a trillion $ and have all that effort counteracted by a visit to UPS and $187.54.
Well, submarines are neither cheap, nor easy. Nor are cruise missiles launched from them. And if the bad guys do go that route - well, that's what the Navy is for. But historically the bad guys go for missiles.
Low trajectory ICBM's aren't cheap and easy either - they are actually more expensive and difficult than the more normal high loft ones. Why? Because you need the same missile - but a somewhat more sophisticated guidance system and *much* tougher heat shielding on the reentry vehicle. It's a semi hard problem, and nobody has seriously tried it yet despite years of panic and hand waving from the usual suspects and those who copy and paste their nonsense without actually understanding it.
Putting a bomb on a freight or a passenger plane is the act of a terrorist, not a nation state. This system is meant to defend against nation states, not terrorists. Nation states go for ICBM's because of two reasons; a) it keeps the weapons close to home and under the control of trusted individuals until needed, and b) there's not much deterrent value in a bomb on a civilian plane.
JR Oppenheimer did this math in his head in 1952 as he was testifying to a govt comittee. Nothing has changed since then.
Given that nobody had flown an ICBM in 1952, and that nobody knew much about them in 1952, I find that hard to believe. (I.E. citation needed.) Even if he did, I'll point out that the technology of 2010 is a (very) far cry from the technology of 1952. Robert Oppenheimer was a very smart fellow, but his opinions on ABM defense aren't much more relevant than Sir Isaac Newton's.
Funny. The typical Slashdotter foams at the mouth about how the government is supposed to protect privacy - his privacy. But when it's not his privacy directly at stake, the government is held to be the villain.
In no way does that exonerate google. In no way did I try to say that I agree with what they have done - rather I will here state clearly that I do not agree with their choice. How on earth you read that to "exonerate google" is a question I would like to know the answer to.
And how else is an utterly fact free 'explanation' that justifies Google's actions to be interpreted? How else is a statement utterly lacking in condemnation of Google's action to be interpreted?
It's not sexist. Some posts in this thread are outright lies. "Cougar" is banned for being an adult term. So is Sugar Daddy, contrary to what some claim.
Have you even bothered to google on Sugar Daddy? Obviously not.
The site for older men trolling for younger women likely intentionally does some obfuscation to hide what they are after.
Actually, they don't - they're pretty blatant about it. Obfuscation attracts neither eyeballs nor clicks.
In the same light we seldom see political advertising that pushes facts, most political ads (the ones on slashdot being excellent examples) instead push rumors, half-truths, and outright lies.
And after making stuff up to exonerate Google, you finish off with some political slurs.
But you forgot to include a car analogy in order to complete the Slashdot trifecta - so I'll help you out:
Google has been accepting advertising offering hot new sports cars to fuddy duddy old luxury car owners for years now, and continues to do so without a qualm. But now, they've taken a site that offers hot new motorcycles to fuddy duddy old motorcycle owners and declared that motorcycle owners may not advertise on the AdSense network.
Of course, you can't convince him and neither can anyone else.
Except you've built your case on one mistaken and dangerous assumption - that the civil rights of one individual are totally and completely dependent on the emotional status of another individual.
Why these folks were not given a life sentance to begin with somewhat mystifies me as that would seem to be the "right" solution.
The problem being that your only justification for it being "right" seems to be because that satisfies Polly Klass' father. As I said above, that's a dangerous road to travel.
Reading about this today, I found that the scope of this particular decision is less scary than I initially assumed -- it's limited to prisoners who meet a standard as being "sexually dangerous", so they're not just being held without due process.
Due process means appearing before a jury of your peers, or at least before a judge, with an opportunity to face your accuser and to defend yourself - not that some bureaucrat makes out a report and then another bureaucrat throws away the key to your cell.
Furthermore, they're not making the decision to confine on the basis of evidence, they're making it on the basic of assumptions and one person's judgment.
Interestingly, TFA mentions that NASA was also soliciting new designs for a supersonic transport aircraft; given the reluctance of nations to allow those in their airspace and the resulting eventual demise of the Concorde (which, IIRC, never made a profit anyway), one has to wonder why.
Why? Because there's an awful lot of ocean of in the world, and an awful lot of air traffic, passenger and cargo across it.
Can't believe this actually made the Slashdot front page.
I can easily believe this made the front page - Wikileaks is right up there with Wikipedia, Apple, and Google as the Slashdot editor's favorite stroke material. Make it look like Wikileaks is being threatened by Da Man and you have a 'perfect storm'.
Why be dubious? Shutting down Wikileaks in its entirety until the site is 'fully funded' practically screams his intentions from the rooftops. (Though I see now that he has relented and published a handful of 'time sensitive' material.)
Slashdot Mirror
Other than the fact that such a delivery system is useless and unattractive as a delivery system to a nation state, sure. (Or IOW, no, except in the ill informed fantasies of the ill informed.)
Reasons *against* smuggling a weapon into a city.
- It removes the weapon from a secure environment and from the command and control network.
- It removes the weapon from positive control.
- It must be deployed weeks in advance of the attack.
- It provides little to no deterrent effect.
The latter is particularly important, as nuclear weapons are far more instruments of statecraft than weapons of war.
Actually, the bus releases them pretty early - almost immediately after the last booster stage burns out. Why? Because it both increases the size of the potential MIRV footprint and decreases vulnerability to interceptors. It also decreases the amount of time the gyros and accelerometers in the guidance package have to drift (which reduces accuracy) and minimizes the amount of electrical power required thus allowing the use of a smaller and lighter battery.
Disclaimer: Former USN SLBM missile fire control technician.
You state that as if it were a fact - when it is anything but. It's an ill informed fantasy with little or no connection to reality.
Shipping containers are in no way attractive to nation states. They require the weapon to be away from their command and control for weeks at a time and provide absolutely no deterrent effect. There's a a reason why North Korea and Iran are building IRBM's and exploring ICBM's.
Yes, the pattern of labeling those who have the audacity to think for themselves and point out the dangers and flaws of something as a radical group along with something profoundly negative such as kooks, fundamentalists and religious freaks.
Ah yes, of your are 'pointing out the dangers and flaws [as you see them]', you are 'thinking for yourself'. Which of course explains the Tea Partyer's and Climate Change deniers neatly - they, by your definition, must be among the smartest people in the world.
Oh, wait...
Sadly for your dogma, pointing out the dangers and flaws [as they see them] may be the result of someone thinking for themselves - but thinking for yourself and being a kook are decidedly not mutually exclusive. Not even close.
As above, it's because so many of them are kooks - and no matter how often you disprove their points, they just keep coming back. After a while, it isn't worth the effort.
The 'submarines' used by smugglers are actually semi-submersibles, not submarines in any sense of the word. They're air breathers that run awash and cannot submerge. They're also roughly as analogous to a cruise missile launching submarine as a Cooper Mini is to a main battle tank.
Other than the elephant in the room - there are nations developing and possessing ICBMs. There are not (at least not publicly known) any nations developing the required small nuclear warheads, cruise missiles, and submarines or semi-submersibles.
Ack, that should have read "Nor are the".
Actually, they've been launched from submarines since the 1940's. The first such launch from a surfaced submarine was from the USS Cusk in February of 1947. For modern missiles, the Tomahawk was being launched from submerged submarines back in the early '80s.
Apples and paranoid oranges.
That it can be misused has roughly precisely zip point nada to do with whether or not voluntarily providing a sample should come with an expectation of privacy.
It's worth pointing out that, despite the anti-terrorism/Homeland Security spin currently in fashion, the Navy has been working on using marine mammals for underwater security since at least the 1960's, with preliminary work going back into the 50's.
The general idea is that it's rough and dangerous to send people into the water, E.G. to inspect the hull of a submarine moored in the 50 degree water of the Hood Canal, so it's better to use animals evolved to survive in that environment. Trained animals can also provide 24/7 coverage with greater detail over a larger area than humans can.
Well, I'll agree that voluntarily (if it's truly voluntary and not semi-coerced as in 'we won't let you do $desirable_but_not_mandatory_thing until you 'volunteer') providing a sample isn't an invasion of privacy. But your notion that doing so willingly means I can't expected it be confidential is utter hogwash. I willingly and voluntarily give up credit card numbers, medical information, etc. etc... on a daily basis with every expectation that they will be held confidential. I see no reason why DNA should be any different.
Unless you actually use Usenet and have noted the precipitous drop in traffic over the last few years. Usenet may not be legally dead, but it's much closer than it was and decaying almost daily.
Not that the moderators need to even bother, 90% of the time, after the article drops below the fold, the users aren't posting comments anyhow.
[[Citation needed]]
Seriously, not many nuclear powered probes have been launched because there aren't that many missions requiring them. Despite that, we've been launching them at a fairly steady rate.
The real problem with them over the last twenty years has been that their fuel is actually a byproduct of nuclear weapons production and processing - an activity that has greatly declined since the end of the cold war. The number of protesters/lawsuits has been dropping steadily with each launch - and there hasn't been a peep to date over the upcoming launch of the nuclear powered MSL rover.
Hell, my (from the OEM) installation of Windows XP has had additional drivers and software installed and it ticks away just fine. It locks up/crashes/blue screen roughly once annually, more than stable enough for most ordinary purposes. (Hell, the computer I used in the Navy to control the launch of nuclear tipped missiles crashed every month or so and was considered more than reliable enough for the job.)
My installation of Windows 95/98 was a trifle less stable, but still more than stable enough for ordinary purposes.
Of Window 3.1, we shall not speak - except to note that machine was unstable under DOS too.
But the difference is, I know how to install and uninstall things and how to run registry cleaners, etc... etc...
Which is why these missiles are designed for long range intercept, so we don't need one every twenty miles along the borders. But this is just basic geometry and you forgot to mention it.
Well, submarines are neither cheap, nor easy. Nor are cruise missiles launched from them. And if the bad guys do go that route - well, that's what the Navy is for. But historically the bad guys go for missiles.
Low trajectory ICBM's aren't cheap and easy either - they are actually more expensive and difficult than the more normal high loft ones. Why? Because you need the same missile - but a somewhat more sophisticated guidance system and *much* tougher heat shielding on the reentry vehicle. It's a semi hard problem, and nobody has seriously tried it yet despite years of panic and hand waving from the usual suspects and those who copy and paste their nonsense without actually understanding it.
Putting a bomb on a freight or a passenger plane is the act of a terrorist, not a nation state. This system is meant to defend against nation states, not terrorists. Nation states go for ICBM's because of two reasons; a) it keeps the weapons close to home and under the control of trusted individuals until needed, and b) there's not much deterrent value in a bomb on a civilian plane.
Given that nobody had flown an ICBM in 1952, and that nobody knew much about them in 1952, I find that hard to believe. (I.E. citation needed.) Even if he did, I'll point out that the technology of 2010 is a (very) far cry from the technology of 1952. Robert Oppenheimer was a very smart fellow, but his opinions on ABM defense aren't much more relevant than Sir Isaac Newton's.
Funny. The typical Slashdotter foams at the mouth about how the government is supposed to protect privacy - his privacy. But when it's not his privacy directly at stake, the government is held to be the villain.
And how else is an utterly fact free 'explanation' that justifies Google's actions to be interpreted? How else is a statement utterly lacking in condemnation of Google's action to be interpreted?
Have you even bothered to google on Sugar Daddy? Obviously not.
The mind boggles at such sexist handwaving in order to excuse Google. Are you a time traveler from the [18]50's or something?
Actually, they don't - they're pretty blatant about it. Obfuscation attracts neither eyeballs nor clicks.
And after making stuff up to exonerate Google, you finish off with some political slurs.
But you forgot to include a car analogy in order to complete the Slashdot trifecta - so I'll help you out:
Google has been accepting advertising offering hot new sports cars to fuddy duddy old luxury car owners for years now, and continues to do so without a qualm. But now, they've taken a site that offers hot new motorcycles to fuddy duddy old motorcycle owners and declared that motorcycle owners may not advertise on the AdSense network.
Except you've built your case on one mistaken and dangerous assumption - that the civil rights of one individual are totally and completely dependent on the emotional status of another individual.
The problem being that your only justification for it being "right" seems to be because that satisfies Polly Klass' father. As I said above, that's a dangerous road to travel.
Due process means appearing before a jury of your peers, or at least before a judge, with an opportunity to face your accuser and to defend yourself - not that some bureaucrat makes out a report and then another bureaucrat throws away the key to your cell.
Furthermore, they're not making the decision to confine on the basis of evidence, they're making it on the basic of assumptions and one person's judgment.
If you aren't scared, you should be. Very scared.
Why? Because there's an awful lot of ocean of in the world, and an awful lot of air traffic, passenger and cargo across it.
I can easily believe this made the front page - Wikileaks is right up there with Wikipedia, Apple, and Google as the Slashdot editor's favorite stroke material. Make it look like Wikileaks is being threatened by Da Man and you have a 'perfect storm'.
Why be dubious? Shutting down Wikileaks in its entirety until the site is 'fully funded' practically screams his intentions from the rooftops. (Though I see now that he has relented and published a handful of 'time sensitive' material.)