"STAR WARS" - ANOTHER OUTRAGEOUS SCIENCE BOONDOGGLE
-----------Warren Smith Nov 2000-------------------

"Star wars" defense against nuclear-tipped missiles,
is an idea beloved by Edward Teller (the man who
was the inspiration for the fictional "Doctor Strangelove")
and his dupes, Presidents R.Reagan and G.W.Bush.

There are many reasons why Star Wars is 
necessarily going to be extremely expensive and
probably will not work. And it is obvious to all
that it is going to be far more expensive to build 
this defense, than the cost of upgrading one's offense
with the aid of, e.g., cheap "decoys", sensor "blinding"
methods, communications "jamming", paying off some
of the programmers to insert hacks into the code...
and other simple anti-star-wars offensive countermeasures
such as electromagnetic "pulse" attempts to destroy
the whole system, etc, to defeat Star Wars.  
All these anti-star wars measures
are cheap and low tech. In the past, defenses that cost far more
than the offense they were designed to stop, have unsurprisingly been 
regarded as bad defenses (e.g.: the Maginot line stationary forts 
versus tanks and airplanes); while defenses that cost far less 
than the offenses (e.g. Machine guns vs infantry charges in WW I)
were regarded as good defenses.  Reagan and Bush
have not explained why the rules have suddenly 
changed just for them.

Keep in mind that so far nobody has been able to prevent the vast
majority of old-style subsonic bomber planes from penetrating to 
their targets, so it seems a bit much to try to stop missiles in space.
The first time ever tried. With >99% successful stopping. In
less than 30 minutes from first warning.

So, Bush and company have now retreated to the stance that Star Wars,
while incapable of stopping a nuclear attack from an experienced
nuclear country, at least will hope to stop an attack from a
newcomer "rogue" country like North Korea.  So that is
the current justification for Star Wars - stopping North Korea.

OK, fine. Let us suppose every Star Wars dream
Edward Teller has ever had, actually is technically feasible,
and Star Wars really will work to stop the likes of North Korea
and Libya from bombing us with nuclear missiles. 

Well, use your mind. Is Libya, once it has a Nuke (or a few)
that it wants to use, going to then try to develop, at tremendous
expense, a space program? (Incidentally, if they were, then
it would probably be a lot cheaper for the USA to destroy their
space program by military action, than it would be to build Star
Wars.) Or is North Korea instead going to ship the Nuke to 
the target city in a tramp steamer or in a bale of marijuana
(the idea being that Reagan and Bush never were able to prevent
bales of marijauna from reaching Washington DC from foreign 
countries in great quantity and with high success ratios). 
Gee, I wonder. Well, the smuggler approach looks far, far
simpler and cheaper. It also has the advantage that nobody
will be able to tell where the Nuke originated (once it explodes)
causing revenge to be difficult or impossible.  It also has the
advantage that the smuggler will be able to set it off by remote
control (e.g. by dialing it up on a phone...) instantly at any time. 
This choice for North Korea looks like a "no brainer" to me. 
So, the incredibly expensive Star Wars Maginot Line will look on utterly
uselessly as somebody smuggles a Nuke into Washington DC
and sets it off. And who says they have to smuggle one?
I think the nukes are already there, already smuggled in, by
countries such as Russia, China, and whoever else wanted to, >20 years
ago, waiting to be set off by remote control. I mean, if they haven't
done this, their military planners are complete morons.  I mean,
we are talking about the people that dig secret tunnels under each other's
embassies as a matter of course. Do you think they are suddenly
going to get squeamish when it comes to world destruction methodologies?
(In case you are wondering if there is any way to detect a hidden Nuke,
the answer is: no. That was the reason the US public was previously
being sold the gazillion dollar "mobile MX-missile shell game" plan
by the same people.)

It is irresponsible to base a multi-billion dollar (if not trillion dollar)
defense policy (indeed arguably the fate of the entire world is
riding on it) on utter fantasy. The frightening reality is, there
is no possible defense, and simple logic (no Edward Teller is needed!)
is capable of telling us that.  The only way to try to "defend"
is actually through preventive measures such as diplomacy, 
trade, "mutual assured destruction", etc.
This may not sound very sexy or promising, but it is all we have got.
So quit living in a fantasy.