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I remember when Ronald Reagan announced the Strategic Defense Initiative.
The press mocked it, calling it Star Wars.
I cannot help but notice that we're actually doing stuff mentioned in the SDI plans.
Stuff like intercepting ballistic missiles outside the atmo.
I was pretty young when that happened, I think I was in High School when the initiative was announced... I know the press were trying to mock him, but I know a lot of us going into the STEM fields who were also Star Wars fans probably took it a lot differently than they intended... Just me of course :-) I cannot really speak for others...
ReplyDeleteWe had functioning ABMs that worked, in the late 1960's. One of the joys of my childhood was watching Sprints and Spartans intercepting incoming warhead simulators launched from Vandenberg.
ReplyDeleteAnd we had a launchable ASat missile back in the 80's. Lauchable from an F-15. Scored direct kills against targeted dead satellites.
Lots more cool stuff. That actually worked. And the stuff we have actually works. Lasers for burning sensors and things like that.
SDI was an attempt to get back capability that we lost in the 1970's. Like the aforementioned ABMs and other neat stuff that was tossed away by Congress after the purges following Nixon's resignation. And the horrid Carter years.
There were also treaties that shut down ABM deployment and ASAT, back when Brezhnev was stagnant but conciliatory. With Putin and Xi in charge, we should go full gas on ABM and ASAT because they are neither
DeleteThere actually were some problems with the idea. Even if you can intercept missiles and bombers, there are other ways to deliver nukes. HOW many freighters and freight containers come into US ports every day?
ReplyDeleteWell, then let's just fucking give up then.
DeleteThey outnumber us too.
I fail to understand. Missile defense cannot, all by itself, render all nuclear weapons perfectly harmless forever. Yes, and? Is there something that can?
ReplyDeleteAs a matter of fact, I made a very similar argument this week that Reagan has been vindiated on "Star Wars". So many of the things that libtards found to be science fiction in the 1980s have actually happened in the last 40 years. You can't stop every nuke, but some of the ways that were supposedly un-possible work now.
ReplyDelete-swj