
Scientist quits antimissile panel, saying task is impossible (1985) - Thimothy
http://www.nytimes.com/1985/07/12/world/scientist-quits-antimissile-panel-saying-task-is-impossible.html
======
dogma1138
Things have surely changes in 30 years, because effective missile defense is a
reality these days.

That said SDI wasn't a failure, the "Star Wars" part of it kinda was, but
sensor, targeting solutions, ABM (heck one of the original SDI systems - ERIS
is quite functional to this day) technologies serve as the base for the US's
current missile defense shield and they do work.

SDI also lead to quite a few significant developments in both chemical and
more importantly solid state laser.

Hubble also owes a large debt to SDI, there have been several experiments
regarding bouncing ground based lasers of mirrors in space in which they've
actually launched mirrors and bounced a laser over 1 or more of them. Both the
mirror manufacturing technology and more importantly the ground breaking
tracking and stabilization technology which allowed them to bounce of a laser
of a freaking tiny mirror in space were used in the HST.

~~~
rlucas
Can you elaborate on or source your claim about ERIS?

I'm genuinely interested in the historical and scientific question of the
viability of ABM at scale. I enjoyed a course perhaps 15 years ago with a
professor who asserted that the challenge was intractable due to the limits of
physics. Yet, I have also heard from a former aerospace engineer on the
Patriot system that such objections are poppycock.

ERIS was not in the matters we studied, though THAAD and the then-recent
midcourse interceptor tests were.

~~~
dogma1138
Apperantly ERIS (Exoatmospheric Reentry-vehicle Interceptor Subsystem) wasn't
deployed directly but transferred into THAAD and GMD.
[http://astronautix.com/lvs/eris.htm](http://astronautix.com/lvs/eris.htm)

Scale is a different question, it's a matter of number of interceptors vs
number of threats.

Iron Dome and it's evolution Stunner/David's Sling(used the Radar, tracking
and core interceptor form ID with an added booster stage) are quite capable of
handling large salvos.

HAMAS attempted to saturate the Iron Dome missile defense shield with large
salvos of 30-60 launches but the system still continued to operate with a very
good success rate.

Now Iron Dome has an advantage over systems that would presumably be employed
to counter mainly nuclear threats as it can ignore targets that will not
directly hit populated areas which would be somewhat harder to ignore when
nukes are in play. Any leakage of munitions is also not as huge of a threat as
with nuclear warheads, but losing 2 cities instead of 40 is still worth every
penny if it ever will come to a nuclear exchange, and with a rogue actor /
single launch all of your interceptors can focus on a single target which
gives you very good leakage protection.

From my experience what scientists often miss is that a system doesn't have to
be 100% effective, and you also can have multiple systems (which is the
current doctrine, early/co-stage interception, exo-atmospheric interception,
terminal stage interception, near target interception etc.) and depending on
your target hit success rate use multiple interceptors.

Missile defense is very real, systems like Iron Dome are bigger technological
advancement than things like GMD they can intercept a target as small as a
mortar shell in under 30 seconds which one would never thought would've been
possible even 10 years ago.

However considering that 15 years ago systems like Arrow (2) and Agies/SM-3
were already in advance testing or already deployed with quite a successful
track record I'm not sure why a professor would argue that physics make it
impossible, It was never a question of physics to some extent more about
sensors, software, and the ability to actually terminally guide interceptors
well enough to hit anything, but even during the years of SDI some branches of
the program had successful intercepts.

------
Bud
Of course, we now know that the Reagan Administration knew that the "Star
Wars" anti-missile systems were not going to actually work. The goal was never
for them to work as advertised. The goal was to convince the USSR that they
would work, and force the USSR to spend huge amounts of money trying to keep
up. And it worked.

~~~
akiselev
Do you have any reading materials about the effects the SDI had on the Soviet
aerospace program? The only citations I can find from a cursory search don't
seem particularly reliable or authoritative in this matter (largely off hand
comments by talking heads, even Carl Sagan).

I hear this out economic strategy repeated often as a post-hoc justification
but based on first hand accounts (my maternal grandparents met while working
on the Sputnik rocket and my entire family lived through this period in the
USSR as engineers), my understanding is that although some spending in
defense/aerospace rose during that time, the writing was on the wall for the
USSR and it's space program by the late 70s. According to my grandparents it
was impossible to reconcile the propaganda with what they were experiencing as
engineers actually working in aerospace/defense. Apart from the politically
doomed Buran, there wasn't even any ambition to try and match the United
States except for geopolitical posturing.

~~~
TheCowboy
There were earlier reports of Soviet economic weakness that predate Reagan. As
early as 1975, Senator Moynihan had predicted the demise of the USSR for
economic and ethnic reasons. I think at best the policy accelerated the
process.

My view is that if the Soviet system was inherently inefficient, and it was,
then it should eventually lead to collapse or reform if left to its own
course. It didn't seem to necessitate such an wasteful expenditure that lead
to a collapse that was terribly managed. It's not difficult to imagine worse
scenarios where the Soviet nuclear arsenal played some role.

That said, Reagan's original argument for increased spending was that the
Soviet Union's military capability was relatively stronger.

~~~
dalke
"It's not difficult to imagine.."

Certainly. The question is, is there any actual evidence?

Quoting
[http://russianforces.org/podvig/2013/03/did_star_wars_help_e...](http://russianforces.org/podvig/2013/03/did_star_wars_help_end_the_col.shtml)
, which examines the topic:

> As could be expected, the data on the Soviet strategic programs in the 1980s
> clearly show that the U.S. policies and actions and its strategic buildup
> and the Strategic Defense Initiative program in particular, had a
> significant impact on the choices made by the Soviet leadership at that
> time. However, the nature of this influence, its mechanisms and the effect
> of the U.S. actions strongly indicates that these actions did not help bring
> the end of the Cold War.

> The new evidence on the Soviet response to SDI largely corroborates the
> prevailing view that the Soviet Union eventually realized that this program
> does not present a danger to its security, for it could be relatively easily
> countered with simple and effective countermeasures. The evidence also helps
> answer some important questions about the concerns that the Soviet Union had
> about the U.S. program, the reasoning behind the choices that the Soviet
> leadership made, and the process that led to those choices.

> ...

> The issue of the Soviet own program that was produced in response to SDI
> brings a question of whether the burden that it imposed on the Soviet
> economy was a factor in the decision of the Soviet leadership to initiate
> reforms or even in accelerating the demise of the Soviet Union. The answer
> to this question is most certainly negative. While the package of anti-SDI
> programs was supposed to be a massive effort, comparable in scale to its
> U.S. counterpart, very few of these projects were actually new. The most
> expensive programs, such as the Moscow missile defense system or the
> "Energiya-Buran" heavy launcher, or the second-tier programs like the "Skif"
> space-based laser, existed long before SDI. When they became part of the
> "D-20" or "SK-1000" programs, they did not require any additional commitment
> of resources. Most of the projects included in the package never went beyond
> paper research and those that did were among the least expensive ones.
> Overall, while the military spending was certainly putting a heavy burden on
> the Soviet economy, there is no evidence that SDI or the Soviet response to
> it increased that burden in any substantial way.[89] Documents show that the
> issues of effectiveness of the military programs or shifting resources to
> the civilian sector had not became prominent in the internal discussions
> until about 1988, when the key decisions about SDI and the response programs
> had already been made.[90]

~~~
TheCowboy
Sorry, I think I wasn't clear in what I was suggesting with the sentence:
"It's not difficult to imagine worse scenarios where the Soviet nuclear
arsenal played some role."

I meant outcomes such as where a fringe general in the USSR felt it was a
legitimate threat requiring a first strike, or an unmanaged collapse lead to
dissemination and use of nuclear weapons. Basically, a successful policy can
easily become a Pyrrhic victory.

But this is interesting information, thanks for sharing it.

------
qwerty_asdf

      The scientist, David L. Parnas, a professor at the 
      University of Victoria in Victoria, British Columbia
    

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Parnas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Parnas)

------
DanielBMarkham
Last week I got through reading "The Dead Hand", which I will plug again.
Great book. I saw and lived these things as a armed forces member and citizen.
It was really cool to finally be able to see behind the scenes.

The most amusing thing about the story of the end of the cold war was SDI.
Reagan, contrary to popular belief, was not a cowboy. His goal was actually to
completely eliminate nuclear missiles, and he told his staff this several
times. Whenever he said this, however, the clique of those in power went
berserko. How could he advocate such a thing! So they most always managed to
shut him down, prevent him from ever going public with his dream.

Gorbachev, likewise, was a prisoner of the system he was in. The armed forces
had a huge -- and mostly secret -- budget. They were into everything. They
were paranoid and highly suspicious of anything having to do with the U.S.
They were more and more detached from reality. For a while there, soviet spies
were instructed to start gathering clues that a surprise nuclear attack was
underway, even though nobody in the west had anything like that in mind. Given
that amount of craziness, Gorbachev's goal was never to end communism, it was
to open things up and try to make the system work better. He genuinely cared
for the little guy, and saw that the system was not working.

Additionally, the Soviets had reached the point where everybody in the system
(mostly) knew how messed up it was. They just couldn't do anything about it.
People wanted somebody, somehow to fix things.

During a meeting with a physicist, Reagan first heard the idea of a missile
defense. He latched on to it right away, although it took many months to go
public. What better way to eliminate nuclear weapons than to make them
obsolete? It wouldn't be offensive, it would be something to prevent damage.
Who could oppose that?

Now the funny part is that even though this was mostly just an idea in
Reagan's head, it drove the Soviet's crazy. How much work had been done? Did
the Americans have a working weapon? What technologies should we develop? The
natural Russian paranoia and distrust of the U.S. fed into what was just a
dream on the American side. (Yes, I understand that money was spent, but SDI
was something that was going to take decades. Initial progress was extremely
slow.)

So the Soviet armed forces spent all kinds of resources pouring over SDI and
trying to come up with a response. What did they fear? Space-based nuclear
weapons and nuclear-powered space-based lasers, not SDI itself. Finally they
came up with their own plan to create their own SDI -- a hugely expensive
program. After all, how could you plan to counter something that doesn't
currently exist? When the Soviet government looked at those projected
expenses, along with the failing economy, the lost war in Afghanistan, and
many other factors? It was obvious that something had to change.

It's a fascinating story because although the system on the U.S. side could
certainly shut down the president from doing something so radical as proposing
an elimination of nuclear weapons, what could they do about the guy just
having a dream? He had an idea. People have ideas. Nobody really knew how to
stop him from talking about his ideas. But the idea alone, whether it worked
or not, was just another straw on the camel's back that eventually brought
down a huge system of governance. Amazing story.

~~~
Zigurd
My anecdotally informed opinion is that Soviet science advisors thought the
Space Shuttle was key to making SDI work.

