Quote:
Originally Posted by piece-itpete
And why would we walk away from missile defense?
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Three reasons:
1. It's destabilizing. It upsets the MAD (mutual assured destruction) paradigm and makes other nuclear states nervous and more prone to increase and improve their arsenals.
2. It's extraordinarily expensive, hasn't been proven to work (except in a few "canned" tests between Vandenberg AFB and Kwajalein), and is very easy to trick with dummy multiple warheads.
3. A ground based system doesn't have the flexibility of an ship-based system that has advantages both in deployment and targeting missiles in their vulnerable launch phase.
The American public has been sold a bill of goods on the whole Star Wars thing. We've been working on it for 30 years and have spent countless billions and have not yet developed a reliable, foolproof system.
What's puzzling to me is that Star Wars has become an article of faith for the GOP, a party that is inherently skeptical about science and government competency. Star Wars is the most complex and expensive thing the government has ever attempted IMHO.