We know missle defense won't protect us from suitcase bombs or russia or biological attacks or chemcial warfare so why do we want it. The missle defense only protects us from China and North Korea (if they have anything), right?

Well most civilized countrys wont use the weapons that you mentioned as a first attack maby a last attack but never the first ( unless your alquada ). YOU alwaya fire missles first. ALWAYS...or drop bombs

Missle defense has been a large sinkhole of resources with so much having been spent on it and no successful return. Someday, it may be feasible. It would be better to put the efforts into other areas.

Nobody right now would be affected by the Missle defense. China is friends with us and has no desire no create a great chinese parking lot in Bejing. Russia can swamp the missle defense and is friends with us. North Korea can't hit us. Iran doesn't have the capability. Iraq doesn't have the capability. We also don't have the money. It's like a person who doesn't have cable buying a big screen TV, they don't have a big use for it.

LOL as usual i disagree. This missle defense shield make america feel protected. America can fire a missle at planes and destroy them. I just wish america should of fired them at suspected planes that attacked the WTC

I am confused. I thought missle defense was the ability to knock missles out of the sky. If you are talking about the ability to shoot planes out of the sky, I am for them. That technology has been around a while and it works. Anti aircraft guns are not costly as well as missles to do the same.

Anti-Aircraft guns better know as flank isn't all that good. I thought that i heard somewhere that if you fly a certian altitude the flank wouldn't cause such a big problem. I believe that america should create a pre-empted missle attacks, in which they can fire at ANY suspected airplanes.

Missle defense protects us from missles, not airplanes. The USA is totally defended from long-range bombers. Bush just wants to protect us from ICBMs.

I would say that now that we are in the age of terrorism, missle defense would be anachronistic. Our enemies now are terrorists, which aren't going to be firing any missles from overseas. Missle defense was a good idea during the cold war. And I agree that it won't do much good now.

Yeah, this doesn't make sense so something else is going on. My suspicion is the initiative is based on economics, not national security. Hey, maybe something good will come of this--WPA and CCC built a lot of cool things. Do you suppose some of us will get our very own anti-ICBM goodies in our back yards?

When an enemy parks a nuclear submarine off our coast or sneaks an atom bomb into this country in a box explain how our missile fly swatter program is going to make us any more secure except in our dumb heads.

Something else is going on. The "Missile Defense Shield" is actually one of the scariest offensive weapons ever conceived.

Good point, Wertz. I've never seen a military toy that wasn't tried out on some population somewhere, except for the neutron bomb. Whatever happened to that thing? It was designed to kill but not harm infrastructure.

Um, sorry about instigating any nightmares or anything.

I think i'm going to throw in my two cents on this one.

To be down right honest, we the people dont really know what this program consists of. I'm reading lots of anti-missile defense editorials and comments. Its called a "crash job", "unproven technology", "uncertain risk" and we dont know if it is or is not.

I believe that it is not so. The feds, using common sense, would not give out its true capabilities. All the theorys running around have muddied the pool. They (i hope no illinois politicians are in on this ) are not going to build a pile of junk

Looks more like an offensive weapon to me as well.

A wise man, i believe it was Sun Tzu, said "The best defense is a good offense."

They arent going to mess with us if they know we are going to stomp the crap out of them with this critter.

*who, i dont know.

Travis

PS Didnt we have to pull out of a weapons treaty with Russia to build it?

Missile defense is necessary to protect US citizens from an incoming ICBM.

1) Why SHOULDN'T we be building up? China is...on a huge scale in fact. And now that a new guy has taken office over there, chances are, the buildup will quicken.

2) Missile defense treaty with Russia? bah! Moscow ALREADY HAS a missile defense around it. They broke the treaty years ago by doing that.

3) The treaty was with a country that no longer exists. (Soviet Union)

4) With points 2 & 3, we had every right to do what we did.

--cheers

I agree with you DP.

I'm skeptical that this weapon is really for shooting down ICBM's though. Either way, its good for us. Peace by deterrance?

I have a crazy idea...Maybe this critter is some kind of EMP (electromagnetic pulse) weapon that fritzes out the electronics of the missle, or plane, or tank, or terrorist bomb factory. The military has set up protection of its ships and planes from basic EMP effects. (Specificaly to protect from the EMP backlash of a Nuke.) So we know the technology is out there.

I believe point weapons can be developed to do this stuff. Maybe this is what it is.
Or....a shot from a satellite that shoves a stream of ionized particles through the atmosphere to a point...or a....the possiblilitys seem endless to me.

Whatever it is we could use it.

Well perhaps by investing hundreds of billions of dollars we will master the technique of hitting a bullet with a bullet even when the other side chooses the time and place of the attack. The question is will we be hitting the REAL BULLET or the cluster of dummy bullets that our attacker will undoubtedly be throwing out as a diversion?

There are also ways of delivering nuclear bombs other than by a long range land based ICBM. I mentioned two methods in my previous post.

Cheers