Apopuli.120
net.space
utcsrgv!utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!G:asa
Tue Mar 16 13:33:44 1982
High Frontier, or, Pigs in Space, Episode Foo
So you like the video game scenario, do you, bud? Luke Sky-
walker's lasers blasting Darth Vader's missiles before they reach their
targets? Thanks, but I'll take my chances with Dr. Helen Caldicott,
the knee-jerk nukies, and the no-win pacifists.
In an article titled "Laser Weapons" in the December 1981
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN (vol. 245, no. 6, pp. 51-57), Kosta Tsipis of MIT
discusses the potential of lasers as weapons, as assessed in a series
of workshops organized by the Program in Science and Technology for
International Security of the physics department of MIT. Tsipis states
that he and his colleagues have concluded that "lasers have little or
no chance of succeeding as practical, cost-effective defensive
weapons" (p. 52). The article concludes:
"On balance, then, laser weapons operating in the atmosphere
offer no clear advantage over existing weapons for close-range defense.
In addition they can be impeded by weather, they cannot operate
effectively beyond a range of a few kilometers, they are easier to
neutralize by countermeasures than ordinary projectiles or supersonic
missiles and they require a much better tracking system. Under these
circumstances it is difficult to see how the development and deployment
of such fragile, complex and expensive weapons would improve the
military capability of a nation" (p. 57).
You don't have to be a no-win pacifist to object to billions of
tax dollars being pissed away on unworkable Buck Rodgers weaponry such
as the B-1 bomber, the MX missile system, and (now) High Frontier
lasers...and that well-known knee-jerk nukie Admiral Rickover recently
stated before the Joint Economic Committee of Congress (apropos of
nuclear-powered ships) that he would "sink them all." Rickover's
scathing indictment of private sector ripoffs and Defense Department
wastefulness (not to mention his remarks on nuclear war) make
interesting reading: much of the text of his prepared statement
appears in the March 18, 1982, number of the NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS
(pp. 12-14).
John Hevelin
...ucbvax!g:asa
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