bagelche
Member
Registered: Jan 2001
Location: Great Barrington, MA
Posts: 20 |
quote:
Originally posted by Burns
What's with these people? The test was not "rigged" despite what ever offshoot news you read (pardon the intentional pun). The test did exactly what it was meant to do, in the manner it was supposed to. No, the purpose was not to boost support for Bush's plan.
What is it with these people, huh? You're absolutely right that the test did what it was supposed to do, namely make it appear that the project is more successful and possible than actual results would have achieved. These wacky ideas come from such fringe news sources as "Defense Week"... doesn't seem so offshoot to me. However, yes the purpose was to provide support for the project, which at this point is a heavy point of the "Bush plan". So yes, that was a significant purpose of the test.
quote:
If you look at it, this all started BEFORE Bush ever got into office. I've been working with this type project for several years. The project started back in the Reagan years with "Star Wars" (not the movie). The test used the GPS tracker because that was the stage of testing that was needed at the time of the test. Neither Bush nor the leaders of the US had anything to do with the GPS tracker in the test.
No one is disagreeing that this started before Bush came into office. That's not the point at all. The plan was ill-conceived politically, economically, and scientificly since it started, however the Bush administration is pushing forward with it HEAVILY, at the expense of more diplomatic, economical, and strategicly sensible alternatives.
I would question exactly how you define "the leaders of the US", but whilst it may not have been Bush's or his administration's plan to put the GPS in the missile, they certainly are working the PR spin on the story in favor of a "successful" test which the media has been accepting at face value.
quote:
There is also a misconception about the GPS tracker. The supposed news article said something about it being similar to a satelite beacon. The reason for this is that the intercepting missile will be in contact with satellites that tell it where the target is.
That rather seems to be the whole point of this. As I understand your explanation, the incoming missile had a GPS installed in it in order that it could be tracked by a satellite whose data would allow us to lock an intercepting missile on the target. In other words, it was rigged. These "rogue states" they keep talking about are NOT going to be putting GPS systems in their missiles for us to lock onto. That is the whole point of why the test was a ruse.
Quoting from the author of the Salon story:
The Defense Week article revealed that "a prototype interceptor was able to find a target warhead partly because the target signaled its location to the interceptor for much of the flight and the transmission formed the basis of the targeting orders, according to officials and documents."
And, Five days after the test, former Assistant Secretary of Defense Philip Coyle stated before Congress that the missile-deflecting umbrella envisioned in Pentagon briefings to promote NMD "is a practical impossibility."
-bagelche
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08-21-2001 06:48 AM
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