re: #7 Political Atheist

We are not at the apex of missile defense. We are at the beginning. The replacement for kinetic defenses is energy beam, or lasers of some kind. Also in it’s infancy. But then look at the infancy of aerospace and see where we are now. Unless they get rail gun warheads to guide somehow. That stuff is what is years away. So are sophisticated ICBM’s from rogue states.

This is my point, though. We’re at the apex in comparative missile defense: right now, after having spent billions and billions of dollars, we, the most militarily advanced country on the planet by a massive margin, have a very iffy chance to defend against a single missile from one of the most backwards military powers.

Countermeasures to our interceptors will always be easier to design than designing interceptors will be. In order for interceptors to work, we also need to have near-perfect knowledge of what’s coming at us.

Each and every expensive aerospace / military program gets caught in the “what if we feed the poor instead” argument. About that supposed false dichotomy you mentioned…?

What about it? If you spend money on one thing, you really can’t spend money on another thing. If you want us to spend more money in general, to raise taxes to pay for the missile defense program, then sure, it becomes a false dichotomy. But the money has already been spent, up till now, and it’s been spent on missile defense instead of on other things.

Have you noticed this is the second topic in which we seem to disagree on the “fighting chance” at defense? Twice now I’m more in favor of the fighting chance tools being available when you oppose them mostly. That’s an interesting peek at a difference in our world views.

This is a flagrantly false representation of my views and a little bit weird back-patting on your part. It is not that I don’t want us to have a fighting chance, it’s that I don’t think this does give us a fighting chance. It gives us the illusion of a fighting chance. At the cost of billions and billions of dollars.