After this was published, I believe the US and USSR concluded that there was a fundamental problem: Devices that block missiles cost much more than a missile.<p>Assuming the cost gap narrowed, one side could theoretically outspend the other (by a little), forcing the other side to make more missiles, including them dummy missiles, which are much cheaper than nukes.<p>In response, the missile defense side would need to make more missile defense systems, and the cycle would continue.<p>Basically, it creates a situation where the Nash equilibrium leads to one side going bankrupt, and being vulnerable to a first strike.<p>Rather than break the mutually assured destruction equilibrium, the US and USSR ultimately decided not to build these systems.<p>Of course, weapons manufacturers keep trying to revive the idea, as it leads to infinite military expenditures...
Very interesting, also it comes before the news that the nuclear pumped X-Ray laser concept came about from misreading the results of a test. Teller used this faulty data to imagine a satellite system that could shoot down 10s of missiles from each satellite. When that seemed to be 'too little', the capabilities of these satellites jumped by an two orders of magnitude twice, each time in response to criticism.<p>"It might be possible to generate as many as 100,000 independently
aimable beams from a single x-ray laser module, each of
which could be quite lethal even to a distant hardened object
[e.g., an RV] in flight. " <a href="https://larouchepub.com/eiw/public/1988/eirv15n44-19881104/eirv15n44-19881104_018-status_of_the_x_ray_laser_the_ex.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://larouchepub.com/eiw/public/1988/eirv15n44-19881104/e...</a><p>This was due to an imagined gain of 10^6 to 10^12 over the xray output of a single device. In the PDF it is given as fact that they were able to achieve these gains, where as it was found that there was never any evidence of any x-ray lasing gain found in any nuclear test.
I hope there is a shit ton more devs interested in national security and military application development than there was 3 years ago. If you don't know yet, even if we don't want war it can fucking land on your doorstep (or someone else's).
SpaceX has a contract for this...<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink#Military_capabilities" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink#Military_capabilities</a><p>Also interesting bio on Elon's friend: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin#Career" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin#Career</a>
Hello Dr. Teller...(page 21)<p>> These various programs and policy recommendations came to a head in President Reagan's March 23 "Star Wars" speech. Reagan had been interested in high-tech defense systems from the years he was Governor of California. his interest in this area grew during the 1980 Presidential electoral primaries with the advice of Dr. Edward Teller (Lawrence Livermore Laboratory). In late 1981, Teller met with Lt. Gen. Daniel Graham (US Army, ret.) and Karl Bendetsen (Hoover Institution) at the Heritage Foundation, where the three formed a small group on space policy and continued to offer advice to Reagan.
Ballistic Missile Defense is irrelevant when the enemy has this: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Status-6_Oceanic_Multipurpose_System" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Status-6_Oceanic_Multipurpose_...</a>