Quote:
Originally posted by james t kirk
Missile threats from who?
Terrorists don't own missiles, probably never will. NMD is just donald rumsfled's folly.
But a determined terrorist could buy a nuclear warhead from the likes of north Korea and as 2wolves said, just put it on an old freighter. (I never thought of that angle.)
Even easier, just send it via UPS.
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Okay, ignoring my point about the technology of a missile defense network being applicable to short range missiles, you are thinking only in terms of the present. National defense can not take this approach. There are overall trends going on in the world that have nothing to do with terrorism. In fact, it could be argued that the pre emptive invasion of Iraq has made this more of an issue than before as countries without nuclear capabilities rush to build them in order to make a pre emptive strike against them too dangerous. Throw in that missile technology is becoming more readily available and the expertise to build/use it is more prevalent than ever before.
I don't want to hijack the thread to be about which countries are most politically unstable and may have reason for missile attacks in the future but I will also throw out one more justification for research into missile defense. That's protection of our troops. The technology developed in this program can and will filter down to our troops on a smaller scale. Even if that only means that detecting short range, low flying missile firings is improved, it will mean valuable minutes for troops to get prepared.
Again, I am not arguing about whether ports should or should not be protected. It should NOT be an either or decision. There are plenty of non-critical programs that could be cut to allow for both.