Many
moons ago, there was a major gummit program that one would think
would have the military/industrial complex all happy and
squirmy as a box full of puppies. Gazillions of tax-payer bucks to
spend on pie-in-the-sky doodads to zap Soviet bang-sticks out of
existence before they could make us glow in the dark. Although Ronnie
Ray-gun's Evil Empire was fully stocked with engineers and physicists
every bit as bright as our own, theirs were always bogged down with a
type of gummit that universally fails.
Well,
lots of methods were being developed in parallel, gummit money was
pouring into the armed forces, universities, national labs, and
various spooky groups to make many proof-of-principle machines from
huge, ground-based chemical lasers to anti-ballistic missile
missiles. There were all varieties of scientific and press releases
declaring all varieties of near-term successes including the
space-based X-ray lasers. Now the X-ray lasers were probably the
meanest shooters in the showdown, each consisting of a very
sophisticated tracking/guidance system, the 200 individual
lasers, and a small, 2 to 4 thousand ton yield atomic bomb to provide
power to the lasers. If the Soviets decided to launch a first strike,
sensors on the platforms and separately in orbit would coordinate the
frying of missiles as soon as they cleared the atmosphere and since
each platform costs less to build than a fighter jet, it looked like
the era of the ICBM was coming to an end. For the Soviets. Not us.
Now the poor Soviets had all these sophisticated ''Star Wars''
defenses that could be used to render their gadgets no more effective
than a spitball. What's a poor Evil Empire to do? The rich, decadent
Westerners were eating their lunch, both figuratively and literally.
SDI grew and grew, the ground-based systems continued to advance, the
anti-missile missiles were coming along, albeit slowly and looked
like they would wind up as terminal defense as would the
aircraft-based laser. These systems all had holes that would allow a
certain number of nukes through, however, our science and skill with
the X-ray system made the best of the Soviet systems obsolete. We
won! Only three years after the beginning of SDI, the satellite
countries (Hungary, Latvia, Poland, etc.) were withdrawing and eight
years from the beginning of our defensive offense, the once mighty
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was vastly overspent, broken, in
turmoil, too ruined to ever compete in the Cold War.
The
winners write the history books.
There
was only one flaw. The X-ray laser didn't work. The fundamental flaw
was a 4th order instability, possibly impossible (that's an
engineering fighting word!) to overcome, and so esoteric that it was
easily overlooked by even the best.
We
didn't outspend the Soviets, especially on this, the panacea of all
the SDI menagerie. For a military system we spent damn-near nothing
(for a military system! ;o).
Boris
didn't call our bluff!
The
40 years of the Cold War ended.
No comments:
Post a Comment