Hey Firaxis! SDI doesn't work!

[Alexander's Horse]

So why is it foolproof in civ II?

I guess it was meant to be a reward for the infamous "relatively peaceful builder's". Who wants some loser to upset the chess board right at the end of the game right?

But nothing is foolproof and at the very least SDI should be attackable, especially given the strong possibility that SDI will NEVER WORK!

[Ming]

Actually AH... SDI isn't fool proof in CivII. You can still use a spy to deliver a nuke to the city
And plus, how many other things in civ AREN'T realistic

[Provost Harrison]

I agree with Ming. The purpose of the game is, yes, to be a simulation, but not an absolutely replication of history.

Besides, I liked the satellite system in SMAC

[Kropotkin]

true, so True. It's not a perfect simulation but what's really the effort of putting in a lets for arguments sake say 10% that a nuke gets thru the defences?

There was quite a few ideas about how one could 'fool' thr SDI system back in the day. One that I can remember was to overload the system with a huge number of fake missiles so that a real one could get thru and nuke the enemy to the stoneage or worse.

Besides, the game is more fun if unpredictable things happens now and then.

[Solver]

Ming starts to make the same grammatical mistakes I do.

[easy]

Yes, add earthquake and tornado to the game.
For earthquake, your city population will decrease, units around the area will be hurt, even died, some city improvements may also be destoryed.

Originally posted by Kropotkin
Besides, the game is more fun if unpredictable things happens now and then.

[Grumbold]

For the ultimate in unexpected disasters, set your PC to automatically shutdown at a set time regardless of whether it is in use, then take all watches and clocks out of the room and disable autosave. Can you win before a sudden massive meteor strike heralds the end of the world?

[Kropotkin]

Grumbold: Just disabling the autosave will have that effect, windows XX will do the rest of it for us automatically

btw, easy. Why the habit of posting an answer and then quote? Seems highly irregular...

[Pagan]

Star Wars does not work yet. However, the scientists are making progress. There was another successful anti-missile test only a month ago in the Pacific.

The idea of a missile defense shield is not to protect from all types of nuclear attack, only from ICBMs and perhaps theatre (tactical) weapons.

You may also note that the Patriot defense system had limited success against SCUD missiles (tactical) in the Golf War.

If President Bush gets his way, a missile defense shield may become a reality. I, for one, hope that Bush does get his way.

[Inverse Icarus]

hey you propaganda influenced fuc|(nut, the SDI hit a target on it's fourth try.

[Pagan]

That’s right. They had one success earlier, so that’s two out of four. Not bad for technology that’s in its infancy.

Did you ever notice that people like UberKruX (who keep claiming things can’t be done) are always wrong? Examples: flight, landing on the moon, submarines, etc.

I have an open mind. That doesn’t make me a propaganda influenced fuc|(nut.

[Inverse Icarus]

well, as a canadian i will pass off ure idiocy as canadianess.

i am DEFENDING the SDI system, they said it didnt work and i say it HIT A TARGET.

Did you ever notice that people like UberKruX (who keep claiming things can’t be done) are always wrong?

show me where i said it couldnt be done.

let me break it down canada boy.

hey you: Greeting.
propaganda influenced fuc|(nut: (insult to non believers)
, the SDI hit a target on it's fourth try. (proof it worked)

well i obviously am slamming that poor missle defence system.

woe is me.

[down th' pub]

Pagan, if I read the newspaper correctly the target vehicle was carrying a GPS transponder to allow the kill vehicle to locate it. 2 out of 4 isn't a great result if you're playing with loaded dice.

[tniem]

Two out of four in a controlled testing environment. I feel so safe.

The sure numbers of an SDI do not work. A missile hitting a missile will only work so many times. Even if Bush does deploy such a system, it will only shield the country from like 20 nukes.

So then, China builds a few more just to make sure they can still hit us at any time. And rogue states carry a nuke in a suitcase.

So I applaud Bush's solution to this massive problem of nuke attacks that have been happening so often here in the U.S. Wait, my country is the only nation on Earth to ever use a nuclear weapon, then we need a shield!

[kolpo]

Against every offense is there a defense against every defense is there an offense. This is endless the only result are stronger weapons that use more tax payer money.

What for example if you make for every true nuclear rocket 200000 false rocket who all(and the nuclear) have a very cold engine that makes it hard to track them, Who fly at complet different attitudes and speeds then the system is designed for, whole all have the same amount of plutonium(just like the nuclear) in them so they give the same radiation. There is off course a solution for this: a new better ABM defence that uses more tax payer money, where they will design new misiles against who use even more tax payer money where they will design a new ABM against that...

The Russias have already designed nuclear rockets to avoid ABM and that are most likely capable of infiltrating the USA ABM system and off course predicts "the balance of power" that China will also try to design rockets that can inflitrate that sytem and that they will also try to build an ABM system where the USA will have to devolop new rockets againsts that cost tax payer money. The only long term result is: more tax payer money to the military industry.

[Harlan]

Don't believe the hype. This story is from salon.com.


The rigged missile defense test

The target destroyed in the "successful" defense shield test contained a global positioning satellite beacon that made it easier to detect. Why has the media mostly ignored the story?

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Joe Conason


July 31, 2001 | The Pentagon and the Bush administration are determined to sell the American people a national missile defense system that will probably increase tensions with allies and adversaries and will surely cost more than $100 billion. Their latest marketing exercise took place on the evening of July 14, when a "kill vehicle" launched from the Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific smashed into a rocket sent up from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

Precisely according to plan, the target was instantly vaporized on impact -- and along with it, or so the Pentagon's uniformed salesmen hoped, the perennial concern that missile defense won't work. With the cooperation of major news organizations and conservative pundits, that test provided an enormous propaganda boost to the Bush proposal, which conveniently enough had been brought up to Capitol Hill by Defense Department officials just two days earlier.

There was only one thing that all the happy salesmen forgot to mention about their latest test drive. The rocket fired from Vandenberg was carrying a global positioning satellite beacon that guided the kill vehicle toward it. In other words, it would be fair to say that the $100 million test was rigged.

No wonder, then, that Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish, the Air Force officer who oversees the NMD program, told the Washington Post on the eve of the test that he was "quietly confident" about the outcome. The general knew about the GPS beacon, while the reporters didn't.

This rather significant aspect of the July 14 mission remained hidden in the fine print until a few days ago, when the Pentagon confirmed the role of the GPS device to a reporter for Defense Week magazine. But of course most Americans still don't know why the test functioned so smoothly, because the Defense Week scoop was either buried or ignored by the mainstream media, which had so obediently celebrated the technological breakthrough two weeks earlier.

And as Kadish later acknowledged, each of the previous three tests -- two of which failed anyway -- had also involved the use of a guidance beacon. (To longtime observers of the missile-defense effort, this latest news recalled the notorious "Star Wars" scandal, when investigators discovered that a target had been secretly heated to ensure that it would be picked up by the interceptor's infrared sensor.)

Reuters was among the few news organizations that bothered to cover the Defense Week story. The wire service quoted a Pentagon official who "conceded that real warheads in an attack would not carry such helpful beacons." Probably not, although we can always hope that the Iranians or the North Koreans or the Chinese will attach to each incoming nuke a loudspeaker that screams "come and get me!"

Unfortunately, weapons experts agree that even the most primitive enemy missiles are more likely to carry a very different kind of accessory, namely, decoys designed to fool the computerized sensors aboard the kill vehicle.

While the missile launched from Vandenberg on July 14 did spit out a single Mylar balloon as a symbolic decoy, that scarcely challenged the kill vehicle's capacity to select the correct target -- particularly because there was no GPS beacon on that shiny balloon. In real warfare, an incoming missile is expected to deploy multiple decoys of varying shapes and sizes to lure the kill vehicle astray. Past tests have indicated that these simple fakes work far more reliably than the complex technology designed to detect them.

Eventually, the truth about the inherent problems of national missile defense may emerge in congressional hearings. But meanwhile, the Pentagon and the Bush White House mean to stifle any dissent about the capabilities of their favorite toy. They have repeatedly sought to reclassify documents that show that the system doesn't function as advertised. And within the past few weeks, they have blatantly attempted to intimidate Theodore Postol, a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology who is the country's leading critic of missile defense.

In early July, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education, Defense Department officials asked MIT to confiscate the reclassified report from Postol and to "investigate [his] actions." At first MIT president Charles Vest, no doubt worried about millions of dollars in defense research grants to his university, moved to comply with that request. Only when Postol protested publicly did MIT back down.

Bogus tests and bullied critics are the hallmarks of a defense establishment that fears facts. With billions in contracts at stake and bellicose ideologues in power, the salesmen for national missile defense must conceal the many defects in their dangerous product. And the press corps, reverting to the bad habits of the Cold War, has done little so far to penetrate the Pentagon's propaganda.

So when the next "successful" missile-defense test is announced with fanfare and fireworks, don't necessarily believe what you hear. You are the buyers targeted by this massive sales effort -- and you should most certainly beware.

[Grumbold]

The last time the defence industry was threatened with massive loss of revenue Kennedy got shot....but of course that is just a conspiracy theory.

[Kropotkin]

...So Bush Jr. will live forever!

[TechWins]

SDI has the potential to become 100% effective. Right now in the beginning of a lot of future testing it's about 50% effective. This is of course in testing, which means the effectiveness is even lower than this in real war. I'm not sure why so many people are down on this for the fact that it isn't 100% effective yet. If you're reasons against are that it costs too much money than it is slightly more understanding. It is only slightly more understanding because if it does become 100% effective than it well worth the money to save millions of lives. If it doesn't become 100% effective than it was only worth the try in the defence point of view but a big dissapoint in the financial view. Every major technological improvement is going to take some time to become 100% effective. Give it more time for it to become 100% effective until then it looks like it's on the right track.

[Harlan]

Oh, and regarding the myth of the Patriot missile working mentioned above, here is some text from the Frontline documentary on the Gulf War, airing January 9, 1996:


NARRATOR: America had rushed Patriot missiles to Israel and Saudi Arabia to shot down Scuds. In the skies above Tel Aviv and Riyadh, they dueled with the incoming missiles. The Patriots got as close as they could and detonated, filling the air with shrapnel.

The Patriot became a symbol of resistance, damping down the pressure for Israel to join the war.

Pres. GEORGE BUSH: The Patriot is 41 for 42 - 42 Scuds engaged, 41 intercepted! I view it as an honor to be here, to come to Raytheon, the home of the men and women who built the Scud-busters. We're very, very proud of you.

NARRATOR: The Israeli government thought all this was nonsense. The Pentagon was claiming a kill every time a Patriot exploded near a Scud and the Israelis simply didn't believe the American figures.

On the ground in Tel Aviv, experts from the Israeli military analyzed the damage every time a Scud fell to earth. What they discovered was kept top secret so as not to inflame Israeli public opinion.

MOSHE ARENS, Israeli Defense Minister: When I met President Bush in Washington, we got into something of an argument because he was convinced that the Patriots were doing a great job. I told him that, at the very best, the intercept ratio maybe was 20 percent intercept probability. He asked me what I meant by that and I said that maybe out of every 10 Scuds the Patriots tried to intercept, they might succeed with two. But in retrospect, I was overstating the case. I think that probably not a single Scud was intercepted by a Patriot.

NARRATOR: After the war, the Army downgraded the Patriot's overall success rate against Scuds to sixty percent. But that figure was hotly disputed and other studies placed the kill rate much lower. A GAO study of classified military records said the Army really had "high confidence" that twenty five percent of the Scuds were destroyed, but that there was no way to conclusively determine how many targets the Patriots had killed.

--------------

The above is actually being overly generous by only mentioning the Army's own estimate in the GAO study (a US Government study), and not the other results of that study. Most non-Army estimates now hover between 10 and 0 percent. The scud missile were so bad they tended to break up in flight without any assistance.

Don't believe the hype! Missile intereception technology is still far off from working, and will never work 100%, because of the many constantly evolving countermeasures sure to be used.

And Techwins, given that there has not been one successful non-rigged test yet, I would call that a success rate of 0% for SDI so far.

[down th' pub]

I do have one additional concern/query. So suppose we have a situation where we have incoming nukes, we somehow manage to shoot one down, what happens to the warhead then? If it detonates anyway, just at an alernative site is that an awful lot better?

[Provost Harrison]

Originally posted by Grumbold
For the ultimate in unexpected disasters, set your PC to automatically shutdown at a set time regardless of whether it is in use, then take all watches and clocks out of the room and disable autosave. Can you win before a sudden massive meteor strike heralds the end of the world?

Heh, you could just live in California alternatively, I am sure their power supply will take care of that for you

Back to nukes anyway. I would expect that the system for nuclear weapons is going to be a bit more sophisticated anyway, so who knows how the SDI factor will work. Look at SMAC, it works completely and utterly different to Civ2, for example...

[Kropotkin]

I'm not sure why so many people are down on this for the fact that it isn't 100% effective yet. If you're reasons against are that it costs too much money than it is slightly more understanding.

So we can't 'be down on it' because 1) it's breaking of the ABM threaty 2) It's a potential threat to the gobal security and powersystem?

[down th' pub]

My understanding is that Mr. President isn't prepared to honour a treaty unless he signed it himself.....

[Kropotkin]

Considering that he can't write that kind of narrows 'em down.

The whole worlds biggest amusement is making mean jokes about the worlds mightiest man. Isn't it great?

[tniem]

Originally posted by TechWins
SDI has the potential to become 100% effective.

Repeat after me, nothing is 100% effective. Nothing.

Right now in the beginning of a lot of future testing it's about 50% effective.

As shown above, that is not the case at all.

I'm not sure why so many people are down on this for the fact that it isn't 100% effective yet.

I am down on it because it will never be very effective. With decoys, multiple missiles to overload the system, and terrorists nukes there is no way that a NMD will protect the US.

If you're reasons against are that it costs too much money than it is slightly more understanding. It is only slightly more understanding because if it does become 100% effective than it well worth the money to save millions of lives.

Why is it going to save a single life? How many nukes have been shot at the US in the last 50 years?

I don't recall a single one. Not one life has been lost in the US because of a nuclear bomb and yet suddenly we need a missile defense shield that will protect all of us.

And for those of you that don't believe MAD will work with rogue nations, look at Iraq. I listened on NPR a year ago to a show that was asking why the Iraqis did not use their chemical weapons during the Gulf War. They had them and they were ready to use them. So why didn't they use them?

It turns out, we told Saddam that if he used them, we were going to retaliate with nukes. Now whether we would have or not, he did not chance it. He knew that if we were serious, than he was assured destruction. So yes MAD does work with rogue nations, but you won't hear it from Bush.

If it doesn't become 100% effective than it was only worth the try in the defence point of view but a big dissapoint in the financial view. Every major technological improvement is going to take some time to become 100% effective. Give it more time for it to become 100% effective until then it looks like it's on the right track.

It will never be 100% effective, remember nothing is ever 100% effective. My guess this will never get above 25% acurate. So yes I am going to oppose spending millions of dollars on a system that will never work and even if it does will serve no practical purpose.

[Darkknight]

Umm I live in Ireland and generally the media doesn't feed us American propaganda but we have been hearing of these tests. Just about all the leaders of Europe are condemning it. Mainly because if Bush does get his wish (Not his wish of global warming the one where he wants to look like he's invulnerable )
we have the following possible situation.

An American "patriot" has been trusted with the blueprints/codes of the new SDI system and either by mistake or on purpose relays them to a friend in Beijing.

Chinese Leader : We are invulnerable with this marvellous system.

Chinese #1: Yes oh all-powerful one

Chinese Leader : We can attack whoever we want and destroy them before they can respond.

Chinese #1: Yes oh all-powerful one

Chinese Leader : Well Jolly good show then lets trot on over to our missile silo's and let those American blighter's have one or two eh?

Chinese #2: Righty-oh, Tally Ho chaps!

America gets nuked, surprise surprise SDI doesn't work and so America lobs a few back at China and well you know the rest from there.

[korn469]

ok first what you have to understand is that George W. Bush's National Missile Defense (NMD) is a different entity than Ronald Regan's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI)

NMD is an anti-ballistic missile system designed to stop either an accidental launch from an established nuclear power, or a small attack from a rogue nation like Iraq or north Korea...from what i have read, NMD will have 50-100 missile interceptors when it is finally completely

however the primary hurdle to overcome with NMD isn't technical (though a great many challenges still faces it) the thing most likely to stop NMD is the federal budget surplus, or more precisely the lack of a budget surplus...current estimates are that the non social security/Medicare federal budget surpluses are going to be very small if they even exist...the white house announced a change in accounting practices that makes the non-social security/Medicare about 4 billion dollars bigger...also at the end of the week the white house is also announcing cuts in the military

they are cutting an aircraft carrier battle group, 15k army troops in Europe, 30k national guard soldiers, and 3 air force squadrons in part to help pay for NMD

read about it here
Accounting changes
military cuts

and i also thought that Bush and Gore both promised to pay down the national debt which is trillions of dollars...unless they use social security/Medicare surpluses they won't be able to do that

then not only is NMD sucking money from the conventional military and social programs...once it is built all it will do is protect us from Iraq and north Korea...so the united states is no more powerful than what it was, Russia and China would both be able to overcome the little protection it offers, and the US conventional military is going to be smaller meaning that China therefore becomes more powerful relative to the US even if it doesn't expand its military

the best time to hit a ICBM is when it is either on the ground or when it is in the boost phase...the airforce has a 747 with a laser that can rupture an ICBMs fuel tank...however it's not fully operational yet...but it even seems like the old phoenix missile system from the F-14 tomcat or a new very long range missile could be fitted on a 747, or a B-52 or other large plane and then those planes just hover above the rogue nation ready to strike at possible ICBM launches when they are in the relative slow liftoff stage...right now the US and the UK controls most of the skies over Iraq, and i'm sure that it would be easy to do the same over North Korea, or Iran, or whoever else is considered a threat...there was also a proposal by the navy to redesign the Aegis Missile system for ABM duty, and then the Navy would just park a Aegis Cruiser close to the rogue nation so it would be able to hit an ICBM on liftoff

this can be done...but it depends most on the budget surplus...if the economy tanks there isn't going to be a NMD system or if Putin and Bush can't work out an agreement over the ABM treaty and Russia starts putting multiple warheads back on their nukes then i'm sure congress will balk at NMD...however if the economy goes back to being better than before then most likely Bush will build an NMD system to better protect his presidency from a democratic opponent more than a rogue nation

also NMD can't stop terrorist with nukes

SDI is a proposed ABM system that in theory would protect the US from a Massive Soviet nuclear strike...though some have suggested that in practice SDI would be coupled with fleets of stealth bombers that would penetrate Soviet airspace and launch a pre-emptive first strike on Soviet ICBMs and that SDI would have to counter a Soviet retaliatory nuclear strike

however SDI would almost certainly have failed, and the idea of SDI (which could have been a bluff to encourage the strained soviet economy to spend even more on its military) died with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991

SDI would have had to intercept massive numbers of Soviet ICBMs, most of which were deep in Soviet territory, in highly defended airspace so the only way to hit these ICBMs in their highly vulnerable liftoff phase would have been to place, either missiles or laser or particle beams on satellites...if the missiles survived through the liftoff phase then the challenge would increase enormously

first until arms control banned multiple warheads, many missiles in both the US and Soviet arsenals carried them...that means that each missile would turn into a much larger number of decoys and warheads...each one of the nuclear warheads would have to be intercepted...if you fail to intercept all of those (which numbered in the thousands) then somewhere is going to get nuked

for those of you who are interested in learning more i found a site full of information about the history of the space arms race

http://www.fas.org/spp/military/doco...-18/part01.htm

here is a FAQ that contains just about everything you need to know about nuclear arsenals

http://www.fas.org/nuke/hew/Nwfaq/Nfaq0.html

but besides SDI not really existing in the real world...

100% effective SDI in civ isn't good for balance, while M.A.D. is...SDI lets one player launch nuclear attacks at will, without fear of reprisal, while M.A.D when coupled with more powerful nukes should make everyone think twice before using nukes...if nukes do completely destroy a city then even an enemy civ with five nukes should scare you (that's your five best cities and all the wonders they contain gone forever)...i don't know if firaxis will make nukes destroy a city it has good sides and bad, but if they did then M.A.D. would be absolutely essential...try playing SMAC with the following change...give missiles a range of 99 and a play on a small map where both sides have an equal number of cities and nukes...and see what it's like where the person with first strike capability has an enormous advantage

[Urban Ranger]

Will MD/SDI work? Clearly, in some sort of indefinite sense, yes. However you have to look at it in a practical way, in which case, MD won't work.

Of course, this is just a game, and a player can always send a spy into a city to destroy it's SDI first.

[Alexander's Horse]

Getting back to the topic

There should be some modifiers for SDI. It shouldn't be 100% effective.

For example, if you are the most technologically advanced civ maybe it should be more effective, like say 75%. Maybe if you put it in all your cities, damage might be lessened, or pollution from blasts reduced, etc. etc.