Avoiding the next nightmare: We need to put the missile-defense program on emergency fast forward

Washington Times ^ | Friday, November 2, 2001 | Edwin Feulner

[JohnHuang2]

Pretend for a moment it was Israel, rather than the United States, that was hit by the attacks of September 11. Would the world now be waging the same war against terrorism, with the same arsenal of weapons and the same intensity?

[JohnHuang2]

Quote of the Day by Ray in San Diego

[VRWC_Member428]

I'm all about hauling "Star Wars" out of the graveyard of discarded ideas, and continuing work where we left off. I remember watching a show that had a demonstration of the gun created as a test bed for SDI, the Strategic Defense Initiative. It shot a projectile which left a baseball sized hole in a plate of steel at least 1" thick. (The backstop was dozens and dozens of San Diego phone books)

This particular plan would only work on ICBMs. The gun is basically a satellite orbiting Earth. If a nuclear missile is launched, the satellite fires at the missile while it's in space, thus incapacitating the missile.

For a well-rounded defense, we would also need land-based anti-missile systems in case somebody launches a short-range missile.

But we are still left open for nuclear attack. Today I was thinking about how I would get a nuclear warhead into the country if I were a terrorist. I decided I would smuggle it in on a cargo ship, kinda the same way illegal Chinese immigrants sometimes make it into the country. Once the ship is in a US port, it could be detonated if the port was in a large enough city, or the cargo container could be loaded onto a truck, driven into a major city, and detonated.

Hopefully, somebody in the government is reading this, and will take the necessary steps to guard against attacks from ocean-going vessels.