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From: yali@bnr-di.UUCP
Newsgroups: can.general
Subject: Re: Star Wars
Message-ID: <132@bnr-di.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 13-Apr-85 22:25:15 EST
Article-I.D.: bnr-di.132
Posted: Sat Apr 13 22:25:15 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 13-Apr-85 04:01:15 EST
References: <909@ubc-vision.CDN> <389@mnetor.UUCP> <1003@utcsri.UUCP>, <1014@utcsri.UUCP>
Organization: DI, Bell-Northern Research, Ottawa, Ontario
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In article 70 Tom West writes (in reference to the SDI):

>  Isn't much of this worry unfounded?  Is there any indication that the system
>is even going to work?  

>  In my opinion, the only point is what the money would have been spent on
>otherwise.  

Yes, serious technical questions have been raised as to the feasibility
of the scheme. However, it is worth bearing in mind that in practice
SDI may boil down to something that is less ambitious than the 
leakproof umbrella so grandiloquently described by President Reagan
in his public announcement. More likely (i.e., feasible) is a
system that is designed to protect a limited number of military targets, 
such as missile fields. Of course, such a system would work all the
better in conjunction with a first-strike policy, since if a large
proportion of the opposing side's missiles could be disabled in
their silos a
The potentially destabilizing effects of SDI have been catalogued by
numerous commentators; for instance, see the article by Bundy, Kennan,
McNamara, and Smith in the Winter 1984/85 issue of the journal 
Foreign Affairs.