Just like during the cold war

JH

When President Bush told the Russians a few years ago that he was building a missile defense system to protect the US against rogue nations having the atomic bomb, the Russians felt obliged to make a new missile able to penetrate this missile defense system. Mr. Poutine said yesterday, that Russia develepped a missile capable of penetrating any defense system.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A56417-2004Nov17?language=printer

During the first gulf war in 1991, the patriot missiles were supposed to shoot down any incoming scud missile, and although the US said the missile worked, 10 years later they admitted that not one hit an incoming scud missile.

I was just wondering why Russia feels threatened by this missile defense, when it is designed to shoot down a limited amount of missiles from a country like North Korea, who possess only a few.

fleaman uk

wasnt it trying to keep up with American "Star wars "defense systems that contributed to the collapse of the USSR?

Tim Horton

It's all about egos. My bombs bigger and stonger than your bomb. Panther

CoonDawg

Well, call me nutz, but it seems to me that Russia is the only other sizeable nuclear force. They see the US invade Iraq, in part to control the oil flow to other countries. Now, Russia has lots of natural resources and they probably feel particularly vulnerable due to their weakened political state as well as their having fragmented into a confederacy of republics. The whole point on a morratorium against space based and missile defense systems was to keep a balance. If one side or the other had a viable missle defense system against ICBM's, some in that government may, in a moment of tension, feel that they had an advantage and that a "first strike" was actually a winnable strategy. I can see where the Russian government, being a large oil and other resource possessing nation, may feel that it's in their best interests to make a US missile defense system a moot point. Of course, this doesn't address the new generation of intermediate nuclear weapons that this US administration wants to spend money developing. So much for a peaceful new world. Nukes are virtually powerless in a battle against terrorism, because the terrorists hide amongst everyday innocents.

Elsewhere

I wonder if they were finally able to make a Supercavitating Intercontinental Ballistic Missile. Something like that could travel underwater until it reached the continent, then fly out of the water and over a target.

Both the US and Russia have been trying to get something like this to work.

http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/missile/row/shkval.htm

confusedjw