No gaslight. You are doing just fine, dreaming up stuff. The strategy I was discussing was how to conduct nuclear war. You have now dragged in the notion of "deterrence," to which I can only repeat the saying of my mentor in the strategic defense business: "Deterrence works...until it doesn't." If deterrence does not work, you are left with the strategy of nuclear combat. And part of that is strategic defense. Deterrence no longer applies to a scenario where it fails, and you have to launch ICBMs, etc.
A technical strategy would be which, of several ways to do something, would be the "best" way...according to strictly technical performance measures. An operational strategy would be to rule out certain technical options as being characteristically unable to fulfill an operational requirement. That was the case in deciding to abandon radio command guidance (which worked just fine) for inertial guidance. Why allow any exterior signal into the system?
You are straining hard to separate alcohol and water. Just give it up. The amusing thing about all this is that if your fantasy came true and we had the putative ability to abort an ICBM flight, you run the interesting risk that it would not work. Reliability is an important operational characteristic. Are you aware that we typically assign two weapons to a strategic target, against the event that one weapon failed to reach it? So, your idea of a "precipice" entails a betting game that you can hit the "off" switch and that it would work.
No gaslight. You are doing just fine, dreaming up stuff. The strategy I was discussing was how to conduct nuclear war. You have now dragged in the notion of "deterrence," to which I can only repeat the saying of my mentor in the strategic defense business: "Deterrence works...until it doesn't." If deterrence does not work, you are left with the strategy of nuclear combat. And part of that is strategic defense. Deterrence no longer applies to a scenario where it fails, and you have to launch ICBMs, etc.
A technical strategy would be which, of several ways to do something, would be the "best" way...according to strictly technical performance measures. An operational strategy would be to rule out certain technical options as being characteristically unable to fulfill an operational requirement. That was the case in deciding to abandon radio command guidance (which worked just fine) for inertial guidance. Why allow any exterior signal into the system?
You are straining hard to separate alcohol and water. Just give it up. The amusing thing about all this is that if your fantasy came true and we had the putative ability to abort an ICBM flight, you run the interesting risk that it would not work. Reliability is an important operational characteristic. Are you aware that we typically assign two weapons to a strategic target, against the event that one weapon failed to reach it? So, your idea of a "precipice" entails a betting game that you can hit the "off" switch and that it would work.