RE: Its Doctrine, Scouting and Tactics not Fighters

Not totally true, you can have conventions that prohibit such things. 
Just look at the whole MAD doctrine - no one could stop a nuclear
missile, and the US had such weapons before the Russians, and yet, we
didn't go ahead and slag all their military bases.

Even today, an ICBM could theoretically carry conventional or kinetic
kill warheads and with a CEP of 100 meters or less, you could hit an
aircraft carrier in dock with a spread of 10 warheads. The newest
American carriers are $4.5 billion a pop not including aircraft.  Taking
the MX for example, the cost at time of deployment in 1986 was 70
million per missile, not including warheads.  Thus for a cost of under
100 million, you can disable or destroy a ship worth 45 times that.  And
yet, the US doesn't routinely fire ICBM's at capital ships.  The reason
is that you don't want your intentions mistaken for something larger - a
nuclear attack, which would end up up with both sides slagging each
other in minutes.

At one time or another various weapons were banned simply because people
thought they were too atrocious or easy to use - crossbows in Medieval
Europe, firearms in Feudal Japan, dum dum or hollow point bullets,
biological, chemical and nuclear weapons, and now land mines are on the
table.	So there is precedent for conventions that ban the use of
certain tactics or weapons, despite how useful they are in warfare. 
This does not stop "rogue" nations or entities from using such weapons
or tactics, but they are generally frowned on by the rest of the world
and other forms of pressure - political, economic and occasionally
miltary are used to reduce or eliminate the forces that do use such
contra-band tactics/weapons.

--Binhan

> -----Original Message-----
> From: John Atkinson [mailto:johnmatkinson@yahoo.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, May 08, 2002 9:37 PM
> To: gzg-l@csua.berkeley.edu
> Subject: RE: Its Doctrine, Scouting and Tactics not Fighters
> 
> 
> If the stealth/sensor ratio is the same as it was in
> WWII, there would be a radically different way of
> fighting space combat.  You'd be running around
> slagging bases with surprise nuclear strikes and
> hoping he ran out before you did.  Because if you
> can't stop lightning strikes, they will be the only
> way people do business.
> 
> John
> 
> 
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