4 ms·
"You probably don't want to brag very loudly about your shield. Actually, you might want to hide it as much as possible so the attackers don't feel the need to
by oldstrangers 4y ago
"You probably don't want to brag very loudly about your shield. Actually, you might want to hide it as much as possible so the attackers don't feel the need to overcome it."
That's what always struck me about the US being very open about its successes and failures with missile defense. They have absolutely nothing to gain by telling the world any of this, so the only logical conclusion is that their public disclosures are very carefully controlled set pieces to essentially neither confirm nor deny the actual capabilities of the system. I imagine this also applies to the US and its hypersonic weapons program and the very public display of their "failures." Right.
- narag 4y agoAnother item: even if your shield performance is currently underwhelming, you still want to have it, so you can keep upgrading it as technology advances, instead of rushing it when there's a breakthrough. And when it becomes a success, you still keep your cards close to your vest.
- bluGill 4y agoA large part of good vs bad performance is just iterating on bad until you solve the weaknesses. Sure there are sometimes fundamental problems that need a break through that could be years in coming, but often the only thing lacking is effort to fine tune algorithms. (figuring out which is which is left as an exercise for the reader)