1 Haha, good luck Debbye. I hope the 6th of those 6 interceptors lands on your house instead of mine. Oh yeah, lets not forget, our old nemesis the Soviet Kingdom. THEY HAVE 13,000 NUCLEAR BOMBS!!! China has over 400. As I said. Good Luck.

2 Oh yeah, there's more. Even if we did shoot down 5 nuclear bombs, are you aware of the fact that the nuclear radiation still occurs, albeit higher and more dispersed than expected, meaning the fallout would affect even more American "heroes." Once again... Good Luck... It's always the stupid that lead us into war... I can only hope that in this case, the stupid die first. (If you need me, I'll be hiding in artic tundra of Siberian Canada. Unfortunately even there, your stupid interceptors will plague me with first wave radiation.)

3 Progress! At least now the moonbats are admitting that the system might work. So now they're worried about above ground fallout. The idea is to shoot down the missile before the nuclear warhead is activated. In case you didn't know the warhead isn't activated until the missile is above its target. If you can destroy it before then, you've rendered it harmless. But oh well, we can't shoot them all down, so why bother with any of them. Do you live in Carolyn Parrish's riding? Enjoy your new home in the arctic. According to the Kyoto-niks in another 100 years or so it will almost be habitable.

4 Martin, in addition to being indecisive, can now claim to be as much of an idiot as Chretien. I can see the U.S. president, as a missile streaks in at 10,000 mph. (or whatever speed it atains), calling Mr. Martin asking for permission to intercept it. Martin meanwhile, can't decide if he likes his eggs poached or scrambled.

5 A screaming comes across the sky. Then another screaming comes across the sky. It misses the first screaming coming across the sky. Whoops. Raytheon told us they worked that out in testing. Now then.

6 Blackglasses, that was the WORST story I have ever read. I think you should dust off some of your old Kipling and try again.

7 Freep this country!

8 Rafer, you're seriously kidding aren't you? Come on, just send me an e-mail and admit outside of this blog that you're trolling... E-mail me at fresnorafer@hotmail.com and tell me you're kidding. I won't bring it up in here, but I won't pick on you and call you on your mistakes either.

9 I think that Mr. Martin ended up making a tough decision. Afterall, "joining" the US was not going to cost us anything, but it would have lent credability to a military program that lacks credability. The facts are that scientists and engineers from Alaska to Massachusetts all agree that designing and building "anti-missile missiles" is not possible, and it has been made even more difficult a proposition by the recent Russian announcement to build a hypersonic cruise missile to deliver nuclear, chemical and biological warheads. Such unmanned vehicles can cruise in the upper layers of the atmosphere at Mach 6 or better, and are capable of "high dynamics" manoevers that exceed 30 "g" along the entire path, making the problem of attacking and destroying them, virtually impossible with conventional explosives. You can think of them as hypersonic bombers that are continually doing aerobatic maneovers on the way to the target and what it takes to "intercept" and destroy such a bomber. And do not forget that these days stealth radar technologies allow such vehicles to have a minimum radar cross section as well. And since such vehicles travel just inside the atmospheric envelope, attacking them from spaceborn platforms is just as problematic, even with lasers and xray lasers. Canada did a great deal of research on such weapons back in the 1960s and finally concluded in 1970 that such systems could only be effective with nuclear warheads large enough to destroy the incoming missiles. That of course defeats the entire purpose of a defensive missile shield. Nothing has changed in these earlier Canadian studies and nothing has changed in the conclusion. I thought that Mr. Martin would have gone along with the Bush Administration in this expensive boondoggle on the US taxpayer, but to his credit he recognized bullshit when he saw it and was not afraid to say so publicly. And I also think that Mr. Harper must be giving off a huge sigh of relief because the Conservatives know full well that this was simply a money grab by the Carlyle Group and its companies, since no credible scientist or engineer is prepared to recommend this sort of development. In case you have missed it, the Carlyle Group is now in control of the American nuclear weapons programs, and safely out of sight of Congressional oversight since its a private company. Oh yes, that is the same Carlyle Group that counts among its members the Bush Family and the Bin Laudin Family. Canada concluded, back in 1970, and its valid still today, that the only workable method for nuclear arms control is "disarmament". By violating international missile treaties, the US is harming, not helping its own defence posture. Congratulations to Mr. Martin for his willingness to call a spade a shovel.

10 I'll be laughing my ass off the day, GOD FORBID, Canada is attacked and the politicians will be running to the U.S. first.

11 Far be it from me to interrupt kvetching about how the USA suxxors and is the real threat to world peace, etc., but the "5 of 6" number comes from the PAC-3 project, a theater-range Patriot follow-on designed to protect against SCUD-style short-range ballistic missiles. The exoatmospheric NMD interceptors are different animals, and have had far less success, since they have a much, much tougher task. Feel free to return to discussing how the Carlyle group controls the weather now.

12 Whoops. That's the SM-3, not the PAC-3. Still boost-phase, still on short-range targets, still a different system than NMD. However, by the laws of blog, anyone who wants to consider me a lackwit is welcome to do so.

13 SparcVark, thanks for the information. You clearly know a lot about specific missile systems. I wish I had paid more attention to parabolas and such back when I was in school and we were studying a broad range of ABM technology. I remember enough to recognize the difficulty of tracking and anticipating the course of incoming missiles and trying to hit a very small object in a very big sky. Yankee ingenuity can't solve everything, but if we don't try we definitely won't succeed.

14 I wonder if he has considered that the only reason we would shoot missiles over Canaduh is if someone else had already shot other missiles over Canada first? W? T? F? Are the Norks or the Chinese going to get Canadian permission before they launch an attack against us that we need to defend against? This guy is a total dunce.