Word: worthlessness
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...sure, there are serious arguments both for and against developing such a system. Part of the justification is that the U.S. military already has such a capability. Unfortunately, it's nuclear, which renders it worthless for anything but Armageddon. But for about $1 billion, over the next three years, the nation could convert some Trident missiles - now limited to carrying nuclear warheads in their submarine launchers - to non-nuclear weapons. The plan favored by the NRC panel would replace two of the 24 nuclear missiles on each of the Navy's 12 Trident subs with conventional-armed missiles...
...indicate that in most cases, a single CTM [Conventional Trident Modification] KEP [Kinetic Energy Projectile] will have a high kill probability against fixed soft targets if target geolocation accuracy and guidance, navigation, and control accuracy are as predicted." That's eight caveats right there. Such a weapon would be worthless against moving or heavily-defended targets (developing such a capability would take at least a decade and cost as much as $25 billion) and represents only a "niche capability" designed to attack stationary terrorists or nuclear weapons or supplies...
...world could re-engage Zimbabwe and help end the economic crisis that has seen inflation spiral out of control, ruined all but the regime's elite and sent millions of refugees into neighboring Botswana, Zambia and South Africa. Economists predict recovery would be quick: though its currency is worthless, its farms moribund and its industry largely mothballed, Zimbabwe retains good heavy infrastructure, such as roads, buildings and airports. A deal would also signal the passing of an era for all Africa: Mugabe, the symbol of the generation that liberated the continent from colonial and white rule, voluntarilty ceding authority...
...review next year. The Pentagon and its allies elsewhere in the Administration are pushing for a looser interpretation that would exempt the development and testing of an SDI system from the treaty's restrictions. The result, as fully intended, would be to render the ABM treaty worthless as the basis for a new deal with the Soviets. Sooner or later, Reagan is going to have to decide these issues. As in the past, his Administration is too sharply divided for the bureaucracy to produce anything more than cumbersome, half-a-loaf truces among its own warring factions. Like...
...lush with volatility and flimflam. As Groucho Marx's real estate huckster warned in The Cocoanuts in 1929, "You can even get stucco! Oh, how you can get stucco." But eventually, the lies always seemed to come true, because there were always new dreamers from cold climates, and worthless swampland was just a drainage canal and a zoning variance away from becoming a golf-course subdivision...