US Naval Exercise, Cancelled to protect endangered whales Options

[celebritygooner]

A federal judge in California has ordered the US Navy to temporarily stop using sonar equipment because it might harm whales and other sea mammals.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5143698.stm

I've seen many clashes between business and environmental interests, but I've never heard of environmentalists clashing with the military and actually winning. Is this a good thing?

[celebritygooner]

a temporary moritorium until there's more info.

What if a judge would have done the same with uranium in 1943 and the Germans would have finished their bomb first? Or with the chem weapon antidote kits issued to soldiers in Desert Storm? Alot of people think "gulf war syndrome" is a reaction not to chem weapons but to the antidotes themselves ... but widespread chem-filled SCUD use against us would have been so much worse.

My point: when you're working with high tech weaponry in the interest of national defense, isn't there a moral obligation to err on the side of protecting the country? Yeah, the world would be a better place if there were no [insert horrible weapon here], but as long as [insert horrible weapon here] exists, we'd damn well better have more / better / bigger ones than our enemies. The Navy wouldn't have built this thing unless they perceived a need ... and, again, my interest isn't the merits of this need specifically, but in the precedent of judges defining ROE for the military.