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Obama Unveils New Nuclear Doctrine
Hugh Pickens writes "The Washington Post reports that under Obama's new 'Nuclear Posture Review,' released today, the US will foreswear the use of the nuclear weapons against nonnuclear countries, in contrast to previous administrations, which indicated they might use nuclear arms against nonnuclear states in retaliation for a biological or chemical attack. But the new policy included a major caveat: The countries must be in compliance with their nonproliferation obligations under international treaties. The problem for Iran and North Korea is that the pledge does not cover them because the US regards them as in non-compliance with the Non-Proliferation Treaty. The new policy will also describe the purpose of US weapons as being fundamentally for deterrence. Some Democratic legislators had urged Obama to go further and declare that the United States would not use nuclear weapons first in a conflict, but officials worried that such a change could unnerve allies protected by the US nuclear 'umbrella.' The president of the Ploughshares Fund said of the new stance, 'It orients US policy towards dramatically fewer weapons and greatly reduced roles.'"
...but to be honest it really doesn't limit the options of available targets. If we want to nuke someone, you'd best be sure we'll find a way to show that they're in "non-compliance".
As much as we reduce our nuclear weapons arsenel, there remain many a crazy nation that will gladly blow us to oblivion. A monkey who is throwing up a peace sign is not exempt from a skull bashing by the other monkeys.
The question is, which of the monkeys is the US?
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
The problem with putting conventional warheads on an ICBM is that no one would know for sure that it isn't a nuke until much too late. Technologically, it's possible to launch a missile from the continental US and have it hit a specific house halfway around the world within 3 hours. But if the Russians/Chinese/North Koreans/Iranians think you've just launched a nuke against someone, things could get very dicey, very fast.
The Mutually Assured Destruction plans of the Cold War are outdated... we're no longer fighting states with a homeland, we're fighting a mobile group that will go wherever lawlessness is tolerated and don't care what happens to innocents around them. Scorched Earth isn't the idea, it's really just a question of law enforcement. Gotta use different tactics for a different enemy.
I mean, the idea is, don't let your guard down against those countries that are obviously against your ideologies. However, for everyone else who has sworn the non-proliferation, this would help diplomatic relations. Perhaps when the rest of the world starts seeing the U.S. in better light, countries like Iran and North Korea will be a little more amicable to joining these kinds of treaties proposed by the U.N.
In the event that they are stubborn about nuclear domination, the U.S. can still be the standing power capable of keeping them in line.
If you (my next door neighbor) kill my family by purposefully spreading rat poison in our fresh vegetable garden, I promise to only shoot back at you with my pellet gun. But only if you don't own a gun.
We're talking about nuclear weapons. We're talking about whether we encourage or discourage the proliferation and use of weapons that can kill tens of thousands of people in an instant. I don't think it requires a cute analogy for the average person to understand.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
No need for you to shoot back with anything, just prove your case in the justice system, and your neighbor gets their choice of lethal injection or the electric chair.
and what about India, Pakistan, Israel and N. Korea?
If Venezuela launches a biological attack (remember that chemical and biological attacks are a whole lot harder than they sound), they're in a world of hurt by conventional means. We wouldn't have nuked them under any President since, maybe, Eisenhower, more likely Truman, but have you looked at what the US spends on its military compared to any other country (or, for that matter, all other countries)?
Obama's promising the US won't do something that almost everybody was confident the US wouldn't do anyway. It's good PR but that's about it.
The cat has been out of the bag since at least 1982, when Britain did not nuke Argentina in the Falklands/Malvinas war. No nuclear power will nuke a non-nuclear power except out of dire necessity.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Yes, because Venezuela is the country we need to worry about. Riiiiiiight.
First off, these pronouncements aren't worth the paper they're written on- they can be changed at a whim.
Secondly, this is just an announcement to the world of the administration's view of nuclear weapons. Which is unchanged in reality from our stance since the Russians got the bomb. We aren't going to start a nuclear war because someone could retaliate, and noone would win that fight. Not to mention the morality of indisciminately slaughtering tens of thousands of innocent non-combatants.
So don't worry- you're no safer or less safe than you were 12 hours ago. If you feel differently I suggest you consult the nearest psychiatrist about your paranoia.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
There is no justice system in international relations.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
Catrina did a great number on the US
There's a meaningful difference between Catrina and Katrina.
Obama is offering a pledge not to nuke the non-nuclear countries. Realistically, the offer is good until January of 2013, when a new president takes office. For whatever reason, he thinks Iran and North Korea will jump at the chance to become nuke-free states and take him up on his offer. I think the strategy is looney, but I suppose it doesn't really take any options off the table.
This weakness on foreign policy is going to result in another war. Fortunately, it is easy to monetize the new socialism. My stock portfolio consists of oil, defense, guns, and ammo.
But, But, I thought we had to nuke them all from orbit to be sure? Now international politics are getting really confusing. =/
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
Why go all the way to Haiti? Catrina did a great number on the US, and there is always a minor sizemic activity, flood, forest fire, or lost persons... yes, HAM are the ones that go out there in those situations and run communications, often with their own equipment and on their own time. Even that parade you watch, the car race, space flight, or other local event may have been fully or in part orchistrated with the aid of HAM Radio operators. There is also significant technology brought out by HAM Radio experiementers--do you like the idea of Lo-Jack? APRS was the pattern for it.
Been writing in English long?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
More like 15 minutes. Well thats what Open Skies is for
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_Open_Skies
So the US puts all its nukes on B-52s/B-1Bs/B-2/Next Gen Bomber and the signatories like Russia, Ukraine, UK, France, PRC can verify that the nukes are there. So when the SSBN fires an SLBM with 12 convention MIRVs from the middle of the Indian Ocean the Russians don't get too freaked out about it.
Yes there is, The Hague, The UN, and NATO. When 9/11 happened, we had the whole world willing to help us clean up Afghanistan. When Bush 2.0 said "Now let's go after Iraq!" without a sufficient case, they started looking at him funny.
ICMBs are not accurate enough to deliver a conventional explosive payload. (if you are off by half a mile, it doesn't matter if you're delivering a nuke). Thats why we have cruise missiles.
(remember that chemical and biological attacks are a whole lot harder than they sound)
Really? See, most people have heard the name Haile Selassie I. Let your post serve as a reminder that most people don't know why they know his name.
Allow me to enlighten you: He was Emperor of Ethiopia when Italy invaded and attacked with chemical weapons. He made an passionate speech at the League of Nations condemning the use of chemical weapons.
If Italy, using 1930's technology, was capable of developing, delivering, and deploying chemical weapons in Ethiopia, I will go on record and make the claim that Venezuela could do the same to the US, using 2010's technology.
"Be prepared, son. That's my motto. Be prepared." --Joe Hallenbeck
Honestly! You feel threatened by Venezuela?! Good thing we've had those nukes keeping Venezuela from attacking us!
since Iran is in fact fully in compliance with both the letter and the spirit of the NPT, regardless of what the US tries to say. NPT signatories have full right to develop and implement the complete nuclear fuel cycle for the purposes of generating power. NPT signatories are not obligated to submit to inspection of their nuclear facilities at the whim of anyone else. The fact that Iran has repeatedly done so demonstrates a remarkable tolerance on their part.
They are good enough. Unclassified CEP on a Minuteman III is 150 meters, on a Trident D-5 - 90-120 m (300-400 ft) (with GPS guidance), ~120 m without GPS using the Mark 5 RV, thats close enough for hitting an enemy facility, but you are right, not good enough for hitting a palace in downtown Baghdad.
Someone with math skills, how much energy would be released from 2800 kilos coming in at 6,000 kph?
Also you can use the MIRVs or an RV to deploy more accurate submunitions at the target.
Yes, because Venezuela is the country we need to worry about.
Indeed. One wonders why some people are still so irrationally afraid of communists, real or imagined. I don't think much of Chavez, but he's not stupid or comic-book evil, the threat of being nuked was probably never on his top ten reasons not to attack the US.
So when the SSBN fires an SLBM with 12 convention MIRVs
I think you should use more acronyms next time.
-Xoltri
Hmmmm, then maybe the cute analogy was nothing more than a flaming turd after all.
Really? The Battle of Midway was won with nukes?
Not a typewriter
If you (my next door neighbor) kill my family by purposefully spreading rat poison in our fresh vegetable garden
Why do I get the feeling that in your head, this is more than just a hypothetical scenario?
He might not have meant physically difficult. I mean, any country can buy or manufacture chlorine gas and weaponize it fairly easily.
Rather, what I got was that using biological or chemical weapons is a great way to make a whole lot of enemies in world politics very quickly. I mean, look at the fallout the U.S. got from just engaging in a conventional war in Iraq.
It would have been nearly impossible to start firing chemical weapons into Iraq at the start of the war due to the stigma and potential repercussions from allies and neutrals.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
Rule #1 of tyrannical dictators (which Chavez qualifies for these days, although I didn't think so 5 or so years ago)- tyrannical dictators want power. They want to maintain or increase their power. So they may do some sabre rattling, but they aren't going to seriously fuck with anyone who can really hurt them. If they have a small weak neighbor without defensive alliances they may attack their neighbor, but they won't do jack shit against a country many times their size, wealth, and military might. So let them rattle to their heart's content and otherwise ignore them. Just don't let them start snatching small countries, or you risk them thinking they can beat you.
This rule applies to all 3 big crazies at the moment- Venezuela, Iran, and N Korea. None of them are doing more than appealing to their support base. Think of it as the foreign equivalent of a Sarah Palin rally. Of the three Iran is the biggest threat because their is the religious fundamentalism aspect, but the drive for power far outweighs that.
Nations to be worried about are places like China. But its quite obvious the current rule of China is taking a long term view and is more interested in ruling through finance than arms- the fact they haven't invaded Taiwan is proof of that. We should be very concerned about the amount of money we borrow from them, but I don't see war in the next decade. Russia's another worry, but Putin for all his evil falls under rule #1- he likes ruling Russia and is more interested in holding power than anything else.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
We are talking about nuclear weapons. Acronyms are part of the business, its like computers and networking with RAM, CPU, NIC, Eth0, SATA, IDE, RAID-0...
OK. So, when the Nuclear Powered Strategic Missile Submarine fires a Submarine Launched Ballistic Missile with 12 conventional Multiple Independently targetable Reentry Vehicles...
So what's new here?
country {x} does insane thing {y}. the usa has some law on the books about not retaliating to the satisfaction of random internet troll {z}
compute the value of internet troll {z}'s opinion as intelligence of {z} approached zero
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
we might begin to repair the damage to our reputation done by the G. W. Bush Administration.
Funny, it's the same group of people as the "Obama Administration," which you should read as the "Goldman-Morgan Administration." Granted, the facemen/women are different, and wear blue ties instead of red ones, but the puppet masters remain the same. Pull back the curtain if you want real change to be effected.
Captcha: corrupt.
Indeed.
And if he changes his mind, he'll simply ignore the pledge. This is just words.
I'll bet the US has a targeting solution for every bit of the planet.
Eth0 is an abbreviation not an acronym :)
Secondly, this is just an announcement to the world of the administration's view of nuclear weapons. Which is unchanged in reality from our stance since the Russians got the bomb. We aren't going to start a nuclear war because someone could retaliate, and noone would win that fight. Not to mention the morality of indisciminately slaughtering tens of thousands of innocent non-combatants.
Yes, it matches U.S. policy going back to the 1950s... with the exception of an 8-year gap from 2002 to 2010.
The Bush administration's version of this document specifically declared that the U.S. should be prepared to use nuclear weapons on a first-strike basis, and even against non-nuclear states.
You're right, a pronouncement that "we're not gonna nuke ya" isn't worth the paper that it's printed on. But it's a big concrete improvement over a previous pronouncement that "we might nuke ya."
http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/nwgs/npr_review.pdf
More accurately, if you poison my family I promise to only shoot you yourself. I won't blow up your house, rape your wife, and burn your children alive. Unless it looks like there's plutonium in the cupboard, then all bets are off.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
these pronouncements DO have value: its good domestic and international pr
just as there are warhead morons who believe the usa actually just tied its hands, there are peacenik morons who believe the usa just promised to... tie its hands
politics is a lot about putting on a show for the stupid
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Israel, as per their usual policy, has never admitted nor denied to have nuclear weapons.
How do you sleep at night?
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
I don't understand why us borrowing money makes us weaker... can't we just default and bankrupt China? You know, like when we had our little housing problem we're just now getting out of and decided the banks didn't need to pay back the tons of money they'd got from foreign investors?
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
As I've said earlier, while this piece of paper saying "Hi. We won't nuke you. Love, The USA" is pretty useless, it's a major concrete improvement over a piece of paper that says "Yo. We might nuke you if we feel like it. Do you feel lucky?", which was the Bush administration's love letter to the world in 2002.
A buddy of mine is from Venezuela. He said no one really takes that guy seriously, except the dumb Americans.
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
just now getting out of and decided the banks didn't need to pay back the tons of money they'd got from foreign investors?
Who do you think were all the AIG counter parties getting paid 100 cents on the dollar? Hint it wasn't all Goldman Sachs.
I laughed at the weak who considered themselves good because they lacked claws.
Or failing to do everything in their power to replace our fiat currency with a representative currency, that way the nation can do something other than perpetually increase debt according to the design of the financial system.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Yeah, the Venezuelans are so brilliant that they leave him in charge of the country. Obviously it's Americans who are dumb.
Are you confusing the speculative bubble driven by Internet stocks with Bill Clinton actually doing something economically? His timing really was wonderful.
So, just how many nukes do they have? It's kind of hard to mention a nation that doesn't officially have any, but almost certainly does have them, isn't it? Don't worry about it, we would never attack them anyway.
Yes, chemical weapons are very effective when used in conjunction with conventional military attacks against less developed armies, or simply forces without protective equipment. (See also Japanese use in China, or German use on the Sevastopol fortresses.) The conventional attack forces the unequipped foe to concentrate, and then the poison gets them. They would also have been very effective in a large-scale bombing campaign (see the Italian theorist Douhet's writings in, I think, the 1920s, or for a sensationalized version in the early part of Stapleton's "Last and First Men"), if, say, Germany had used chemical weapons against the Western Allies.
They're notably less effective under other circumstances. Civilians tend to scatter, and it's hard to get a large bomber formation into US skies.
Consider the nerve gas attack in the Tokyo subway system during rush hour by whatever religious fanatics those were. It killed twelve people. The fanatics could probably have done better than that with knives.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
...and when he actually did invade Iraq, the exact same crime that the Nazis were hanged for at Nuremberg, they did jack shit.
The US is impervious to international law because it is the strongest.
No. You couldn't take the chance. An ICBM/SLBM currently has but one payload - a nuke warhead. You simply could not risk that this is not a conv weapon.
And its called a "Nuclear Triad" for a reason. Aircraft, sub, missile. Rendering any one leg inoperative still leaves two viable launch platforms. Each delivery mode has its own strengths and weaknesses. Aircraft can be recalled. ICBM's can't be stopped. Subs can't be found.
Don't put all your eggs in one basket.
There are long term costs to these weapons: r&d, tooling, production, periodical testing and calibration, and future maintenance. They are a significant investment and vital industry.
A small amount of weapons could do the *offensive* job but the smaller the cache, the more vulnerable they are to detection and interception. The defense concept is mutual assured destruction - and it requires a staggering overwhelming abundance of ready-to-use weapons. What really screwed the USA was the Carter admin agreeing not to further nuclear weapon r&d. We were on the way to a half-life of a matter of days in which the impact site could be habitual again...
Regardless of the morals and ethics, the bottom line is its good skilled and technical jobs for America that include retirement packages and healthcare. Get rid of the nukes and we put 10s of thousands of people out of work. (This is definitely putting my dad out of work.)
Plus the USA has the right to amass any sort of defense we feel necessary. We are a sovereign nation - no other entity has legal domain over us. Time and time again other nations break their promises to the US. To trust them at their word is foolhardy.
I don't believe that Israel is an acknowledged nuclear power. Yes, it is clear to anyone with half a brain that they have lots and lots of canned sunshine, but as far as international diplomacy goes, I believe they are a non-nuclear state.
Learn about Photography Basics.
"Nucular" is the vernacular in half the country. I'm sorry you don't understand the concept of dialects, and you can go to hell if you want to judge me based on my accent.
Learn about Photography Basics.
OK. So, when the Strategic Submersible Booming Nuker fires a Submarine Launched Ballistic Missile with 12 conventional Multiple Independently targetable Reentry Vehicles...
Fixed that for you.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Israel, as per their usual policy, has never admitted nor denied to have nuclear weapons.
They certainly have the technology, so it would be foolish to assume that they don't have them. The USA didn't talk about the Manhatten Project until much later on as well.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
We had to use nukes. Once the Japanese landed their zombie marines on the beach, it was the only way to stop them.
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
I'll tell you what doesn't go down well in America: lack of reading comprehension. Israel is not "exempted" -- they are a nuclear state. Iraq is not exempted either, as, having no nuclear weapons, they don't need an exemption. The "exemptions" you are worried about are for non-nuclear states that are considered (by the US) to be in non-compliance with NPT requirements. You're free to disagree with the policy, but at this point it doesn't seem as if you have any idea what you're disagreeing with.
Just because you sold your soul to the devil that needn't make you a teetotaler. --The Devil and Daniel Webster
Because if we default the economy will make the Great Depression look like the good old days.
*The dollar would immediately crash to record lows as no foreign investors would trust US assets.
*The US would be unable to borrow additional money, probably at any rate. Who would trust us? Even if we offered up the white house as collateral we could just reneg again
*Banks, companies, and individual investors hold billions in US savings bonds as long term safe investments. They're considered as good as cash- you can bring one to a bank and they'll pay you on the spot for it with only a service fee. Those would become worth pennies on the dollar. Banks would go bankrupt and be unable to loan, companies would be unable to make payroll. You would be looking at 30-40% unemplyment within a year.
The US has never defaulted on a national debt in its 230+ year history. It won't start now. We'd be better off jumping back to Eisenhower tax rates to pay interest than in defaulting.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
The rest of the US delivery systems should just be mothballed so they're not paying to staff and maintain them. I suspect that's pretty much the point. They don't really need to keep around 5500 weapons they'll probably never use.
I don't get this argument. As soon as it becomes actively required, I don't see what would ever stop the US from using their nuclear weapons. You've spent hundreds of Billions on your nuclear arsenal and aren't going to be limited by a fancy piece of paper with a presidential stamp on it.
When was the US likely to use their nukes on any country that attacked them via conventional means anyway? As most people have pointed out, this is a nice PR stunt, but you've reiterated the sort-of known stance of the US since the end of the cold war, we've got nukes but we don't really want to use them.
Venezuela may now feel they can launch a biological attack without fear of being nuked back to God.
Correct, Venezuela can attack us and we will not nuke them. We will attack them with daisy cutters, Mk-84s, thermobaric bunker busters, MOABs, Apaches, Raptors, Hornets, Spirits, Hercules, Reapers, Hellfires, Abrams, Bradleys, these things, and some other shit none of us have even heard of. But we won't use nukes. Keep living in fear though.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Some rouge nation meeting their nonproliferation obligations hits the US with a chemical attack in a major city. Say, one million dead... and we won't nuke them back?
Well, google gives (using EK=mv^2/2):
(this is a quick calc so might not be accurate but the result seems to be of the right magnitude from my reading from many years ago)
((2 800 000 grams) times (6000 kph) times (6000 kph)) divided by 2 = 3.88888889 × 10^9 joules which if I remember right is roughly equivalent to a kiloton of tnt (4.1 gigajoules) - or a very small tac nuke.
But how much is actually released is going to depend on what your kinetic mass weapon is composed of and how it's constructed.
The idea of using orbital kinetic mass kill munitions is more than a half century old - Pournelle proposed it back in the 1950s.
Using submunitions is much more problematical, they have to be able to survive severe g-forces and have integral guidance systems and steering systems that can work at that speed; not outside the realm of our technology, I don't think, but they would not be cheap, and almost certainly would not be used outside of the theater of a major war.
I would think it likely that if one wanted to one could boost enough mass to orbit, with the proper explosive submunition design, that one could thoroughly destroy even a large city, or a fairly thickly concentrated military force, with one single orbital vehicle.
Anyone who would like to chime in with more modern and/or accurate figures please do :)
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
Currently we've got something like 1100 nuclear weapons- many of those are multiple-warhead weapons. Seems to me we only need, at most, a few dozen, mostly for geographic coverage.
Please help metamoderate.
Naw, turn the rest of the SSBNs into SSGNs and load them with cruise missiles.
Every nuclear capable nation's capital is within Tomahawk range of the sea. The Navy could keep a few W-80 equipped Tomahawks on the SSGNs to mess up things if anyone attacked the US
Citation please, since that is obviously not true.
The US sends about $3 billion Israel's way. Which is clearly not larger than the $1.4 trillion the US spends on just Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
So are you an idiot? Or are you really claiming that the US spends three as much money on the Israeli military than it spends on its own military?
It's nontrivial. KE = mv^2/2 (Joules in the MKS system). M = 2800kg, v=6000k/hr = 1,667m/sec. KE works out to about 3.9 gigajoules, with one metric ton of TNT yielding about 4.18 GJ. So if my arithmetic is correct, this would be more or less like putting a 2,000 lb conventional bomb on the target.
Of the three Iran is the biggest threat because their is the religious fundamentalism aspect, but the drive for power far outweighs that.
Michael Totten just posted an interview today with a former member of Iran's Revolutionary Guards. This is the latter's insightful perspective:
"If you look more deeply into the thought processes of the people controlling the [Iranian] government, these are people who strongly believe Islam will conquer the world. Every act they commit is in that direction. They don't just want a nuclear bomb to make them untouchable. They think it will be the trigger for Islam conquering the world....
Thirty years ago they were told the Mahdi [i.e., the prophesied redeemer of Islam] wants them to proceed with the nuclear project, and that's why they're not bending. They think they're untouchable and that the Mahdi wants it."
Mustard gas delivered via artillery shells is what you are worried about? Your statements are laughable.
If North Korean troops start pouring through the DMZ, the US military is going to consider all of its contingency plans to keep its ~150,000+ soldiers from being killed or captured, and there is a 100% chance one of those contingency plans includes using nuclear weapons. In all likelihood it is one of the reasons why it hasn't happened yet.
NK is not even remotely a conventional match for US troops. They cannot keep the lights on at night, let alone maintain air superiority against stealth fighters. Nukes would not be considered if NK attempted a land grab.
They are being held in reserve, to make sure NK knows good and well the consequences of building and employing a few fission weapons. This is a carrot/stick move that might encourage them into non-proliferation compliance. We have all the reason in the world to want this, because we would completely steamroll them in a conventional war, and we wouldn't suffer the negative publicity of a nuclear war.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Reminds me of ABM systems in Poland. Suure we're not going to use them against Russia right now, but in case when they step on our toes all of a sudden this becomes a distinct possibility. Otherwise we'd have built those systems in Iraq, where they'd be closer to Iran, strikes from which we're supposedly trying to prevent.
We would never use them against Russia. They have a bigass army. Russia and China are the two untouchables. We're more likely to attack Canada than Russia.
We wanted them in Poland because that gives more time to react, and less likely to be destroyed due to sabotage and/or a suicide bomber. Plus we want to leave Iraq eventually.
>Nuclear weapons have turned into something of a penis waving contest.
It would seem to me that you are completely incorrect. Having nuclear weapons is basically your best way to keep the US from interfering overtly with your country.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
CEP only means half the rounds would hit inside that radius, and half outside. It doesn't specify how far outside they will hit. A CEP of 150 meters isn't great.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
If you (my next door neighbor) kill my family by purposefully spreading rat poison in our fresh vegetable garden, I promise to only shoot back at you with my pellet gun.
Did you just equate the US military's massive stockpile of conventional weapons and attack vehicles to a pellet gun? You realize we have conventional warheads which nearly equal the power from a nuke, right? That bomb has a yield of 11 tons, the smallest nuke has a yield of 10.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Obligatory.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
"Nucular" is the vernacular in half the country.
So is "ain't" and "googled" and "y'uns", but I'm probably not voting for anyone using words like that in their speeches. Sure, a lot of the country uses 'like' every third word, but that doesn't mean the President can. While I don't think it's correct to say that "nucular" isn't a word, it's not something you should be hearing from a high ranking politician. You're expected to maintain a different style of speech when you're speaking to the entire nation.
Well...Sprint showed that we could make electronic systems that could survive 100g and 0 to Mach 10 in 5 seconds, so I bet we could make submissions that can survive a reentry, after all, Apollo 13 came in at 11.037 km/s.
Obama's promising the US won't do something that almost everybody was confident the US wouldn't do anyway. It's good PR but that's about it.
Well, good PR is good. USSR cached in on that for a long time with its no-first-use policy, why shouldn't USA do the same?
This declaration has very little effect on actual policy -- in fact, USSR one-upped it decades ago be declaring that it won't use nuclear weapons first in any conflict, however it didn't have much of effect, either.
True importance of this is in its effect on American propaganda directed toward Americans -- government basically tells its propaganda workers in the media to stop claiming that US is willing to establish its control over the rest of the world through the threat of nuclear war. Remember Republicans screaming about nuking Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, North Korea(!), etc. in 2001-2002, despite the fact that no one in Bush administration was considering such an action? Now this madness has to stop, and xenophobic propaganda should take more sane forms than "We will nuke all those sandniggers into the stone age!!! Middle East will be a parking lot!".
What, I have to admit, is some serious progress.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
The Bush administration's version of this document specifically declared that the U.S. should be prepared to use nuclear weapons on a first-strike basis, and even against non-nuclear states.
It was never any different under the presidents preceding Bush - U.S. has historically maintained the option of using nuclear strike in response to a conventional attack, unlike the USSR, which had pledged no-first-use for a long time. The present assessment is that U.S. was overestimating the military power of the Warsaw pact, and assuming that all its European NATO allies would be quickly overrun by a Soviet conventional attack, if tactical nukes couldn't be used to counter it.
True, perhaps - who knows how accurate ICBMs really are nowadays, with modern electronics and guidance? The ones in the know aren't telling, and for good reason. I'd bet a nice sum that modern ICBMs are a lot more accurate than the data anyone in the public has, given the advances in electronics and guidance. I wouldn't be surprised if modern tech has given the ability for 10m accuracy. After all, if we could guide a Apollo capsule returning from the moon to within 10km or so of it's recovery fleet 30+ years ago...
Cruise missiles are also a lot harder to find - but ICBMs are a LOT harder to destroy before they reach their target.
Also, if you manage to detect a cruise missile and shoot it down, it's probably going to crash well short of it's target, but even if you manage to destroy an ICBM after it's entered the atmosphere it's almost certainly still going to land on or near it's target. Given that cruise missiles can't deploy submunitions until they are on top of their target, while ICBMs can deploy submunitions after they enter the atmosphere, ICBMs are a lot more likely to hit their target with at least one of their submunitions. Which considering those submunitions can include nuclear warheads kind of makes the point moot if you're not shooting at a hardened target, doesn't it?
I suspect that the only thing preventing the US military from deploying orbital kinetic kill vehicles right now is launch costs. R&D would be cheap next to the cost of deploying a system that could hit any target in the world on a couple hours notice.
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
I take GP to mean that no-one takes Chavez' ambitions of dictatorial rule seriously. So far as I know, there are actually quite a lot of people there happy about and supportive of his economic policies.
CEP of 150 m is pretty good considering historical CEP and honestly we don't know if that is the real CEP. I've seen technical sources claiming the Mk-12 RV with GPS has a CEP of under 15 meters. In NROTC our instructor claimed that the D-5 with GPS had gotten RVs within 3 meters.
Israel isn't suspected of stealing their initial nuclear weapon designs. France gave them nuclear weapon designs and helping them build their first nuclear reactor (Norway and the U.S. voluntarily supplied them with heavy water early on). Sure, the Israelis have spied on the U.S. (and vice versa), but acquisition of the bomb did not require espionage.
$_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
"Nucular" isn't an accent.
$_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
Posting anon both because of my current career and the content of this post
I grew up of in a rough school. Surprisingly, not once did I ever fear for my safety. You know why? I made two things clear.
1.) I won't bother you if you don't bother me
2.) If you do bother me, I won't throw punches. I won't bloody nose. I will break bones, gouge eyes, bite, stab, bludgeon and shoot... You will leave in an ambulance.
One kid, ONCE tried the tough guy act with me. I believe he ended up with a broken arm, broken nose and they kept him in the hospital a few days to make sure the swelling in his brain would go down.
An overreaction? Possibly. But it worked.
This should be our strategy. No "peacekeeping missions". No "tactical strikes". If you mess with the US, we launch nuclear missles, end of story.
Of course this would mean no more gallivanting around the Middle East and South America and dismantling the military industrial complex (You don't need to spend trillions to keep a large stockpile of first strike nuclear weapons prepped.), so it would never fly.
We promise that we won't nuke you, until we decide that this promise is no longer valid and we need to nuke you. This a PR game, but nothing has changed. It is not like if the US threatened to nuke any country right now.
I read the wiki article before I posted, Mr. No Sense Of Humor. I even called it a Boomer, sheesh. I'm not the one who shit in your cereal this morning, I promise.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
A monkey who is throwing up a peace sign
Who, exactly, did that? Not the Obama administration with this policy, that's for sure.
To put it in monkey terms, since that seems to discourse trajectory here, our RedWhiteBlue monkey has a *lot* of SkullBashers, in a variety shapes, sizes, and degrees of devastationizingness. In particular, the MegaWhackBat is incredibly devastationizing. Now, noticing that the other monkeys -- even some of the smaller monkeys with smaller arsenals -- have been looking to get their own MegaWhackBat as a safeguard against bein' pushed around or even devastationized by RedWhiteBlue monkey, ol' RWB has done some serious game-theory like thinkin'. This does not involve flashing peace signs or giving up any weapon, including his MegaWhackBat. What he does is he screeches to the other crazy monkeys "Here's the deal; if you don't have a MegaWhackBat, and you agree not to get a MegaWhackBat, I MonkeyPromise I won't use my MegaWhackBat on you, even if we get into some serious SkullBashing (though I will totally use my BigStrongBats). If you have a MegaWhackBat, or look a lot like you're trying to build one, even if you say you aren't, no promises, you might get MegaWhacked."
Now, the truly crazy monkeys, the ones that don't care if they get MegaWhacked or not, this isn't going to affect. The ones that already have their own MegaWhackBats it isn't going to affect either. The ones it *is* going to affect are the ones who were worried that if they didn't have a MegaWhackBat that RWB would hold his over their head. Now they don't have to worry about that, unless they don't trust us, and seriously, who wouldn't?
Tweet, tweet.
Yes, but the majority of readers of Slashdot are interested in or directly involved in the computer industry so we're familiar with those acronyms and abbreviations.
I bet a much smaller number of us are nuclear weapon fetishists.
If you want to communicate something, it would have been polite to provide some of the full names of those things. If you were just trying to show how much you get off on weapons of mass destruction, then you did it just right.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Let's not change the goalposts. That's far more of a 'triad' than "So the US puts all its nukes on B-52s/B-1Bs/B-2/Next Gen Bomber"
If I understand correctly, Israel will simply be treated as a nuclear state for the purposes of this declaration, same as Russia, China etc.
Iran and North Korea are singled out because they signed NPT (and thus claimed to be non-nuclear states), but then did not comply with it, so they are, in effect, being treated as nuclear states even though they may not have any actual nuclear weapons.
We can't just default on our debt and "bankrupt China" because China is far from the only holder of our debt. We would bankrupt almost every government and bank worldwide - almost any institution that holds any amount of money holds it in US Treasury bonds, because even with such low interest they'd lose billions keeping it in cash.
Even if we accept wiping out half the world's wealth, they don't "need" our debt. We need them to keep financing our debt - otherwise our government collapses. When was the last time we had a balanced budget? We can get away with that because the rest of the world buys our debt - which stops the minute we default.
Not to mention the free-falling dollar, as other posters warned about.
DATABASE WOW WOW
The Nazis in 1939 were enforcing UN sanctions against the German-Jewish nuclear weapons program? The ever-wily Jews were hiding said nuclear development programs in squalid concentration camps with funny names like "Auschwitz"?
Interesting. How much is your newsletter, I'd like to subscribe.
So - how exactly are Russia and all the rest going to verify that all our nukes are in one place or another? Seems to me the whole thing is based on trust, right? And, if you trust the other parties, you have no need to verify. Little catch 22 here, don't you think? Or, is it just propaganda, playing on people's naivete?
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
To be fair, I don't think that Nuremberg was about unjustified invasion of other countries; more about racial genocide, and I don't think the US invasion of Iraq quite falls under that definition.
Unjustified aggression against a sovereign state, definitely; I do agree to some extent with your last point, and I am a US citizen. However from a historical perspective we are hardly the first to do such things just because we can - not that it makes it "right" just "because we can".
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
so it is ok for israel to have nukes? If the roles were reversed, I think that israel would be doing everything in their power to get nukes as a deterrent to israel. It would be a better strategy to make israel disarm their nukes to get iran to give up on it.
If you want peace, prepare for war.
If Italy, using 1930's technology, was capable of developing, delivering, and deploying chemical weapons in Ethiopia, I will go on record and make the claim that Venezuela could do the same to the US, using 2010's technology.
What, you expect Venezuela to exert air superiority over the US? Chlorine gas only works over very, very short distances.
The US won't nuke you unless you aren't in compliance with nuclear agreements. How many of our enemies *are* in compliance? Is the US in compliance? Who gets to determine who is in non-compliance anyway? Why should anyone believe the US wouldn't nuke someone it that it really wanted to anyway?
These are meaningless words from a belligerent rogue state.
The US wasn't enforcing any sanctions; if that were the case, the action would have been carried out by blue helmets and the action would also have not been an invasion.
I just found this article in my Gmail RSS bar and I thought it was interesting to see the comments on Obama's new nuclear policy.
I am really surprised of the concept you guys have about Venezuela. I mean, honestly I laughed a bit when reading this. I am from Venezuela, I live here, and seriously, this president, and this country is not going to attack anyone. Do you think a small country, where people don't have constant water supply, or a good electric power infrastructure will attack a huge world potency like the United States of America?
I'm telling you, it just wont happen. This is not like an arab country where people would fight for their beliefs. If we launch a stone to US ground, and you guys send a bunch of last generation jets and soldiers with last generation weapons and suits, we'll get crushed in less than 24 hours. We don't have technology, we don't have the soldiers, we don't have the will, and we don't a reason to do that.
I honestly don't know what is being broad-casted on US TV, but we are no threat to the US. There is no war to be fought. We just have a president that talks WAY too much.
While I was Stationed at Ramstein AFB, Germany - Once a year a Russian Nuclear inspection team came by to verify that there were no Nukes on base. It was something of a big deal because we had to open up all our facilities to the inspectors if they wanted to come in and snoop around.
Dudes always seemed to just do a once-over with what I assume was a radiation detector in a van driving around base, and then break for vodka around noon.
Thats what Google, FAS.org, Wikipedia or the dictionary are for.
Many /.ers are also into science fiction, gaming or were military and those abbreviations have been common in those genres and sectors of society for decades.
The abbreviations MIRV, SSBN, SLBM are not obscure and have not been obscure for at least 35 years. One doesn't have to be a "nuclear weapon fetishists" to be literate in the terminology of the devices that have been waiting to kill us for the last 50 years.
Strategic nukes on bombers, tactical nukes, which were not covered by SALT or START, can go other places.
Alright - I hate pedantic clods - but, where did you get "submersible ship"? Subs aren't ships, they are boats. No one in the US Navy has ever referred to a sub as a ship, that I'm aware of. I've done a few googles now, and I can't find any reference to "submersible ship". I find no readily available definition of "SS" as used by the Navy, and most other sources say that a ship designated as "SS" is a steam ship. Obviously, that doesn't apply to the Navy. DD's and FF's were almost exclusively steam powered, today many are powered by gas turbines. Most larger warships are nuclear powered. As for power, SS's were traditionally diesel powered, today they are exclusively nuclear powered.
Anyway - I'm curious where you got that term, and how credible the source is. Military terms and acronyms aren't always obvious, after all. :^)
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Theres a treaty system in place called Open Skies that allows for overflights by aircraft equipped with senors and optics to verify things.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_Open_Skies
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:B-52s_chopped.jpg
Plus treaties like START, SALT, Conventional Forces in Europe and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty allow for inspections of bases and counting warheads, pits and delivery devices.
Remember back during 2002-2004 there used to be posters of the US with all the WMD sites and "Who is inspecting the US?", well alot of people were inspecting the US with satellites, aircraft and even folks on the ground.
All I can say is that this fits in with that rightwing extremist shop ad you have in your sig. It reinforces the stereotype. Would you walk around in a t-shirt reading something along the lines you just uttered?
" Nucular or go to hell "?
"Praise the lord and pass the nucular bombs"?
"Nucular Choctaw Bingo"?
Of course nucular is just plain wrong no matter which dialect you speak or accent you have. At least that is what I learned at school...
--frank[at]unternet.org
France: 500 warheads
China: 400+ warheads
Britain: 300+ warheads
The best estimates put Israel behind the UK.
Maybe this will help you.
List of US Navy ship and service craft classifications
Some days I get the sinking feeling Orwell was an optimist.
No, we're promising to only blow the fuck out of them with an endless barrage of missiles until they and their home are rubble, rather than a bomb so big it'll blow up every house in the neighborhood, you brain-damaged idiot.
The enemies of Democracy are
But, you're not addressing the real question. Isn't it pretty easy to make a mockup of some warheads? Basically, the whole thing is based on trust. The world believes that we are complying with the treaty, and showing them everything we have - or they don't believe.
I'm one who believes in having an "ace in the hole". I don't even tell anyone where my backup weapons are at home. If someone breaks in in the middle of the night, they might find my weapons cache is, but they can't know that they have ALL my weapons. All that they can be reasonably sure of, is that they've found all my long guns.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Actually, as far as I can tell, he equated our nuclear arsenal to a pellet gun (thus why we won't use it if they don't have a gun), and equated our conventional arsenal to doing nothing at all.
The stupid, it hurts.
The enemies of Democracy are
Strategic Submersible Booming Nuker
I even called it a Boomer, sheesh.
No you didn't - you fail again sir.
Seriously though, it was just really unfunny.
We are talking about DEFENCE. Acronyms are part of the business
Fixed that for you!
Kids! Bringing about Armageddon can be dangerous. Do not attempt it in your home!
where did you get "submersible ship"?
...(from wikipedia)
I think I was fairly clear.
Subs aren't ships, they are boats
Apart from the fact that that is how the US Navy designates them, how are you defining ship and boat? As far as I'm aware the only distinction that you can make with any certainty is that ships are bigger than boats. By that definition, I would personally say that military subs classify as ships (I think they're big enough).
Also, see Q-Hack!s reply.
Like Reagan would say - Trust, but verify - "doveryai, no proveryai".
Is it easy to mockup warheads? Probably. I'll focus this on the US/Russia because they are the powers with the long history here.
But I think the Major Powers have a ton of intelligence information on each other, so the US/Russia have a pretty good accounting of how many strategic weapons they made. So with the inspection schemes they might be 75-85% accurate and they'll trust the other side, to a limit. From what I've read on the Cold War and the verification treaties, the Soviets always cheated and assumed the US cheated because, well, the Soviets were cheating.
Do I think that the Major Powers will always keep an ace in the hole? Absolutely. In my world view, if everyone knows about NORAD and Area 51, then there are places they don't know about and weapons they don't know about.
Despite the treaties banning nuclear weapons in space I know the Soviets had SS-9 and SS-18s tasked with putting weapons in orbit and I'm sure the US did and does the same. Not even an optimist like Obama will give up all the secrets and defenses the US has, just in case.
Sadly this may only be one of the last steps in the hydrogen bomb era, not a first step...
Most "ultimate" weapons have a shelf life.
Take the history of the battleship for example, between WW-I and WW-II was the era of the the Naval limitation treaties which concentrated on battleships. Of course the war that finally erupted WW-II in the pacific, the nations took great advantage of the aircraft carriers, and in the atlantic, it was submarines. The battleships used during WW-II primarily came from upgraded WW-I battleships.
These types of arms limitation treaties have not be shown to prevent any historical conflicts as they just tend to lock-in the status quo (although poorly crafted treaties may cause big problems like WW-I and WW-II). You only need to start with the Hauge Convention of 1899 declaration II and how it didn't seem to affect chemical weapon usage in WW-I very much.
We may see this a sign that nations are recognizing on emminent transition to a new munitions era. We may see nations start developing a whole new class of armaments after this. MOP or MOAB style bombs or even anti-matter bombs. These new non-nuclear bombs seem to promise to be more useful in the next battle (or war on terror).
Maybe, fortunatly, we get the opportunity bypass the urge to use this generation's strategic weapons that cause massive collateral damage and concentrate on more tactical (and containable) munitions. Strategic weapons are historically only useful to prevent a country from sustaing a war effort (if you want a more "street-fight" analogy, basically a kick in the nuts). For many countries that have nuclear weapons, demoralization by "media" has replaced the need for strategic weapons. Of course there are some other countries (e.g., like North Korea, Sudan), where media influence is insufficient other strategic mechanisms may still be needed, but probably in lower amounts.
Although this might be a glimmer of hope that we may be make to the end of the hydrogen bomb era, who knows what the next era will bring us.
I'm sorry but including Venezuala/Chavez alongside North Korea and Iran is absurd. Here is the difference: Kim jong Il, and Achmenedinijhad are both batfuck crazy. Chavez is just angry because the IMF and World Bank have been assfucking South America for decades and he's tired of the 'status quo', which involves rich Americans and Europeans with their dicks in his ass.
I don't blame him for rattling sabres, and I don't blame him for being pissed off - what the World Bank and the IMF have done to South America should be criminalized as economic warcrimes, because they're killing people en masse by fooling desperate and poorly-educated-at-best politicians into agreeing to national loans they will never repay at exorbitant rates they will never out-earn.
All of South America is getting fucked, the only reason you see Chavez speaking out all the time is because Venezuala is gifted with enough crude oil to escape the spiraling debt the rest of the continent is subject to - since he can escape it, he has the luxury to examine the problem and speak out against it, while the other leaders are scrambling just to survive or pocketing the money themselves and getting the fuck out of Dodge before someone comes gunning for them.
Kim Jong Il and Achmenedinijhad, by contrast, are trying to get nuclear weapons so they can be bully neighbour states without fearing reprocussions from stronger organizations that would disapprove, such as the US and NATO, (Chavez is not beyond sabre rattling that if only he had nuclear weapons people would listen to him, which is partially true).
I'm with you that modern ICBMs are a lot more accurate than most people would guess. However, I don't think it's a major focus of munitions development. The modern war doesn't really call for ICBMs. In fact, they have become a deterrent, with MAD keeping them grounded on all sides. It's unlikely any major ICBM launch would go unanswered, and the answer is going to come before detonation of whatever the first one was carrying.
Cruise missiles are not exactly easy to shoot down, granting that they are EASIER to shoot down than a MIRV or RV. There isn't any reason that cruise missiles have to fly low and perform pop-up attacks on targets. They do this now because most countries can't stop them (at least the ones we most often shoot at). Technologically, cruise missiles could be fired from anywhere, go upto sub-orbital insertion vectors and drop back on the target like an ICBM. It's not optimal to do so because: few countries can shoot down incoming missiles, and it takes more fuel and time. (besides the fact that it would probably require an engine change)
Technologically, there isn't that much difference in ICBM and a cruise missile. But their respective fields of use are entirely different. Cruise missiles are used as close support and strategic targeting. While ICBMs are a threat and deterrent only.
I suspect the only thing stopping the US military from TELLING YOU about the orbital kill vehicles it already has is that they are most effective when no one thinks they exist. Which keeps them from becoming only a threat and deterrent, instead allowing them to be a devastating weapon when one is desperately needed. (we hope it only gets used in desperate situations)
Well then it's a good thing you're here to let us know what is and isn't funny. The world is a better place because of people like you.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
"Apart from the fact that that is how the US Navy designates them, how are you defining ship and boat? "
Naval tradition, as much as anything. And, size is not the deciding factor. Barges can be huge, but they will never be classified as a ship. I checked the link Q-Hackis gave, and I find no "submersible ship" even when I follow the links.
IMO, anyone who refers to a submarine as a ship is a land lubber.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
In the last 40 years, that would be Iraq, twice, and Afghanistan
Not counting airlifts and small skirmishes:
1970s
operations in Cambodia
the Vietnam War
1980s
El Salvador
Columbia
Nicaragua
Panama
Lebanon
Grenada
Honduras
1990s
Persian Gulf War
Yogoslav Wars
Haiti
2000s
Afghanistan
Iraq
This list does not include foreign intervention by way of arms sales, CIA coups, or trade embargoes. And does not including the permanent deployment of 250,000 troops around the globe in over 130 countries with over 700 military bases.
The point being, you can stop and start the dates any time you like. The United States now has the most vast system of military bases in human history, and has invaded other nations at a higher rate than any other, except perhaps for Nazi Germany. We account for over half of all arms sales, and equal the rest of the world combined in military expenditures, despite having 3% of the population and under 3% of the landmass.
We are the empire. Any whining to the contrary is evidence of a painful amount of historical ignorance.
An accent wouldn't change "clear" to "cular". No corresponding change in the pronunciation of the letters in "clear" can give you "cular" without making the English language indecipherable. It isn't due to an "accent" any more than saying "libary" is due to an accent, or any of the other mispronunciations that ignorant people use because they never read, write, or consider the spellings of the words they use. No matter which accent you happen to have, it is possible to both say words correctly, and to mispronounce them.
P.S. vernacular != dialect != accent.
Systemd: the PulseAudio of init systems
You mean dahwlects.
...maybe he pecked it all out in some sort of Morse Code to ASCII converter?
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
it did say
so I suppose the SS refers to Self-propelled Submersible as apposed to non-self-propelled submersibles.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
I wouldn't be so sure.
Russia, China, or even Lichtenstein could have a "bigass army", but an army with no defensible supply line is a very useless army (especially if you've turned their supply lines and/or sources into a self-lit glass-paved parking lot).
In fact, I daresay that a larger army has a harder time of things when/if supplies get questionable, because they consume a shitload more and consequently need to be fed more, and on a constant basis.
One of the biggest reasons that Japan had such a bugger of a time holding islands in the Pacific during WWII had to do with the fact that in spite of having a big-assed army, they couldn't keep that army fed and cared for - their supply lines kept getting cut off, and were stretched way too thin.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Afghanistan is nothing but fucking mud huts, and $500B a year US Army can't keep it stable. Land wars are a thing of the past.
Suppose within 10 years the US military has ABM system that can actually shut down ABMs (they're not quite there yet). This means that in a global armed conflict they have no deterrent. This, in turn, means they can tell Russia what to do under the threat of a nuclear attack. Not a very comfortable place for Russia to be in.
I remember an Article published in Sci Am that stated that for a Russian 50Kt warhead to have a 50% of knocking out a Minuteman III silo the warhead would have to detonate within 300m of the silo, a half mile is about 800m. Also the debris raised by one detonation would prevent other warheads (traveling aprox. 15,000 MPH) from reaching their targets intact while we could launch through it.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
I hope they would include depleted uranium weapons as nuclear weapons, and forbid using this weapons except in the context of a nuclear war against another nuclear power. These hardened shell weapons do not cause nuclear explosions but they do cause nuclear pollution, being made of radioactive waste. They were widely used by the USA and Britain in the Gulf "wars" and elsewhere. If you want to know about the consequences, google "extreme birth defects".
Check his UID. He was probably born after the Cold War ended. In my experience people who did not grow or live through the Cold War do not have the same kind of world view on nuclear weapons.
according to wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_Trials The indictments were for: 1. Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of a crime against peace 2. Planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression and other crimes against peace 3. War crimes 4. Crimes against humanity
Please tell me you are not being serious. Strategic nuclear weapons in bombers make no sense since the ICBM was invented. If someone launches an ICBM attack in 15 minutes the bombs are dropping. By that time the pilots are probably still getting out of their bunkers, let alone spinning up the engines, or actually getting to the destination. Doing that would be tantamount to political suicide. You lose the retaliatory strike ability that made MAD successful in guaranteeing world peace in the first place.
You could try to convince me on tactical nuclear weapons in a bomber, but not strategic.
While I was Stationed at Ramstein AFB, Germany - Once a year a Russian Nuclear inspection team came by to verify that there were no Nukes on base.
...while I won't go into details, times change.
When were you there? I was there as well, probably before you, and
(Ramstein AB, not AFB)
Dudes always seemed to just do a once-over with what I assume was a radiation detector in a van driving around base, and then break for vodka around noon.
Ah, so the same procedure as their Nuclear Waste Disposal Safety Inspectors.
The enemies of Democracy are
2005-2008, fairly recently. I imagine it was much different back in the day.
Dudes always seemed to just do a once-over with what I assume was a radiation detector in a van driving around base, and then break for vodka around noon.
LMFAO break for vodka at noon. Such a stereotype yet so funny. In Germany the vodka still owns you.
"We are just a war away from Amerikastan. When god vs god the undoing of man." Dave Mustaine
The Iran invasion doesn't help the US prove they have deterrence in mind at all. Afghanistan may hurt that claim even more, but that depends on how long it drags on and what comes out about drug connections in the interim.
But, the president's policy is in keeping with a deterrence based system for Nuclear war. First, it limits use of Nukes to respond to chemical or bio warfare, and in particular it says we won't escalate to nukes for a lot of the very chem or bio type attacks that everyone else knew we would have to be crazy to respond to with nukes. To put it a bit more simply, we now know there's more to the world situation than two big superpowers that can Mutually Assure each other's Destruction (MAD), and we're not going to cling to deliberately acting irrational as a method of psyching 'the other side' out. Promising you're not going to deliberately fake crazy any more fits with not using nukes for leverage, posturing, or national vanity, so deterrence is one of the few uses left.
Yes, focusing the conventional military forces on deterrence and not using them for economic leverage, posturing or vanity, either, would send the same message better than just sending it via changes in a mostly secret and difficult to verify set of nuclear responses, but some steps are better than no steps.
Who is John Cabal?
The UN weapons inspectors didn't find anything in Iraq. The USA kicked them out before they were finished inspecting. Then the UK and USA "sexed up" their intelligence dossiers to make it look like Saddam was a threat when he was not.
The comparison the GP made to the Nazis is wrong - they were hanged for war crimes. However the Iraq war was still unjustified and illegal and based on a lie. These are the facts and they were at the time for those who didn't get swept up in the jingoism, drum beating and "Baghdad in 2 weeks" nonsense.
Before I read through the posts, I just wanted to mention that Reagan pushed for the total elimination and use of nuclear weapons.
Not sure who tagged this Jimmy Carter, but it should be tagged Ronald Reagan, as he was more progressive about the elimination of Nuclear weapons than Jimmy Carter.
(Not a fan, just trying to keep it factual.)
Every nuclear capable nation's capital is within Tomahawk range of the sea. The Navy could keep a few W-80 equipped Tomahawks on the SSGNs to mess up things if anyone attacked the US
Tomahawks can be shot down. We've never even used them against an adversary with a modern air defense network. SLBMs are a bit harder to deal with.....
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
If by orbital kinetic kill vehicles you mean something like a satellite that drops a tungsten rod on a target from orbit the reason we don't use them is because even china can blast satellites out of the sky.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
87-91, when we had the 86th Fighter Wing, with F-16's. Yes, Ramstein was much different.
NIC, SATA, and RAID are also pronounced as words . .
Three days from now?? Thats tomorrow!! ~Peter Griffin
True, perhaps - who knows how accurate ICBMs really are nowadays, with modern electronics and guidance? The ones in the know aren't telling, and for good reason. I'd bet a nice sum that modern ICBMs are a lot more accurate than the data anyone in the public has, given the advances in electronics and guidance.
Who knows when the US last upgraded their ICBMs? We're still using the Minuteman III, whose development program started in 1966. There was a guidance replacement program initiated in 1993 to upgrade the guidance packages, but AFAIK, the US is the only nuclear nation to not majorly upgrade their nuclear systems every 10-15 years.
You think someone's slashdot UID and age are correlated, huh?
Three days from now?? Thats tomorrow!! ~Peter Griffin
Just wondering what part of the Western world refers to the Falklands war as the Falklands/Malvinas War. You talk like an American but I don't actually know any Americans who don't recognise the utterly one sided nature of that conflict. Refering to it by the name the Argentinians give it is like calling the war in the Pacific the "Greater East Asia War to establish the Co-prosperity Sphere" or something similar.
So it doesn't matter that this has been said and demonstrated before. It matters that he's the one saying it.
When the axe came to the forest, the trees said, "Look out - the handle was once one of us."
The traditional system is a ship carries boats, and boats do not carry other vessels.
So, a cruise liner or a supertanker are ships because they carry lifeboats.
Those lifeboats are boats because they do not carry other vessels.
That's my personal shop, so that makes sense.
As for your stereotype, you'll find it quite wrong. Did you see any Christian decals on my site? I didn't think so.
When everyone around you says "ain't", "y'all", and yes, even "nucular", that's how you speak in those surroundings. I agree that it isn't appropriate from national-level politics, but to pretend that it is somehow ignorant isn't really fair. Rough and unpolished, yes - proof of subpar intelligence? Not even close.
For the record, "y'all" seems to be spreading north - I've heard it uttered many times by "those people" (See? I just made fun of my own stereotype!)
Out of curiosity, where did you go to school? It was definitely pronounced "nucular" here in northern Arkansas - in fact, one of my coworkers here was a reactor engineer on a LA-class nuclear submarine in the US Navy - he pronounces it "nucular".
Just to make you feel better, though, I do have a Gadsden flying on a pole outside my home. My own car is fairly low-key, but I have a teabag decal on the windshield near the corner, and "Molon Labe" in classical Greek on the top of the rear window. It's a '97 Honda Accord, not a 4x4 F-150, though, so you're going to have to adjust your mental image of me at least a little bit.
Learn about Photography Basics.
They are an undeclared nuclear, chemical, and biological weapon state. They run active programs for all three types of. Nobody knows the exact number of nuclear warheads; it is estimated to be from 100-200, with about 30-60 in deployment.
Mordechai Vanunu blew the whistle in the 1980s on Israel's nuclear weapons program. He was later kidnapped by Mossad and transported back to Isreal for a sectret trial on treason and espionage charges.
Slashdot - The great and glorious cluster fuck of Internet wisdom.
Yes, and the proportion is evidently rising. 53% voted for Obama.
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Analogy fail.
You poison my family, and I promise to only shoot back with enough conventional firepower to render your home into a deep, smoking crater instead of rendering your home into a deep, smoking, radioactive crater.
We have ample conventional weapons to devastate any non-nuclear state. Using nukes just makes the clean-up messier.
Exterminate!
when presidents do things that harm the economy, such as allowing fed chairmen to "lower interest rates."
Are you really that clueless about the workings of the federal reserve that you believe the president is the chairman's boss?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
"most people don't know why they know his name"
I remeber Haile Selassie because the Rastas worship him as the second coming of christ.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
One wasn't looking for WMD, he was into 20 8 year olds.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Ritter
In GOD we trust, all others we monitor.
Solving just this problem is what projects like the X-51 are for; a delivery system capable of delivering a conventional payload anywhere in the world without being mistaken for a nuclear strike.
caritj.org
"Today Venezuela was wiped off the planet by US nukes"
"In other news, Venezuela was labaled as non compliant to nuclear treaties ten minutes ago"
HTTP/1.1 400
The point of terrorist attacks is terror
They're not just killing people... but trying to kill the people who make the American economy and American government run.
That's simply not true. If their aim was economic destruction rather than simply terror, then they would have set of some talcum powder bombs in as many chip fabs as possible and taken them offline for months. No need to kill anyone: our economy at this point is the information and the ability to process it.
They're just lashing out because of economic and social globalization removing all the elasticity out of the social systems where they used to live on the margins, leaving them no place to go or to live how they'd choose to live. Terror is the way they get your attention.
-- Terry
You mean mines? Do they bother giving them names? They'll be cracking champagne bottles on torpedoes next.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Wyatt Earp? I think you meant to write, "Good and Bad and Ugly."
My page.
"irrationally afraid of communists"? You mean, other than the track record that two of the main communist nations murdered millions of their own people just last century, and have an ideology that preaches expanding their system worldwide? And the fact that both of those countries (despite the fall of official communism in Russia) also have nukes which are probably, right now, aimed at American cities?
Revive the Constitution.
In other news, "Skunk Announces It Won't Spray In Self-Defense". Also coming up: "Skunk Eaten".
Revive the Constitution.
I've never seen a square-rigged sailing submarine with at least three masts, so I say they're boats.
Nixon defaulted on your debt when he took the dollar off the gold standard.
But I think the Major Powers have a ton of intelligence information on each other, so the US/Russia have a pretty good accounting of how many strategic weapons they made. So with the inspection schemes they might be 75-85% accurate and they'll trust the other side, to a limit. From what I've read on the Cold War and the verification treaties, the Soviets always cheated and assumed the US cheated because, well, the Soviets were cheating.
LOL, sounds like a scene from "The Men Who Stare at Goats:"
General Brown: So they started doing psy-research because they thought we were doing psy-research, when in fact we weren't doing psy-research?
Brigadier General Dean Hopgood: Yes sir. But now that they *are* doing psy-research, we're gonna have to do psy-research, sir.
[leans forward] Brigadier General Dean Hopgood: We can't afford to have the Russian's leading the field in the paranormal.
At night I drink myself to sleep and pretend I don't care that you're not here with me
We can't let ourselves fear. When we do, it exacerbates our tendency towards dividing. Fear causes us to think of people as "other" and to care less for them. When that happens "big exceptions" are more likely. This is the crux -- those big exceptions, those instances of people being evil, they were fostered by the fearfulness of the perpetrators.
There are other factors that promote dividing, but fear is perhaps the biggest.
Sure, I carry a knife, though I expect not to need it. The difference between my attitude and the attitude of the fearful is that I'm not motivated to push others away. I don't look for excuses to condemn or devalue. I'm ready to incapacitate you if you mean serious harm, but my primary goal is your health and well-being. Regardless of who you are.
My beliefs didn't change with 9/11. 9/11 pissed me off for a while, but it wasn't really a pivotal moment in my life - certainly not the basis of an ongoing fear.
As for "molon labe"- that has nothing to do with the Spartans' sexual preference, which I am well aware of. It has everything to do with the Spartans' (and their compatriots') dedication to their families and willingness to stand and defend their home. They would not kneel (figuratively) before Xerxes to save themselves, but preferred to die valiantly to give the other time to assemble an army. A few thousand years later, it was termed differently: "Better to die on your feet than to live on your knees" - the Spartans' had a different view of what made a man a man, but the dedication and courage it took to stand strong at Thermopylae is surely something to be admired.
I find it ironic that my political opposition tries to frame me as homophobic and ignorant, but as soon as they are faced with philosophical opposition they immediately fall back to ad hominem attacks and gay-bashing. Very fucking enlightened.
Learn about Photography Basics.
Exactly. Admitting to having nuclear weapons would force the hand of Israel's allies to either break treaties, or stop providing military and economic aid.
Therefore, Israel's possession of nuclear weapons is an open secret. "Don't ask, don't tell" on a national scale.
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[...]Dudes always seemed to just do a once-over with what I assume was a radiation detector in a van driving around base, and then break for vodka around noon.
It's easier to detect nukes than other weapons of mass destruction. That's part of the reason why the US has always mantained that Nukes were interchangeable with Bacteriological or chemical weapons, i.e. a chemical attack would have possibly attracted a nuclear response.
Personally I think that the obsession with nukes is rather misguided, since the usefulness of the threat of first use is too good to pass up: if (any) enemy wants to get in close, he cannot concentrate its forces if he thinks that it would attract a nuke. If I remember correctly, a Russian armored division could be concentrated in 10 km in ordinary circumstances: under the nuclear threat, this number went up fourfold.
"If a boss demands loyalty, give him integrity. But if he demands integrity, give him loyalty." (John Boyd, 1927-1997)
I'll bet money that the US has weapons way beyond nuclear bombs and these new treaties simply reflect that we have options our enemies have never dreamed of in their worst nightmares.
There is really no point in having that many warheads in first place, any conflict can be resolved with much fewer number of efficient warheads. I don't know why US or Russia wouldn't unilaterally reduce their warhead numbers, most likely it's a mind game to not appear weaker than the other.
I see this disarmament more as a cost reduction effort rather than a significant reduction of capability to perform nuclear strikes. If US or Russia came up with a stockpile of 10000 unaccounted warheads the threat wouldn't be any greater than with planned 1000+ warheads.
When talking about "ace in the hole" each country has nuclear submarines hidden in oceans that are capable of retaliation strikes. Number of warheads isn't the "ace". Even then everyone most likely know how many nuclear submaries there are, unknown location is the key. Any launch facility location on firm ground can be found out very easily and therefore won't serve as an "ace".
Please tell me you are not being serious. Strategic nuclear weapons in bombers make no sense since the ICBM was invented. If someone launches an ICBM attack in 15 minutes the bombs are dropping. By that time the pilots are probably still getting out of their bunkers, let alone spinning up the engines, or actually getting to the destination. Doing that would be tantamount to political suicide. You lose the retaliatory strike ability that made MAD successful in guaranteeing world peace in the first place.
Please tell me that you don't think the military spent billions on a fleet of nuclear bombers for no reason. During the cold war and up until 1991, those bomber crews were on constant alert, and we certainly would have had many in the air in time for a retaliatory attack. Suggest you watch this video, and read the notes from one of the posters there:
http://nycaviation.com/forum/b52-scramble-drill-t17274.html
Just another day in Paradise
I would have thought this world was way past treatise by now, oh well... and who would even trust the US in a treatise anyway, they broke eveyone ever written with the Natives of its stolen lands
In my opinion it is a relic from the Strategic Air Command clique from WWII. It is about as obsolete a strategic nuclear weapon delivery platform as cavalry is obsolete as an infantry shock weapon.
The instant storable propellant ICBMs were developed in the 1960s, which can be launched in a matter of seconds and travel at Mach 20 to the destination, compared with bombers which take at best 30 minutes to setup, then fly to the target at Mach 1-2, bombers were utterly obsolete. As it should be painfully obvious.
If you take off too late, your airbase has likely been glassed already.
If you take off early enough, and the enemy air defenses did not knock you down (not that difficult to do to a large subsonic or mildly supersonic target), then your air airbase gets glassed, you have nowhere to return to.
By the time the bombers arrive the nuclear exchange is over already. So nuclear bombers are only useful in a first strike scenario against countries with ICBMs. However how can you achieve a successful first strike if the enemy can see your lumbering bombers enter their airspace hours (in a large country like Russia or China) before reaching their targets? Their ICBM counterattack will hit you before you even get there.
Strategic bombers still have uses, but for delivering conventional munitions, or perhaps tactical nuclear weapons in a protracted low intensity nuclear conflict.
... we now know there's more to the world situation than two big superpowers that can Mutually Assure each other's Destruction (MAD), and we're not going to cling to deliberately acting irrational as a method of psyching 'the other side' out.
This hits the nail on the head. It's always nice to see an administration admit that we're not in the Cold War anymore - you know, outside of the context of scaring us about the new age of global terror.
Well sorry if I came off as "I am right - you suck at jokes". I was in kinda a bad mood yesterday, so it probably came through in my posts. I think I need to get more sleep. Anyway, I still don't think it was funny - replacing words with silly alternatives just doesn't resonate with me (seems on the same level as "your mum" jokes) and I'm not a fan of the "I fixed that for you" meme, but I was a little harsh and aggressive I must admit. I honestly wasn't sure at the time if you were serious or not though...probably lack of sleep again there.
The Battle of Midway was won with nukes?
Midway was won with a combination of good leadership (McCluskey on the tactical level, Spruance and Nimitz on the strategic), good intelligence, Japanese stupidity and luck.
Midway was not however the turning point of the Pacific War. Midway blunted the Japanese offensive and enabled the US Navy to fight them on a more equal footing but the true turning point came a few months later. Guadalcanal is where the remaining skilled Japanese carrier aviators died -- at the battles of the Eastern Solomons and Santa Cruz islands. Guadalcanal is where the Allied Navies proved we could beat the Japanese in surface engagements -- though we had to get our asses kicked a few times before we figured out how to do it. Guadalcanal is where we proved that Japanese infantry tactics couldn't match Western firepower and training.
As an aside, Guadalcanal is one of the few campaigns in the 20th century that the US fought on an equal footing with our adversary. We proved that we could take on the Japanese on a level playing field and win. To the best of my knowledge that never happened in Europe -- every time we fought the Germans we did so with superiority in men, material and air/naval power.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
There is really no point in having that many warheads in first place, any conflict can be resolved with much fewer number of efficient warheads. I don't know why US or Russia wouldn't unilaterally reduce their warhead numbers, most likely it's a mind game to not appear weaker than the other.
Do not EVER underestimate the mind game.
Don't want to get in a fight in high school? Start lifting weights. Being bullied? Pick out the biggest bully and and go ape-shit on her. You'll get smashed, but it will be the last time. People will get the idea that they can pick on you, but you're likely to get in a few punches, too.
Mutually Assured Destruction? It has kept the peace throughout history. Wars only happen when Germany thinks that it can overrun France and actually come out ahead. If they think their major cities will be fire bombed to ashes in the process, they will think about it more. The US was pressuring the Japaneses before WWII, and the Japs got the idea that the US populace did not have the stomach for a war. They thought a major frontal assault would nullify the minor US threat. If the US had been a bit more hawkish, the warnings from the Japanese military's leaders would have carried more weight.
Once again, Obama shows that he is an idiot. The response to all threats is, "Will bomb you back into the stone ages. You will NOT threaten us with force, for YOU have everything to lose and you will gain NOTHING. Now, would you like to negotiate peacefully." You make the statement in private to foreign leaders, so as not to rile national sentiment among the various populations, and just use weasel words publicly (We will fight tyranny. We will not be bullied. We will keep the strongest military. etc.)
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
According to the merriam-webster online dictionary, "a-jay-sent" is the correct pronunciation. Where did you see the other form?
I am calling BS on this.
A) The USA already did this twice and remains to this day the only country to ever use nukes to kill civilians of a non-nuke nation.
B) The rational for using nukes was public opinion. The USA knew that their public would never support a war in which they would accept such heavy losses, which they would have during a conventional invasion of Japan. For this reason the only option for victory was to kill as many civilians as possible to force Japan to capitulate, which they did.
C) If EVER faced with a similar situation; exactly how long do you think it will take to destroy that newly developed doctrine? About as much time it takes to tear it up.
D) Given that the only two uses ever specified for Nukes are 1) Deterrence, 2) Mutually assured destruction or doomsday, and 3) See "B)" nothing has really changed.
So it is all ready pointless to create said document other than to abstractly give more weight to the nonproliferation treaties, which really is BS other than mentally. Having said all that, I don't think the USA would ever use it on Iran, as I am pretty sure they could wipe the floor with them conventionally (and be left with a mess like Iraq likely). As for NK, that is another matter. I would say of all countries, that is the one place in the world it would be used. The reason for this is that NK is so fortified, and militarized, that any conventional victory by the USA would fail. The troops would get chewed to hell (even if they are winning), and public opinion for the war would go into the toilet, and a new leader would be elected and end the war.
http://www.icasualties.org/
To date about 5000 Americans have died over a period of 9 years in Iraq. Look how much opposition there is to that war, and how much media coverage every time there are causalities. When the USA went to invade Japan, they were pretty much defeated, yet casualty estimates were into the MILLIONS of allies. NK would be not a whole lot different I don't think. For this reason I hope the people of NK get a more moderate leader than old Kim Jon, as if he does something crazy, there is NO WAY the USA is invading that mess, they will turn it into so much blackened glass before that happens. I believe it is the only place in the world that has that danger.
But nuclear submarines (and carriers, etc.) are steam ships! They just use nuclear fission (instead of combustion) to heat the water. : )
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
How do you sleep at night?
Most likely on a mattress stuffed with (hundred) dollar bills
Note to self: Stop putting jokes in my insightful comments so I can get something other than +1 Funny!
You can't be in non-compliance with the NPT if you've never signed it. India, Pakistan, and Israel never signed it; North Korea signed it and then pulled out. The policy seems to be that the US is treating North Korea - and potentially Iran - as out of compliance with the treaty (departure from the NPT is of debatable legality), while treating India, Pakistan, and Israel as not bound by its terms.
Steam propulsion doesn't make a boat into a ship either. Tugboats were steam powered before marine diesel and gas turbine engines were invented. A lot of riverboats were steam powered, back in the day.
I give you a point though, for pointing out that nuclear powered craft are still steamers. A lot of people don't realize that you can't hook atoms directly to a reduction gear to move the ship or boat - the energy has to be converted and transmitted to the gearing somehow!
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Exactly. Thank you for agreeing that military is an industry. A key industry. Which when Clinton downsized it caused ripple effects that contributed to the 2000-2003 recession. It was military build up that brought us out of it. As it brought us out of the late 70s recession... As it brought us out of the 1939 Great Depression...
Nuclear deterrence via an overwhelming stockpile of missiles is the defense... Maintaining a football team is not deference either. It is both offense AND defense. That also provides many people with jobs and healthcare.
That was my only point, actually. However, it should be noted that there are other ways to turn nuclear energy into a usable form without using steam... it's just that (AFAIK) no ships or boats (or whatever you want to call them!) use them.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz