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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".
The US is crazy dynamite monkey.
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The Mutually Assured Destruction plans of the Cold War are outdated...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.
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
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.
Russia and possibly China are the only countries that could blow America to oblivion and it wouldn't do them much good. Apart from anything else, the US could comfortably scrap 1000 nuclear weapons and still have enough to reduce any and all aggressors to dust. Obama's moves on weapons reduction just take America on it's first steps away from Strangelove country. There's still a hell of a long way to go before you need to start worrying about what the other monkeys are doing*.
*(but, FYI, it rhymes with plaster slating)
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
The world really isn't as evil a place as some think it is. And it's not really the "evil" monkeys we need to be afraid of, it's the fearful ones.
The world would be a less dangerous place if folks could stop being such hair-trigger fearmonkeys.
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.
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
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?
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.
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
You are dramatically overestimating the power of nuclear weapons.
Mt St Helens blew with 24 megatons of power. That is close to 2000 times the power of the Hiroshima bomb or about 1.8 times more powerful than the biggest bomb the US ever detonated.
Krakatoa blew with close to 200 megatons of power. That is 4 times more than the largest nuke ever blown and about 13000 times more than Hiroshima.
With 100 large nuclear weapons we can devastate 100 major cities or utterly destroy a couple dozen major cities.
Yeah, the Venezuelans are so brilliant that they leave him in charge of the country. Obviously it's Americans who are dumb.
...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.
"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
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?
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?
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?
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!
>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.
China's arsenal isn't large enough to blow the US to oblivion. Only Russia really has that. China has enough to act as an effective deterrent (that happens somewhere between five and 25 warheads, depending on delivery capability and ease of defense of those warheads), as do India, France, Britain, and Israel.
North Korea is moving in that direction, but because of its significant conventional forces (1.2 million active plus 3.5 million to 4.7 million reserves out of 24 million population), it has a deterrence factor even without nuclear arms. North Korea is in effect one giant military base.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Obligatory.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
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 never said they couldn't devastate cities, just that the fear of nuclear winter, or the idea that "Even with 100 we could completely wipe China off the Earth" is utterly false for a largely rural nation like china. You could barely wipe Delaware off the map with a hundred such bombs.
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
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
...and THIS is average American's understanding of international conflict -- an equivalent of schoolyard brawl.
This is why everyone treats you like a bunch of retards with bombs.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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
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.
The world really isn't as evil a place as some think it is.
For the most part, no, but surely you admit there's a few big exceptions? But on the bright side, maybe the last genocide ended this spring, knock on wood, in which case the greatest evil around is a measly few million women and children enslaved and forced to work as prostitutes. Things are definitely looking up now that only a third of the world is ruled by totalitarianism, but perhaps it's not time to beat all the swords into plowshares yet?
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.
The only place in Europe that still acts like this after WWII is former Yugoslavia+Albania.
And only when Americans are helping.
Everyone else grew up.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Contrary to popular belief, Soviet Russia was not populated, nor led, by lunatics who were just waiting for an opportunity to blow up the USA.
(On the other hand, the U.S. was the only nation to ever use nuclear weapons, and had once sent 13,000 troops to participate in an anti-Communist invasion of Russia, and was, during the 1980s, led by a lunatic who believed the Soviets were the "Evil Empire" and that a Biblical Armageddon was nigh. Can't blame the Russkies if they thought the U.S. might really launch an unprovoked attack.)
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
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.
Actually, it would probably be better to assume a good portion of your warheads will not make it to the target. Whether they're get destroyed before use, fail to launch, get shot down before use (on an aircraft), get intercepted by defenses (yes, missile defense systems are real, and contrary to popular "knowledge", they do work and have worked since the 70's), fail to initiate, etc. Remember, many of the latest warheads have never been actually tested, and neither they nor their delivery systems (in the case of ballistic missiles) have been tested under realistic conditions. It's entirely possible that a significant fraction will simply not make it to their targets or work as intended.
The meek may inherit the earth, but the strong shall take the stars.