Slashdot Mirror
Obama To Decide On New Weapons
krou writes "Buried within the New Start treaty, which saw the decommissioning of nuclear warheads, was an interesting provision as a result of Russian demands: the US must 'decommission one nuclear missile for every one' of a new type of weapon called Prompt Global Strike 'fielded by the Pentagon.' The warhead, which is 'mounted on a long-range missile to start its journey,' would be 'capable of reaching any corner of the earth from the United States in under an hour. ... It would travel through the atmosphere at several times the speed of sound, generating so much heat that it would have to be shielded with special materials to avoid melting. ... But since the vehicle would remain within the atmosphere rather than going into space, it would be far more maneuverable than a ballistic missile, capable of avoiding the airspace of neutral countries, for example, or steering clear of hostile territory. Its designers note that it could fly straight up the middle of the Persian Gulf before making a sharp turn toward a target.' The new weapon is in line with Obama's plans 'to move towards less emphasis on nuclear weapons,' and rather focus on conventional ones. The idea is not new, having been first floated under the Bush administration, but was abandoned, mainly because 'Russian leaders complained that the technology could increase the risk of a nuclear war, because Russia would not know if the missiles carried nuclear warheads or conventional ones.'"
FTFA: The idea is not new: President George W. Bush and his staff promoted the technology, imagining that this new generation of conventional weapons would replace nuclear warheads on submarines. In face-to-face meetings with President Bush, Russian leaders complained that the technology could increase the risk of a nuclear war, because Russia would not know if the missiles carried nuclear warheads or conventional ones. Mr. Bush and his aides concluded that the Russians were right. Partly as a result, the idea “really hadn’t gone anywhere in the Bush administration,” Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who has served both presidents, said recently on ABC’s “This Week.” But he added that it was “embraced by the new administration.”
First time I've seen something like this, where Obama is more hawkish on a military matter than Bush ? Man that seems wierd...
After all, if the warhead contains more than 3 ounces of fluid in any one container, or won't fit in a one liter zip-lock bag, there is no way that the TSA will allow the launch...
If the TSA's word isn't sufficiently reassuring, we could always stencil "No nukes here, we're saving them for Ivan" on all conventional ordnance...
The US does not want to build nuclear weapons that can only be used defensively (for political reasons), and therefore which act primarily as a deterrent. It wants to build weapons that can be used now.
The US does not only want other countries to be scared to attack the US; it wants other countries to be scared not to do what the US wants them to, as the US may attack tomorrow.
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
Russia really needs to be put at ease about nuclear attack. We simply aren't going to do it. We develop advanced weaponry, but for all intents and purposes, these weapons are just stockpiled, never to be used.
Agreeing to decommission existing missiles is an easy agreeable point. We don't need them anymore. Realistically, there isn't a country in the world that America is politically ready to bomb back to the stone ages. We just like having this stuff because it makes us feel better.
This type of concern isn't new, either. Russia was worried that Reagan's Star Wars missile defense shield would allow America to attack with impunity, but we never had good reason to bomb anyone, much less Russia.
My sincere hope is that Obama can navigate these treacherous waters. It's really his first true test of foreign policy on a global scale. If he can soothe the Russians here, he'll have made huge progress that future generations will reap the benefits of for decades.
The problem has never been that we blow too much shit up. The problem has been that we don't blow up ENOUGH!
I have always been a proponent of the Master of Orion foreign policy theory. You live in peace ad harmony with your neighbors, until they do something to piss you off. You know, they attack your colonies, steal too much technology, crash their star cruisers into a couple of towers, whatever.
You then send your fleet to bomb your enemies from orbit until their land is clear of any buildings, population, dogs, pine cones, or ants... then you simply bring in your own colonists to settle the area and call it good.
Once the other countries learn that you're serious and not screwing around anymore, they don't dare pick a fight with you.
Where's the problem?
It took us nearly a week to export Democracy to Iraq, now we could do it in less than two hours. Sounds like a good deal.
"Sorrow is better than laughter, for by sadness of face the heart is made glad." [Ecclesiastes 7:3]
This idea is bad on many levels.
1. It looks like a nuclear ballistic missile launch. Every time you fire one, you're risking nuclear war. Russia, China, and any other enemy will see the launch and has to make a very quick decision on what to do. Chances are, it probably wont' be misidentified as a nuclear first strike. Do you really want to take that risk though??? If you have to notify them first, the entire quick strike goes out the window and the entire point of the technology is lost.
2. It's fucking expensive. Having a 1 time use ballistic missile is going to cost 100s of millions to a billion dollars a shot. That figure doesn't even count the R&D money for the program. To allow for quick strike capability, they have to be manned at all times, and ready to fire, so the ongoing "maintenance costs" on it are very high. This is going to be an insanely expensive system.
3. Why? Who are you realistically going to strike with it. Anywhere in the middle east, North Korea, and most of Europe is currently within fighter range and can be hit in relatively short time from conventional fighter/bombers.
>>>Our efforts to blow stuff up in Iraq and Afghanistan have only worsened our image in the Middle East and created even more rabid terrorists
I could have told you that on 9/12.
In fact I did tell people that, saying going to war is not the solution,
but at the time people were thinking like animals. All they could see was "red" and revenge.
If you're going to risk billions of dollars and millions of lives, you don't do it for just 1 or 2 criminals. That's just ridiculous and totally disproportionate. Plus all it did was create a lot of orphaned children who will grow-up and want to kill Americans & Europeans. The problem is now worse, not better.
A wiser course would be to mirror what we do in our own homes. Get better locks to keep out criminals. i.e. Close the borders, in order to prevent another Bin Laden from sneaking through, unless they first had permission (visa).
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
yes, but that heat-seeking ABM will need to move even faster, thus generating even more heat, thus making it an easy target for a heat seeking AABM.
There are lots of high tech workers that read slashdot. I'm one of them. I decided, while at university, that I was not going to spend my life building weapons. Working on weapons certainly was an opportunity that presented itself when I was getting my degree in the late 80s. I do not want to create weapons because I would have no direct control over whether those weapons were limited to truly righteous causes.
Do you work on weapons? Do you share my concerns?
Only capabilities matter.
If the US can nuke Russia, Russia has to plan for the possibility that the US will nuke Russia. If the US launches missiles that could be aimed at Russia, and that could have nuclear payloads, Russia has to assume that they are and they do. Because they're fucked if they assume good faith and are wrong.
Better never to launch such a missile and best not to have them at all.
The problem comes when your civilization declines, and you no longer have the resources to smash your neighbors into oblivion. The Roman Empire successfully used your strategy (kill all troublemakers/) for ~600 years until they eventually reached a stage where they no longer had enough strength to do that. Then their enemies invaded & took the remaining pieces of the crumbling empire.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Where's the problem?
Assuming you're not kidding, there are two major problems with this approach. The first is a matter of morality: "bomb your enemies from orbit until their land is clear of any buildings, population, dogs, pine cones, or ants" may be a lot of fun in a game, but in real life it's mass murder on a scale that not even the most bloody-minded conquerors in history have ever attempted, and that is really not a contest any sane nation wants to win.
Okay, let's assume that the morality of it doesn't bother you (and it probably doesn't, although I suspect if you were ever confronted close-up with the results of such an action, your opinion would change.) The second problem is practical. Could we do what you propose to Iraq, or Afghanistan, or Iran? Maybe we could ... but we are not the only country in the world with the capacity to do such a thing, and be assured, the rest of the world will take notice. We get too close to the borders of Russia or China with such a campaign (BTW, take a look at a map and notice just how far west China's borders go) and we are pretty much guaranteeing an all-out nuclear exchange of the sort everyone was more than halfway expecting all through the Cold War. You may be too young to remember what living under the nuclear hammer was like, and just how high the level of mutual paranoia was. Me, I was stationed in Europe when the Wall came down; trust me, we don't want to go back there.
And Russia and China aren't the only major powers we'd have to worry about if we started down that road. Japan, the UK, Germany, India, France ... they're all pretty friendly to us these days. That would change in a heartbeat if the US turned into a latter-day version of Genghis Khan's Mongolia. And all of them either have nuclear stockpiles or the ability to produce them quickly, along with delivery systems. The US, or any other country that tried this approach, would quickly find itself isolated in a hostile world full of countries just itching to scorch its cities to the ground, and willing to take the risk of receiving the same treatment in return.
The US is unquestionably stronger militarily than any other country, but we aren't stronger than everybody, and this is a good thing. There will never be another Alexander, another Caesar, another Genghis Khan, another Napoleon, another Hitler, and this is also a good thing. The rest of the world will not allow it, and for the first time in human history, the concept of "the rest of the world" makes a difference in the thinking of those who would follow in the bloody footsteps of emperors. Not because the human race is any wiser or more moral than it used to be, but because there is no other choice.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
capable of avoiding the airspace of neutral countries, for example, or steering clear of hostile territory.
So if it will avoid neutral countries, and steer clear of hostile territories, by process of elimination that leaves the target to be our allies?
Where's the problem?
I'm sure those were the same words used when planning the assasination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Bang Bang and Austria will have a new leader, that's all.
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
Rome's problems...
Poor leadership because you could kill your way to Emperor. So every new Emperor was a target of the Army leadership, family members, etc
Slavery took away jobs from entire classes
Unhappy classes because there were no jobs had to be kept happy with massive spending on things like games, tax free holidays, free food, etc.
Lack of technological progress, the Western Empire stagnated under constant attack and couldn't progress, the Eastern Empire did better but again it was hammered by attacks on the frontiers.
Over expansion and under population in the provinces.
The United States could have gone the same way, if the expansion to the west had been coupled with constant warfare from massed Indian Tribes, Canada and Mexico all at the same time the American Civil War through Spanish-American War happened.
Also, Rome wasn't a world power. They were a European and west Asian power, the Han Chinese didn't have to make treaties with Rome, the Roman's couldn't project power to South Africa or the Americas.
The Aztecs in 1400 didn't care one bit about what the Eastern Roman Empire was doing.
Is there a place on Earth that the Americans, Chinese, French, Russians or British can't affect?
But in the broader context, what you're talking about is a continuum of engineer responsibility: engineers who design guns have no control over whether people use them to shoot people, engineers who design cars have no control over whether people use them to run over people, and engineers who design garbage bags have no control over whether people use them to asphyxiate other people. Unless your job is designing large shapeless soft foam objects, you're always going to risk someone using your creation to hurt someone else, and at each point along the continuum from plastic bag designer to nuclear weapon designer, at least a few people are going to say they're not comfortable with doing that, and at least a few people are going to say they are. I'm not sure how one would draw a line at any given point and make a decision that beyond that point, other people were Bad People for continuing to work on those designs.
With all THAT said, I've noticed that a couple of friends who work in weapons systems drink. A lot. A lot more than most people, and a lot more than they used to when they were working on launch systems for satellites or modelling asteroid impact crater formation.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
Which is basically what I've been saying locally for about a decade. The people we're having the most trouble with internationally don't just hate The West, they hate ANYONE that doesn't actively join their crusade. It's not enough to leave them alone, if you don't actively assist them in their genocidal goals you're going to be considered a target.
Basically extremist islam right now is pretty much the same problem with US right now, "You're with us, or you're against us."
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
Very good and well-thought out post. However, there is one point I disagree with:
There will never be another Alexander, another Caesar, another Genghis Khan, another Napoleon, another Hitler, and this is also a good thing.
You can never say never. While the world has become a much smaller place thanks to technology, that does not mean some future person won't attempt (and succeed) in utilizing that technology. In addition, the real challenge is to get people to follow you - if you can build up people, everything else just falls into your hands. (For example, look at Hitler. In any "normal" environment, that would not have happened. But the people of Germany were discontent and he played to that and, as such, received FAR more power than he ever would have otherwise.)
Actually, that's not completely accurate. If you can get an accurate read on the velocity and trajectory (shouldn't be too hard due to the massive amount of heat the missile is putting off) you just launch your ABM at the place the missile will be by the time the ABM reaches intercept altitude. That's how ABMs work against the ballistic missiles that are available presently.
We've seen how well that has worked in the past... (not very well)
Besides, a ballistic missile defense system is designed to either target the launch phase (the missile is still moving relatively slowly) or the ballistic phase (not rockets firing, a simple parabolic trajectory). A decently designed missile could simply avoid the ABM with 0.5 degree course changes. Within one minute at mach 4 (2884mph @ 1500 feet of altitude) that half degree change puts the course of the missile about 1/2 mile off the projected course. The more time you have, the more course changes you can make. Even if you only need to be accurate to 100 meters for the explosion to disable the missile, you only have 78 milliseconds between when the missile enters your (perfectly aimed) kill zone and when it leaves it. Make your missile faster or fly higher, and it's even safer from shoot-down.
Shooting down a missile is hardly a simple task, especially at these speeds.
Write your representatives! Repeal the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics!
This brings up an interesting point. I'm starting to suspect that the reason why the United States is bending over backwards of copy write lobbyists (an pressuring everyone else to do the same) is because that's rapidly becoming the only thing they have. they've gone through their natural resources, all of their manufacturing is going to China (including high tech), they've just conclusively proven that they can't be trusted with finance, their car companies were pretty much built on the assumption that they can continue to convince people to buy a new car every five years.... I suppose they'll have agriculture for a while, but it looks like their largest export will be imaginary property.
disclaimer: IANA economist, and probably have no idea what I'm talking about.
404: sig not found.
I think the largest contributing factor to Hitler's rise to power and world war 2, was the Allies' actions after world war 1. The Treaty of Versailles pretty much placed all blame for WW1 on Germany, neutered them politically, and ordered them to pay 132 billion marks in war reparations. this contributed to hyperinflation in the 20s, and the cost of living skyrocketed. It's not really surprising that the people got pissed off. ironically, most of this was in order to prevent Germany starting another war.
404: sig not found.