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How Quickly Will the Latest Arms Race Accelerate?
First time accepted submitter tranquilidad writes "Russia was concerned enough about the U.S. development of a Prompt Global Strike (PGS) capability in 2010 that they included restrictions in the New Start treaty (previously discussed on Slashdot). It now appears that China has entered the game with their 'Ultra-High Speed Missile Vehicle.' While some in the Russian press may question whether fears of the PGS are 'rational' it appears that the race is on to develop the fastest weapons delivery system. The hypersonic arms race is focused on 'precise targeting, very rapid delivery of weapons, and greater survivability against missile and space defenses' with delivery systems traveling between Mach 5 and Mach 10 after being launched from 'near space.'"
Or, every nation building new nuclear weapons could maybe scrap the idea and work on space exploration, fusion power, renewable food production, anagathics, or a hundred other good ideas that might actually be of some use instead of a one-time "End it all in case of national butthurt" button.
...some alien antagonists to direct our incessant fears towards. That, or maybe a zombie apocalypse?
We'll just have less warning this time.
- mother nature
Someone once said that World War Four would be fought with spears and stones or some such.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Change we can believe in!
Rapid delivery of lots of money into giant contracting company's pockets.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
Sadly.
Collective insanity? Is there no defense for that?
Who here believes that Vermont would maintain a huge hypersonic nuclear missile delivery system?
The danger to human society is these huge nation-states. The only rational thing to do is to reduce the size of these states to the point where they don't pose such risks. Yeah, that's a hard planet-wide challenge, and we have a few of them to contend with, but articles like these show that there's still far too much effort going into the wrong projects.
It might take more courage to make these required changes than currently exists within humanity.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
The US is so far ahead of the rest of the World in weapons deployed, developed, designed and built, that China and Russia could rush until doomsday and never catch up.
WWII is over. The Cold War is won. Disband NATO and bring the troops home from Japan and South Korea. America should stop playing World Police.
Because races towards annihilation powers are good for frail economies built on overlapping debt schemes, somehow... right?
Nobody remembers the cold war, except the old fogies. I'm an old fogie now, I guess.
Look kids - every day there are thousands of nuclear missiles aimed at cities in an uneasy truce to ensure that our governments maintain control. It's easy to pretend power doesn't matter, but let's be clear: Power is everything, and the power of the western world is enforced under threat of nuclear annihilation if we're messed with.
That's never going to change, and it's better to accept it and deal with it than pretend China and the USA and Russia will one day magically extinguish Prometheus' flames.
I hope they enjoyed the time not worrying about the bomb. As global energy resources (OIL) get tight, you'll see more of this type of thing starting up until the war is on again.
How'd that line go? Oh yeah. Judgement Day is inevitable.
..don't panic
Why this arms race? There can only be one reason: access to natural resources. Some natural resources (such as cheap fossile fuels) are on the decline, and China wants to keeps ite growing population happy, otherwise those in power might lose their position. The other superpowers also want to keep their positions. Cheap natural resources (ranging from water to fossile fuels to rare earth metals) are an essential fact for a healthy economy.
Well, we could care less, though I'm certain the fireworks will be brief and somewhat spectacular, when they do happen.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Back in the 90s a business student told me we needed free trade with China because they would become more powerful than us. That's one kind of loser talk.
The other kind of loser talk is from the parent. It's hubris.
Overestimating an opponent (note, not an enemy, an opponent) and underestimating are both bad IMHO.
If I had to lose sleep over one thing about our military, it'd be aircraft carriers in a naval battle with China. Giant siting ducks. They've been the backbone of the navy for decades now. Just think about that. That's an awful long time for opponents to think about strategies against it.
We shouldn't be beating our chest and bragging. We should be figuring out what to do if carriers become sitting ducks under some new weapons system. WW2 proved the carrier. WW3 might disprove it.
We should also take a page from their book--the Art of War, and try to prevent opponents from becoming enemies. We've been doing a pretty sucky job of that lately.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
'I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.'
---Albert Einstein
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Yay, another Cold War! Now we can rebuild our economy!
C|N>K
They are not that far behind if you focus on their military objectives of excluding the American navy which currently provides the security umbrella for South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Philippines, etc.
I am not the only person who sees parallels between China / America and Germany / Britton during the dreadnought arms race that preceded WWI.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-German_naval_arms_race
work on space exploration, fusion power, renewable food production,
You know what's even worse than working on developing weapon systems? Working on 90 years old weapon systems.
Aircraft carriers were state of the art during WWII, today they are as obsolete as the USS Arizona was in 1941.
What's the point is spending hundreds of billions of dollars in building sitting ducks that can be taken out by a single hypersonic missile?
Poor 3dfx, "hypersonic GLIDE vehicle" would have been a much better name than Voodoo 3.
In the USA that would, without question be true.
Remember, President Dwight Eisenhower famously warned the U.S. about the "military–industrial complex" in his farewell address. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military%E2%80%93industrial_complex
And, just as he foretold, it has come to pass.
The internal economic situation in China however, is different. I do much work in China and have a lot of close friends there. Several are actually pretty high up in the PRC Army. There is certainly corruption, but it is a different kind. This is more of the bribes kind which is common in the east.
As I heard from my friends, regarding new weapons, someone will think of something that they want and say to such and such department...build this thing now and do not fail to build it.
There is a strange mix of capitalistic and communistic economic policies at play and so it is hard to gauge cost overruns like in the west. In any case, weapons development is not about filling the pockets of your brother in-law but about fulfilling the request from the military. Now, if you are in charge of the project, that is not to say your brother in-law does not now have a good chance to fill his pockets.
False. China has a generation better submarine fleet, better infantry (gear, troop count, morale -- they don't have any Snowdens betraying their secrets), better planes, and better nukes (remember, Russia's rocket research is still going while NASA got hit by funding cuts.) The only reason US aircraft carriers don't wind up random floatsam is because no sub captain has been given the order. Even US destroyers are unable to handle a modern Chinese sub should trouble arise, and the ship would be sunk in seconds.
China as a military threat is so far behind us, it's really not worth discussing. They are just trying to show off for their nationalist population.
The fact is even if they did catch up, we would still wipe the floor with them and any other potential threat. We own the world, there is no country on Earth that can stop us.
Unless you shoot yourself in the foot, like most past Empires...
Parent has it. China is obviously very important, but fearing the 'rise' of China as some global dragon is insane and stupid.
We have plenty of reasons to 'fear' what's happening in China. China is a beast of pollution and bad "face"...the people of China are as good as any people anywhere, but their government has ruined at least an entire generation with the one child policy & done irrevocable damage to their environment.
It's kind of crass for an American to say "we won" but its true. This is the internet after all, crass is to be expected. It doesn't invalidate the entire point of the post.
We need to foster Democracy in China & stop using predatory capitalism as a long-term tool of diplomacy.
We need to stop this bullshit of looking for the 'next' superpower for us to irrationally fear. We won that whole thing. Now we have new problems that require a new paradigm.
We obviously should still have the best military in the world. TFA is fear mongering and China propaganda. Remember the same people who control China's wealth are in partnership with the people who profit from military spending.
Thank you Dave Raggett
Perhaps. Perhaps not.
The reality is that the US and west never stopped waging the Cold War. We broke the understanding with Russia and pushed NATO eastward, even incorporating parts of the former USSR into NATO.
Then we tore up the ABM treaty and put anti-missile bases in Eastern Europe claiming we were doing that because of Iran. The Russians didn't find that laughable claim one bit funny and understood that the west was seeking to negate their nuclear deterrence.
NATO has been used offensively both inside and outside of Europe and shows that it has nothing to do with "defense".
We portrayed a rag-tag group of Muslim fundamentalists as some sort of existential threat to the US and west, but now the US gov't has made a "pivot" and is portraying China as militarily aggressive because they are squabbling over some worthless islets with their neighbors. It's clear that China is the focus of a new Cold War.
It's clear the US is in search of a "new enemy" because that's what keeps Americans distracted from how much we waste on our military and our continuing economic decline.
"Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military-industrial establishment would have to go on, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented. Anything else would be an unacceptable shock to the American economy." -- Ambassador to the USSR and US State Dept. strategist George F. Kennan.
The 3rd Straight of Taiwan crisis put a giant butthurt on China.
I would say a LARGE part of their military build has to do with preventing any such humiliation like that from happening again.
Think of what people in the US would be doing if something like that happened off the shores of North America.
This is an arms race that only Russia can win. Only Russia has a vast empty territory with a significant population still living a subsistence lifestyle. Assuming that WWIII destroys technological civilization, the American countryside will be helpless without gasoline, pesticides, fertilizers and other modern tools. Americans will all starve to death. But in Russia, a large population will live on, and maintain the Russian language and culture. They will eventually recover, build a new empire, and take over the world. The only way to prevent such a takeover is to prevent WWIII so that America and Europe continue to exist as separate cultural spheres.
"Go ahead and ask your friendly neighborhood Chinese exchange student about whose nation should be humiliated in the next 20 years" -- if by that you mean, which nation do the Chinese still resent the most, which nation has killed the most Chinese people ever, and which nation the Chinese government is most using as a bogeyman to whip up nationalistic fervor? -- that would be Japan. By the way, if the US ever pulls out of the western Pacific or looks like it is going to, Japan will field nuclear weapons within in six months, followed almost simultaneously by S. Korea, and maybe Taiwan.
We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without asking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage.
Since both our last six federal deficits and the last several years of Fed money printing both separately exceed our military spending, I conclude that our mortgaging of our grandchildren is the more imminent problem.
I can have my packages withing one hour of ordering?
What is the time now that a nation has to decide if incoming ICBMs are real or a computer or sensor glitch? Because you have to launch before the other guy's warheads go off among your silos or make an EMP over your head - use them or lose them.
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/near-launching-of-russian-nukes
Now what if everyone has the new fast weapons which cut your decision time from minutes to seconds?
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
1945-1950 is the longest period of peace?
I suppose it depends your definition of peace... Who cares about Korea or Vietnam, It's been all peace since the bomb dropped on Nagasaki...
Yeah sorry... to say that the second half of the 20th century was in relative peace is arrogance. yeah there weren't warring states as often, and Europe has experienced the greatest peace,( no major conflicts directly in Europe is what i'm refering to) since then, but the war in Europe wasn't ended with a bomb, It was ended when Russia stormed Berlin.
who's talking about hyperbole?
{evil power begin}
We will do just that!
... When we own the World completely.
{evil power end}
Did South Ossetia beg US-backed Georgia to invade?
Oh, sorry, I forgot that CNN and FOX have told you that it was Russia that escalated tensions.
Or did slashdotters beg propaganda shills like cold_fjord and friends to infest slashdot with all their bullshit links to "Documentaries" about evil Soviet Union that are proven fakes? "Soviet Story" anyone?
They had their taste of Warsaw Pact life and wanted their best chance of avoiding a repeat.
Citation needed. Or, in other words, you are full of shit.
The Cold War is not over and we are on different sides. One of them is a global hegemon that is willing to devour more and more, and another one is a completely economically and militarily fucked-up oversized banana republic of sorts.
Greetings from Moscow.
Indeed. All surface ships are vulnerable to modern non-improvised weapons.
Naturally the Chinese surface Navy has no answer to being sunk by B-2's. In a significant conflict China could successfully deter/eliminate US surface fleet a significant distance, and the US could deter/eliminate Chinese surface fleet at any distance.
Aircraft, missiles and subs win.
That Chinese hyper-velocity missile reminds me of a high-school joke about the adventure of an Astronaut Monkey, who having survived the test ride in the nose-cone of ballistic missile used "sign language" to tell the Project Leader that he was "going so fu$k'n fast that he couldn't see a damn thing."
The counter system to the hyper-velocity missile is a WW1 bi-plane. It can fly so slow that it can turn and dive on a "dime."
Ha ha
Hypersonic Strike is much better than nukes -- all the destructive power without the nasty radioactive byproducts.
It's sad that people can't get along but that problem goes back to antiquity.
These types of weapons likely exist as a means for the .0001 %'ers to wipe out major portions of the surplus, global population as the need arises. Every major destructive event seems to drive a resurgence in the arts and sciences. Why let the asteriods have all the fun?
"China has a generation better submarine fleet, better infantry (gear, troop count, morale -- they don't have any Snowdens betraying their secrets), better planes, and better nukes (remember, Russia's rocket research is still going while NASA got hit by funding cuts.) The only reason US aircraft carriers don't wind up random floatsam is because no sub captain has been given the order. Even US destroyers are unable to handle a modern Chinese sub should trouble arise, and the ship would be sunk in seconds."
Dude, go easy on the pot, lsd or whatever you're on now.
No American aircraft carrier operates alone; They only operate as part of a "battle group" or "carrier group" (pick a decade and get a different phrase) which includes other surface ships and submarines. Not only do carriers provide their own defenses, but the escort vessels provide defenses as well, particularly against inbound missiles. Various forms of sea-skimming missiles have existed since WWII, and American carriers have been a pain in the posterior to many tyrants over the decades. You apparently assume all those guys were just too dumb to buy and launch a missile that could so obviously and easily eliminate an "obsolete" (to you) carrier. The truth is that as each generation of faster-and-better threat has come along, the fleet defenses have improved to deal with it... and some of the ships currently deployed have interceptors that can down an ICBM. The new Ford class carriers are designed to support the eventual replacement of the current generation close-in defense systems with defensive lasers (which will always be faster than ANY inbound weapon) and the Zumwalt-class destroyers now coming on-line are similarly prepared to host laser-base missile defenses (which the USAF have already validated from airborne platforms)
If the age of a basic weapon system idea defines whether it's wise to spend money on new versions of it, history does not truly prove that point; Guns and knives are much older, yet we keep spending money on new guns and even new bayonets. Body armour is quite old, yet we spend lots of money on new forms. The ballistic missile is nearly as old (in historical terms) having become operational in the 1940's (the carrier transitioned from experimental to effective in the 1930's) and yet you do not scoff at missiles as obsolete. Things only become obsolete when they are actually obsolete, not when pajamaboy bloggers declare them to be
-- Navy vet
South Ossetia is part of Georgia, not Russia. Russia is the invader, not Georgia.
"The organization has concluded that the United States is now the principle violator of human rights and freedoms worldwide." -- Amnesty International's annual report on human rights.
Dictatorships and closed systems/societies have the advantage that Amnesty International can't get all the information to make valid conclusions. They get rumors and innuendo. Half the time AI only knows there are problems when bodies start flowing down the rivers. I view this in the same way I view those who say that Snowden's documents prove the USA is the most intrusive. (Yeah I'm in the minority that think both the NSA is violating the constitution and that Snowden belongs in jail) This of course isn't true to the degree Europeans like to run on about. Snowden's documents show that many other countries willingly cooperated for information sharing. Dig out the documents from eastern Europe or china and we can talk about how governments rank against each other on some human rights and freedoms scale.
American carriers are escorted by surface combatants that are Anti-Sub Warfare (ASW) ships and also by "friendly" attack subs that quietly stalk any "non-friendly" subs that get close enough for concern. Oh, and before somebody cites an article about non-American subs operating near American carriers, keep in mind that American subs are VERY stealthy and excellent at hunting their opponents ... and they are under NO obligation to advertise their capabilities to opponents by "showing their hand" during peacetime ;-)
The only REAL threat to an American carrier (currently) is the failure of her crew, or the crew of one of her escorts. The Russians and the Chinese know this which is one reason why the Chinese are racing to learn to build AND OPERATE their own; The Chinese may be working on their own hypersonic missiles, but they know full-well that the Americans are further along that path than they are AND YET they are working on new carriers.
-- Navy vet
Aircraft Carriers are good operational platforms for rescue and humanitarian operations. Maybe we could figure out some way to consistently re purpose them?
Then we tore up the ABM treaty and put anti-missile bases in Eastern Europe claiming we were doing that because of Iran. The Russians didn't find that laughable claim one bit funny and understood that the west was seeking to negate their nuclear deterrence.
North Korea and Iran are good friends. North Korea has detonated nuclear weapons since 2006. Iran has developed rockets, that can launch satellites into orbit, with North Korea help. If Iran really wanted nuclear weapons, it could have them, with help from NK.
"After the Empire: The Breakdown of the American Order" this book is by an author who predicted the end of the USSR long before everyone else. And this time he predicts the decline of the USA, which turns agressive upon losing its power instead of peacefully joining to club of all the other western nations which have realized that they depend on all the others for economic survival. The US seems to feel very smug about their ability to wreck havoc on random parts of the world, but the nature of homo sapiens is to unite against the bully. Look at the NSA scandal or the military involvement - the US is losing allies pretty fast, and in the long run it will lose its moral support in most of the world due to these grabs for hard power which sacrifice any moral high ground the US might have had.
China / America and Germany / Britton
WTF? You seriously don't know how to spell 'Britain' but are too lazy to look it up and figure that taking a vague stab at what you think the word's spelling might be must be the better option?
We will all go together when we go
All suffuse with an incandescent glow.
No one will have the endurance
To collect on his insurance,
Lloyd's of london will be loaded when they go!
Please don't avoid the overall issue. There are people who control the U.S. government who make huge amounts of easy money by encouraging and causing and engaging in violence.
The U.S. government has engaged in violence each year for more than 100 years, to make a profit for a few. Anyone desiring more information about that can, for example, read these highly rated books:
Overthrow: America's century of regime change from Hawaii to Iraq
by Stephen Kinzer
The brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and their secret world war
by Stephen Kinzer
South Ossetia is a part of Georgia as Kosovo is a part of Serbia.