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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.
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."
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)
It was Einstein...
"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."
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.
America, with dozens of aircraft carriers and thousands of jet fighters and bombers, is extremely well prepared to fight WWII.
Just about seventy years too late.
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"?
Yay, another Cold War! Now we can rebuild our economy!
C|N>K
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.
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...
Actually, for most individual peons like you or me, I don't think that's technically correct. For us, the only warning we're likely to get is the flash of light that burns out our retinas moments before the fireball burns us to ash. The time between the "warning" and our actual annihilation probably isn't affected all that much by these faster payload delivery systems.
Personally, I'm going to save my complaints for the day when they announce that they are working on warheads that explode more quickly, as that's something that could affect me personally. The loss of a few ms of reaction time might make the difference between being able to say "Oh shit..." vs only being able to say "Oh sh...". I find that in times of distress, being able to successfully complete a curse can make a big difference in one's well-being and piece of mind...
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.
"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.
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
The biggest danger to carriers---any surface vessel in fact---is attack submarines.
In nearly all 'unrestricted' exercises among allies (meaning the submarine's capabilities and tactics were not nerfed a priori) the submarines almost always get many hits with almost no sub losses or detection.
They don't talk about this in public much, but it's true. Modern torpedoes have excellent guidance and are very hard to detect. They can be launched dozens of kilometers away, and the submarine has half an hour to an hour to keep on moving. Ever go on the ocean and look out in all directions for 30 miles? And try to find something very quiet underwater?
A single hit sinks a destroyer in 20 seconds. They're designed to detonate under the keel area for maximum damage---where the nuclear reactors are in a carrier. Carrier and submarine nuclear reactors run on nearly weapons-grade uranium. It's a very large amount compared to weapons as well, of course since it runs for many years. Just some anomalous water getting in there, say from having thousand pound explosives, changes neutron reflection geometry and you could get a criticality accident/detonation as well.
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