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The Argument For a Hypersonic Missile Testing Ban
Lasrick writes Mark Gubrud has a fascinating piece arguing for the U.S. to lead the way in calling for a ban on the testing of hypersonic missiles, a technology that the U.S. has been developing for decades. China has also started testing these weapons, which proponents optimistically claim would not be used to deliver nuclear weapons. Russia, India, and a few other countries are also joining in the fray, so a ban on testing would stop an arms race in its tracks. The article discusses the two types of hypersonic technology, and whether that technology has civilian applications.
Sounds fair...
So we can follow the ban and everyone else cheat?
You really think China would stop testing because of a treaty?
HA HA HA HA HA HA HO
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
How often does a ban stop anything in its tracks?
Bans only stop the good guys in their tracks.
So this comes along just as Russia drops the word "Nuclear" to remind everyone that they have them.
Are you naive enough to believe the Russia would bother to show up to negotiate about this?
One also wonders what the people of Ukraine think about such a well timed suggestion.
Have you compiled your kernel today??
It is the kind of idiocy that makes the military industrial complex laugh and call you names.
There are good reasons to ban weapons - but not just because the weapon is good at killing people. To those in the military, effectiveness at killing people is a reason to BUILD the weapon, not ban it.
Chemical are banned not because they kill people, but because they are likely to kill civilians and your own soldiers as much as they kill the enemy. They also people and damage valuable land after you win.
A similar argument applies to biological weapons, land mines and nuclear weapons.
There is NOTHING in this article that would convince a soldier to ban the weapons. Instead, any military person, upon reading it will of course demand that we spend lots of money figuring out how to build hypersonic missiles.
If you dislike war, ban it. But you are probably not naive enough to try that. You would lose the argument because such an attempt has many many flaws. Well guess what - trying to ban weapon research because the weapon is too goo is just as naive.
WORST of all, your naive and foolish attempts make it much harder to ban the weapons we actually CAN ban - land mines, chemical and biological warfare.
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The US would stop building and researching and every other country in the world would continue. But hey, a BAN on evil horrible weapons makes good soundbites for low information voters...
It was called the Kellogg-Briand Pact. "The High Contracting Parties solemly declare in the names of their respective peoples that they condemn recourse to war for the solution of international controversies, and renounce it, as an instrument of national policy in their relations with one another."
How well did that work out?
It was signed in 1928. Good thing there have been no wars since then...
The argument is at heart "Don't develop these weapons because they will be good at killing people and I personally am not smart enough to come up with a civilan use that doesn't kill people".
It is the kind of idiocy that makes the military industrial complex laugh and call you names.
I think the big issue with these weapons is that they *will* become nuclear payload delivery systems, and as first-strike weapons they would be very hard if not impossible to stop (not that good defense industry $$ won't be spent trying). First-strike weaponry generally enables the crazy/unstable countries and their leaders to exert their will over the rest of the world, while not exactly providing much in terms of benefits to larger, more well nuclear established countries.
Banning this kind of testing isn't new - we did have a nuclear test ban for several decades [1]
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
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One rule I try to remember is to never make a rule that can't be enforced. With nuclear bombs, there is seismic and radioactive evidence, so you can know if somebody is breaking the treaty. I doubt that such a thing exists for hypersonic missiles.
Nuclear weapons are mainly not used right now because they are so damn slow. When you want to nuke someone on the otherside of the planet, you want them blown up right friggen now. Then some douche tells you, "Sir, the best we can do is 8 hours." and you're all "WHY THE FUCK DO WE HAVE THESE THINGS TO BEGIN WITH???' Clearly if we make nukes fast enough everyone will use them. Seriously though, with laser missile defense systems nowadays are hypersonic missiles really that big of a deal? I mean the systems that use lasers to burn up the missiles, not the laser guided ones where you still have to shoot at a bullet flying at you.
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Seems to me that all this would do is stop the *open* development of these weapons. Even if everyone agrees not to make them, they will all still be making them.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Because nothing works like wagging your finger and pretending something doesn't exist.
A "ban", eh?
Good actors would comply, bad actors would not. Then bad actors would have them, good actors wouldn't.
And that's ... better? How?
We already have hypersonic missles -- really! Most of the air-to-air missles shot from 1 plane to another are hypersonic and we've had these for decades. This is public knowledge.
What the article is try to get banned is "long-range hypersonic missles", or if you prefer, the old ICBMs going a lot faster. If you could make a very small nuke and stick it in one of the existing missle cases; you could have a pretty awesome weapon if short distances are all you need (say in the 80-100 mile range from what I've read, definitely far enough the pilot wouldn't have to worry about getting caught in it). It'd be pretty easy to hit any coastal city from international air space that way.
Just build the goddamn things. Don't trust anybody that says they're not. I'm sorry, but that's the world we live in.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Mutually Assured Destruction is more of a pro than a con when considering certain element of society which are willing to, say, strap explosives to their chest and detonate them in a public venue. Projecting your morality onto others in order to predict behaviors is a dangerous game.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
It's not patronizing to point out that both Russia and China are much poorer countries that the US. All you need to do is look at their GDP/capita figures to see the wide gap. As for scholastic achievements, cross-country comparisons are always difficult especially when dealing with non-democratic countries that need to look good for propaganda purposes. Examining the latest PISA figures, it doesn't look like Russian students fare better than Americans. Russia and the US have similar scores for math, but Americans are better at reading and science. Unfortunately, no data is available for China as a whole. Students in Shanghai perform much better than Americans but this is comparing apples and oranges and I doubt that students in poorer, rural areas of China would score as high.