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US Preparing to Put Nuclear Bombers On 24-Hour Alert (defenseone.com)
DefenseOne reports on new preparations at Barksdale Air Force Base:
The U.S. Air Force is preparing to put nuclear-armed bombers back on 24-hour ready alert, a status not seen since the Cold War ended in 1991. That means the long-dormant concrete pads at the ends of this base's 11,000-foot runway -- dubbed the "Christmas tree" for their angular markings -- could once again find several B-52s parked on them, laden with nuclear weapons and set to take off at a moment's notice... Gen. David Goldfein, Air Force chief of staff, and other senior defense officials stressed that the alert order had not been given, but that preparations were under way in anticipation that it might come...
Already, various improvements have been made to prepare Barksdale -- home to the 2d Bomb Wing and Air Force Global Strike Command, which oversees the service's nuclear forces -- to return B-52s to an alert posture. Near the alert pads, an old concrete building -- where B-52 crews during the Cold War would sleep, ready to run to their aircraft and take off at a moment's notice -- is being renovated. Inside, beds are being installed for more than 100 crew members, more than enough room for the crews that would man bombers positioned on the nine alert pads outside... Large paintings of the patches for each squadron at Barksdale adorn the walls of a large stairway. One painting -- a symbol of the Cold War -- depicts a silhouette of a B-52 with the words "Peace The Old Fashioned Way," written underneath.
General Goldfein, the Air Force's top officer and a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, "is asking his force to think about new ways that nuclear weapons could be used for deterrence, or even combat... 'It's no longer a bipolar world where it's just us and the Soviet Union. We've got other players out there who have nuclear capability. It's never been more important to make sure that we get this mission right.'"
Already, various improvements have been made to prepare Barksdale -- home to the 2d Bomb Wing and Air Force Global Strike Command, which oversees the service's nuclear forces -- to return B-52s to an alert posture. Near the alert pads, an old concrete building -- where B-52 crews during the Cold War would sleep, ready to run to their aircraft and take off at a moment's notice -- is being renovated. Inside, beds are being installed for more than 100 crew members, more than enough room for the crews that would man bombers positioned on the nine alert pads outside... Large paintings of the patches for each squadron at Barksdale adorn the walls of a large stairway. One painting -- a symbol of the Cold War -- depicts a silhouette of a B-52 with the words "Peace The Old Fashioned Way," written underneath.
General Goldfein, the Air Force's top officer and a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, "is asking his force to think about new ways that nuclear weapons could be used for deterrence, or even combat... 'It's no longer a bipolar world where it's just us and the Soviet Union. We've got other players out there who have nuclear capability. It's never been more important to make sure that we get this mission right.'"
I know folks who voted Trump because they saw Hilary as a war hawk. She is (more a Chicken hawk than anything else since I can't see her ever in harms way) but Trump certainly wasn't the answer. At least Hilary wouldn't be riling up Iran just to appeal to her base.
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That's a really interesting take on the Rosatom transaction. Did you get it from Fox News, perhaps? Or did you do your research by reading Clinton Cash?
What really happened is that Rosatom, the Russian atomic energy agency, bought a controlling stake in Uranium One, a Canadian company with 20% of the US uranium mining capacity. This deal had to be approved by a committee composed of a dozen different US government agencies, of which Clinton was the head of one (as Secretary of State), along with agencies in Canada and Kazakhstan, and stock markets in Toronto and Johannesburg.
Apparently none of them found sufficient reason to halt the sale. Are you arguing that Clinton has somehow secretly convinced all those people involved to permit the sale AND stay silent about the convincing? And even if Clinton had decided that the deal wasn't a good idea, she couldn't have unilaterally stopped it -- she would have had to convince Obama that there was a national security reason to do so.
So was there a national security reason to halt the sale? What Rosatom bought was the mines, meaning they can dig up rock and refine it, but they can only sell it to the same people that Uranium One could always sell it to. They don't have a license to export the uranium, so who cares?
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Somebody needs to send Trump a copy of "On the Beach". Radiation sickness is not a pleasant way to go. You vomit and deficate like the flu. According to the book, you might get better, but it only lasts for two weeks before the symptoms recall and then you die. http://www.atomicarchive.com/E... I think people need to hear the graphic effects of what a nuclear war would be like.
As much as I would like to disagree with you (as nukes are disagreeable), the fact remains that combat deaths, and the number of conflicts worldwide, has dropped dramatically since nuclear weapons were invented.
I'd like to see the stats to back up that claim.
Here you go: https://ourworldindata.org/war...
Only if launchers are modified specifically for tests. The deployed ballistic missile weapon systems, e.g. ICBM's and SLBM's have no such capability.
Firstly, there is no reliable means of reception by the missile or a reliable command system to transmit such messages, and if there were, it could be exploited by an enemy. Warheads are made to be very robust and sealed, given that they re-enter the atmosphere at stupendous speeds. They don't have any antennae or radios.