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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.'"
While I've got no idea whether this site is a reliable source for such information, it does seem like a step backward.
Nuclear weapons are always a bad idea. The public relations cost of using them alone could devastate our country. They were always sold to the American public as a temporary weapons system due to the Soviet, then Chinese, threat. Today no country on earth will let lose with these armaments because the retaliation would be devastating.
Even North Korea must know that internally.
But it sure seems like a bad idea to have these systems on 24 hour alert. Especially since retaliation with nukes essentially destroys both sides.
Of course I'll take a lot of heat for taking this position. But after reading books on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, along with survivor accounts, and photographs- I could draw no other conclusion.
Nukes go way beyond military supremacy issues- into overkill. No pun intended.
Another consultant who stuck it out.
"We are the Priests, of the Temples of Syrinx..."
Call up Major Kong, he knew how to handle a nuclear weapon. Ahhhhh hoooo!
This would send a clear, unambiguous to each and every nation that would do America harm:
"We have no idea what we're doing, but we're gonna look real tough doing it."
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
I'm curious the strategic use of bombers on 24 hour standby, when there are enough ICBMs, including those in nuclear subs which are likely really, really close to North Korea already, to totally decimate that country. North Korea could be a smoldering ruin before the bombers would even leave US airspace (even if they were on standby). So I wonder if the bombers would simply be more "obvious" to Kim Jong or what?
Better known as 318230.
If you voted for Hilary Clinton instead of a sane candidate who would have unquestionably defeated Trump, this is your fault. Fuck you.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
Once upon a time, I bought and started playing Pandemic. Right after, just as I started enjoying the game, there was the West African Ebola outbreak. And now? I start replaying Fallout and this happens.
That's it. From here on out my only entertainment will be re-watching the Death by Snu Snu episode.
It's a statement that can be photographed and noticed - putting your ballistic missile force on high alert has few physical signs as potent as bombers sitting on ready alert at the end of a runway.
That's not who most of us are worried about.
You are welcome on my lawn.
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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It's most likely that the weapon of choice vs North Korea is a B61-11 or B61-12, the most recent versions of an air-dropped weapon.
The air-dropped weapons are likely more precise and more suitable to use against reinforced underground structures with less surface yield.
Ballistic missiles, whether land based or sea-based can only use one particular warhead intimately configured with the delivery system and guidance, because of the need to match the mechanical dynamics & mass with the guidance. I.e. there is no way to change the weapon. Additionally, they are not as precise--they re-enter the atmosphere at extreme velocities within a giant ionization cloud, and prior to re-entry they have only one chance for guidance, immediately after release, and are thereafter falling, unpowered.
The ICBM and SLBM warheads are also very large (200-500 kt) and intended as retaliation. If you want genocide, any of them will do, but if you intend a military attack then you'd want to be more specific.
Against DPRK you'd be looking at using 'bunker buster' weapons---there are rumors that there are nuclear designs which may direct maximum force downward seismically (e.g. use the primary to accelerate a secondary penetrator downward?)---and probably low-yield neutron weapons against the artillery units threatening Seoul. Probably under 10kt.
Those need to be launched by bombers, or maybe from cruise missiles carried by those bombers.
In any event, it's insanity as it undoubtedly gets Seoul, Tokyo or maybe even Seattle obliterated. DPRK has plenty good enough missiles to put whatever size warhead they have already over Korea and Japan---and missile defense is awfully difficult. DPRK could easily launch 40 missiles simultaneously, four of which are nuclear, and each one puts out 10 decoys in space .
When the Soviet union was the threat, having the bombers on alert was a credible deterrant. Specifically, they put the Soviets on notice that even if they launched a strike sufficient to annihilate the U.S. we would get the bombers safely in the air first and they would go down with us.
Today, the threat is different. Nobody is at all prepared to launch an attack to annihilate the U.S. Even if N. Korea does it's worst, we'll have plenty of ability (and will) to turn them into a glass wasteland.
The crazy guy in NK is also somewhat of a figurehead. There are always tons of older generals standing around him in the official photos. He only has the power his military grants him. It's an actual whole country with people in it, and not democratic, but there is a political party running things, not a kingdom.
There are English language North Korean books, from the DPRK point of view, that you can buy right in the Kindle eBook store. It is obviously totally the biased 'official' propaganda, but it's important for people to realize the NK leadership are not Marvel Comics villians. There is an 'official' Kim Jong Il (the previous leader and current leader's father) biography published by the Foreign Language Publishing House, and since they are, (uh..) kinda a non-profit, it's very inexpensive. Checking stuff out and not treating our enemies like comic book villians is the way to resolve things.
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?
dom
There are strategic resources for the equipment needed for renewable energy production and use. Rare earth metals for motor magnets for electric cars, as one example. Some of the 'new' critical resources are more localized and scarce than petroleum ever could have been. There will be new resource wars, just as there have always been.
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.
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.
North Korea doesn't have the ability to launch a massive counter-strike, so their continued existence after rattling the nuclear sabre the way they've been doing depends on utterly on the US sticking to the "no first strike" policy. Yet TFA claims that General Goldfein is asking his staff to come up with ways to use nukes in combat. To me that sounds very much like the US Joint Chiefs are preparing contingency plans for pre-emptive strikes and "small" tactical nukes after that. To be fair, it is the clear duty of the Joint Chiefs to come up for contingency plans for pretty much every possible scenario, even the incredibly unlikely ones. But, one doesn't juggle squadrons around and re-assign personnel for unlikely contingencies.
Meanwhile, there have been a slew of articles which suggest the US Navy is in dire straits. It's my understanding that successive administrations have forced them to cut back on new ship purchases and skimp on maintenance so long for the sake of short term availability, that now some ships are sitting in dry dock for years, waiting for repair. Likewise, there has been a clear trend to lower head counts in the ground forces as well. The focus has been on smaller, more nimble forces, aimed at dealing with insurgents and the like. That smaller force has become very sensitive to combat losses, has been forced to keep guys posted in combat far longer than expected (stop-loss) and is deployed in a number of hot spots all over the world. The ground forces are just not prepared to get into a land war in Asia right now. As an aside, I'm not sure I buy the fears of fanatically loyal human wave attacks. There was some concern about that in Iraq as I recall, because both Iraq and Iran had an established history of using such tactics. There were human wave attacks in the Korean conflict sure, but as in Iran, Iraq and WWII Russia, human waves always rely on political officers at the back, sending the hapless troops into battle at gun point, threatening family members back home if necessary. But, as we saw in Iraq, once the troops got totally cut off from high command, most couldn't surrender fast enough. (there is an apocryphal tale of an Iraqi regiment that tried to surrender to a BBC camera crew)
The only arm of the US forces that seems to be ready to open a can of whoop ass in Korea is the Air Force. Problem is, there is a long standing dictum "You can bomb it, shell it until the rubble bounces, but you don't control it until you stick a kid with a rifle on it." The Air Force is guaranteed to wipe out anything on the surface taller than a dandelion with conventional weapons alone. But the Koreans have had decades to dig in and there is a lot of evidence of their tunnelling prowess in the tunnels the south Koreans have intercepted at the DMZ. The upshot is that the Air Force can not win the war on it's own.
With that situation, it is going to be very tempting to just nuke the place.
And we have Donald Trump with his finger on the button.
Donald Trump...let that sink in for a moment.
Tactically, this is shaping up to be a bigger version of Vietnam and the US had to worry back then about the Soviet Union and The Peoples Republic of China who were not only pretty close allies at the time, but backing the north Vietnamese. Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon were all far more savvy poli
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... those “30 years” of war between Iran and Iraq, where more than a MILLION people died, by the way, were because, remember, Saddam, who had always been a major asshole, was still the USA‘s favorite "ally" (read: vassal/dog) in the region, and the US told him, that if he stops Khomeini, he’d get to keep the oil wells he conquered, and would keep getting the support (read: weapons, training, money) like all that time before.
But Saddam didn't get in, because the stupid Persians kept defending themselves, because they had the third or fourth largest military in the world at that time. This changed literally overnight, when Saddam became stroppy, wanted his promised oil wells anyway, and decided to take them from Kuwait. Suddenly, the USA got stroppy too... we can’t have it that Saddam doesn’t invade what he’s told to invade! ... But honestly, *what did he do different than before?* All he did, was *turn around*. ^^
Suddenly he was "The new Hitler".
And the best part is: The only reason Iran became such a big military power, with the third or fourth biggest military in the world, was because the USA previously armed them to their teeth too! "As a stronghold against the reds." ... Yeah, unless millions of you are prepared to die for it, your system won’t improve either. Things still need to get a *lot* worse for that to happen.)
But they had installed such an evil cruel dictator, that the Persians turned to Khomeini as the better alternative, in their desperation. Imagine how fucked-up of a situation you would have to be in, to turn to the WBC, to get rid of your president! (Okay, nowadays, that sounds almost reasonable. ^^)
Which, interestingly, ended in a semi-peaceful revolution! The military stopped shooting people because they realized that the people were so determined, they stopped giving a fuck about if they died. (So much about how you actually get rid of a dictator.
So whatever fake news reality distortion scheme about these things is going on in your "Number One!" (in propaganda, online trolls, and population control too) country... using the war between Iran and Iraq as an argument, for them to NOT have nukes to stop the USA from fucking with them, is REALLY FUCKED-UP! :)
That whole shit might not even have started, if they would have had nukes. (Remember, that Iran and Afghanistan were comparatively very modern countries back then, with women wearing mini-skirts and going to universities; with philosophy and sports clubs; and being a cool tourist destination for hippies! Extrapolate THAT!
But yeah, Pakistan did have nukes, and still got made to breed "mercenaries" for Afghanistan by the USA. Now known as the Taliban. I guess it also requires being determined enough to actually threaten the CIA with *using* them, instead of being best friends and drinking tea together, like those CIA operatives did with Hamid Gul (Pakistan’s ex military general who oversaw the construction of the nukes, told Bin Laden what to do, and was so crazy that the *Al Qaeda* gave him house arrest because he threatened to fly nuclear warheads to the US, and even Al Qaeda leaders knew that wouldn’t have ended well for them!).
So what do I know. I only have a dad who worked as an reporter and operative in this clusterfuck for 4 decades now. I’ve only been threatened to be killed by terrorist groups twice. One of those being backed by my own western government.
Maybe my flaw is that I don't hate *anyone*, not the USA, not Kim Yong whatever, not Israel, not the Palestinians, not even the literal Nazis. They're all fucked-up people, and all I want, is to fix shit so that we can have a self-determined happy life. Even you.
"The U.S. no longer leads the world in diplomacy, nor climate change, nor nuclear non-proliferation."
None of those things are things we really have to lead the world in though. The only things we really need to lead in are things that actually make us more powerful and our military and economic power still ensures we are very diplomatic even if we are complete assholes. But it is certainly true that while other nations may not have a choice but to deal with us, avoiding dealing with us where they can get away with it will certainly erode our position over time.
Given that for the most part the choices remain The US, Russia, and China though, the US is still the least distasteful of the bunch.
I did. It's a reasonable assumption that a nuclear weapon would have saved Saddam and Iraq.
The public image of our opponents is generally outrageously stupid, and it's encouraged by the press who will uncritically reproduce any claim about the opponents. We're not that different, any claim about North Korea is deemed credible.
But cruel dictatorships are often easy to negotiate with. We call them mad because it suits us, that's all.
In the case of North Korea there is a long history of their willingness to negotiate.They still are ready to talk. They will no longer consider getting rid of their nukes an option though. For good reason.
Whenever you hear our side say 'negotiations are impossible' it means 'we prefer applying power'.
Unfortunately this is what the US folks want. What they forgot is that because they elect the president, they're responsible for a huge nuclear arsenal. It's a very large minority that is batshit crazy.
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There is no winning a nuclear war, ever. Radiation from Japan made it all the way to the west coast. The bombs of those days might as well have been a stick of dynamite compared to what we could release today.
Both are mostly true, but the implication doesn't necessarily follow. One of the reasons that modern nuclear weapons are higher yield is that they are more efficient. 'Radiation' didn't travel from Japan to the West Coast of the USA, because radiation only travels in straight lines and is blocked quite well by the curve of the planet. Radioactive fallout travelled that far. Radioactive fallout is the leftover radioactive material that is not consumed in the nuclear reaction and is dispersed by the explosion. In other words, it's a waste byproduct of inefficient nuclear weapons. The more efficient the weapon, the less radioactive material is left after the explosion to become fallout.
There's no such thing as a completely clean nuke (in theory there could be, but nuclear weapons are trivial to build in theory, it's only the engineering that's hard), but a modern weapon can have a much higher yield for the same amount of fallout.
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Rare earth metals are not localized, they're deposited all over the world. They're rare because they're spread out and it is expensive to concentrate them. The US was a major producer before the Chinese started selling cheaper.
The neighbouring country, Ukraine has plenty of oil, so does the recently annexed Crimean Sea. For some reason, Russia isn't worried about oil from the middle-east.
From wher do you get your facts? Ukraine is an importer of gas and oil. Coal they do export but that's not what this discussion is about. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... . Has it really come down to creating facts to support your viewpoint on a country?
Or did you do your research by reading Clinton Cash?
Of course not. I much prefer just to take the word of random ACs on Slashdot who don't cite a single source.