On that note, when was the last time we actually had to destroy a submarine?
Officially? 1945.
Note that if we stop using sonar, or stop practicing with sonar, that the next time we need to sink a submarine may be a lot like the last one - we lost 1700 or so merchant ships that go-round, before we got a handle on enemy submarines.
180 db is still extremely strong. Now, compound that with the fact that the Submarines are moving, pinging and that Dolphins are curious anmials and like to follow ships... and I think you will find that the chances for Dolphins being near one of these ships greatly increased.
A couple of things: submarines don't use active sonar if they can possibly help it - active sonar is very helpful in locating someone, but it's even more helpful in announcing your presence to everyone out to well beyond the range the active sonar can detect someone.
Dolphins don't spend a lot of time down where the subs routinely travel.
And a dolphin might very well be curious about a ship, and head toward it. But unless they're dumb as posts, they'll turn away before the sonar reaches the "deafening" level.
Again, it is asserted that the ice sheet has broken free from both islands, when a quick perusal of TFA says that it's only broken loose from one of the two islands, and is still firmly attached to the other.
The extent of the obligation is clearly proportional to the potential military strength of such a country. Therefore the US as a superpower is nearly always deserving of criticism.
Since the US always had the potential turn the tide in WWII, it's timing and motives deserve to be scrutinized. The US in my opinion did intentionally let the Russians bleed, and perhaps it was right in doing so.
Perception matters here. Most Europeans do not attribute the obligation to police the world to the 25 small to medium-sized countries that form Europe, while increasingly Americans judge the behaviour of "Europe" as a whole and expect more of it.
And yet...
In 1939, the USA was NOT a superpower. It had a small Army, a tiny Air Force (yes, it was a branch of the Army then, but it was still tiny), and a large Navy spread over two oceans.
The industry that built ships faster than the Germans could sink them, and built more warships than every other country in the world combined, didn't exist.
The tank factories that built tanks for the USArmy, the UK, France, and the Soviet Union, didn't exist.
The Airplane factories that produced enough planes to lose (according to Hap Arnold, commander AAF) 25% of the planes in combat every single month didn't exist.
The large active military that basically beat the Japanese with our left hand while helping pummel the Germans with our right hand didn't exist.
Basically, in 1939 and 1940, the USA had nothing to bring to the table of a European war but the Navy. Which, oddly enough, was fighting the Germans by early 1941, by providing convoy escorts for British convoys.
And even the Navy wasn't as significant as it looked, since the majority of our Navy (which was about the size of the Royal Navy) was busy in the Pacific, and not available for duty in the Atlantic (which was all the war there was before 7 DEC 1941).
So, if Europeans want to insist that we had an obligation to get involved in WW2 earlier, that's their privilege. But they still look like idiots for doing so.
China has no shortage of either land or people. If they want to attack North Korea, the prospect of a few nuked cities won't deter them. It would take a superpower-sized arsenal to do so. (of course they'd move their govt leaders out of Beijing before attacking)
Moving government leaders is trivial (and easily noticed by spies, if you're considering that form of security by obscurity).
Moving industry rather less so. Watching your industry heading for the stratosphere along with your cities and citizens is not something even the rulers of China would look upon with equanimity.
Kim won't feel anything, not long after he presses the button. He'll be dead, unable to enjoy his lavish lifestyle.
It's not quite so clear-cut as that. An ICBM is not casually re-aimed. If there's not one pointed at wherever Kim is when the balloon goes up, it'll be some hours before one can be pointed that way.
And in an ICBM war, "several hours" is a lot like "it'll never happen".
The nuclear strategy is the real reason that, uniquely among official designated enemy countries of the US (the "axis of evil"), they have not been blockaded, attacked or even threatened with attack, and have even cut some deals with the US through purely diplomatic channels. They didn't get this treatment by being less "evil" than the rest of the "axis of evil", but by having nukes.
That might make sense if North Korea had had nukes back when we were deciding to ignore them. Since they didn't, it doesn't.
As for your 4% figure, you have to include the military related R&D spending of all companies in the military industry, such as GE, General Dynamics, Boeing, Northrop-Grumman, Lockheed-Martin and a bunch of others. Just because the US has privatized large parts of its military doesn't mean you can arbitrarily exclude them from the military spending figure. If you include all of these then you'll come to a hell of a lot more than 4%.
Umm, no. Do you really think GE, GD, Boeing, Northrop, Lockmar spends a DIME on research without a government contract in hand first???
Virtually every penny of military R&D done in the USA is done with DoD money.
Sorry, 4% it is. And declining, at a guess. Somehow I doubt the Dems are going to be willing to maintain the current state of the US military.
Nothing say north korea will attack first either, but it will prevent them from getting attacked in the first place, as is the situation with all nuclear forces.
Has North Korea been attacked by ANYONE since WW2?
Has ANYONE expressed an interest in attacking them?
It's not like they have vast mineral wealth, or industry, or really much of anything anyone wants. Basically, if they'd not built a nuke (they actually didn't quite - evidence is that their nuke didn't work right - a 0.5 kt device is a fizzle, not a nuke), they'd be just as safe as they are now. Or maybe safer, since if they'd just sit quietly and go about their business, 99% of the world would happily ignore them.
Just checkout New Orleans, very few were killed and it hasn't recovered from partial infrastructure destruction in how many years?
Actually, it pretty much has. Not everyone who lived here before lives here now, but that's mostly a matter of choice on their part (if my house had been destroyed (it was damaged), I'd not have bothered to rebuild in New Orleans).
And it's been three years. When South Carolina got hit with a big hurricane twenty or so years back, it took about ten years to recover completely.
Fortunately 6000 nuclear warheads is not, by a long shot, enough to destroy even a little country.
It is enough to drop a warhead on every city with more than 100,000 people in the world. And still have almost 3000 warheads left.
Don't kid yourself - 6000 warheads is plenty to ruin every country in the world.
Assuming, of course, that we were aiming them at cities - mostly we aren't, because cities aren't going to be firing nukes back at us - ICBM silos in the countryside might, on the other hand.
Current nukes are in the 5-50 megaton range, and do really rather more damage.
Current nukes are usually smaller than 1 megaton.
The USA used to keep a few 5MT bombs around, but the need for such weapons mostly disappeared when we made our missiles accurate enough that we could wreck anything with a 170 kiloton bomb. Or with ten 50 kiloton bombs.
The Russians popped off ONE 50mt bomb. There's no evidence they ever built another one, much less planned to use it on anything. Their deployed weapons tended to be bigger than ours, since they were less accurate. But not all that much bigger. In the range of 1 megaton or smaller.
It should be noted that a large nuke is a very inefficient weapon. Entirely too much of the blast is wasted on the upper atmosphere.
It has been mumbled for a while now. Remember all the discussion about it during the election?
So, basically you're saying that it's never happened, then?
I should point out the Israel has never invaded Iran either. Probably something to do with the lack of a common border and no Navy to speak of. Much less the fact that they don't have the manpower to do it if they wanted to.
third, not american military leadership has prevented the nazis, the russians have. americans preferred to sit on their collective arses until it was sure that russians would win the war and then they went in to steal the laurels.
Umm, no.
Stalingrad made it pretty clear the Germans were going to lose. Not certain, but pretty clear. It happened in the winter of 1942-43. A year after the Americans were in the war. More or less at the same time as the Americans and British were invading North Africa to push the Germans back into Europe.
Note, however, that for all the Russians did to defeat the Germans, how much help they had from the USA. We gave them tanks, trucks, aircraft, etc. Yes, the Russians made most of their own (except for the trucks - the Russians were always too fixated on the things that shoot to make sure their logistical tail worked worth a crap).
I've always been fascinated by the European assumption that the USA was obligated to help out in any European war, by the way. Especially when we watch those same Europeans not get involved in those same wars till it suits them.
Note also that, properly speaking, the Pax Americana started with the END of WW2, not the beginning.
without recycling the spent nuclear fuel you end up with some SERIOUSLY hot nuclear waste
Not really. It's SERIOUSLY hot for a couple of days at most. After that, it's hot enough to be dangerous to sleep on or eat, but otherwise not a big deal.
After the decade it's supposed to sit in a cooling tank before it is shipped off to a storage site (which doesn't exist, since noone wants it around), it's still something you don't want to eat, but sleeping on a pile of it is no big deal, as long as you use clean sheets.
That said, hell yes we should reprocess that stuff! Quite a lot of it is valuable! And after it's reprocessed, you're talking kilograms per year of waste, as opposed to gigatons per year of waste from a coal plant.
Alas, the limits are based on emissions of the Soviet Union, so Russia must reduce emissions to lower than the Soviet Union emitted. Which is a level higher than Russia actually emits, so it's basically given a pass on Kyoto, while still being technically bound by it.
Are there some countries that are exempt from the global regulations?
Yes. China, India, and Indonesia, to name three moderately large emitters of CO2, are not bound to limit their CO2 emissions in any way.
And China and India have already said that they won't sign onto a Kyoto follow-on that requires them to limit their CO2 emissions.
In fact, the overwhelming majority of the signers of Kyoto are not required to limit their CO2 emissions in any way. Which is one of the things that makes Kyoto a farce.
The ice shelf is imminently expected to break away from ONE island which is considered part of the Antarctic Peninsula. It will still be connected to another island which is considered part of the Antarctic Peninsula.
But didn't you watch the excellent, well-researched, highly-factual, non-fear-mongering Jane Fonda documentary "The China Syndrome"? When Three-Mile Island blew up, the nuclear waste melted straight through the earth's core and came out in China, and there was a huge government coverup of the whole thing. Really. Jane Fonda told me so.
Obviously, you didn't watch The China Syndrome. In that movie, when something started to go wrong, all the fail-safes behaved, and the reactor shut itself down as intended, with no problems at all...
Yes, there was a lot of fear-mongering leading up to the conclusion when nothing actually happened. But, in the end, nothing actually happened....
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Officially? 1945.
Note that if we stop using sonar, or stop practicing with sonar, that the next time we need to sink a submarine may be a lot like the last one - we lost 1700 or so merchant ships that go-round, before we got a handle on enemy submarines.
Because the design purpose of a Navy is to kill people and break things?
Or are you really suggesting that they should spend more time finding ecologically friendly ways to sink ships and kill people?
A couple of things: submarines don't use active sonar if they can possibly help it - active sonar is very helpful in locating someone, but it's even more helpful in announcing your presence to everyone out to well beyond the range the active sonar can detect someone.
Dolphins don't spend a lot of time down where the subs routinely travel.
And a dolphin might very well be curious about a ship, and head toward it. But unless they're dumb as posts, they'll turn away before the sonar reaches the "deafening" level.
Again, it is asserted that the ice sheet has broken free from both islands, when a quick perusal of TFA says that it's only broken loose from one of the two islands, and is still firmly attached to the other.
And yet...
In 1939, the USA was NOT a superpower. It had a small Army, a tiny Air Force (yes, it was a branch of the Army then, but it was still tiny), and a large Navy spread over two oceans.
The industry that built ships faster than the Germans could sink them, and built more warships than every other country in the world combined, didn't exist.
The tank factories that built tanks for the USArmy, the UK, France, and the Soviet Union, didn't exist.
The Airplane factories that produced enough planes to lose (according to Hap Arnold, commander AAF) 25% of the planes in combat every single month didn't exist.
The large active military that basically beat the Japanese with our left hand while helping pummel the Germans with our right hand didn't exist.
Basically, in 1939 and 1940, the USA had nothing to bring to the table of a European war but the Navy. Which, oddly enough, was fighting the Germans by early 1941, by providing convoy escorts for British convoys.
And even the Navy wasn't as significant as it looked, since the majority of our Navy (which was about the size of the Royal Navy) was busy in the Pacific, and not available for duty in the Atlantic (which was all the war there was before 7 DEC 1941).
So, if Europeans want to insist that we had an obligation to get involved in WW2 earlier, that's their privilege. But they still look like idiots for doing so.
In a word, no.
In a few more words, NASA's budget peaked at less than 10% of the DoD's budget.
Moving government leaders is trivial (and easily noticed by spies, if you're considering that form of security by obscurity).
Moving industry rather less so. Watching your industry heading for the stratosphere along with your cities and citizens is not something even the rulers of China would look upon with equanimity.
It's not quite so clear-cut as that. An ICBM is not casually re-aimed. If there's not one pointed at wherever Kim is when the balloon goes up, it'll be some hours before one can be pointed that way.
And in an ICBM war, "several hours" is a lot like "it'll never happen".
That might make sense if North Korea had had nukes back when we were deciding to ignore them. Since they didn't, it doesn't.
Umm, no. Do you really think GE, GD, Boeing, Northrop, Lockmar spends a DIME on research without a government contract in hand first???
Virtually every penny of military R&D done in the USA is done with DoD money.
Sorry, 4% it is. And declining, at a guess. Somehow I doubt the Dems are going to be willing to maintain the current state of the US military.
Has North Korea been attacked by ANYONE since WW2?
Has ANYONE expressed an interest in attacking them?
It's not like they have vast mineral wealth, or industry, or really much of anything anyone wants. Basically, if they'd not built a nuke (they actually didn't quite - evidence is that their nuke didn't work right - a 0.5 kt device is a fizzle, not a nuke), they'd be just as safe as they are now. Or maybe safer, since if they'd just sit quietly and go about their business, 99% of the world would happily ignore them.
Actually, it pretty much has. Not everyone who lived here before lives here now, but that's mostly a matter of choice on their part (if my house had been destroyed (it was damaged), I'd not have bothered to rebuild in New Orleans).
And it's been three years. When South Carolina got hit with a big hurricane twenty or so years back, it took about ten years to recover completely.
It is enough to drop a warhead on every city with more than 100,000 people in the world. And still have almost 3000 warheads left.
Don't kid yourself - 6000 warheads is plenty to ruin every country in the world.
Assuming, of course, that we were aiming them at cities - mostly we aren't, because cities aren't going to be firing nukes back at us - ICBM silos in the countryside might, on the other hand.
Current nukes are usually smaller than 1 megaton.
The USA used to keep a few 5MT bombs around, but the need for such weapons mostly disappeared when we made our missiles accurate enough that we could wreck anything with a 170 kiloton bomb. Or with ten 50 kiloton bombs.
The Russians popped off ONE 50mt bomb. There's no evidence they ever built another one, much less planned to use it on anything. Their deployed weapons tended to be bigger than ours, since they were less accurate. But not all that much bigger. In the range of 1 megaton or smaller.
It should be noted that a large nuke is a very inefficient weapon. Entirely too much of the blast is wasted on the upper atmosphere.
No. They couldn't.
Peking is well within range of the missile the Koreans just lofted. Hell, Moscow is.
I think the Chinese will think twice about attacking North Korea, just because China has so many nukable cities within reach.
A common mistaken belief, probably due to Allied propoganda of the time. Hitler was 5'9", which is about dead average height.
So, basically you're saying that it's never happened, then?
I should point out the Israel has never invaded Iran either. Probably something to do with the lack of a common border and no Navy to speak of. Much less the fact that they don't have the manpower to do it if they wanted to.
That's about 5000 miles, by the way.
Oddly enough, most ICBM's have a range of about...5000 miles.
Might want to draw a 5000 mile circle around North Korea and see what's inside that they can ruin if Kim starts feeling a bit irrelevant.
Peking, Moscow, Honolulu, Anchorage, New Delhi, just for a few examples.
Hell, most of Asia fits in that circle.
Umm, no.
Stalingrad made it pretty clear the Germans were going to lose. Not certain, but pretty clear. It happened in the winter of 1942-43. A year after the Americans were in the war. More or less at the same time as the Americans and British were invading North Africa to push the Germans back into Europe.
Note, however, that for all the Russians did to defeat the Germans, how much help they had from the USA. We gave them tanks, trucks, aircraft, etc. Yes, the Russians made most of their own (except for the trucks - the Russians were always too fixated on the things that shoot to make sure their logistical tail worked worth a crap).
I've always been fascinated by the European assumption that the USA was obligated to help out in any European war, by the way. Especially when we watch those same Europeans not get involved in those same wars till it suits them.
Note also that, properly speaking, the Pax Americana started with the END of WW2, not the beginning.
Not really. It's SERIOUSLY hot for a couple of days at most. After that, it's hot enough to be dangerous to sleep on or eat, but otherwise not a big deal.
After the decade it's supposed to sit in a cooling tank before it is shipped off to a storage site (which doesn't exist, since noone wants it around), it's still something you don't want to eat, but sleeping on a pile of it is no big deal, as long as you use clean sheets.
That said, hell yes we should reprocess that stuff! Quite a lot of it is valuable! And after it's reprocessed, you're talking kilograms per year of waste, as opposed to gigatons per year of waste from a coal plant.
No, Russia is bound to limit its emissions.
Alas, the limits are based on emissions of the Soviet Union, so Russia must reduce emissions to lower than the Soviet Union emitted. Which is a level higher than Russia actually emits, so it's basically given a pass on Kyoto, while still being technically bound by it.
Yes. China, India, and Indonesia, to name three moderately large emitters of CO2, are not bound to limit their CO2 emissions in any way.
And China and India have already said that they won't sign onto a Kyoto follow-on that requires them to limit their CO2 emissions.
In fact, the overwhelming majority of the signers of Kyoto are not required to limit their CO2 emissions in any way. Which is one of the things that makes Kyoto a farce.
The ice shelf is imminently expected to break away from ONE island which is considered part of the Antarctic Peninsula. It will still be connected to another island which is considered part of the Antarctic Peninsula.
Obviously, you didn't watch The China Syndrome. In that movie, when something started to go wrong, all the fail-safes behaved, and the reactor shut itself down as intended, with no problems at all...
Yes, there was a lot of fear-mongering leading up to the conclusion when nothing actually happened. But, in the end, nothing actually happened....