It's not worth arguing with this guy, as you can see that he thinks that a deterrent force is evidence of an offensive posture. It's like handing someone an orange, he says it's an apple, and then he attempts to prove it to you by getting you to admit that it is a fruit.
If you are offended, please take the time to consider whether or not you are in fact ignorant (don't know about) of the complexities of nuclear warfare.
I wasn't intending to insult you by calling you ignorant, I was informing you of your ignorance concerning nuclear war and you took it personally for some reason. Are you a former FBM skipper, are you a former SAC bomber pilot, a former EAM processor? How would you have even gained knowledge of the basics of nuclear war?
Here's the tl;dr:
1) The Russians are not worried about a Chinese attack because PRC SRF does not provide the PRC with offensive nuclear capabilities.
2) The maintenance of a counter-value or counter-force deterrent capability is irrelevant to my position that the PRC does not maintain an offensive capability.
3) Orbital rocket programs absolutely do not provide all development information necessary to build and deploy an offensive nuclear program, which requires incredibly high accuracy and reliability, neither of which are expected outcomes of orbital programs.
4) If you accept that the Chinese force might only be for deterrence, then you implicitly accept that it is not offensive. Offensive means there exist a manner or scenario in which force employment can largely prevent the employment of adversary weapons.
The only nuclear states which can be considered to deploy offensive nuclear weapons systems are those which are capable of decapitating a nuclear state, destroying post-attack command and control systems, and then detecting, tracking, and targeting remaining survivable assets on the trans-SIOP battlefield. There are two actors which have developed and maintain this capability: the Russians and the Americans. All other states maintain deterrent forces only. The UK and France should definitely be considered as potential offensive actors as part of NATO nuclear weapons employment, but it must also be considered that the UK and France have taken significant actions in reducing their deployed warhead counts and capabilities.
You can keep arguing that China is seeking to develop or has an offensive capability, but you simply have NO IDEA what you are talking about.
China is spending their money on more cost-effective forms of deterrence, such as ASBM's, EW, littoral combat platforms, etc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People's_Republic_of_China_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction
Follow any of the references regarding warhead utilization, or the FAS's research, or the BAS's research. Even the USG assesses the situation as such. http://www.defense.gov/pubs/2013_China_Report_FINAL.pdf
China's nuclear force is the smallest of any nuclear weapons state. It does not maintain warheads mated to delivery vehicles.
Your ignorance surrounding the analog between pinpoint-precision MIRV/MARV'd solid-fueled stellar-guided advanced ICBM's and orbital rockets is pretty impressive, but analyzing your statements regarding Chinese rocket capability is absurd given that you don't even address the most important issue regarding the potential for offensive use of the Chinese strategic rocket force: THEY DON'T HAVE REMOTELY ENOUGH launchers. If you can't decapitate and then neutralize the US's strategic defence forces, then how you can you utilize your nuclear forces to prevent annihilating counter-battery? The answer is that you can't.
The only adversarial rocket force capable of even targeting all necessary US non-survivable assets is the Russian SRF. Period.
Keep in mind that MIRV'd weapons are constrained to deliver warheads in proximity to each other. This fact means that it is more useful to look at launcher count vice warhead count.
The blast radius is not limited by the curvature of the earth, as dispersion of an overpressure wave of sufficient magnitude would 'hug' the earth.
The blast zone is limited by energy deposited into the atmosphere surrounding the device following the chemical reactions which remove the transparency of the air surrounding the weapon, and former weapon materials.
To start off, your carefully quoted list of rebuttals is so littered with misrepresentations and ignorance that I suspect it would make someone either (1) acquainted with the reality of the deployment and employment of nuclear weapons, or (2) trained in a nuclear science or engineering... just make their head explode.
Those weapons have to be decommissioned at some point anyways, therefore if you engage in policies which dictate any maintenance fees be incurred, it is more expensive to keep them. This is obvious on its face, and arguing with this point can only be incredibly ignorant or disingenuous.
Most of the cost of maintaining nuclear weapons has nothing to do with military payroll, but costs incurred by in the maintenance of peripheral force structures necessary to support the force in the pre- and post-SIOP environment. The US strategic defense system is the most expensive and reliable engineered construct devised by man. DOD carves out a very large chunk of the nuclear pie, but it is not the majority, and the bulk of it goes to support forces which are single-purpose nuclear war fighters. So in the event force reductions made certain squadrons redundant, most of those jobs would go away.
Can you city any mathematical proof which states that it is safer for you and your greatest enemy to horde innumerable cataclysmic weapons? I suspect you can't, and you can name-drop conservative think tanks till you are blue in the face, but that doesn't change the fact that those studies chiefly concern weapons employment and using mathematics to ensure that the use of constrained resources such as warheads are optimal.
Also, neither the Brookings Institute nor the Santa Fe Institute did any foundational work on MAD, only retrospective analysis, which, in the context of the fact that billions of dollars of recurring contracts are wrapped up in the enterprise, is hardly surprising considering the amount of money laying around to throw to those willing to write for the purpose of supporting the current budget.
You proceed with a laundry list of useless strawmen that has nothing to do with the benefits of nuclear force reductions. What in the world does closing Gitmo have to do with the logic of nuclear force reductions?
Nuclear weapons materials fuel almost half of all reactors in the United States, whether it is Plutonium-based MOX or HEU going into naval reactors.
Commercial power reactors, in fact, start with a low-enriched Uranium fuel load, and convert a significant portion of the 238U into Plutonium, which is then fissioned and the energy converted. BWR fuel cycle leverages this more than PWR, but both would be completely uneconomical without the existence of this conversion. Also, for this reason, commercial reactors can, and have, been fueled with ex-weapon plutonium and uranium.
The plutonium that RTG's use is NOT the same plutonium as in weapons.
The Chinese don't even deploy warheads mated to delivery vehicles. Any research whatsoever on China's nuclear force posture would reveal this. China's nuclear force is purely defensive, as of now, and there is no indication that China seeks expanded capabilities.
A good thing to keep in mind as you attempt to understand everyday engineered products is that: if analysis of an engineered product which is similarly deployed all over the world leads you to believe that the people who designed and built the device are idiots or missed something obvious, in all likelihood it is merely your ignorance of the dynamics of the physical reality of the system which precludes you from realizing the relatively optimality of the design.
Oh the country to the north of the US which has almost identical unemployment, ranks below the US on the UN human development index, and is so fundamentally dependent on trade with the US that any financial crisis in the US immediately and significantly affects it?
That country?
The first part of a proper engineering evaluation is to ask the right question: How far does a cruise missile, in the maximum, need to travel?
Halfway around the world.
So why use the term 'violent crime' when you are only referring to gun violence?
Seems rather silly to use a phrase which has a clearly understood meaning to only refer to a subset of the events it describes.
You think there are states in the US where explosives can never be used, even for demolition or mining purposes? Does that actually sound reasonable to you?
Of course. History has taught us that once we realize that the systems we have spent many billions of dollars in developing are damaging the environment, those vested interests do not care to invest in well-funded, comprehensive, and effective schemes to manipulate political and media activities to prevent shutdown of those systems.
because income taxes are the only taxes paid. sales taxes on gasoline, food, and necessary consumer goods don't apply to the poor.
the poor go to the same schools as the rich? news to me.
the poor have access to the same hospitals as the rich?
what country do you live in?
If you know of a way to instantly test for actual intoxication of other drugs...
3) Profit!
Ratio of aviation accidents caused by alcohol to other drugs = Large
'Following accidents, 91 employees -- averaging 18 out of every 1,000 -- tested positive for drug use.
Random testing found just six out of every 1,000 employees tested positive.
"This is a very, very rare occurrence," when compared to other industries such as trucking, where drug use is estimated at 20 to 30 out of every 1,000 employees, Li said.'
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/04/us-drug-use-linked-airplane-accidents-idUSTRE7235NY20110304
Are you rational? MAD is not a theory, it is a doctrine, it is the state of your world. The United States and Russia have several thousand thermonuclear weapons they are ready to annhiliate each other with at a moment's notice. A flaw in the engineering of any component in this system is a flaw in the system. It's a system. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System
What you don't have is a basic understanding of the functioning of the United States or Russia's strategic warning, communications, command and control, and delivery systems.
Here is a pretty clear reason why MAD is unreasonable: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov
Here is a list of military research by MIT which includes projects which destabilize the MAD model by introducing the possibility of delivery system defeat: http://web.mit.edu/pugwash/www/milres.html
You did not say it was moral, you said it was for the benefit of humanity.
The problem with MAD is that it is predicated on the assumption that if no one conducts a first-strike, no one will have to counter-attack, and therefore there will be no nuclear war.
History has shown that only due to early warning system operators disobeying their training and exercising judgement that could have ended in trial by court martial and execution was the world saved from a computer error causing a nuclear holocaust which would result in the destruction of the bulk of the world north of the equator.
Nuclear weapons launch warning systems are fallible and have nearly caused the collapse of our civilization.
Please let us know if you have professional experience with nuclear weapons command and control or launch systems and therefore could contradict the publicly available information which indicates that these systems are unstable.
And one that contributes/has contributed to the US nuclear weapons complex and other projects that contribute to the national defense of america, which certainly is not for the good of humanity.
How long does the PRC have to engage in massive coordinated intrusions into western military, defense contractor, and commercial computer systems until people get it through their head that this is no conspiracy theory and it the only reason the west puts up with it is the economic barrel the chinese have us over.
If a country has invested multiple billions of dollars into the development of weapons capable of killing most of the population of the united states, I will not install black-box security software developed in that nation.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not worth arguing with this guy, as you can see that he thinks that a deterrent force is evidence of an offensive posture. It's like handing someone an orange, he says it's an apple, and then he attempts to prove it to you by getting you to admit that it is a fruit.
If you are offended, please take the time to consider whether or not you are in fact ignorant (don't know about) of the complexities of nuclear warfare.
I wasn't intending to insult you by calling you ignorant, I was informing you of your ignorance concerning nuclear war and you took it personally for some reason. Are you a former FBM skipper, are you a former SAC bomber pilot, a former EAM processor? How would you have even gained knowledge of the basics of nuclear war?
Here's the tl;dr:
1) The Russians are not worried about a Chinese attack because PRC SRF does not provide the PRC with offensive nuclear capabilities.
2) The maintenance of a counter-value or counter-force deterrent capability is irrelevant to my position that the PRC does not maintain an offensive capability.
3) Orbital rocket programs absolutely do not provide all development information necessary to build and deploy an offensive nuclear program, which requires incredibly high accuracy and reliability, neither of which are expected outcomes of orbital programs.
4) If you accept that the Chinese force might only be for deterrence, then you implicitly accept that it is not offensive. Offensive means there exist a manner or scenario in which force employment can largely prevent the employment of adversary weapons.
The only nuclear states which can be considered to deploy offensive nuclear weapons systems are those which are capable of decapitating a nuclear state, destroying post-attack command and control systems, and then detecting, tracking, and targeting remaining survivable assets on the trans-SIOP battlefield. There are two actors which have developed and maintain this capability: the Russians and the Americans. All other states maintain deterrent forces only. The UK and France should definitely be considered as potential offensive actors as part of NATO nuclear weapons employment, but it must also be considered that the UK and France have taken significant actions in reducing their deployed warhead counts and capabilities.
You can keep arguing that China is seeking to develop or has an offensive capability, but you simply have NO IDEA what you are talking about.
China is spending their money on more cost-effective forms of deterrence, such as ASBM's, EW, littoral combat platforms, etc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People's_Republic_of_China_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction Follow any of the references regarding warhead utilization, or the FAS's research, or the BAS's research. Even the USG assesses the situation as such.
http://www.defense.gov/pubs/2013_China_Report_FINAL.pdf
China's nuclear force is the smallest of any nuclear weapons state. It does not maintain warheads mated to delivery vehicles.
Your ignorance surrounding the analog between pinpoint-precision MIRV/MARV'd solid-fueled stellar-guided advanced ICBM's and orbital rockets is pretty impressive, but analyzing your statements regarding Chinese rocket capability is absurd given that you don't even address the most important issue regarding the potential for offensive use of the Chinese strategic rocket force: THEY DON'T HAVE REMOTELY ENOUGH launchers. If you can't decapitate and then neutralize the US's strategic defence forces, then how you can you utilize your nuclear forces to prevent annihilating counter-battery? The answer is that you can't.
The only adversarial rocket force capable of even targeting all necessary US non-survivable assets is the Russian SRF. Period.
Keep in mind that MIRV'd weapons are constrained to deliver warheads in proximity to each other. This fact means that it is more useful to look at launcher count vice warhead count.
The blast radius is not limited by the curvature of the earth, as dispersion of an overpressure wave of sufficient magnitude would 'hug' the earth.
The blast zone is limited by energy deposited into the atmosphere surrounding the device following the chemical reactions which remove the transparency of the air surrounding the weapon, and former weapon materials.
To start off, your carefully quoted list of rebuttals is so littered with misrepresentations and ignorance that I suspect it would make someone either (1) acquainted with the reality of the deployment and employment of nuclear weapons, or (2) trained in a nuclear science or engineering ... just make their head explode.
Those weapons have to be decommissioned at some point anyways, therefore if you engage in policies which dictate any maintenance fees be incurred, it is more expensive to keep them. This is obvious on its face, and arguing with this point can only be incredibly ignorant or disingenuous.
Most of the cost of maintaining nuclear weapons has nothing to do with military payroll, but costs incurred by in the maintenance of peripheral force structures necessary to support the force in the pre- and post-SIOP environment. The US strategic defense system is the most expensive and reliable engineered construct devised by man. DOD carves out a very large chunk of the nuclear pie, but it is not the majority, and the bulk of it goes to support forces which are single-purpose nuclear war fighters. So in the event force reductions made certain squadrons redundant, most of those jobs would go away.
Can you city any mathematical proof which states that it is safer for you and your greatest enemy to horde innumerable cataclysmic weapons? I suspect you can't, and you can name-drop conservative think tanks till you are blue in the face, but that doesn't change the fact that those studies chiefly concern weapons employment and using mathematics to ensure that the use of constrained resources such as warheads are optimal.
Also, neither the Brookings Institute nor the Santa Fe Institute did any foundational work on MAD, only retrospective analysis, which, in the context of the fact that billions of dollars of recurring contracts are wrapped up in the enterprise, is hardly surprising considering the amount of money laying around to throw to those willing to write for the purpose of supporting the current budget.
You proceed with a laundry list of useless strawmen that has nothing to do with the benefits of nuclear force reductions. What in the world does closing Gitmo have to do with the logic of nuclear force reductions?
Nuclear weapons materials fuel almost half of all reactors in the United States, whether it is Plutonium-based MOX or HEU going into naval reactors.
Commercial power reactors, in fact, start with a low-enriched Uranium fuel load, and convert a significant portion of the 238U into Plutonium, which is then fissioned and the energy converted. BWR fuel cycle leverages this more than PWR, but both would be completely uneconomical without the existence of this conversion. Also, for this reason, commercial reactors can, and have, been fueled with ex-weapon plutonium and uranium.
The plutonium that RTG's use is NOT the same plutonium as in weapons.
The Chinese don't even deploy warheads mated to delivery vehicles. Any research whatsoever on China's nuclear force posture would reveal this. China's nuclear force is purely defensive, as of now, and there is no indication that China seeks expanded capabilities.
10 nukes to "annihilate" China? This is simply malarkey.
A good thing to keep in mind as you attempt to understand everyday engineered products is that: if analysis of an engineered product which is similarly deployed all over the world leads you to believe that the people who designed and built the device are idiots or missed something obvious, in all likelihood it is merely your ignorance of the dynamics of the physical reality of the system which precludes you from realizing the relatively optimality of the design.
The problem with his argument is structural. I don't expect you to understand what that means, because ... math.
So a math 'freak' assumes the conclusion ... to find the solution!
We'll need to find a good way to preserve that tenth of a child though.
Oh the country to the north of the US which has almost identical unemployment, ranks below the US on the UN human development index, and is so fundamentally dependent on trade with the US that any financial crisis in the US immediately and significantly affects it?
That country?
The first part of a proper engineering evaluation is to ask the right question:
How far does a cruise missile, in the maximum, need to travel?
Halfway around the world.
So why use the term 'violent crime' when you are only referring to gun violence?
Seems rather silly to use a phrase which has a clearly understood meaning to only refer to a subset of the events it describes.
Not to burst your bubble, but the violent crime rate in England is not only higher than the US, but it is so much higher that the actual number of violent crimes in England is higher than the US, a country with SIX times the population.
http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/crime-stats/crime-statistics/period-ending-december-2012/stb-crime-in-england-and-wales--year-ending-december-2012.html#tab-Violence
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/violent-crime/violent-crime
You think there are states in the US where explosives can never be used, even for demolition or mining purposes? Does that actually sound reasonable to you?
Of course. History has taught us that once we realize that the systems we have spent many billions of dollars in developing are damaging the environment, those vested interests do not care to invest in well-funded, comprehensive, and effective schemes to manipulate political and media activities to prevent shutdown of those systems.
because income taxes are the only taxes paid. sales taxes on gasoline, food, and necessary consumer goods don't apply to the poor. the poor go to the same schools as the rich? news to me. the poor have access to the same hospitals as the rich? what country do you live in?
Have you seen my cell phone? I'm sure it's around here somewhere.
If you know of a way to instantly test for actual intoxication of other drugs... 3) Profit! Ratio of aviation accidents caused by alcohol to other drugs = Large 'Following accidents, 91 employees -- averaging 18 out of every 1,000 -- tested positive for drug use. Random testing found just six out of every 1,000 employees tested positive. "This is a very, very rare occurrence," when compared to other industries such as trucking, where drug use is estimated at 20 to 30 out of every 1,000 employees, Li said.' http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/04/us-drug-use-linked-airplane-accidents-idUSTRE7235NY20110304
Send them through a breathalyzer-only checkpoint and you will have satisfied me.
Are you rational? MAD is not a theory, it is a doctrine, it is the state of your world. The United States and Russia have several thousand thermonuclear weapons they are ready to annhiliate each other with at a moment's notice. A flaw in the engineering of any component in this system is a flaw in the system. It's a system. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System
What you don't have is a basic understanding of the functioning of the United States or Russia's strategic warning, communications, command and control, and delivery systems.
Here is a pretty clear reason why MAD is unreasonable: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov
Here is a list of military research by MIT which includes projects which destabilize the MAD model by introducing the possibility of delivery system defeat: http://web.mit.edu/pugwash/www/milres.html
You did not say it was moral, you said it was for the benefit of humanity.
The problem with MAD is that it is predicated on the assumption that if no one conducts a first-strike, no one will have to counter-attack, and therefore there will be no nuclear war.
History has shown that only due to early warning system operators disobeying their training and exercising judgement that could have ended in trial by court martial and execution was the world saved from a computer error causing a nuclear holocaust which would result in the destruction of the bulk of the world north of the equator.
Nuclear weapons launch warning systems are fallible and have nearly caused the collapse of our civilization.
Please let us know if you have professional experience with nuclear weapons command and control or launch systems and therefore could contradict the publicly available information which indicates that these systems are unstable.
And one that contributes/has contributed to the US nuclear weapons complex and other projects that contribute to the national defense of america, which certainly is not for the good of humanity.
How long does the PRC have to engage in massive coordinated intrusions into western military, defense contractor, and commercial computer systems until people get it through their head that this is no conspiracy theory and it the only reason the west puts up with it is the economic barrel the chinese have us over.
If a country has invested multiple billions of dollars into the development of weapons capable of killing most of the population of the united states, I will not install black-box security software developed in that nation.