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Posted on 02/15/2013 2:51:13 AM PST by Reaganite Republican
WOW! Fascinating. Thanks fot the post; ping.
More commentary (95 comments) and a longer video segment...here...
Very good compilation here...
h/t Hobbleknee @ zerohedge
Lose Lose as far as meteors go, if you don't break it, it explodes. Mercy.
Yeah. That was one hot little hunker on the incoming.
One report of the speed of the meteor was 19 miles per second.
Now they are using an S21 variant with nuclear warheads - sort of a broad spectrum spray. They are more than able to take out any ICBM, MIRVed or not. We are that far behind.
We, on the other hand, were trying to effect a direct hit on incoming missiles, a proposition not solved until lately, and only good against a few missile warheads at a time - a proposition the Russians never considered.
Then again in the 50s and 60s, Russian workers wearing their white paper overalls used to handle refined plutonium with their bare hands, so they willing to accept a bit of radiation to save the Motherland ... and, not to put too fine a point on it, those that survived said they would do it again.
Yes, despite their diplomatic posture on ABM sites in Eastern Europe, Russians has both a working technology and deployed ABM systems since earlier 1970s. Even their simpler legacy theatre defense solutions has limited ABM capabilities. For that reason, there is technically a slight chance for them to hit a meteor. Anyway, it is really doubtful if a standard anti air munitions may affect such a thing much.
Obama could skeet shoot a mitterorite.
I have no idea what the Russians believe or not about stopping a MIRV attack. Only if the Russians were to attack us, we would need a lead time to deploy any putative defenses - they do not, since there defenses are already deployed.
Further, they are willing to take large casualties, we are not; they have elaborate shelter systems for the populace and full scale underground cities, we have neither.
Belief really does not enter into it. Preparation does.
Will their SA systems actually be able to stop a MIRV attack, will either side’s warheads reliablly detonate - are questions which can only be answered by putting the questions to the test.
We certainly have no SA system to stop a MIRV attack, they may have. Something is better than nothing - we have nothing ... AFAIK.
The Russians freaked out when we announced deployment of defensive missiles in Western and Central Europe. Much of their current and planned ICBM force consists of liquid-fueled, silo-based missiles. These are just very expensive sitting ducks. I don’t lose any sleep over Russia’s current nuclear capabilities. Many of us did in the 1970s, for no reason as it turned out, because we vastly overestimated their military strength and technology.
At the time, should the Russian have come through the Fulda Gap, they were estimated to be 72 hours from the English Channel. ... our position would have been 15k behind their first rest stop ... Understand that this was after full tactical and strategic nuclear strikes through out the European Theater by both sides ...
Joe Blow GI had no idea what they would have been up against. The US soldiers were quite confident that they had superior forces to fend off (in short order) the Russians and their obsolete weapons ...
The Russians passed their comm traffic using one day pads, the US soldiers passed their traffic in the clear using explicit directions to their positions routinely, despite having secure coms.
Every time the Russians lit up their SA radars, we would look at the clock and count down 15 seconds - the time it would take for the first nuclear tipped missile to hit our position.
Later back at NSA, us poor slobs learned that we were a first strike nuclear target for the Russians strategically and a first strike target for the US tactically ...
The Russian freak out, as you call it, was nothing more than one of their ordinary power plays, which our current regime fell for ... again. They were never worried about our missile system somehow interfering with any launch of their missiles.
Today, while the Russians have many silo based missiles, they also have their latest and greatest missiles on mobile and sea based platforms ... those are worth losing sleep over, if one is so inclined.
Never underestimate your enemy, especially if he happens to be Russian. Never forget Uncle Joe's maxim: Quantity has a quality all its own ... just ask Mr. Schicklgruber.
I agree that if we are not willing to use our technological advantage, then sheer quantity will often dominate. We learned that the hard way against the Chinese in Korea. You were part of the frontline tripwire in the 1960s. The only reason the Russians didn’t use their overwhelming conventional forces to overrun our troops in West Germany is they feared our nuclear first-strike capabilities. Many Soviet officials have written memoirs in the post-Cold War era revealing their immobilizing fear of our nuclear superiority. We were mislead by the disarmament crowd into thinking that the Russians were an unstoppable colossus when the truth was that much of their nuclear force was of dubious reliability. Penkovsky feared Kruschev more than Eisenhower or Kennedy, and worried that K was going to bluster his way into a military disaster that would destroy Mother Russia.
I don’t believe these claims, but not because of lying politicians but because of physics. Not only do you have a big difference in speed between the rock and the missile, but a bigger difference in momentum. The rock is much, much larger and more massive so if the missile were to be launched at EXACTLY the right time then yes, it could realistically be done but it would have no effect because the rock would smash the missile to pieces and continue on its way. The only way to destroy such a rock with a much slower missile would be if the missile was carrying a powerful enough contact burst nuclear warhead. I’d say the warhead would need a yield of at least 500 kilotons. Nevertheless, we would need much faster nuclear missiles to realistically intercept and destroy meteors. Which BOTH countries should develop.
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