Posted on 09/08/2015 8:01:54 AM PDT by lbryce
I never understood the concept of “minimum deterrence”. To define it is to say you want to be at the point of almost NOT deterring, which, you would think, would encourage your enemies to break through in technology or tactics in a way that defeats such “minimum” deterrence. I want maximum deterrence where there is no question to an answer from an aggressive attempt against us.
Clearly Obama, in his infinite wisdom thinks otherwise... (Sarc)
A couple things are evident at this point;
-The Russians are not our friends. They see us as “Glavni Vrag” (The Main Enemy).
-the Russians and specifically the present Putin gang, have grand plans for Russia.
-The Russians are not stupid. Quite the opposite.
-we may be stupid if we continue to delude ourselves with such strategic suicide.
From orbit..
Why even return? It’s a drone, just detonate the thing entirely.
or airplane, or jet, or tank, or helicopter...
It was a matter of time before another country or even a terrorist group gets the technology.
That’s a good point. What are they going to do? Take us to court, sue us? With sailors on board it’s a whole different ball game
Correct, but there are lots of subs tied up at Bremerton and one nuke at Bangor effectively closes Puget Sound.
National Lampoon used to sell t-shirts with the slogan “Nuke the Whales” on them.
I’ve mentioned this possibility in threads some months back - though I was thinking of drone submarine carriers for launching aerial drones instead of nuke ICBMs - I think the nuke side is very dangerous to do this given the hacking potential.
Now they can update the t's with the slogan, "The Whales ARE Nukes"
“...we may be stupid if we continue to delude ourselves with such strategic suicide...”
This is the real danger in having a “peace at ANY price CinC”. Just look at the Iran “deal” where he gave away every REAL safeguard — all for preventing a war with Iran. Combine that with our “effort” to combat ISIS. What a laugh but actually real sad. Again, no fight, no war, no security, no military, no ally support, you name it. No CiC.
It sounds like a one way trip. No launch or return. Just a drone with a nuke. It gets to its destination and explodes.
There are some interesting twists. If it can be tracked it can be destroyed. Does the payload have a deadman switch on it? When is the launch process terminal? Or can it be recalled? Can it be captured and controlled? All sorts of interesting C-cubed-I questions arise.
Not just stealthier, but probably capable of going much deeper than manned subs. Visualize something that can just quietly sit on the sea floor, far below where manned subs can go, consuming close to zero power, just listening for a signal to come up and launch.
The article mentions a specific nuke sub base on the East Coast, not one the West - just making the correction - Nuke subs may be tied up for repairs or other things in other bases but are not based out of them.
Meanwhile, Russia is making its naval base at Tartos, Syria a base for one of its Typhoon class nuke subs: the Dmitri Donskoy (TK-208) ...
I’m more upset about Russia attacking a piece of the Ukraine than losing our ports (and the cities that go with them). Therefore we should continue to goad Russia.
(or at least that’s how many people here feel)
Great way to deliver an EMP attack. Put a one or more of these drone subs on each coast, give the signal and the USA is back to 1880s development, with 90% killed after one year.
Even more so is for it to make its way into a harbor then detonate, a lot or radioactive fallout that way.
And think about this. Where a nuclear missile warhead or bomb is limited in its size and weight, something delivered by an underwater drone is much less restricted in such dimensions. Even Tsar Bomba had limits as to delivery, which was a highly modified TU-95 with resulting very limited range.
Tsar Bomba was exploded in 1961 with its reduced yield (from 100 megatons) of 58 megatons. And it weighed 27 tons, which is quite a load for an aircraft or missile, but a drone or shipping container, or concealed in the hull of merchant vessel that is quit a different story. I’m sure the Russians can probably multiply that 100 megaton yield design several times after 50 years of warhead development.
Yes, but still you don’t get anywhere near the usability of a manned submarine.
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