Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

To: Owen; USA-FRANCE; PIF
Owen: "The overall point is the word “deployed” is not particularly relevant when one of the 3 legs of Triad are manned bombers that fly around day to day without nukes aboard.
They need an hour to load from stockpile, and they will likely get it."

Just a few points to add here:

  1. I doubt if any of those numbers are accurate and doubt if the true numbers are known by more than a small handful of US strategic planners.

  2. The definitions of words like "active", "reserve", "inactive", "retired", etc., can change over time, as well as the conditions of various warheads within each category.

  3. Iirc, after 1980s negotiations between Reagan and Gorbachev, it was announced with great fanfare that "the Cold War is over!", based on agreements to remove computerized targeting information from each country's strategic warheads.
    How was this done?
    Essentially, by flipping a switch from "on" to "off".
    How could the targets be restored to those warheads?
    By flipping the switch back from "off" to "on".
    How long will that take?
    Not as long as it takes to tell the story.

  4. Of course, a nuclear war is unthinkable -- as Reagan first said in 1984: "a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought".
    However, when Russians are throwing around flagrant, repeated threats of nuclear war, then the entire world needs to review in our minds all the logic associated with MAD -- Mutual Assured Destruction -- whether the technology still works or needs upgrading, and what are the various levels of response short of all-out Armageddon?

Washington Metro subway:

Owen: "In the 80s they [Old Soviets] moved city grocery supermarkets underground.
We never did that.
They have a civil defense advantage."

Sure, and I think many countries also built large underground facilities for their government elites in case of nuclear war.
The US does not have such extensive facilities, but we do have:

  1. Thousands of miles of subway, railroad and highway tunnels underneath and connecting every major city.

  2. Large public underground facilities, including shopping malls, in many major cities.

  3. A relatively dispersed population -- there are more Americans living in smaller towns and rural areas than in all of Russia.

  4. A governmental system built on the strength of local and state governments, which will not collapse if, God forbid, we lose Federal government in Washington.

  5. Anti-ballistic missile systems -- Ronald Reagan's "Star Wars" defenses -- which are currently deemed less than 100% effective, and which Pres. Trump has promised major upgrades for.
Finally, it's well worth remembering that just this past Saturday, Russians conducted yet another test of their largest ICBM, the Satan II at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome, between Moscow and St. Petersburg.
The results included a catastrophic explosion, visible from space, the fourth unsuccessful test of the Satan II (the others were in 2017 & 2018).

One wag said the explosion resulted from someone stealing the part designed to prevent it.
Bottom line: all their insane threats notwithstanding, there is no way that Russians want nuclear war because it would effectively result in Russian national "suicide by cop".

Russia's Satan II, aka Putin's Big D*ck, suffers from E.D. -- premature Explosive Disfunction:

28 posted on 09/23/2024 3:54:26 AM PDT by BroJoeK (future DDG 134 -- we remember)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 27 | View Replies ]


To: BroJoeK

I realized later I was not clear about bombers needing to have warheads put aboard and it takes an hour or so, and they will probably get it. —— Will probably get it refers to targetting. If you’re in St Petersburg, the Russian naval central offices, you point your boomers at the targets that might immediately hit Russia. That won’t be bombers. That is ICBMs, maybe some command and control like the Pentagon and Bremerton/Groton, and not places like Wright Patt logistics or home ports with no ships currently docked.

Meaning, you aim at things that might hit you, Russia, in the next 48 hrs. Bombers aren’t going anywhere, even stealth, until there is some confidence Russian air defense has been destroyed, and thus bombers won’t be SLBM targetted. They get hit later, not first, and thus there is time to load bombs on them.

ICBM targeting and “loading targets into them” just means align/calibrate the onboard inertial nav systems (the gyros and linear accelerometers) and give them a latitude/longitude to hit. That’s a less than 1 hour activity, but it’s not less than 2 minutes. Nobody is dumb about this stuff. If a missile is offline per treaty requirements, it got cut up into pieces, not merely erased target.

SALT and START were two different things, and there are solid in-orbit recon assets for verification on both sides.

Perhaps the biggest Russian advantage in all of this is their somewhat brilliant choice to place ICBMs on mobile launchers. You have to point missiles at latitude/longitude and if they move them, you lose not only accuracy, but a completely wasted warhead that is not hitting nothingness.

US anti missile interceptors number about 44, and their somewhat optimistic effectiveness estimate is 50%. I read the test criteria that generated that number. It required all countermeasures be off and zero maneuvering past boost phase. So just put that stuff aside. There is no defense against high speed ballistics, never has been and are not now. And that was all pre hypersonic.

Note the ABM treaty allowed both sides to have interceptors to defend 2 sites. A later protocol reduced this to 1 site, because neither side built a 2nd site. The Russians put theirs around Moscow. The US, around the North Dakota launch complex. The whole idea of ABM was to reduce defenses — because if defenses were kept small then there would be no ongoing incentive to build more and more strategic ICBMs or SLBMs. Regardless, the US withdrew from the treaty in 2002. There is no ABM agreement as of now, largely because there is no point. It doesn’t work.


29 posted on 09/23/2024 7:29:53 AM PDT by Owen
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 28 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson