Posted on 03/01/2018 5:53:23 AM PST by tlozo
Vladimir Putin warned the West Thursday that Russia has developed a high tech new arsenal — including a supersonic nuclear weapon that can reach any spot on Earth while avoiding missile-defense systems.
Delivering his annual State of the Union address, the Russian president said his country was prepared to use its nukes if attacked, and added that Moscow would consider a nuclear attack on its allies as a nuclear attack on the Motherland — and would retaliate immediately.
“I want to tell all those who have fueled the arms race over the last 15 years, sought to win unilateral advantages over Russia, introduced unlawful sanctions aimed to contain our country’s development: all what you wanted to impede with your policies have already happened,” he said. “You have failed to contain Russia.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Laser's aren't magic. The beam propagates at c or some appreciable fraction thereof (the atmosphere is not a vacuum), but, the question is the quantity of energy delivered per unit time.
There are several factors.
1) The wattage of the laser pulse.
2) The amount of time the laser is fixed on substantially the same patch of skin on the missile (raking a laser from top to bottom might not impart enough energy to any one square inch, what have you, to penetrate, or even to cause the skin to blister -- at these velocities, any asymmetry in airflow over the missile body would be catastrophic for guidance, if not immediately fatal to the airframe).
3) The composition of the missile's skin.
4) The angular velocity of the missile relative to the gun : for a head on approach, the bearing is constant, but the closer the missile gets for any nonzero offset, between the missile's path and a straight line between missile and laser, the FASTER the laser mount will have to swivel to keep its beam on the missile. For some orientations, the laser will have a very limited time to engage before the missile has just whizzed on by.
...and don't forget the strategic implications of flight time for early warning / evacuation of the President before impact. The only saving grace here, is that it is quite unlikely that anything like Tsar Bomba would fit on the cruise missile airframe.
...and, come to think of it, the faster the missile, the more precisely the detonation sequence will have to be matched to the missile's known or calculated position. Recall that at 3600 mph, you're going a mile a second. This will likely only be an issue for high precision targets; and these missiles are envisaged as strategic weapons, i.e. city busters.
And nukes prob'y won't take out our Trident subs.
How come we don’t have more politicians who run for re-election like this? . . . I think I saw an intel rpt that the Ruskies have also designed a better mouse trap...
Russia does not have enough money to even have a new field ready bath tub.
They spent it all on the SU-57.
Yes, I'm sure we'll lose a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier in an outright attack from Russia and China, then we'll just crawl back to our own coastline and hope we're left alone for the rest of time. Very plausible scenario there.
Yep.
5000+ dead, $14 Billion for the carrier (+another 5-10 billion for attached air wing) at the bottom of the ocean, and we will just slink back into our own waters and pull a blanket over ourselves like turtles.
Yeah. That’s plausible. My eyes hurt from all the rolling. Jesus Christ.
I think it means that it is either very low altitude OD it has the ability to maneuver at high speeds. Most MIRVs are ballistic and fall in a pretty computable path.
Pearl Harbor was bomber with our own iron. History rhymes.
Are you really advocating starting a thermonuclear war?
I just want to make sure so that whenever the archives of the forum are recovered in a thousand years someone will be able to point to this thread and say, “Yes, indeed. There were people who thought that was a good idea.”
Imagine the heat generated on the skin when you are going 3600mph. I doubt it takes much to make a compromise.
Yes but at that speed, there is no room for error. Imagine going 3500mph and suddenly the onboard computer gets a Microsoft Office update.
We’ll see. Most likely we won’t even know what the hell hit us, considering how far ahead they are now.
Yup, we have defenses for anything launched.
Russia can’t afford weapons programs.
The world needs top remember that Russia’s economy is smaller than Canada’s. Canada has more oil and gas reserves.
Are we supposed to be shaking in our boots?
Well your post and question are ignorant and false. Where did I exactly propose a first nuclear strike use or even advocate going to war?
Putin is boasting about a first strike weapons development. He did so as a result of the missile shield going up in Europe and becoming operational. He is gloating our shield can be defeated by his new missiles. If you knew he was about to use them you could use stealth insertion or special forces on the ground with non nuclear methods to prevent them from being used. If Putin did use them what is the point under MAD doctrine if you start something that ends in your destruction? China is also now boasting about developing salted nuclear warheads with heavy fallout or what Leo Szilard called doomsday weapons. So no your rhetoric is just that and I did not nor do I suggest use of nuclear weapons is ever a good idea. But they exist and are there everywhere and every despot on the planet wants one and soon they may be used again by miscalculation or megalomaniac insanity. How do you stop that, because you are never going to be rid of nukes until they are launched or retired
Paragraphs are your friend.
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