See p. XII
Posted on 02/04/2020 3:32:29 PM PST by Berlin_Freeper
The U.S. Defense Department said on Tuesday the Navy had fielded a low-yield, submarine-launched ballistic missile warhead, something the Pentagon believes is needed to deter adversaries like Russia but which critics say lowers the threshold for using nuclear weapons.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
See p. XII
I’ll note you FAIL to post a single quote from the article we are discussing.
The problems you have are:
1. Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit.
2. Submarines can be hunted too.
3. Why the bother with “low yields” at all? Because submarines... something or something?
Read the book, then get back to us.
And like I said, P XII is a good place to start. You can learn even more by searching on “low-yield.”
Be a good boy and read the article we are discussing.
Yea I will search “low yield”...
Why then are we only putting them on subs now?
You are actually a good example of why I post articles without a comment.
We are putting them on subs because the selected warhead, the W76, is only used in SLBM's. It was a really cheap way of adding this “escalate to deescalate” doctrine. It also keeps our tactical nukes off the "battlefield" where they are at risk of capture, off of aircraft that could be shot down, and keeps the firing chain at the Commander in Chief level. Sure, a sub could be hunted, but that same sub already carries 2 dozen Trident missiles, so you are just changing the mission of a couple of those.
And we are doing this now because Russian doctrine has changed in the face of overwhelming conventional superiority. The Russian economy really cannot support maintaining conventional parity with us. Some US actions in the past have also probably heightened their paranoia, but that is another subject. Cf. Pat Buchanan on this subject.
Be careful or he’ll ping Jim Robinson and try to have you banned for not agreeing with him or trolling him. Making him look ignorant for not commenting on the article the little snowflake posted.
I’m assuming it’s not very survivable at ground zero. It might be useful against crazy regimes with nuclear ambitions at sites a reasonable distance from population centers.
Exactly. And we were in a position where we would have been unable to answer the use of tactical nuclear weapons by Russia without massive escalation to strategic weapons and all out nuclear war. These warheads prevent Russia from using theirs, and give us a "usable nuclear weapon" in special cases like responding to chemical or biological attacks that don't require 100KT or 475 KT retaliation.
We are using them now because of further destructive options where we can nuke a force without having to kill everyone around.
lewslynn: Be careful or he’ll ping Jim Robinson and try to have you banned for not agreeing with him or trolling him. Making him look ignorant for not commenting on the article the little snowflake posted.JR, you see it is not my feud and how much lewislynn respects your instructions to stop personal attacks on your forum:
JR: Your feuds are getting old. Give it a rest.My web search says 42 days passed. Could be shorter since lewislynn didn't ping me.
A reasonable assumption.
Or known terrorist bases with same vector.
In the old days we called weapons like this “urban renewal” tools. Small nukes should be used in the jungles of Africa to take out Boko Harum camps, the new Fulani genocidal islamists of Nigeria, some Taliban major villages and towns, and any Al Shabaab sites in Somalia, Kenya, etc.
A couple little kiloton boomers would do the job and not really hurt the environment other than to make some green glass and jungle salad au flambeau.
And now we are deploying boomers with an eye at Russia because they may see an advantage of hitting in a limited attack, but now we have an answer for such a scenario. Which means it is less likely to happen.
US deploys submarine-launched low-yield nukeU.S. weapons were too powerful = less survivableThe administration argues the warhead is necessary to deter Russia.
Moscow, the argument goes, might have miscalculated that the United States was unwilling to use its nuclear weapons in response to a Russian low-yield nuclear strike because the existing U.S. weapons were too powerful.
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