Replies

A few reminders for all the "Yawn, Russia is our friend now" drones.-

1) The subs are a paper unit- little warheads- no independent launch capabilty- Clinton removed the PAL codes. They now rely on the ELF signal for a warning/ launch order. If you simultaneously squish Washington (or wherever the Prez is at the time) LOOKING GLASS, and the two TACAMO planes- guess what? No PAL codes, no launch, first strike wipes us UNOPPOSED.

4) The US has 500 ICBM's. A lot you say? consider this- Russia currently has over 700 SS-18 Mod-3's (14 550 kiloton warheads) & 5's (1 20 megaton bunker buster) deployed. And that is ONE type of missile. They could squish every silo, launch command center, military base, airfield, and a decent chunk of our largest cities with the SS18's alone.

Great post here. The Clinton elimination of our nuclear missile subs capability for independent launch (circa 1995) is extremely disturbing. Bush is merely continuing and accelerating the previous Clinton initiated unilateral US nuclear disarmament suicidal death march. A word on Russian MIRV's. Over the last several years, I have done some very diligent research into US and Russian nuclear missile capabilities and found out some very interesting info. One book I purchased was an anti-nuke work entitled "The Myth of Soviet Military Supremacy" revealed some of the most interesting tidbits one of which was the fact that all of the MIRV’d warhead limits are entirely artificial creations. For example, the SS-18 is artificially limited by the SALT II Treaty as having only 10 warheads, even though it was never ratified.. However, according to this anti-nuke book and another book entitled “How to make Nuclear Weapons Obselete”, the Russians had the technology as far back as 1983 to pack THIRTY warheads onto an SS-18 Mod 1-4 ICBM.

Doing the math, you can figure about FOURTEEN warheads would fit on a never ratified START II Treaty permitted SS-19 ICBM even though only SIX of those warheads are counted by the START II Treaty. Our Trident I SLBMs had the same payload capacity and were downloaded to eight warheads following the signature of the treaty. The Russian SS-27 mobile ICBM is supposed to be a single warhead missile even though it can carry a greater payload than the missile from which it was derived the THREE warhead, the SS-20 IRBM. In fact, Russian sources have stated that the SS-27 can be uploaded to SEVEN to TEN modern Russian nuclear warheads which also means that the payload of every existing Russian ICBM and SLBM can be determined by multiplying their SALT II Treaty payload by two to three times. Furthermore, the Russians produce “thousands” of new miniaturized nuclear warheads each year according to sworn Congressional testimony by former Secretary of Defense, Secretary of Energy and Director of the CIA, James Schlesinger, (Rummy’s predecessor as SECDEF during his original tour of duty at the Pentagon) given in late 1997.

All of the above combined with the fact that the Russians have FOUR TIMES AS MANY NUKES AS THE US (40,000 to 9800) and that smaller lower yield tacnukes can be “packed” into strategic missiles (using the Russian “barrage” tactic) means that the Russian strategic nuclear potential is being grossly estimated. A CIA report issued around 1993 stated as much when it estimated that Soviet STRATEGIC nukes had likely been underestimated by as many as 4,000 warheads! Furthermore, Russian refire and non-deployed missiles and warheads are not even counted in our estimates of their strategic nuclear arsenal or for arms control treaty purposes. The bottom line is that THE US HAS ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA HOW LARGE THE RUSSIAN STRATEGIC NUCLEAR ARSENAL REALLY IS. The only thing we do know is that it is a lot larger than we think it is which makes these types of draconian Bush unilateral nuclear disarmament measures and unverifiable nuclear arms control treaties WITH A NATION THAT HAS SERIALLY VIOLATED EVERY ARMS CONTROL TREATY THAT IT HAS EVER SIGNED all the more dangerous. The problem is that the US will invariably adhere to its treaties by disarming our ICBMs to one warhead a piece and our SLBMs to four, while the Russians can be counted to keep their missiles uploaded to maximum payload even as they retire older missiles and launchers. That is why the Russian nuclear superiority over the US will only continue to increase with the Bush unilateral nuclear disarmament plan even if Russia disarms to what the US considers to be an arsenal capable of launching only 2000 SALT II limited strategic warheads. If anyone here thinks that it costs the Russians red cent to upload their missiles to TWO to THREE times SALT II capacity, they are completely delusional.

"The bottom line is that THE US HAS ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA HOW LARGE THE RUSSIAN STRATEGIC NUCLEAR ARSENAL REALLY IS..."

The FAS website hasn't had any "estimated current deployed forces" numbers for Mother Russia for a while now... that has always bugged me. They got a bunch of warheads and delivery systems, and they ain't tellin...

"Trust but Verify..." to which I will add "You lower your gun, I'll lower mine Vladmir"

Thanks for the ping. I wonder why Rumsfield is endorsing this. I thought he was a hawk about such matters.