Jake McGuire wrote:
Ed Kyle wrote:
Once operational, the greatest rouge threat might be the use
of conventionally-armed missiles against the U.S., something
like the rain of missiles that fell on Israel recently. Such an
attack would quickly deplete an anit-missile system and it
would be politically impossible to respond to it with nuclear
weapons.

ICBMs cost a lot of money - apparently much more than their warheads.
Even the US can't justify putting conventional warheads on them because
it's too damn expensive. Who else is going to be able to afford to do
it. And in a world where ICBMs are only used to carry nuclear
warheads, who is going to take the risk of launching a bunch of them at
the US, hoping that we sit and take it?

Wrong. The US did look at puting conventional warheads on SLBM-s,
however, it was abandoned as the only safe way ( from the POV of
definitely not escalating to a nuclear war) would have been converting
all of the missiles. It is only in conventional non-wisdom where
strikes by ICBM-s with conventional warheads are not worth it. The
cost is not the problem and never was.


Then, avoiding the issue of what parts of the US one could threaten
with 50-mile-range artillery rockets, we certainly wouldn't use the NMD
against them.

You can threaten pretty much all of the US with them. Its a question
of placement.


And finally, artillery rockets are easy and cheap to make and hard to
trace. ICBMs (or even IRBMs) get made in expensive factories and are
pretty simple to identify. Launching a bunch of them at the US would
certainly justify having said expensive ICBM factory blown to bits, and
probably a bunch of other military production facilities as well.

IRBM-s with reaonable accuracy have been made in cheap factories in
bulk in the past. Doing so becomes easier each year.


-jake


--
Sander

+++ Out of cheese error +++