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#121
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Bye-bye INF treaty?
"Derek Lyons" wrote in message
... "Greg D. Moore \(Strider\)" wrote: "Henry Spencer" wrote in message ... In article , Charles Buckley wrote: Maybe, and maybe not. US policy for a long time (and possibly still today) was that detection of incoming objects -- even lots of them -- wasn't sufficient grounds for a retaliatory strike... Can you honestly expect this administration to react any other way then how Pat described it? Actually, yes. Now, some members of the Administration might or might not start screaming for the immediate nuking of Tehran or wherever... but one of the reasons that there's a considerable body of *rules* about how these things are done is precisely to require angry or frightened politicians to slow down and think and get concurrence from others. Those rules can't be bypassed by Administration fiat, not even Presidential fiat. No, but the CinC is the ultimate legal military authority. Failure to obey a legal order from him could resort in a court-martial. You are correct, it could result in a court-martial. But in the meantime, refusing to follow the order puts a speed bump in place. (We used to have a joke that ended: "If you do that, they'll court martial you!" "So? That means I survived.") Yeah, I was going to say something like that. And of course there's always the "Yes Sir, we'll follow out your orders, but a backhoe has taken out the secure line to NORAD, we're attempting other channels, they may take a bit longer." Meanwhile you figure out what else to do. The CinC can't simply turn to the #2 man as say "well, Admiral X won't do it - will you General Y?" as they do in the movies. The folks the next level down know dammed well that Admiral X should be giving the orders, and will not obey General Y without an indication that authority has been properly transferred. (And no, the CinC simply stating that "Admiral X has been relieved" does not constitute proper transfer.) D. -- Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh. -Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings. Oct 5th, 2004 JDL -- Greg Moore SQL Server DBA Consulting sql (at) greenms.com http://www.greenms.com |
#122
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Bye-bye INF treaty?
Scott Hedrick wrote: You gain *nothing* by responding on warning with a nuclear weapon to a single or several incoming missiles. Sure I do- I ensure that the weapons I launch don't get destroyed by the incoming missile. Assuming you can hit the launch site in short order, you can also avoid a possible second attack as the launchers get reloaded. Pat |
#123
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Bye-bye INF treaty?
Pat Flannery wrote:
Henry Spencer wrote: Almost certainly the US would *not* respond with ICBMs, especially given that an ICBM strike on Iran would go more or less over Moscow. The first thing you'd do is get Moscow and Beijing on the blower and tell them what you were going to do; then you'd let a Trident submarine have at them, probably from the Mediterraneans. A) Trident's don't patrol in the Med. (We gave that up as soon as we could.) B) AFAIK policy is that such retaliatory strikes are tasked to the Minuteman force. D. -- Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh. -Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings. Oct 5th, 2004 JDL |
#124
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Bye-bye INF treaty?
Scott Hedrick wrote: There's no other payload that justifies the effort and expense of an ICBM. Even chemical and biological weapons aren't cost effective on ICBMs. The biological ones might. The Soviets were shooting for millions dead in their anthrax ICBM attack: http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/r36m.htm "In the 1970's biological warheads for single-warhead ICBM's were developed and flight-tested, presumably including the R-36/R-36M. In the late winter of 1988 the extremely secretive Fifteenth Directorate of the Soviet Army prepared to arm the multiple-warhead R-36M with a biological agent in lieu of nuclear warheads. It seemed that an interchangeable dispensing warhead had already been developed and qualified for this purpose, since the only issue was which agent to select and how quickly it could be produced. Anthrax 836 was the agent of choice. Ten warheads on a single R-36M could dispense 400 kg of milled anthrax in aerosol form over a major city. This would be sufficient, it was calculated, for a single R-36M to kill 12 million people. Attacks were considered against New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Chicago. Soviet production capacity at that time was sufficient to load the planned 'hundreds' of warheads on dozens of missiles within two weeks." Pat |
#125
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Bye-bye INF treaty?
Scott Hedrick wrote: "Henry Spencer" wrote in message ... Almost certainly the US would *not* respond with ICBMs, especially given that an ICBM strike on Iran would go more or less over Moscow. And that's why I'd have to check where the boomers are, first. A launch from the northern Mediterranean or straight westward from the Indian Ocean would have the advantage of not being headed for Russia or China. Pat |
#126
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Bye-bye INF treaty?
Greg D. Moore (Strider) wrote: Given the supposed launching nation was someone like Iran, the majority, if not all land-based missiles will survive any initial attack. Combine that with the other legs of our triad and you can still fire back with overwhelming force if required,. Even one Trident submarine could completely annihilate the country. In fact, even one Trident missile could knock them back to the stone age, particularly if you detonated one of the warheads in space for a EMP effect before the others impacted. Pat |
#127
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Bye-bye INF treaty?
Greg D. Moore (Strider) wrote: A pure EMP weapon is probably more effective in many ways. A decent EMP pulse over the Eastern Seaboard would probably do more economic damage than any number of nukes a nation like Iran could launch. Fusing might be tricky though. Ideal burst height is 300 miles for maximum effect radius, 60 miles if you didn't want the effect to spread into Canada. (That's based on the U.S. Congress' "Military Space Forces - The Next 50 Years" report from 1989) Pat |
#128
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Bye-bye INF treaty?
Scott Hedrick wrote: I thought of this while watching Yugoslavia break down. Just because the threat of Tito was lifted *did not* obligate anyone to fire the first shot. In Iraq, just because Saddam was gone *did not* oblige anyone to start killing anyone else. It's voluntary and self-inflicted and NOT the fault of the US. I just had this berserk vision...Washington DC gets nuked... the country needs a new capital city. Where should it be? "Why in New York City, of course!" "No, in Richmond, Virginia...where it would have been if the right side had won!" "Oh yeah, Johnny Reb?" "Yeah, Billy Yankee!" Guess what happens next. ;-) Pat |
#129
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Bye-bye INF treaty?
Derek Lyons wrote: B) AFAIK policy is that such retaliatory strikes are tasked to the Minuteman force. We shoot one of our ones in North Dakota at them, and stages one and two are going to fall somewhere in the U.S. . Pat |
#130
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Bye-bye INF treaty?
Scott Hedrick wrote: "Bill Bonde" wrote in message ... Scott Hedrick wrote: "Bill Bonde" wrote in message ... You can zap warheads, of course, if you have that technology. What I'm saying is that you cannot retaliate with thermonuclear weapons just because someone sends a missile your way. You need to wait to see if it's a WMD attack or not. No, I don't. I *don't* have to wait for the first warhead to impact in order to assume the worse and act accordingly. Moreover, I would be highly irresponsible to do so. You gain *nothing* by responding on warning with a nuclear weapon to a single or several incoming missiles. Sure I do- I ensure that the weapons I launch don't get destroyed by the incoming missile. They aren't likely to have that sort of accuracy. America has air and submarine nuclear missiles enough to blow up anyone they might want to attack. Launch on warning to possibly save one missile is probably not going to be ultimately justifiable to the congressional investigation that will surely follow. Well, I guess you could end it right there by going nuclear and then say, "I thought he was attacking with nukes so I nuked him." Exactly. Launching anything other than NBC weapons on an ICBM is monumentally stupid, and even launching BC weapons would be pretty foolish. You haven't explained where the dividing line is between conventional missiles making sense and not making sense. How about missiles fired at Europe from Iran, are they only to be NBC too? After 60 years of even losing wars such as the Korean War and the Vietnam War by not using nuclear weapons, you would just use them to no advantage by launching on warning? Actually, I would use them for the advantages already stated. For rational parties, a known launch on warning policy decreases the chance that either would launch in the first place. Moreover, as I have already stated, it's just not that simple. If you are shooting missiles at Iran, how can you justify a nuclear response if they shoot missiles back at you? It's not their fault that the United States is farther away from their forces than Iran is from American forces. -- Bush say global warm-warm not real Even though ice gone and no seals Polar bears can't find their meals Grow as thin as Ally McBeals |
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