Australia to Get Nuclear Submarines

[Stuart Galbraith]

52 minutes ago, glenn239 said:

I think the trend in warfare is disabling military capacity with as few causalities lost as possible.  

Ah, so you're saying that they have not already solved this problem even though the DF-21 has been operational for quite some time.

 

That's what Douhet tried for. Remember how it turned out?

 

[Nobu]

India's per capita income should trend upward based on the youth of it alone. Then again, the socioeconomic factors that have retarded their socioeconomic growth aren't just going to disappear, either. Reproducing one's way out of poverty isn't going to work without addressing why one is living in a box on the street to begin with.

 

On 10/15/2021 at 8:54 AM, BansheeOne said:

Yeah, avoid occupying the PRC, and you should be good. 😁 

That's where the "off" switch to the war would be, however.

Still wondering what the hell Argentina was thinking in 1982.

 

36 minutes ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

That's what Douhet tried for. Remember how it turned out?

Swap out "bomber" with "nuclear delivery device" and he may have been right after all...

Edited October 22, 2021 by Nobu

[RETAC21]

1 hour ago, Nobu said:

Still wondering what the hell Argentina was thinking in 1982.

 

Actually, their thinking was pretty common through history, let's have a small, victorious war to distract the people from domestic problems. Austria-Hungary thought this way in WW1 and that dodn't end well for them either.

[Nobu]

A small, victorious war against Bolivia and Bolivians, sure.

Politically and militarily, the "off" switch to such a war is going to be much harder for Argentina to flip against a power like Britain, however.

UNSC Ceasefire Resolution XX

USA: Abstain  USSR: Yes  France: Abstain  China: Yes  Rest of the world: Yes

United Kingdom: No

The blockade of Argentina continues.

[lucklucky]

From my reading of it, it was close for the British to start negotiations instead of military action.

If Henry Leach wasn't advising PM and circumventing protocol would there be an operation to retake the islands?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Leach

[Stuart Galbraith]

13 hours ago, Nobu said:

India's per capita income should trend upward based on the youth of it alone. Then again, the socioeconomic factors that have retarded their socioeconomic growth aren't just going to disappear, either. Reproducing one's way out of poverty isn't going to work without addressing why one is living in a box on the street to begin with.

 

That's where the "off" switch to the war would be, however.

Still wondering what the hell Argentina was thinking in 1982.

 

Swap out "bomber" with "nuclear delivery device" and he may have been right after all...

Not if you are dropping them on cities he wasnt, which is what his doctrine amounted to. Destroy the enemies military production by destroying cities, save lives. Which would work fine, other than in destroying a city you kill thousands of people(even more in the nuclear age), even if you save the lives of soldiers at the front. True, in the 1940's there wasnt much of a better option. Today in the era of PGM there certainly is.

TBH, all this talk of hypersonics and glider delivery vehicles kinda proves the absurdity of the last 40 years of American thinking, which believed you could put up an ABM system and cut off the threat of nuclear weapons. There are lots of other ways of delivering nuclear weapons even if you rule out the ICBM. I distinctly remember pointing this out 20 years ago when Dubya started putting ABM's into Eastern Europe. Instead I got roared at by the Cheap seats for being Anti American. Hey Ho.

Edited October 23, 2021 by Stuart Galbraith

[RETAC21]

11 hours ago, Nobu said:

A small, victorious war against Bolivia and Bolivians, sure.

Politically and militarily, the "off" switch to such a war is going to be much harder for Argentina to flip against a power like Britain, however.

UNSC Ceasefire Resolution XX

USA: Abstain  USSR: Yes  France: Abstain  China: Yes  Rest of the world: Yes

United Kingdom: No

The blockade of Argentina continues.

Problem here were the signals the UK was sending, pulling out ships, denying islanders the UK passport, contracting Argentinian scrappers and airlines to service the islands, so the Junta thought (not unreasonably) that the UK would just reach an agreement post-fact based on boots on the ground because it would be too hard and too expensive to fight that far from home. They were so wedded to this concept that the TF sailing South didn't kick them into high gear about fighting a war, particularly in the case of the Navy, who had planned and pushed for the invasion.

[Stuart Galbraith]

Everyone was sending mixed messages. In fairness I think the FO finally got their act together and communicated fairly straightforwardly after the invasion. But yes, for years we had been sending mixed messages. I seem to recall in John Notts memoirs he admitted the navy cuts he projected probably contributed, but so did every defence review previous, going back to the decision to withdraw the South Atlantic Squadron in 1964 by the Labour Government. He has a point.

 

[RETAC21]

Them

 

[glenn239]

4 hours ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

TBH, all this talk of hypersonics and glider delivery vehicles kinda proves the absurdity of the last 40 years of American thinking, which believed you could put up an ABM system and cut off the threat of nuclear weapons.

The threat of these weapons is primarily in the conventional field, not nuclear.  

[Stuart Galbraith]

No with an area range of 24 miles it bloody isnt. Thats a nuclear delivery system, not a pinpoint attack system.

[Stuart Galbraith]

 

[lucklucky]

1 hour ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

No with an area range of 24 miles it bloody isnt. Thats a nuclear delivery system, not a pinpoint attack system.

So you make your judgment of a system in one data point based on rumours?

[bojan]

1 hour ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

No with an area range of 24 miles it bloody isnt. Thats a nuclear delivery system, not a pinpoint attack system.

Again, how do you came to that data? Random internet article does not count.

[Stuart Galbraith]

21 minutes ago, lucklucky said:

So you make your judgment of a system in one data point based on rumours?

Show it hitting a pinpoint target. Until you can it remains an area weapon and viable only with a nuclear payload.  And yes, you have to trust the rumours, otherwise there is no evidence  of a hypersonic weapon at all. So why pick out the bits you want to believe, and ignore the rest of the story?

Also, anyone lofting a long range missile suffers the risk of it being interpreted as a nuclear attack. So that being the case, why not make it a nuclear weapon? It's going to take 2 hours to arrive, so it's hardly like you are going to sneak it in with a sneak attack.

There are too many people here, breathlessly repeating claims from the Chinese and Russian news agencies claiming uberwaffe. If these worked reliably, they would show you. Instead the Chinese are claiming its a space capsule. Doesn't much sound like a success does it?

[RETAC21]

15 minutes ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

Show it hitting a pinpoint target. Until you can it remains an area weapon and viable only with a nuclear payload.  And yes, you have to trust the rumours, otherwise there is no evidence  of a hypersonic weapon at all. So why pick out the bits you want to believe, and ignore the rest of the story?

Also, anyone lofting a long range missile suffers the risk of it being interpreted as a nuclear attack. So that being the case, why not make it a nuclear weapon? It's going to take 2 hours to arrive, so it's hardly like you are going to sneak it in with a sneak attack.

There are too many people here, breathlessly repeating claims from the Chinese and Russian news agencies claiming uberwaffe. If these worked reliably, they would show you. Instead the Chinese are claiming its a space capsule. Doesn't much sound like a success does it?

Re. the underlined. It may be a nuclear attack or not, but if the number of missiles is small, then the natural reaction is not going to be to launch a massive counterattack, but to wait and see and then go for a measured response.

[Stuart Galbraith]

14 minutes ago, RETAC21 said:

Re. the underlined. It may be a nuclear attack or not, but if the number of missiles is small, then the natural reaction is not going to be to launch a massive counterattack, but to wait and see and then go for a measured response.

If this missile is as currently with a CEP of 24 miles, it can't be anything but a nuclear missile, at best an EMP weapon. And if you are one of the smaller nuclear powers, ones where you are not really going to shrug off a 10 or 20 megaton hit, there isn't much point n waiting to make certain.

Tbh, it doesn't seem to be a very viable weapon at all, taking 2 hours to arrive. Even if it becomes a reliable conventional weapon, it's hardly as if B21s won't already in the air to strike the launch sites before they even lmpact.  As a first strike weapon it's difficult to see it's utility.

I can see the point of a theatre hypersonic weapon. This to my mind makes little sense, even if they get the cep down. It's Gryphon for the 21st Century.

Edited October 23, 2021 by Stuart Galbraith

[RETAC21]

13 minutes ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

If this missile is as currently with a CEP of 24 miles, it can't be anything but a nuclear missile, at best an EMP weapon. And if you are one of the smaller nuclear powers, ones where you are not really going to shrug off a 10 or 20 megaton hit, there isn't much point n waiting to make certain.

Tbh, it doesn't seem to be a very viable weapon at all, taking 2 hours to arrive. Even if it becomes a reliable conventional weapon, it's hardly as if B21s won't already in the air to strike the launch sites before they even lmpact.  As a first strike weapon it's difficult to see it's utility.

I can see the point of a theatre hypersonic weapon. This to my mind makes little sense, even if they get the cep down. It's Gryphon for the 21st Century.

The smaller nuclear powers are not going to know this was launched at them, they lack detection satellites.

[Stuart Galbraith]

I think it likely that the US would point it out to them at some point in the following 2 hours.

Or at least, I like to think they would. I believe the French already have their own equivalent of BMEWS anyway.

 

[sunday]

2 hours ago, lucklucky said:

So you make your judgment of a system in one data point based on rumours?

 

2 hours ago, bojan said:

Again, how do you came to that data? Random internet article does not count.

 

There is the possibility of a last minute/second steering out of target in order to not reveal real capabilities.

[lucklucky]

Even if it was a  real problem, that do not meant that by next launch what ever was wrong could not be fixed.

[bojan]

My point was that we simply do not have a clue other than random rumors. Now remember what happened with most of the rumors about Soviet weapons from Cold war. Yep, rumors turned to be mostly crap, one way or the other, either widely overestimating or underestimating things. 

[R011]

10 hours ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

If this missile is as currently with a CEP of 24 miles, it can't be anything but a nuclear missile, at best an EMP weapon. And if you are one of the smaller nuclear powers, ones where you are not really going to shrug off a 10 or 20 megaton hit, there isn't much point n waiting to make certain.

Tbh, it doesn't seem to be a very viable weapon at all, taking 2 hours to arrive. Even if it becomes a reliable conventional weapon, it's hardly as if B21s won't already in the air to strike the launch sites before they even lmpact.  As a first strike weapon it's difficult to see it's utility.

I can see the point of a theatre hypersonic weapon. This to my mind makes little sense, even if they get the cep down. It's Gryphon for the 21st Century.

The alleged results of this test, if accurate, may not be indicative of the capabilities of the system.  If all they wanted to do was just show that they could make a system with world-wide range, they may not have bothered testing the accuracy of the warhead itself.  That being said, we have yet to see a full-up test of the system against a moving target or much data about their ability to find and engage such targets.

It isn't time to panic yt.  The Chinese are not fifty foot tall giants who will crush us under foot.  It is time and past time to take the threat seriously and I have no reason to believe the US is not.

[Stuart Galbraith]

1 hour ago, R011 said:

The alleged results of this test, if accurate, may not be indicative of the capabilities of the system.  If all they wanted to do was just show that they could make a system with world-wide range, they may not have bothered testing the accuracy of the warhead itself.  That being said, we have yet to see a full-up test of the system against a moving target or much data about their ability to find and engage such targets.

It isn't time to panic yt.  The Chinese are not fifty foot tall giants who will crush us under foot.  It is time and past time to take the threat seriously and I have no reason to believe the US is not.

Yes, I quite agree. They probably will keep tinkering with it, and it will probably get more accurate. But I struggle to see what it gives them other than an ability to evade American ABM defences, which are seemingly regarded as a bit of a joke anyway.

https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/disastrous-us-approach-strategic-missile-defense

Yes, exactly. I really am getting very distrubed at how often people here fasten onto these stories of new weapon systems and assume theirs are all flawless and ours are all broken. I still remember the 'missiles like sausages' comment by Khruschev, and SAC's subsequent attempts to prove the Crimean war memorial was a secret missile launch complex. Few are thinking back to the cold war and reflecting on what we know about Chinese and Russian claims, which were similarly effusive about weapon systems that turned out to be junk.

We just need to calm the hell down.

 

[Stuart Galbraith]

10 hours ago, sunday said:

 

 

There is the possibility of a last minute/second steering out of target in order to not reveal real capabilities.

I think if they have a system they are testing, they are really going to want to know what it can do, rather than bodge their own test for security reasons.