US Forgets How To Make Trident Missiles 922
Hugh Pickens writes "The US and the UK are trying to refurbish the aging W76 warheads that tip Trident missiles to prolong their life and ensure they are safe and reliable but plans have been put on hold because US scientists have forgotten how to manufacture a mysterious but very hazardous component of the warhead codenamed Fogbank. 'NNSA had lost knowledge of how to manufacture the material because it had kept few records of the process when the material was made in the 1980s, and almost all staff with expertise on production had retired or left the agency,' says the report by a US congressional committee. Fogbank is thought by some weapons experts to be a foam used between the fission and fusion stages of the thermonuclear bomb on the Trident Missile and US officials say that manufacturing Fogbank requires a solvent cleaning agent which is 'extremely flammable' and 'explosive,' and that the process involves dealing with 'toxic materials' hazardous to workers. 'This is like James Bond destroying his instructions as soon as he has read them,' says John Ainslie, the co-ordinator of the Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, adding that 'perhaps the plans for making Fogbank were so secret that no copies were kept.' Thomas D'Agostino, administrator or the US National Nuclear Security Administration, told a congressional committee that the administration was spending 'a lot of money' trying to make 'Fogbank' at Y-12, but 'we're not out of the woods yet.'"
Rumor has it.. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Rumor has it.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Didn't you read the article/summary? The torrent is dead, because all the seeds went away.
On the other hand, we should just ask China. I'm sure they have some copies of the recipe laying around...
Re:Rumor has it.. (Score:5, Funny)
"Fine. We'll help you refurbish your missiles if you'll just shut up about Tibet."
Re:Rumor has it.. (Score:5, Funny)
I thought it was just:
svn co https://trident.nnsa.gov/svnroot/fogbank [nnsa.gov] --username=guest --password=topsecret
Re:Rumor has it.. (Score:5, Insightful)
you can download the instruction from the Pirate Bay...
Just wait a few weeks; you might be right ...
My immediate thought was related: The US government probably does have the info hidden away in some obscure department's archives, hidden behind a wall of secrecy and classification. The repair guys just don't have the right clearances, and instead of saying "We can't give you that information", the agency says "We don't have that information".
It could also be a case of Clarke's third law. The information is stored away somewhere, but the repair crews don't know the name of the archive or who runs it, and the people at the archive haven't heard that anyone's looking for it. And chances are that if you ask for the info using the part's name, they won't be able to find it; you have to tell them the code number (or whatever they call it) for that particular part.
That is, the information could be hidden by ignorance and incompetence, not by any active efforts to hide or eliminate the information. That happens all the time any large organization, businesses as well as governments.
Actually, my other thought was "Did they google it?" Chances are that google could tell them the part number(s), and maybe also the torrent name at the Pirate Bay.
Re:Rumor has it.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Rumor has it.. (Score:4, Insightful)
My wife and I do this all the time. We hide stuff from the kids in a "safe place"... only a week later we can't remember where the safe place was.
I think that's what happened here. Every body properly changed their passwords and cleaned out file drawers... and nobody did the diligence to make sure all the pieces were accounted for... because that would be "insecure" for there to be a checklist. The instructions are probably buried, like you said, and the only people interested in looking thru the archives don't have clearance... I'd venture even the archivists don't have clearance to open files not requested...
I agree with the other guy too. The DoD has been pushing to restart Nuclear Manufacturing of NEW devices since the last prez came to office. If only for the shock value of making new weapons to put some fear out there. I can't believe the current prez would fall for the ruse and burn that kind of international goodwill he's trying to muster.
Re:Rumor has it.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, the current prez doesn't need to look like a pussy in front of the rest of the world either. In that article, the push was for updating making replacement warheads and the like, with no new capabilities other than to replace again cold war stock. The Russians and Chinese are keeping their nukes up to date....why should we not do the same?
Do a taste test?!? (Score:5, Funny)
Just get Gordon Ramsay to taste it. He'll tell you what's in it.
Re:Do a taste test?!? (Score:4, Funny)
Apparently Heston Blumenthal has already been experimenting with it in the Fat Duck's ill-advised 'Fogbank and Plutonium porridge':
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/berkshire/7927715.stm [bbc.co.uk]
Not the only time (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Not the only time (Score:4, Interesting)
Who is still flying them? To my knowledge the last SR-71 flight was 10 years ago or so.
On a somewhat related note, I was watching some stuff on the U-2 a few days ago and I have to think that the days are numbered on that aircraft as well. Between advances with satellites and UAVs, manned surveillance aircraft don't seem to make much sense.
Re:Not the only time (Score:5, Interesting)
Who is still flying them? To my knowledge the last SR-71 flight was 10 years ago or so.
They have two at Beale AFB in Marysville, CA. According to people I know who work on base, one is kept in a constant state of operational readiness. That's expensive, so you wouldn't do this unless you were using the damned thing. You'd never notice a launch, because they're launching aircraft of all sizes out of there night and day with constant training flights and U2 overflight.
Re:Not the only time (Score:4, Funny)
You'd never notice a launch, because they're launching aircraft of all sizes out of there night and day with constant training flights and U2 overflight.
Fucking Bono.
Re:Not the only time (Score:5, Interesting)
Incidentally, regarding lost war tech., I had always heard that the U.S. no longer has the ability to cast the shells for the large 16" guns on the iowa class battleships, I have no idea if it's true though.
Re:Not the only time (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not the only time (Score:4, Funny)
Ooh, yeah! And their outdated tech will allow them to survive the electronic attack that obliterates the rest of the fleet; they will wander the oceans for four years looking for the mythical "Great Britain", and then the last couple of episodes will be really boring.
Re:Not the only time (Score:4, Interesting)
Problem is, when you shoot a satellite down, it can take years to develop another one, and weeks to launch it into orbit. UAV's can have their signals jammed, and most depend on satellites for either GPS, or control. A plane can maneuver, and quite often be there much quicker than waiting for a satellite to come into position.
Re:Not the only time (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not usually the conspiracy-theory type, but I suspect that the USAF already is flying an SR-71 replacement and this is why they have been retired.
Spy Satellites and UAVs certainly cover parts of the SR-71 mission profile. However, what about battlefield survailence of a major military adversary? Current UAVs cannot survive in combat. Sure, they can loiter over Basra all day when nobody has anything other than a rifle to shoot at them with. Try to get footage of downtown Tehran with a UAV and you'll just have UAV-parts raining all over the place. Satellites certainly work better, but they're very limited in coverage and have no loiter capability. They're also very vulnerable if somebody is determined enough to actually start shooting them down.
I'm not saying you couldn't do the job with a UAV with SR-71-like capabilities. That is certainly an option. Perhaps one already exists. However, neither satellites or the currently public UAV options make the SR-71 completely obsolete. Either the US doesn't think it needs ariel recon of hot areas, or it has some other way of doing it that nobody knows about.
Disinformation (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Disinformation (Score:5, Insightful)
I hope you're not referring to the "we lost the blueprints to the Saturn V" urban legend. Because if you are, you need to be aware that the US has all the plans and the experience it needs to rebuild these craft. What it doesn't have is the heavy industrial base. Material science has moved the US significantly forward from the heavy metal construction and high noise/high latency electronics used in the original SatV. Rebuilding the SatV would be more effort than just designing a new spacecraft.
If you're just referring to a few components here and there, then I have to argue that these things just happen. Systems age, get out of date, and certain challenges arise in maintenance. For someone like NASA, they're not that difficult to solve. It can take quite a few man hours to understand the part properly and re-machine it (even if original staff are on hand; people tend to forget things over time), but the job still gets done with a minimum amount of fuss.
This issue is a far more worrisome problem. Due to the need for secrecy (there was a HUGE concern that the USSR would obtain our technology), many of the steps were maintained as secrets in people's heads rather than on paper. That makes it difficult to combat the brain drain that invariably happened both as the engineers and researchers aged and the Cold War wound down.
Re:Disinformation (Score:5, Interesting)
Saturn V Urban Legend (Score:4, Informative)
According to a friend that did a stint in high level strategy at NASA, that's not really an urban legend. When the project was shelved, the documents were more or less destroyed. Our Shuttle launch capacity isn't the same as then, and we really don't have the capacity to just "put err up." It's not that the blueprints are gone, one presumes that a certain level of that was archived, and reverse engineering the rest of the tech wouldn't be the issue, but you are right about the industrial base.
Also, changing environmental and work conditions would prevent just throwing together the Saturn V. Also, engineers of today don't have the same skill sets as back then. I never learned drafting, the core of engineering then. The archived records would presumably let skilled engineers recreate the project, but we don't have the same skills. Reorienting NASA for the Mars mission was a complete reorg of most of the agency, and a LOT of the work is recreating our technology from the space race with modern techniques and materials, because the old stuff doesn't exist.
Same reason you can't buy a 57 Chevy new... it's not that GM couldn't make a similar truck, but with modern environmental and CAFE standards, you couldn't recreate the classics, even if all the plans were there, and the guys working the lines are trained for robotic factories, you couldn't just recreate the 57 lines.
CS students and weapons engineers take note! (Score:5, Insightful)
This is why it's important to document your code... or your warheads. Either or.
Actual Explanation ... (Score:5, Interesting)
The material in the design specification was essentially unobtanium. It couldn't be manufactured at all. Quietly, the manufacturing engineers developed a solution that almost met all of the design specifications, and this was an excellent compromise. Unfortunately, the design engineers couldn't be convinced to sign off on the design change because of quality procedure 15, and military qualification 7. However, the biggest reason the design engineers wouldn't sign off on the change was because of a supposedly critical but practically useless mandatory project requirement, like the missile must work when fired in -40 degree water from 20 feet under the polar ice shelf.
The manufacturing engineers decided that the "fire nuclear missile while under ice shelf function", probably wouldn't be used, so the modified material was actually just fine. They shipped the missiles, got paid, and everyone was happy. Until now, when someone tries to "fix" the original "fix".
This story has happened before and will happen again. Whenever you bump into a design that requires a part that "does not exist", watch out for the possibility that the part never did "exist". It could be that you are reading a "design" document, and not what manufacturing actually built. I've worked in manufacturing, and there are lots of stories about impossible to make designs that somehow got shipped.
Secret Ingredient - Gran's cake. (Score:5, Funny)
My European grandmother made a cake that could easily withstand the middle stages of a nuclear explosion.
Re:Actual Explanation ... (Score:5, Funny)
The material in the design specification was essentially unobtanium.
... also known as element 404.
Often times... (Score:5, Interesting)
That "supposedly critical but practically useless mandatory project requirement" is the result of experience. Inexperienced engineers often make the mistake of assuming that if they can't understand why the requirement exists, it must be arbitrary.
Perhaps this is apocryphal, but during the Cold War, submarines would routinely get stuck under polar ice floes. Having a missile which would work when fired from underneath the polar ice was probably a very large concern for the system designers. Had the engineers pointed out the impossibility of this requirement, it is possible that military doctrine would have been changed to reflect the limitations of the technology. If you are correct about the difference between requirements, design, and actual manufacture, then the actions of these engineers (or perhaps bureaucrats) put the entire United States at risk of nuclear holocaust. Had the Soviets known this during the Cold War, they might have been more willing to risk a nuclear confrontation.
just when the warranty runs out ... (Score:4, Insightful)
There is a serious side to this. The US hasn't actually built any nukes, stuck 'en on a rocket, fired them and had a successful BOOM for well over 40 years. That must be coming up for 2 generations of rocket / nuclear scientists and the third generation is now in training. That means that the "new guys" will learn from people who didn't have any practical experience and in turn learned from the people who actually *did it* nearly 50 years ago.
Advanced Engineering (Score:5, Insightful)
See, this is what happens when you don't continue to spend money on extremely advanced engineering projects: you lose the technology. Technology isn't just a textbook and some blueprints, it requires the experience and knowledge of scientists and engineers. It's a living thing: shelve it, and it dies.
It would be nice to think this would serve as an abject lesson to congresscritters, next time they think about cutting funding for something 'we don't need right now.' Although I'm cynical enough not to believe that.
NOTA BENE: This is not possible. (Score:5, Informative)
Having worked at this facility in the '80's as an engineer, I can say definitively that this scenario is either misunderstood, or incorrectly reported, or deliberately obfuscated, or a lie, or postulated from sketchy evidence, but it is factually and wholly wrong.
Every project for every material or product, special or otherwise, was properly documented. These files would not be destroyed. (Note here that I'm assuming the files on "fogbank" were not lost in an accident or by malicious destruction.)
Now, has the practical and hands-on knowledge of the step-by-step, moment-by-moment synthesis reaction to make this material been lost? Perhaps in the course of 25 years it has. Lots of people have left the plant since then. But all the information, notations and observations necessary to reconstruct the process/project do exist, I assure you.
Re:NOTA BENE: This is not possible. (Score:5, Interesting)
Having worked at this facility in the '80's as an engineer, I can say definitively that this scenario is either misunderstood, or incorrectly reported, or deliberately obfuscated, or a lie, or postulated from sketchy evidence, but it is factually and wholly wrong.
Every project for every material or product, special or otherwise, was properly documented. These files would not be destroyed. (Note here that I'm assuming the files on "fogbank" were not lost in an accident or by malicious destruction.)
Now, has the practical and hands-on knowledge of the step-by-step, moment-by-moment synthesis reaction to make this material been lost? Perhaps in the course of 25 years it has. Lots of people have left the plant since then. But all the information, notations and observations necessary to reconstruct the process/project do exist, I assure you.
Great point. My experience is often when people we say "we lost the instructions..." they really mean:
1. We've scrapped the production line and its components so we do not have the physical capability to build x anymore, or
2. We have the instructions but since we last did this 25 years ago all the people who knew the little tricks to really make it work are long gone.
Another possibility is the files have been moved so many times over the years to make space for new material that nobody remembers where they are anymore.Probably locked up in some obscure SCIF, waiting to be moved again when the space is needed.
Re:NOTA BENE: This is not possible. (Score:4, Interesting)
And I've spend a couple of decades working in the aerospace and commercial aviation biz. And I can tell you that there's documented procedures and then there's the actual way to get it done. The documentation isn't always complete, with some critical steps or knowledge being left out. Either they were overlooked, or in some cases its a matter of a trade secret (a company doesn't want a competitor to bid the contract) or job security (the guy on the shop floor doesn't want to get replaced, so he doesn't document the specifics that keep the whole shebang from blowing up).
I can see how such a situation can arise quite easily.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Desceptive title (Score:4, Interesting)
I find it tough to believe that the foam in the W88 is really that different from the foam in the W76. I thought the goal of the foam was to just become completely ionized and become transparent to X-rays? How hard can that really be when a fission weapon is exploding a few feet away.
I imagine there might be some physical characteristics of the foam related to ballistic devices (can handle G's on launch, re-rentry, etc.) but that would be similar across all ballistic weapons.
Unless there is something they aren't telling us ;)
Re:Good reason to get shut (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Good reason to get shut (Score:5, Funny)
Wouldn't it be ironic if the missing ingredient in making Fogbank was Butter?
Torontoman
Re:Good reason to get shut (Score:5, Funny)
Wouldn't it be ironic if the missing ingredient in making Fogbank was Butter?
Torontoman
Actually, there are several missing ingredients.
Re:Good reason to get shut (Score:4, Funny)
According to Dr. Seuss [wikipedia.org], that would just lead to an arms race between countries that butter their warheads on top and those who butter their warheads on the bottom.
Re:Good reason to get shut (Score:5, Insightful)
Or, you know, we could reprioritize the list. We might just decide that spending ten times more than any other nation on "guns" is too much, cut it down to, say, five times, spend some of the saving on "butter" and some on repaying the loans we started taking out back in the Reagan days to buy all those "guns", and tell the military-industrial complex to go on a fscking diet already.
Re:Good reason to get shut (Score:5, Insightful)
Not to put too fine of a point on it, but... Why?
Is there any particular target you can think of that would be a viable candidate for a nuclear weapon strike? Cities would seem to be the most viable option, but we'd kill millions of innocents along with the bad guys. The brass once suggested that armies in open areas could be wiped out with a single nuke. However, no modern army is going to just line up and wait to be nuked short of a parade or show of force. (And definitely not in an unpopulated area.) Supercarriers and other large ocean-going vessels are good "soft" targets for nukes, but to what effect? Only the US floats supercarriers. With over a dozen in service plus hundreds of supporting vessels, all other navies are already outclassed.
In the end, our nuclear arsenal serves one purpose: deterrence. Whoever might want to lob nukes out way is aware that we have nukes of our own to lob back. And we WANT those nukes to be as eco-unfriendly as possible so that they won't do any stupid calculations like "we'll take out 20 million of their's in exchange for 1 million of ours." Instead, the calculation should be, "if we kill 20 million of their's, we die."
Re:Good reason to get shut (Score:4, Informative)
Not that the US did not create the situation, but more Iraqis killed other Iraqis than US soldiers killed anyone in the past 8 years.
At its heart, radical, fundamentalist Islam is a death cult.
Re:Good reason to get shut (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Good reason to get shut (Score:5, Informative)
No offense, but stuff it. The US does not set out to kill as many people as possible.
I certainly hope not. But unfortunately what one "set out to do" isn't what counts. What counts is what actually happens, especially when it was a forseeable result of one's actions. "I didn't mean to" is okay for children, but not so good for adults.
91,060 - 99,433 [iraqbodycount.org] is the complete total for civilian deaths in Iraq.
No, actually it's the number of documented deaths. That is, it's actually only a lower bound. The true number is certainly higher. No one knows how much higher. It would seem that there has been a studied effort by the governments involved not to determine the true number of men, women, and children killed.
But having a hundred thousand people die due to being killed by their own people (#1 cause) and accidental deaths during live fire
If these people would still have been alive had the US not acted, the US bears a responsibility. It might be true that this was the best of the available alternatives, but this case has not been seriously made at this point. "It's not our fault" is a pretty pathetic substitute.
Re:Good reason to get shut (Score:4, Informative)
And for the record, your figures are complete bunk. 91,060 - 99,433 is the complete total for civilian deaths in Iraq.
No, it's not. Those are perfectly-documented, reported-in-the-media deaths.
Statistical study in the Lancet (British medical journal) in 2006 came up with a more likely number of over 600,000 violent Iraqi deaths since the invasion. ORB (British polling agency) in 2007 came up with a number more than 1,000,000.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/10/AR2006101001442.html [washingtonpost.com]
http://www.opinion.co.uk/Newsroom_details.aspx?NewsId=78 [opinion.co.uk]
Re:Good reason to get shut (Score:5, Insightful)
But how would nuking Iraq help secure oil supplies?
Re:Good reason to get shut (Score:5, Informative)
They're not really clean. They're "clean" from the perspective that they kill all the people while leaving the buildings *mostly* intact. However, they greatly increase the amount of radioactivity in the area. All those buildings that are penetrated with neutron radiation become radioactive themselves. A significant "rest" period is required before the city can be inhabited again. (Which is arguably unwise anyway.)
Air-burst nukes are already relatively clean. Putting aside the fact that they mow over cities, the detonation event happening in mid-air leaves very little ground material in a highly radioactive state. Topsoil still should be replaced and drinking water checked for possible contamination, but the long term effects of an area that is properly cleaned up are usually fairly minimal.
It's the interim before cleanup that's the big deal. With plenty of short-term radiation to go around, the bombs do a pretty good job of turning any area into a hell-hole. Which is a far more deterring effect than turning a city into a ghost town.
Ground detonations are another matter altogether. Those are just about as nasty as you can get. The fallout does an extremely good job of making the area unlivable for a very long time. (As the US found out after it unhelpfully blasted dozens of islands into nothingness during nuclear testing.)
You still haven't answered the question: WHY? What possible use could such weapons be?
Re:Good reason to get shut (Score:4, Insightful)
What the funding should go towards is creating weapons that do effectively just as much damage without the radiation fallout.
We already have them. They are called fuel-air bombs.
The point of having nuclear weapons is being able to have mutually assured destruction. Even if we have an enemy whose homeland is vague, if one is detonated on US soil expect something bad to happen to anybody we suspect.
That's why non-nuclear weapons with megaton yields aren't enough. You have to know that the land will be uninhabitable for years on both sides.
Re:Good reason to get shut (Score:5, Insightful)
And people wonder why I think the best way to secure peace is to get rid of the US...
you mother fucking idiot. There has been war for thousands of years and will continue to be as long as there are haves and have nots. You think erasing the flash in history that is the U.S. is gonna fix the world? those mother fuckers with glass parking lots have been throwing rocks a lot longer then we have been dropping bombs....
Re:Good reason to get shut (Score:5, Insightful)
And people wonder why I think the best way to secure peace is to get rid of the US...
you mother fucking idiot. There has been war for thousands of years and will continue to be as long as there are...
...people. Not everyone abides by the rules of a convention. The kinds of people who will throw acid at little girls for going to school aren't the type of people who will sit around the breakfast table to discuss their problems over a croissant.
Sometimes the only solution is violence. Done neatly, and done correctly, it can permanently fix the problem.
Re:Good reason to get shut (Score:5, Insightful)
A flamebait moderation here is completely unfair. Violence is always around us, even when we pretend it's not. Pointing out that violence has legitimate uses is 'flamebait' to the hopelessly naive.
Let's say you call the police because someone has broken into your home and is attacking a family member. Let's make the ridiculous assumption that the police get there in time to make a difference.
What do you think they're going to do to stop the criminal? Ask him nicely? Maybe once. After that they're going to beat the hell out of him or kill him. And if the criminal DOES stop after being asked nicely, it will be only because he fears the coming violence.
The police are subcontracted violence, generally used to a legitimate end.
The parent poster made the point that violence is inherent in human society, and at best we can aim to have it wielded by the competent and just. This is not flamebait, this is the plain truth.
Re:Good reason to get shut (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Good reason to get shut (Score:5, Insightful)
Money isn't the root of all evil.
The expression is "love of money is the root of all evil."
That's assuming you believe in arbitrary black and white distinctions of morality.
Re:Good reason to get shut (Score:4, Interesting)
I liked the Jebus character, but I thought he could have used a love interest.
It was in there [wikipedia.org], but it got cut.
Re:Good reason to get shut (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not so much "haves and have nots" but "I have and you can't have" that's the problem.
You're being unfair. No one (or nearly no one) is saying "you can't have", they're saying "this is mine, get your own". Wealth isn't a fixed pie to be divided up; it's something that's actively created by people's actions. Your wealth does not cause my poverty.
Money isn't the root of all evil; the desire to get money without earning it is. And that moral failing exists irrespective of the dominant economic system; it just expresses itself in different ways. Under capitalism, it's unfair and exploitative trading practices. Under socialism, it's welfare parasitism and government corruption. Different symptoms of the same disease.
Re:Good reason to get shut (Score:4, Informative)
In today's environment, there's plenty to go around. It's not so much "haves and have nots" but "I have and you can't have" that's the problem. People call it the "evils of capitalism" and while greed is a big motivator, look at the pain it causes. They aren't kidding when they say money is the root of all evil.
Most war today is occurring in countries with very low levels of economic freedom. There are far greater evils from government control and over-regulation of economies than from the "free market" of capitalism. The science shows that free markets cause peace [ucsd.edu].
So greed for power of government over economies is the greed we should truly fear. Lack of economic freedom causes both poverty and war.
Re:Good reason to get shut (Score:5, Insightful)
the best thing to do in response to a nuclear attack by a terrorist organization would be to STFU and fucking NOT retaliate.
I'm playing devils advocate in my post, I forgot to mention it. The problem is that trying to explain that to the POTUS and the joint chiefs would prove to be far more complex after millions of citizens were killed and millions more will die from the fallout.
I would love nothing more than to have world unity and nothing but love all around, but look at after 9/11. Scorched fucking earth in Afghanistan. The American people called for retaliation, and they got it. Look in Israel, a few of their people are killed in suicide bombings and they level city blocks in neighboring countries. It always seems like the political figures take Sean Connery's line from The Untouchables to heart:
He pulls a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That's the Chicago way, and that's how you get Capone.
Re:Good reason to get shut (Score:5, Insightful)
Scorched fucking earth in Afghanistan. The American people called for retaliation, and they got it.
That's generally what happens when you provide logistical support and a base of operations to a terrorist organization that attacks a Great Power. You think Afghanistan would have come out better if Bin Ladin had murdered ~3,000 Chinese or Russians instead of ~3,000 Americans?
It always seems like the political figures take Sean Connery's line from The Untouchables to heart:
For better or worse that's how the world works. The only reason we don't see more of it is because nuclear weapons made total war too horrible to contemplate.
Re:Good reason to get shut (Score:4, Insightful)
That's generally what happens when you provide logistical support and a base of operations to a terrorist organization that attacks a Great Power. You think Afghanistan would have come out better if Bin Ladin had murdered ~3,000 Chinese or Russians instead of ~3,000 Americans?
I think it would be the same as it always has been. We would provide millions of dollars in aide for them, there would be peace rallies and movements to bring them supplies, but ultimately we (The US) would leave it to them to resolve the problem on their own.
Re:Good reason to get shut (Score:4, Insightful)
I think it would be the same as it always has been. We would provide millions of dollars in aide for them, there would be peace rallies and movements to bring them supplies, but ultimately we (The US) would leave it to them to resolve the problem on their own.
Of course the US would leave them to resolve the problem on their own - the US wasn't attacked in the parent's hypothetical scenario. Why would the US care if somebody killed a few thousand Chinese citizens?
The Chinese (or Russians), on the other hand, would have almost certainly launched an invasion of some kind. Why do you think nobody messes with them?
Now, they might or might not have launched a full-scale takeover of Afganistan. I suspect that their style would be more along the lines of doing covert operations. Then again, the Chinese at least might look forward to an internationally-sanctioned opportunity to get some field practice for their army.
The point was that the US did what any other country in a similar position would have done. The Chinese or the Russians certainly wouldn't have given them a slap on the wrist.
Going back to the original point of this thread - I doubt any major nation would launch a knee-jerk nuclear strike in response to a terrorist attack. If the terrorists were state-sponsored they would almost certainly retalliate at least conventionally, but if the terrorists were wackos from Kansas I doubt they'd wipe Kansas off the map.
Re:Good reason to get shut (Score:4, Interesting)
That's generally what happens when you provide logistical support and a base of operations to a terrorist organization that attacks a Great Power.
Now I understand why the United States is imploding, it's suicide. "How DARE we fund Al Queda, who attacked....ourselves!"
Re:Good reason to get shut (Score:5, Informative)
"The origins of the group can be traced to the Soviet war in Afghanistan. The United States viewed the conflict in Afghanistan, with the Afghan Marxists and allied Soviet troops on one side and the native Afghan mujahedeen on the other, as a blatant case of Soviet expansionism and aggression. The U.S. channelled funds through Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency to the native Afghan mujahedeen fighting the Soviet occupation in a CIA program called Operation Cyclone."1 [wikipedia.org]
Cited, yo.
Re:Good reason to get shut (Score:5, Informative)
Scorched fucking earth in Afghanistan. The American people called for retaliation, and they got it.
That's generally what happens when you provide logistical support and a base of operations to a terrorist organization that attacks a Great Power. You think Afghanistan would have come out better if Bin Ladin had murdered ~3,000 Chinese or Russians instead of ~3,000 Americans?
Bin Laden was in Afghanistan not because the Taleban invited him but because the CIA did. He was an American puppet for as long as it suited the US to stir up Muslim fundamentalists against communism. Then the US 'won the war against communism', and suddenly their CIA trained and CIA funded fundamentalist friends were looking around for a new target.
The Taleban were anything but nice people, of course - they were also CIA clients, after all - but you really cannot blame the people of Afghanistan for Bin Laden. He isn't Afghani, andthe Afghans didn't invite him.
It would be a bit like - oooh, I don't know - blaming Fidel Castro for Guantanamo.
Re:Good reason to get shut (Score:5, Insightful)
The Chinese and Russians are every bit as barbaric as Americans
What you call barbarism I call self-defense. You don't respond to a terrorist attack by filing a lawsuit -- you respond by killing and/or imprisoning those responsible.
"People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf." -George Orwell
Re:Good reason to get shut (Score:4, Interesting)
"What you call barbarism I call self-defense."
Destroying ones enemies has a far better track record than titrated violence in "limited" war.
Re:Good reason to get shut (Score:5, Informative)
"People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf." -George Orwell
Not to be pedantic (well, OK, it's thoroughly pedantic, but I'll point it out anyway), but there's no evidence that Orwell ever actually said this. I see this quote all the time, but it's never sourced or dated. More info here [wikiquote.org]. (And yes, I'm aware of the irony of pointing to wikiquote to debunk a quotation that's not sourced. I think the burden of proof is probably on the person attributing the quote, though.)
That said, misquote or not, I agree with the sentiment 100%.
Tommy (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Good reason to get shut (Score:4, Insightful)
And killing 100 times as many innocent bystanders in the process -- that's ok how?
Because there are no "innocent" bystanders. Those "innocent" bystanders allowed a Government to come to power that provided support to the terrorist group that attacked the United States. I always find it amusing how the anti-war crowd clams that all Americans have blood on our hands because we allowed GWB to come to power but don't apply the same argument to the civilians placed in harms way by the actions of other governments......
Re:Good reason to get shut (Score:4, Insightful)
So the breastfeeding mother on the side of the road bore responsibility for the tank that helped take over her block? Her responsibility was what, exactly? To be a human shield (and die, so we wouldn't kill her later, taking the city back) or maybe to throw rocks?
There's a reason we believe in a distinction between warriors and civilians.
Re:Good reason to get shut (Score:4, Informative)
Everyone needs to remember that the United States is the one that funded Hussein and Bin Laden in the first place
I really wish people would stop repeating this line. We never funded Bin Ladin. We funded the various Afghani Mujahideen groups via Pakistan. Bin Ladin went in with his own resources (recall that he comes from wealth), his own agenda and his own non-Afghani fighters.
Scorched Earth? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm in Afghanistan right now.
Scorched earth? Not likely. All our efforts are are focussed on either rebuilding Afghan state capacity (police, fire, hospital, army, and government institutions) or on providing security for those rebuilding efforts.
The Afghans scorched their own earth during the civil war that followed the end of the Soviet occupation (and the Soviets gave them a good head start). Al Quaida and the Taliban occupied the law vacuum left by the collapse of the Afghan government.
The tough part about the Afghan mission is attempting to build reliable, non-corrupt government institutions in a land where almost nobody has any experience with a life in a place that is governed by rule of law. That's the major obstacle.
The Afghan mission is marked by its LACK of revenge-based policy. It is Marshall Plan 2 (although not as well funded or manned, to its detriment)
DG
Re:Scorched Earth? (Score:5, Informative)
Well... the truth is considerably more nuanced.
Here's a quick summary (which is itself nowhere near the full story)
Afghanistan was ruled by a king, but then it had a Communist student revolution. They happened. Lots of people saw Communism as a way to eliminate social injustice and more than one country had themselves a Communist revolution spearheaded by idealists (and no doubt encouraged and supported by the Soviets with whom they shared a border)
But like a lot of revolutions, it is one thing to be outraged by social inequity and take action to overthrow a government; it is quite another to sucessfully pick up the controls of state machinery and run an effective government - student revolutionary committees aren't particularly good at training adminstrative skills (they do better with sloganeering and inspirational poetry). The new Afghan Communist government simply wasn't very good at governing. And they did themselves no favours by trying in fix every single perceived social problem (some of which were real, like poor education amongst rural women) all at once. In particular, the Communist outlawing of religion did not go over very well in a nation where the majority self-identify as devout Muslims.
So in very short order, they were having to get increasingly heavy-handed when it came to ruling the population, and as a direct side effect, were soon facing a counter-revolution. Backed into a corner, the Afghan government called for Soviet help, and the Red Army rolled in.
Of course, Russia had had Afghan ambitions since the days of the Czar....
The problem was that the Red Army was not particularly suited for fighting counter-insurgancy warfare. It was comprised primarily of undertrained conscripts, and was much better off fighting large-scale manouvre warfare that required mass and firepower but little finesse or skill. The Red Army started taking horrific casulties, and inflicting horrific reprisals (which only fueled the insurgency)
And then the West (primarily the US) realized that the USSR more-or-less had its own Vietnam on the go (there are many similarities) and started arming and supporting the insurgents, providing them with weapons well suited to the kinds of battles they were fighting. Of course, most of these insurgents were motivated by a radical Islamic worldview... but the enemy of my enemy is my friend, right?
The bleeding of the Red Army got worse and worse and worse, and finally the whole operation reached the point of untenability, and the Soviets left. But they left behind the Afghan Communist government that had invited them in the first place. The Mujahadeen kept fighting the remnents of the Afghan government, and soon started fighting each other.
The fighting in Afghanistan never really stopped after the Soviets left... it just kept right on going, and what little was left of any sort of state infrastruture was pounded into mush.
Of course, once the Soviets pulled out, the West stopped paying the area any attention. The goal was "bleed the Soviets dry" not "Help restore Afghanistan".
Eventually, Mullah Omar and the Taliban took over - that's a fascinating story in of itself - the Taliban started out as the good guys - but after corruption set in, they allowed Al Quaida to operate in their territory (and they weren't really very big on rule of law either)
There hasn't been a real, true, functional Afghan government since the early 80s - and the life expectancy is *** 35 *** years. The place is a mess. This is state-building in the rawest sense.
Progress IS being made. Things ARE getting better. But Lord O Mercy is there a long way to go.
DG
Re:Good reason to get shut (Score:5, Interesting)
but look at after 9/11. Scorched fucking earth in Afghanistan.
As someone who spent 2 years not scorching the earth in Afghanistan, I can tell you you're incorrect. Perhaps you were just engaging in hyperbole, but for the most part what we do there is convince the locals to shoot at Taliban/al Qaeda (or at least rat them out to us), because there aren't enough of us to be everywhere. "Scorched earth" policy is something we haven't had the luxury of pursuing since WW2. There's a reason we're not getting our asses handed to us like the Russians did, and that's because our first choice is to make allies of the locals, rather than "conquering" them.
Re:Good reason to get shut (Score:4, Insightful)
6,000 rockets that killed a total of 15 people in 8 years?
Not for the lack of trying. Or are you saying that there is some magic body count number that Israel should have to wait for until it is permitted to respond by force?
Yes, that's exactly what we'd do. What we certainly wouldn't do is respond with missile strikes into apartment buildings and other densely populated areas that killed thousands over the same period.
Look at Britain and the IRA. Spain and Basques. US and gangs or drug cartels. None indiscriminately use military-level power on the civilians the way the Israelis do. It's disproportionate and ineffective.
When you know where a terrorist is, you arrest them, you don't send a missile into their apartment building.
What do you do when missiles are fired from those apartment buildings, but when you come there, there are no uniformed enemy combatants, only "civilians", who all just shrug and say that they didn't see or hear anything, nuh-huh...
What do you do if the terrorist who you know to be commanding the operation is also a prominent political figure elected by those civilians, and attempt to arrest him is treated as an act of war by the other side?
Re:Good reason to get shut (Score:5, Insightful)
And people wonder why I think the best way to secure peace is to get rid of the US...
You think the US is the only country that would respond in kind? Newsflash: Both the British and the French have reserved the right to respond to terror attacks with nuclear weapons. I suspect the Russians or Chinese would do so as well.
Re:Good reason to get shut (Score:5, Informative)
Reality.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Reality.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Correct. Nukes are Mutually assured destruction. They are there only as a endgame.
It's Exactly like a room with 10 people in it, all of them covered in dynamite and a detonator in hand that you have to keep the button pressed, and guns pointed at each others heads. Pull the trigger and we all die. Problem is the 11th guy in the room without a bomb strapped to him can hold the rest hostage by threatening to kill any one of the others. The USA is hostage to the Nuclear weapons. if someone attacked North Korea, they would launch blind, that launch will trigger a cascade.
WW-II was a fluke. we had something that nobody else had so we had no fear of retaliation. That changed really fast after that day.
Re:Reality.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Japan was preparing to defend its islands inch-by-inch. Without the atomic bombs, 1 million+ Americans would likely have died in block-by-block fighting in Japan.
This is far from being clear. Of course this was the official justification, but in retrospect, the military clique has already lost most of its power by the time the nukes fell.
Then also there's the issue of dropping two nukes, when Japanese were already preparing the surrender after the first one...
3 that cheated (India, Pakistan, North Korea)
Cheated who? The fact that a bunch of countries who had nukes already decided to get together and define rules for everyone else doesn't mean that the rules have any legal or moral standing, or that they will be followed.
Re:Good reason to get shut (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a logical, clearly reasoned and well thought out response to a hypothetical situation.
Which is why it will never be done.
9/11 was a far, FAR less traumatic event than a nuclear blast. And look at the fear-based trigger response that had, and the innocent people who took the brunt of that American fear response.
Governments are made of people. And people are stupid.
Re:Good reason to get shut (Score:5, Funny)
Governments are made of people. And people are stupid.
Best t-shirt slogan ever!
Re:Good reason to get shut (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Good reason to get shut (Score:4, Funny)
Maybe you should visit your local pharmacist and ask him to give you something for redness around the neck area.
Re:Good reason to get shut (Score:5, Funny)
You probably wouldn't see that red if you would take off those glasses. You should probably ask your doctor about that yellow around your midsection as well.
Securing peace by getting rid of the US (Score:5, Insightful)
And people wonder why I think the best way to secure peace is to get rid of the US...
I don't know why you think that, but the rest of the world doesn't exactly have a good track record in keeping the peace. Look at Europe before the US started stationing soldiers there in 1941 - two world wars. Or look at the parts of the world the US isn't interested in, such as Sub-Saharan Africa.
Re:Securing peace by getting rid of the US (Score:4, Insightful)
My lord, are you actually suggesting that the reason there's been peace in Europe is US troops?
Given how many wars were fought in Europe in the 19th century and the first half of the 20th, and how many in the second half of the 20th, something must have happened.
If it wasn't US troops, what was it? Why were the horrors of WWII enough to convince Europeans not to fight each other, when the horrors of WWI weren't?
Re:Securing peace by getting rid of the US (Score:5, Insightful)
WWII was basically caused by the war reparations demanded by the "winners" of WWI. WWI wasn't as clear cut as WWII; everybody was basically looking for an excuse for war and everyone was working under the assumption that there was going to be a war, so it's no surprise that one started.
It ended up being such a nightmare because both sides lost so many people that the governments were afraid that they'd be overthrown by their own people if they didn't "win" the war, so no one was willing to stop fighting.
Then the US decides to come in, and our assistance allowed France and the UK to declare themselves the winner, and to subjugate the axis countries to the point where they couldn't help but try it again in a few decades.
Lot of people actually saw it coming. Hell, J.M Keynes actually wrote a book that predicted WWII [mcmaster.ca] in 1919...It was one of the things that cemented his fame as a great economist.
I think it's safe to say though that Europe lost its taste for war after WWII. It basically ended their reign as world powers, cost them an entire generation of young men (the second in a row), and laid waste to the bulk of the fricking continent.
Re:Good reason to get shut (Score:5, Insightful)
Around some parts, the word "patriot" is synonymous with "racist". Some countries are actually proud of other things than just owning the most guns.
yea thats what the US is all about. we haven't contributed any technologies to the world, agriculture, charity. We all just sit at home cleaning our guns looking at our sisters funny. You sir sound like a racist that has America pinned.
Re:Just lay back and enjoy it? (Score:4, Insightful)
This is the equivallent of telling a rape victim to lay back and enjoy it.
No, it's not equivalent. It's nowhere NEAR the same thing. A rape victim gets raped by one person or multiple people. DNA is sometimes left behind or the victim is able to identify their attackers based on a combination of identifiable markings, voice, etc. If the system works correctly, those responsible for raping the victim will be brought to justice. You don't start killing random people in hopes that one or few of those that you kill happened to be the attackers.
I don't think you quite understood what the parent was saying. I don't think that they were saying "don't attack", I think they were saying "don't lob random nukes." Using the parent's logic, some terrorist organization manages to detonate a nuclear bomb inside America. So you decide that you want to retaliate with a nuclear bomb of your own. Where do you drop it? If you can find any shred of evidence that this terrorist organization was backed by some government or state, then that makes the job easy. But if the organization was decentralized? Do you continue to lob nukes indiscriminately within an entire region until everyone is dead?
Would you press the button to kill millions of individuals who had nothing to do with the attack? What happens if you manage to kill millions of people in countries a, b, and c, but the terrorists were hiding out in countries x, y, and z? That's the problem with terrorism. Outside of Hezbollah, they're typically not backed by any state, so you're going to have to start killing a whole lot of innocents until you find the right people.
MAD works quite well when it's between states and countries. Citizens of country X elected the officials who have the power start a nuclear war. In some way, those citizens are responsible. Those same citizens most likely don't want to die, so hopefully as educated voters, they make sure not to vote nutjobs into office. But what happens when you have a terrorist organization who is not tied to any country or state and who is not elected? There is no question that there would be retaliation, but unless I didn't understand the parent correctly, I thought they meant NOT retaliate with nukes since you have no fucking idea what you're attacking.
I'm not some hippie either. I would move to find and crush those responsible, but I don't see how killing millions in the process, on purpose, fixes anything. Those that were responsible are not afraid to die and couldn't care less if those around them died as well.
Re:Just lay back and enjoy it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember, an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind. Or dead, in this case.
Re:What the hell is wrong with you? (Score:4, Informative)
You can't just murder them over something as transient as a rape
on the contrary, you can respond with deadly force for pretty much any kind of physical assault--- and it's self defense, not murder.
Re:Ah the naivety of youth (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, because making a rocket go a few extra thousand miles is such a challenge compared to developing a nuclear bomb.
Actually, it is. The USA got nukes well over a decade before creating the first ICBM (1957). The first nuclear bombs were dropped from a plane. Developing the kind of aircraft that could get through the defences of the average nuclear power is even harder than developing an ICBM. You can't just load it into a conventional bomber and hope for the best. WW2-style bombing raids were only viable because the planes were cheap and it didn't matter if a load of them were shot down.
Re:Ah the naivety of youth (Score:5, Insightful)
because making a rocket go a few extra thousand miles is such a challenge compared to developing a nuclear bomb.
Quite so. There are plenty of horrible, horrible non-nuclear weapons out there that can be delivered by ICBM that aren't nearly as difficult to develop. A good solid hit on downtown Washington and you've made as much as a political statement as a mushroom cloud. Nukes are only 'The Bomb' because of their emotional impact. Consider: people turned aircraft into weapons and now every airline passenger is treated like a criminal. Arguably more people have been effected by the World Trade Centre attacks than nuclear weapons. The sad truth is that you can kill people with a cricket bat if you try hard enough. Disposing of nukes, or guns or cricket bats won't stop violence. The only way to ensure lasting peace is through diplomacy and not engaging in international dipshittery.
Re:Ah the naivety of youth (Score:5, Funny)
It's chemical warfare, plain and simple!
Re:Ah the naivety of youth (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, because making a rocket go a few extra thousand miles is such a challenge compared to developing a nuclear bomb.
Making a rocket go a few extra thousand miles is pretty easy. Making it go a few extra thousand miles and still hit something you want to hit is quite hard.
As an example...North Korea has built a nuclear weapon (1940s technology) but not a reliable ICBM (late 50s/early 60s technology).
Re:Golly (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Golly (Score:4, Insightful)
Hmmm. In that case, they could just make the missiles out of cardboard and felt (like the Clangers) and nobody would be any the wiser.
Re:Buy back the plans? (Score:5, Funny)
Perhaps we can buy back the plans from China? Thank Clinton for selling them most of our nuclear secrets.
He wasn't selling secrets, he was making backups!
Re:I have this really novel idea (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I have this really novel idea (Score:5, Funny)
Unless you have to overcome the counter measures and the chances that a few of your warheads may malfunction. We must calulate in a safety factor for annihlating the entire world. I think a factor of 5 to 10 (or maybe a little more) should be adequate.