Obama To Decide On New Weapons 409
krou writes "Buried within the New Start treaty, which saw the decommissioning of nuclear warheads, was an interesting provision as a result of Russian demands: the US must 'decommission one nuclear missile for every one' of a new type of weapon called Prompt Global Strike 'fielded by the Pentagon.' The warhead, which is 'mounted on a long-range missile to start its journey,' would be 'capable of reaching any corner of the earth from the United States in under an hour. ... It would travel through the atmosphere at several times the speed of sound, generating so much heat that it would have to be shielded with special materials to avoid melting. ... But since the vehicle would remain within the atmosphere rather than going into space, it would be far more maneuverable than a ballistic missile, capable of avoiding the airspace of neutral countries, for example, or steering clear of hostile territory. Its designers note that it could fly straight up the middle of the Persian Gulf before making a sharp turn toward a target.' The new weapon is in line with Obama's plans 'to move towards less emphasis on nuclear weapons,' and rather focus on conventional ones. The idea is not new, having been first floated under the Bush administration, but was abandoned, mainly because 'Russian leaders complained that the technology could increase the risk of a nuclear war, because Russia would not know if the missiles carried nuclear warheads or conventional ones.'"
Smooth-Talkin' Man, (Score:2, Interesting)
He's just Bush with a tan...
Continuous and unbroken policy record in every single, meaningful area. Except where it really doesn't count - you know, the non-Constitutional stuff.
Re:Haven't seen this one yet... (Score:1, Interesting)
Schizoid defenses (Score:2, Interesting)
One variant of the "schizoid defense" (against the inherent violence of the world) involves dissociating one's self from violent sentiments or tools. One stops watching violent movies, for example, stops getting angry, and relinquishes ownership of any weapons.
The mind tells itself a story that by distancing one's self from violence in every ostensible form, one protects one's self from having a violent encounter.
Of course this story is false. The violence finds you. Criminals retain their weapons, and their violent inclinations, and further they actively hunt down and seek easy prey (like, you know, people who don't have weapons, and who are likely to surrender without a fight).
This whole "mutual disarmament" business feels like a grand schizoid defense. The civilians fear the presence of weapons of mass destruction (especially since they have no personal means of defending against them), so they pressure their governments to get rid of all such weapons and to find a way to make other governments to the same. The weaker governments fear the greater ones, and are willing to give up some of their (mostly useless against the 'big boys') weapons if it means the 'big boys' are willing to weaken themselves too. None of this actually makes war less likely or less horrible when it does happen.
In fact, the case can be made that it makes violence MORE likely, since specific targets have just made themselves more vulnerable, and specific types of response are less likely. As anyone with military experience can tell you...the single greatest deterrent to actual violence is a credible threat of equivalent-or-greater response.
This whole mess is just a big exercise in fear, futility, and self-exposure.
Needless to say, I disapprove.
infrared (Score:3, Interesting)
It would travel through the atmosphere at several times the speed of sound, generating so much heat that it would have to be shielded with special materials to avoid melting...
Wouldn't that make it an easy target for a heat seeking ABM? Even as fast as it's moving?
Do you work on weapons? (Score:5, Interesting)
Do you work on weapons? Do you share my concerns?
Re:Don't blow shit up - problem solved (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem comes when your civilization declines, and you no longer have the resources to smash your neighbors into oblivion. The Roman Empire successfully used your strategy (kill all troublemakers/) for ~600 years until they eventually reached a stage where they no longer had enough strength to do that. Then their enemies invaded & took the remaining pieces of the crumbling empire.
Re:Translation (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Don't blow shit up - problem solved (Score:3, Interesting)
I haven't gotten around to reading the Rome entry on wikipedia yet, so I'm curious, what happened to rome's strength? Poor leadership? poor training? bad morale? lack of loyalty? too many occupying troops and not enough economy to support it?
600 years is realistically about 6x as long as the US has been a world power, so I'd say that Rome sets the bar there.
Re:Don't blow shit up - problem solved (Score:3, Interesting)
Then again, the Romans didn't have the weaponry to destroy the entire planet several times over. I think "world wars" are pretty much history for the human race until we actually start having wars *over* worlds...
Re:Don't blow shit up - problem solved (Score:4, Interesting)
Where's the problem?
I'm sure those were the same [wikipedia.org] words [wikipedia.org] used [wikipedia.org] when [wikipedia.org] planning [wikipedia.org] the [wikipedia.org] assasination [wikipedia.org] of [wikipedia.org] Archduke Franz Ferdinand. [wikipedia.org] Bang Bang and Austria will have a new leader, that's all.
Re:Do you work on weapons? (Score:3, Interesting)
As an EE, I've had a couple jobs where I worked on weapons. In fact, I've worked on the Conventional Trident Modification program referenced by TFA. It can be a bit of a struggle to deal with the fact that you're building a weapon. There's one rational that got tossed around quite a bit:
The weapons will be built by someone. Would you really want the weapon design to fall only to engineers that couldn't get other jobs? Given that I worked on the guidance parts, I could be glad that I was involved in making sure the weapon only went where it was intended to go.
Granted, that first part is a bit of a strawman, but it's based in the reality that not all engineers will ever stop working on weapons.
In the past, I've also worked on a torpedo project. That was a bit easier since torpedos are rarely used against anything other than a naval vessel, especially the MK48. Missiles are definitely more taxing on moral. Also, the fact that you're working on a weapon was always present for me and affected every single design decision. I wish I could say the same seemed true for the management. I'm not sure how many times I said things like "We're building a damn missile here, how about we double check that?"
I know people who work on weapons (Score:5, Interesting)
But in the broader context, what you're talking about is a continuum of engineer responsibility: engineers who design guns have no control over whether people use them to shoot people, engineers who design cars have no control over whether people use them to run over people, and engineers who design garbage bags have no control over whether people use them to asphyxiate other people. Unless your job is designing large shapeless soft foam objects, you're always going to risk someone using your creation to hurt someone else, and at each point along the continuum from plastic bag designer to nuclear weapon designer, at least a few people are going to say they're not comfortable with doing that, and at least a few people are going to say they are. I'm not sure how one would draw a line at any given point and make a decision that beyond that point, other people were Bad People for continuing to work on those designs.
With all THAT said, I've noticed that a couple of friends who work in weapons systems drink. A lot. A lot more than most people, and a lot more than they used to when they were working on launch systems for satellites or modelling asteroid impact crater formation.
Re:Haven't seen this one yet... (Score:3, Interesting)
In all fairness, Israel isn't exactly a needed ally. To be honest, their even existence depends a lot on our current defense pact. If the US were to revoke its protection of Israel, they may not fall tomorrow as they are fairly adept at defending themselves from attacking neighbors, but the situation would get significantly more precarious for the nation as a whole, as they don't exactly have many neighboring friends, and the actual hostile neighbors have pretty good relations with the other superpower at the moment due to both natural resources, and antagonizing the US. As well as a complete disregard for both Israeli lives, and their own shock troops' lives, if anything, it would help focus any discontent outside of their own country, and trim some of the glut of angry young males therein.
That being said, Israeli interest is fairly strong in this country from a power perspective, as well as lobbying forces, so I don't expect much of a true hardball stance from any administration which doesn't have the solidity of power stemming from the impassioned lower to middle class white voting base which which to offset the desires that would be pro Israel, and the Republicans at the moment have no real reason to do so either, as they have negative interests in the other side of the Israeli coin, their antagonists.
Re:Haven't seen this one yet... (Score:5, Interesting)
Diplomacy takes thinking. Hardliners rarely bother with thinking, preferring to repeat the part of history they were taught. You know, the part written by the victors, who were retroactively justifying their use of force and the collateral damage it caused.
Re:infrared (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, that's not completely accurate. If you can get an accurate read on the velocity and trajectory (shouldn't be too hard due to the massive amount of heat the missile is putting off) you just launch your ABM at the place the missile will be by the time the ABM reaches intercept altitude. That's how ABMs work against the ballistic missiles that are available presently.
We've seen how well that has worked in the past... (not very well)
Besides, a ballistic missile defense system is designed to either target the launch phase (the missile is still moving relatively slowly) or the ballistic phase (not rockets firing, a simple parabolic trajectory). A decently designed missile could simply avoid the ABM with 0.5 degree course changes. Within one minute at mach 4 (2884mph @ 1500 feet of altitude) that half degree change puts the course of the missile about 1/2 mile off the projected course. The more time you have, the more course changes you can make. Even if you only need to be accurate to 100 meters for the explosion to disable the missile, you only have 78 milliseconds between when the missile enters your (perfectly aimed) kill zone and when it leaves it. Make your missile faster or fly higher, and it's even safer from shoot-down.
Shooting down a missile is hardly a simple task, especially at these speeds.
Re:Don't blow shit up - problem solved (Score:3, Interesting)
disclaimer: IANA economist, and probably have no idea what I'm talking about.
Re:Don't blow shit up - problem solved (Score:3, Interesting)
"but in real life it's mass murder on a scale that not even the most bloody-minded conquerors in history have ever attempted"
Never heard what the Romans did to Carthage http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carthage#Carthaginian_Republic/ [wikipedia.org], have you? They were only limited by the technology available at the time.
Oh, and regarding this statement: "There will never be another Alexander, another Caesar, another Genghis Khan, another Napoleon, another Hitler, and this is also a good thing. "
Keep dreaming.
Necron69
Partly Ballistic? (Score:3, Interesting)
Something is not the right order of magnitude here. 12,500 miles/1 hour = 12,500 mph = Mach 16. To me, 16 is more than "several".
I don't know of anything operational (SCRAM isn't) other than a rocket that can propel something that fast. And a rocket with enough thrust and low enough weight wouldn't be able to fire for an hour.
From that I suspect the entire flight profile isn't in the atmosphere. Something like: an ICBM delivers a ramjet-powered cruise missile somewhere in the vicinity of a target. The missile then flies the rest of the way.
As someone else pointed out...jeez. How expensive is that? Why not fire a missile from a B52 or a ship? Last I heard the US still had lots of both of those all over the globe. A Mach 5 ramjet could go 3840 miles in an hour so your platform wouldn't even have to be that close. Way out in the middle of the Indian Ocean is within that distance from Kabul, for example.
Re:Don't blow shit up - problem solved (Score:2, Interesting)
We lost the supposed "War on Terror" the day we we're willing to give up our freedoms in the name of security. Ben Franklin, yada yada...
Our founding fathers said to ally with no one, and trade with anyone. The constitution also says we can't go to war unless we're invaded. I think some people should be thrown in jail for violating the constitution given that they took an oath to uphold it.
Re:Haven't seen this one yet... (Score:1, Interesting)
Obama doesn't have any skill as a diplomat, he got completely suckered by Putin. In exchange for canceling ABM projects and removing missile defense from Europe, and reducing the US's nuke stockpile, Russia got to increase the number of warheads they are allowed to have by threefold and allowed to sell nuclear technology to Iran unhindered. Some deal that was. Apparently someone forgot to tell Obama that in negotiating, you are supposed to get something in return for a concession.
Re:Don't blow shit up - problem solved (Score:3, Interesting)
While the world has become a much smaller place thanks to technology, that does not mean some future person won't attempt (and succeed) in utilizing that technology.
Not only that, but there is also a very real possibility that our tech will decline some time in the future. We might hit a rough patch in the next 40 years as oil runs out--it's not only important as a fuel source but in making plastics and paving roads. Any number of disasters could wipe out large swathes of humanity and some amount of practical knowledge will be taken with them.
Who knows what things will look like 10,000 or even 1,000 years from now? I would be willing to believe that another Alexander is not only possible but pretty likely given a long enough time frame.
Re:It might not be a "human right" but it seems wr (Score:3, Interesting)
I am an Arizonan, and I am in favor of the new law. That stated, I agree with many of your points. I generally agree with a VERY strict illegal immigration (note the word "illegal") policy, even though some of our leaders are pushing for it for the wrong reasons (racism and xenophobia). I still feel that these laws are a better alternative to what we have now, i.e. nothing.
I am open to better solutions. Better feasible solutions, that is. Hell, if we actually enforced our employer sanction law this new law probably wouldn't be necessary.
Another problem I have with the criticism of this law form people not from the Southwest, is that they really have no clue what it is like here. Phoenix is almost like a Balkan state, with large enclaves of Mexican immigrants (legal and not) who exist autonomously from the rest of the city. Large parts of my city are like Mexican annexes, with no common language, culture, or, increasingly, currency with the rest of the country. Mexico, currently, is a VERY bad place, and by not having any border protection we're importing all of their social, and legal, problems. Arizona is the kidnap capitol of the U.S., because of our wanton importation of Mexican crime. Our hospital and public health systems are being financially crushed due to the burden of non-citizens using their services for free.
Also, for years businesses used illegal immigration to cut down on costs, break unions, and generally force Americans (with their expectations of a higher standard of living) out of the work-force. Our economy has suffered. It is almost impossible to make a living wage as a blue collar laborer now, because you can't complete with the horde of illegal, under-paid, labor.
In the Southwest illegal immigration is a major social problem. Doing nothing isn't really an option.
Watching the pro-illegal-immigration rallies on television is enlightening. Most of the protesters who had flags, carried not the American Flag, but the Mexican flag. There is something fundamentally bizarre about this. Most of our Mexican immigrants would classify themselves as Mexican, and not aspiring Americans. This is somewhat distasteful to me.
I have nothing against most Mexicans, as a matter of fact I grew up in a predominately hispanic neighborhood. Around 60% of my friends have ancestors from Mexico. I am not racist, and I have nothing against Mexicans. But to ignore the fact that the massive tide of illegal immigration causes huge problems is a bit niave.
Yes, this law can open profiling, though the text of it isn't about Mexicans, it is about all illegals. Here, though, the problem is mainly (99%) Mexican, and not Canadian or European.