America will be first nation to use Nuclear warheads.

Discussion in 'World Events' started by EmptyForceOfChi, Apr 27, 2011.

  1. Zakariya04 and it was Valued Senior Member

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    Superstringgy felllow

    whats up with banning chi????
    i cant belive you did that?
    whats up with all this muslim talk he answered me with in poost number 3, and his avatar

    I wish you hadn't done that stringgyfellow

    so i decided to log on post somethign to an old memeber like EFC and you ban happy ban him

    well thats great!!!
     
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  3. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    No.
     
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  5. MacGyver1968 Fixin' Shit that Ain't Broke Valued Senior Member

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    Good to see you again, Zak. Apparently Chi has recently converted to Islam. His posts in the past few months have been....um....unusual...to put it nicely...which has gotten him in trouble with the mods more than a few times.
     
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  7. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

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    If only it were as invisible to our eyes as it is to radar.
     
  8. fedr808 1100101 Valued Senior Member

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    At this moment, right now, they aren't scary at all. Have you seen their air force?

    The majority of their transport planes for example are decades old single engine planes with capacity for less then 20 soldiers.
     
  9. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    So what? It was a world war. 50 million people died fighting it and it had to end. The entire Japanese population was involved in the war effort, as was the US population. It was total war for survival on the planet.
     
  10. fedr808 1100101 Valued Senior Member

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    He acts as though no one has ever done anything worse.
     
  11. universaldistress Extravagantly Introverted ... Valued Senior Member

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    Empty F.O.C.

    Russian military budget: $56 billion (FY09)
    Chinese military budget: $100 billion (FY11)
    US military budget: $692 billion (FY10)
    UK military budget: £46.1 billion (GBP FY 2010) $76.42 billion at current exchange rate.
    France €42.52 billion (FY 2010) $62.37 billion ACER

    Year after year.

    This is without NATO Nations who have history of working with the US and UK. Do you also think Australia, Canada, India, other Commonwealth Nations subject of the British Queen wouldn't back the obvious winners? (and in fact do not have access to the superior tech such connections allow?).

    China, Russia, Iran and other muslim states, working together? Don't make me laugh LOL.

    The technology of Europe and the US is far superior to Russia and China, so indeed we get more bang for our buck.

    Open war without nuclear weapons? With the toll superior jets, stealth bombing capabilities, power of Apache helicopters, superior recon, superior missiles (+accuracy) better equipped and trained troops, far superior naval assets, I can see only one victor.
     
  12. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

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    Firepower alone does not win (all) wars.
     
  13. universaldistress Extravagantly Introverted ... Valued Senior Member

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    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9wLKvXMxZ0

    My God, wouldn't the Royal Airforce love to get their hands on a squadron of these . . ?

    No . . . wait . . . we don't need to. Our allies, the US, have got a load, and we have Typhoons and Tornados. Go figure.

    Though UK now has 67 Apache attack helicopters built by Westland under license. Modified and fitted with Rolls Royce units and folding blades for naval use (which in fact the US have shown interest in as they haven't been able to secure funds for a naval version themselves).
     
    Last edited: Apr 28, 2011
  14. universaldistress Extravagantly Introverted ... Valued Senior Member

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    China has bodies, we have superior (not more, but superior more modern) firepower, and the backing of many nations.

    We also, as far as I am concerned, have superior military knowledge and tactics due to our engagements in many modern battles.
     
  15. quadraphonics Bloodthirsty Barbarian Valued Senior Member

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    False dichotomy - if you are in a position to nuke the crap out of someone (without yourself being destroyed by nuclear retaliation), you've already defeated them. There won't be a conventional war in such a circumstance, exactly because both sides know the outcome ahead of time (either the side with nuclear primacy will win the conventional war, or will initiate a nuclear war and win that way).

    What is this scenario wherein Russia and China team up to have a ground war with the USA? Where would this ground war even take place? How many more decades until Russia and China combined could possibly pose a credible threat to American sea and air power?

    Wouldn't need to - it's actually an accepted part of the international laws on use of nuclear weapons that nuclear powers can use them in situations where the existence of the state is at stake. Which it would presumably be, if the USA is facing the prospect of losing a ground war to a Sino-Russian alliance.

    Except the whole scenario is just loopy: all three of those states are nuclear powers, so how is a conventional war between them supposed to ever come about? Nuclear powers don't generally wage conventional wars on one another - they can't. Wars between nuclear powers, are nuclear wars, by definition. Note that most realistic nuclear war scenarios do not involve the actual use of nuclear weapons.

    You seem to misunderstand how nuclear war works. By the time a nuke is fired, such a war has already concluded. To get into the position to be able to nuke an opponent, without risking devastating retaliation, is to have won a nuclear war. If you're firing a nuclear weapon, you've either already lost (and so have no need to worry about retaliation) or already won (your opponent's ability to retaliate will be destroyed once your nuke lands - at which point he faces a choice between surrender or annihilation).
     
  16. MacGyver1968 Fixin' Shit that Ain't Broke Valued Senior Member

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    I don't understand this Quad. How can it be a nuclear war, if no nukes are used?
     
  17. universaldistress Extravagantly Introverted ... Valued Senior Member

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    Valid point spidergoat. During the war the Nazis bombed our cities (UK) first I believe. I would imagine the same is true for Japan/US. Truth is the Japs just bit off more than they could chew. There was little regard for civilian life during th war as like spidey said, all civvies were involved in the effort. In UK there were no kids in the cities, only those engaged in war-type endeavour.

    As far as I am concerned the Japs got theres, and that's it. The US soon won over Japanese hearts by their policy during occupation after the war (would the Japs have been so kind?). These days the Japanese are regarded very highly among western culture and vice versa. Just goes to show, if they aren't bitter, who should be?
     
  18. universaldistress Extravagantly Introverted ... Valued Senior Member

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    Not so simple quad. One nuke doesn't destroy a countries ability to retaliate. Many launched at once maybe. But there are lead times, submarines, ICBMs, differing times of detonation, hidden launch sites etc. etc.

    If such a tennis match could ever occur (it wouldn't) it would never be able to be on a large scale? (weesa all dead den). Could it be used as tactical action against ground troops without escalation? Probably not. But sounds more survivable?

    Also what of anti-missile missiles, and other anti-missile technologies (of the future). Thorium reactor powered satellites with antimissile Laser systems? Are there already such things in orbit without our knowledge? I wouldn't put it past the Russians to already have some old nuke platforms in orbit, and therefore the US too.
     
  19. SciWriter Valued Senior Member

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    And we still say, as did Winston Churchill, that it was the British Empire's finest hour.
     
  20. quadraphonics Bloodthirsty Barbarian Valued Senior Member

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    Calculations as to their potential usage dominate the strategic (and tactical) decisions of each side, at all phases of hostilities. These calculations determine not only the outcome of such a war, but whether it is even pursued to begin with. Which would be to say that the nukes are "used," in the sense of being employed as a threat. They just aren't literally launched at targets - by the time something like that happens, the war has reached a conclusion.

    The thing about nukes, compared to conventional warfare, is that the stakes are much higher. In conventional war, you can try your luck - maybe if you manage to destroy enough enemy soldiers and equipment, they'll reconsider their position and you'll come out ahead. Or the battles don't go so well, and you retrench your position and maybe offer some concessions. Point is that conventional war is a sequence of battles/engagements that each contribute marginally to the final outcome, and so allow for recalculation and response to their outcomes. By the time you employ a nuke (against another nuclear power), one of two things will result: either you have the ability to wipe out the enemy's retaliatory capability (in which case you win), or you both end up getting destroyed. There is no middle option wherein nuclear attack simply shifts the balance of power and allows both sides to recalculate and continue. Once the nukes start flying, at least one side is going to suffer total defeat. So the entire calculus revolves around the question of whether anyone involved is going to get into a position to attack (i.e., has the ability to wipe out enemy retaliatory capability in a first strike), and not the question of how well the latest attacks have gone, where one might counterattack, etc.

    And since such questions are issues of technology and capabilities - and not holding particular pieces of land or killing formations of troops - it's a bit different in character than conventional war. War has always been an extension of politics, but nuclear war manifests primarily as politics (and proxy wars) because of its systemic nature. It's a matter of what everyone knows that everyone else is capable of, and not of who managed to blow up how many tanks this week. It's all political maneuvering and arms races. I.e, the Cold War.

    To get back to the scenario of the OP, Russia/China would never countenance waging war on the USA unless they were already confident that they could, at minimum, deter a US nuclear attack. And since they can't be confident of that, they won't wage such a war. The USA has similar incentives to avoid provoking a military confrontation with such nuclear powers as well.
     
  21. MacGyver1968 Fixin' Shit that Ain't Broke Valued Senior Member

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    Thank you for the response quad.
     
  22. quadraphonics Bloodthirsty Barbarian Valued Senior Member

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    That's why nobody is foolish enough to launch just one, at a nuclear power. You either go whole-hog, or don't go at all.

    Of course. There are also manifold efforts to track and overpower such systems. It's been suggested by researchers in Foreign Affairs that the USA already possesses nuclear primacy - that Russia's submarine fleet is harbor-bound, that they do not have enough mobile launchers (nor move them around frequently or serrupticiously enough), that their early-warning systems and radars are porrous to advanced stealth bombers and missiles, etc.

    And Russia is the nearest competitor. China is substantially farther behind. Nobody else even merits discussing.

    You can only launch nukes without danger of further escalation if you already possess nuclear primacy. In which case, you'd be pretty much crazy not to just wipe out the enemy's retaliatory capabilities. After all, they'd have to be insane to have waged a ground war against an enemy with nuclear primacy, to begin with.

    If you don't have nuclear primacy, the result is almost certainly escalation. That's why this stuff has never been done - it was most certainly suggested by various Army planners back in the 1950's and 1960's, and shot down over exactly these concerns.

    More areas (like those already mentioned) in which the USA enjoys a commanding lead over everyone else. Which I suppose would go to the suggestion that the USA is most likely to employ nukes next (pretty much anybody else would have to be insane to do so). But it also means that China and Russia (and any other nuclear power) is very unlikely to get themselves into a political position wherein the USA might be tempted to nuke them. Why destroy your rivals, when you can just get them to do what you want out of fear of said destruction?

    There are explicit treaties banning the weaponization of space, which both the USA and Russia (and formerly, USSR) are party to. Many proposals for such came out of the Reagan Star Wars era, but to my knowledge none were ever deployed into space. I think it's not so easy to hide such things in space, and they're a huge liability if discovered, and anyway none have ever been shown to actually work effectively in the first place. These things are difficult enough to make work on the ground, let alone launch onto a rocket and remote control for decades on end.
     
  23. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

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    What do you think about tactical nuclear theory? That they could be employed within a theatre without a strategic exchange? I'm tempted to think it's possible - the little Stalinist in me jumps for joy when he hears that - but I think it's still well across the theoretical firebreak of long-distance low-level exchange.
     

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