The Great Game

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Subject: The Great Game
SYSOP 7/28/2012 5:41:24 AM

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samR. 7/28/2012 3:16:10 PM

With your lousy english and the author's lousy lay-out and bigotry, it is clear that you both complement each other to win the incompetency of the day.. Congratulations in convincing me that strategypage.com is not for the open minded reader. Off my bookmark!

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dogberry 7/28/2012 3:41:40 PM

Did the bomber hire on to be a suicide killer, or did his employers change the conditions of his contract? Need to read that fine print.

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HeavyD 7/28/2012 4:05:16 PM

A country has never been directly attacked or invaded while in possession of nuclear weapons. NK? worst country ever, but untouchable. Pakistan? Who is going to attack them now? Would have we invaded Iraq if Saddam had nukes?

So the lesson is "get nukes or risk invasion". Why is Iran so nervous? Gee, they share borders with Iraq and Afghanistan, two countries we now control (militarily).

Ultimately it will save the US a lot of money when Iran does get a nuke. We can pull most of our forces out of there because we the threat of direct conflict will be greatly reduced. Let that sink in: Iran or any other country having nukes greatly diminishes the chance of a major direct conflict. Sure the proxy battles will rage but they will anyway.

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Skylark 7/29/2012 6:27:32 PM

I'm not so sure a nuke is a guarantee of immunity anymore. When missiles were immune to interception back in the 50's, 60's, 70's and 80's that was certainly the case, but now, I'm not so sure. Without a delivery system, a nuke is worthless, unless the Iranians or NK decided to destroy their own country in order to save it. (Which could very well happen with that bunch in charge.) But if that did happen...so what? Iranians destroying Tehran or the North Koreans destroying Pyong Yang just makes it possible for a non-nuclear enemy to destroy a nuclear enemy, with their own weapons. Pretty economical, if you ask me, even if they lose troops in the process. The real value of nukes is the threat of destroying your enemy as you are being destroyed, but it is possible to stop a missile today. With anti missile systems currently on board ships, capable of striking a missile at just about any phase of flight, makes the threat of pressing the 'big button' that much more hollow. Just having a nuke just isn't the impenetrable shield it once was, and the fact that no nuclear power has been invaded, does not make it an impossibility, either.

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WarNerd 7/30/2012 12:07:30 AM

Did the bomber hire on to be a suicide killer, or did his employers change the conditions of his contract? Need to read that fine print.

They have not been able to ID the bomb carrier yet because of a totally forged document trail. But at least on theory is that the bomb carrier was a drug mule and did not know that he was carrying a bomb, which was detonated by a remote control. So you may be correct.

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WarNerd 7/30/2012 12:31:33 AM

The real value of nukes is the threat of destroying your enemy as you are being destroyed, but it is possible to stop a missile today. With anti missile systems currently on board ships, capable of striking a missile at just about any phase of flight, makes the threat of pressing the 'big button' that much more hollow. Just having a nuke just isn't the impenetrable shield it once was, and the fact that no nuclear power has been invaded, does not make it an impossibility, either.

No matter how good an ABM system is, no one will trust it because all it takes is one leaker to produce tens of thousands of dead. So nukes will remain nukes will remain a reliable defense threat.

The key words here is ‘defensive threat’, if a government uses nukes in a offensive form, or even defensively if perceived as excessive by a major power, then they will probably be treated like a rabid dog, i.e. killed a quickly and completely as possible. In this situation possession of ICBM and nukes can actually have a counterproductive effect leading to massive retaliation in response to a single strike in hopes of preventing further launches.

We can only hope that the mullahs understand that.

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Skylark 7/30/2012 1:25:46 AM

Scott: You are over-rating the performance of a nuke to bad sci-fi levels. A nuke cannot destroy an invading army. If it could, it would also destroy the country firing it off on their own soil, which defeats the purpose of using it in the first place. There are also not enough nukes in the hands of third world dictatorships and, in particular, not enough terrorists to deliver them to get the end of the world scenario you seem to think is possible. Nukes are large, heavy, complicated, and require considerable shielding to avoid being detected. They also require people who know what they are doing. A nuke is not like a car bomb. They require people who know what they are doing, and a large percentage of those people will have to go up with the bomb, since it is unlikely they can get far enough away from it before it explodes. That is why missiles are preferable to a bomb in a shipping container.

As I said before, a nuke is nothing without a delivery system, and missiles allow for the time honored practice of saber rattling. This is why these nations want them in the first place. Not to conquer, but the threaten. If firing off a nuke were the solution to everything, Pakistan would have nuked India years ago and vice versa. Nukes are the perfect weapon for bullies and Iran knows that having a nuke and threatening to fire off a missile when their neighbors cannot stop them, will give Iran a measure of security and make it more likely that they will get their way. On the other hand, threatening to give a nuke to a terror group or shipping it will only result in a severe land, sea and air blockade, designed to starve them into submission. But the land-based missile itself is becoming more and more obsolete, as nations now have the option of intercepting the missile in flight.

This was impossible up until the 1990s and not truly practical until now. Anti missile systems are the ideal way of keeping third world powers from wielding nuke capability, because they are barely able to put up a basic missile: MIRV technology and jamming systems are far beyond the abilities of nations still trying to figure out how to get a missile off the pad without it blowing up in flight. And even if they succeeded, a single Aegis equipped destroyer can stop that nuke from getting out of Iranian airspace. I shudder to think what the world would be like today, if we had listened to the ninnies and the nay-sayers back in the 1980s, when they told us with authority that such a system was impossible, and they succeeded in stopping the development of the anti-missile system we now take for granted. Thank you Ron Reagan!

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Skylark 7/30/2012 1:35:14 AM

I agree with you on that, WarNerd, but Iran is not Russia or even China. The odds of taking out a missile from such a country is more than likely, as much as the odds of that nation being able to put up a barrage of ICBMs is all but impossible. The current ABM system is tailor made to stop the threat of a nuclear armed Iran and North Korea, while established nations, like Russia and China are less likely to be so unstable. Israel can intercept mortar shells, while tanks now have systems capable of intercepting incoming tank rounds. This sort of technology is far beyond nations that have trouble getting a missile off the pad, let alone on target.

Is the system foolproof? No, of course not... nobody is saying that. But if an ABM system reduced the odds by 80%, which renders it in the category of all but useless. If a nuke missile in Iran has no power to threaten, then it's equally useless.

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Reactive 7/30/2012 8:33:39 AM

Scott I think you might be mildly retarded, or eight years old, or both.

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Reactive 7/30/2012 10:13:36 AM

SM3 in particular is widely regarded as excellent and I'm quite sure it is, whether it functions as intended when it is needed is another matters and I think what Warnerd was saying is that no-matter that someone has say, 80-90% confidence in a successful intercept that is still nowhere near enough to mitigate the threat or regard it as "all but useless" especially when it is already factoring in BMD countermeasures to its missile designs, decoys and mid-course maneuvering etc which may lower the probability of a successful intercept. There's a reason Russia is not overly concerned about US BMD developments.

Either way, once Iran has a credible deterrent it will be treated differently, the level of risk factored in to directly engaging such a threat increases tenfold if a city like Jerusalem or Tel-Aviv can be levelled, which is to say, it will become virtually untouchable for fear or escalation.

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