U.S. Develops New Weapons for Fast Strikes

kunosoura
Oklahoma

Well, this goes back to the Fractional Orbit System where nuclear bombs were carried in low orbit & could strike within as little as 30 minutes. It is the old Teller (& Reagan) "Star Wars" hoax of intercept of ICBMs (we at Los Alamos "fell out of our chairs laughing" about that). And all the minuteman missiles they shout out of Vandemberg, they never hit even one at Kwajalein Isl. And then Russia was going to accept nuclear weapons in stationary orbit above them ? Are you crazy ! Even their old obsolete rockets could take them out on direct assent. As a fact, we in Intelligence had plenty of warning if we were heading into a situation of strategic nuclear war. We monitored everything about Russia, movements of key personnel, radio transmissions, launch sites. There could be no surprises. Now, the concept of near immediate attack without warning has returned. This can create extreme danger, i.e., you can't "wait" to be sure you aren't under attack- so you have no choice but to immediately launch counter attack. For those of us that lived thru that era it is life "on the razor's edge". The continual production of ever more destructive & hugely costly weapon system is what Pres. Eisenhower warned about - the Military-Industrial Complex. No empire, country, society, much less democracy in all world history ever survived militarism. Not Rome, not us, spelled "U.S." . The American people had better get their wits together, stop listening to all this controlled-media TV , newspaper, radio hate mongering, war mongering. Hello America, if you want to survive, if that yet be possible, you'd better step back and take a close look at what's going on. I'm retired engineer, mathematician - went to Los Alamos from Grad School. There's little significant I do not know about nuclear weapons or reactors. Little you hear/seen in U.S. "news" is true.


Prentizzo
Portland ME

It is both dangerous and worrisome that the US is developing technologies to increase strike speed. With the shorter time gap between strikes, down goes the time that leaders have to consider their options of confrontation (armed or not). Our military leaders have more reason to tempt themselves with the foolish idea that a fast, preemptive strike can effectively defuse a (potential) war, when it is not even clear that armed confrontation is inevitable.

In 1914, Germany preemptively bombed Belgium and declared war on France with the assumption that a fast and effective strike would make for a short war. Because of this, they didn't even wait to see if France would side with their ally Russia and declare war (and Russia hadn't even declared war yet, but only mobilized their troops, fearing Germany would give military support Austria, as it went to war with their ally, Serbia ... ). This fatal assumption started WWI, which was not a short war at all, but a stalemate turned battle of attrition -- one of the bloodiest and baseless ones in history. What's more, it's unclear whether it needed to happen at all, because it arose out of misunderstandings and assumptions which prompted preemptive strikes. And that was when it took a few days to mobilize a strike -- soon it will only take an hour!

Furthermore, the fact that these are non-nuclear weapons is likely to make it more appealing to use them, and the military could argue that these weapons are more acceptable to use than nukes, and this makes it less likely for the US to think twice about it. Yet, if they have the same destructive power -- at least on initial impact -- what's the difference?

Great. So now we have a weapon just as destructive as a nuke, but with more ease of use and speed of attack. Oh, and just wait until other emerging military nations catch on -- and they will, it can be assured. Then the whole world might as well be as war-ready and close-proximity as the DMZ. Only the slightest misunderstanding and -- boom! World War III? I hope I'm being hyperbolic.


Maximus
The United States

Here, let me offer a general piece of advice:

Russia and China are our military strategic competitors. We can pretend that they are not if we like; we can cloak the fact that they are in good words and bilateral cultural exchanges; we can even just ignore it. But, at the end of the day, the are our military strategic competitors.

Okay, next point: any time we develop a powerful or effective weapons system, our military strategic competitors are going to be unhappy. If they think they can use public opinion to decrease the likelihood that that weapon system will be deployed, then they will use public opinion. If they think otherwise, then they'll just go quietly on their way and begin plans to develop a means to counter the given weapon system.

In short, welcome to the world of realpolitik. This is not going away folks. If anything, with the relative rise of China, this sort of news will increase. We have a national security responsibility to continue to develop these systems, at least until the blissful day when we are all part of a one world regime of peace and love and flowers. And our strategic competitors will respond by complaining. Do not be surprised by this.