[Gank]

Originally posted by ionia23
It's only worked so far because the main players on the board (all political wisecracks aside) have maintained enough maturity to not use them.  Yet.

Uh-huh, and thats why **** wants weapons he can use.

[Flaser]

Tac-Nukes are both over and underestimated by you, guys.

A tac-nuke would wipe out an entire battalion of tanks, an entire airfield, or a whole navy group.

However it won't: casue nuclear winter, destroy a city (more like a city block), contaminate a huge area.

After the Cuban Crisis MacNemara had a meeting with some Cuban advisor (in the '70 I guess) and almost fell off his chair when he was told the other half of the story: Cuba had Tac-Nukes beside the medium range city killers, and Soviet submarines were cruising with tac-nuke torpedoes.

Imagine: if the US decided to invade, the army wouldn't have made it to the island, and the casulties of WWII Russia would be nitpick compared to that slaughter.

The problem is that it IS possible to wage war with these things - and casue massive casulties.

What B_U_S_H seems to forget is that they're completely useless against the 3rd world guerillas.

[an0n]

Or against anyone willing to say "****, if they're using Tacs, let's just blow the ****ers to hell with Strats".

[Tiara]

Originally posted by Flaser
What B_U_S_H seems to forget is that they're completely useless against the 3rd world guerillas.

But if brains were gasoline, he wouldn't have enough to run an ant's go-kart around the inside of a donut. He's just another power-addicted idiot suffering from diarrhea of the mouth and constipation of the mind.

In other words; he forgets stuff more often then he remembers them.

[Ulala]

The original article sounds more like a rant than someone reporting news. I have a harder time listening to/agreeing with/believing rants than I do with news. Although most news is one-sided anyway... "-B-U-S-H- (stupid filter thing) EVIL DEVIL WHO RUIN COUNTRY FOR EVAR!!!!!11one."

Meh...

[Gank]

Ulala a news report is this happened here today, bare minimum stuff. You might get a bit of basic background stuff but unless you read these "rants", from both sides, you're arent going to get the full picture. If you check the guys homepage you'll see his listed sources for most of the major bits, which is more than the majority of people who write these things do.
http://www.monbiot.com/
Well worth spending some time reading his stuff, he makes some good points whether you agree with him or not.

Originally posted by Flaser
Tac-Nukes are both over and underestimated by you, guys.

A tac-nuke would wipe out an entire battalion of tanks, an entire airfield, or a whole navy group......

.....What B_U_S_H seems to forget is that they're completely useless against the 3rd world guerillas.

You're talking about the tac-nukes currently in the US aresenal, **** wants smaller ones that can be used for fighting guerillas. Stuff that could be used on the caves in tora bora for example.

[Cabbie]

Originally posted by Setekh


Hah, that anim still makes me laugh. Wtf? ^^

Welcome to HLP, btw.

Hey, thank for the welcome!

[Flaser]

It was prooven in Vietnam and Korea that bombing, no matter how accurate or how powerfull can't solve a guerilla situation inless you're going for utter annihilation of the area - in other words genocide.

Now we see in Iraq that even invasion can't solve it, unless you can marshall a force in greater numbers and with a social support.

The Soviets managed to do this to the Eastern Block, since everybody welcomed them after the Nazis, and they quickly molded the ranks of national political and cultural elite into their own fold - or subdueded/killed them.

America is too hypocritic and the Islam world is too alien to do so.

[Janos]

Originally posted by ionia23


Not a chance.  Maybe in the 1930's, but there'd be no way for them to keep it secret now.  That's the sole reason you didn't see the whole of the Russian army exterminate or expel the Chechen population in it's entirety.  Too easy to get caught and too many consequences if they do.

You know what the Russians are doing there right now? For example: They just dismantled all refugee camps and are sending all civilians back into Chechenya, while their special forces are busily "sweeping villages clean of terrorists" - in other terms they are killing just about anyone they encounter. No one is saying anything, because, well, it's Russia. I doubt that if the first tactical nukes are indeed deployed in "anti-insurgent" roles, the threshold of using them in more vague situations (as in Chechenya!) will lower significantly.

[pyro-manic]

The only reason **** wants these mini-nukes is so he can use them. The warheads in the existing arsenal are just too big to use without causing a massive international incident, and most likely a Third World War. He figures that if he can get nukes down to a very small size, then he can use them without fear of reprisals from any country. Also, don't forget that a helluva lot of this money will go to big defence contractors (eg Lockheed Martin), who built the US's Cold War-era tactical and strategic delivery systems (eg Minuteman ICBMs IIRC). These corporations make large donations to the political parties...

Personally, I think he's got weapons that can do a similar level of damage already. Large fuel-air warheads would be perfectly suited to this kind of attack (IIRC, this type of weapon was used in the Afghan mountains), and they don't have the stigma of nuclear weapons.

Also, as has been said, as soon as **** uses any form of nuke, it'll be open season. It won't be long before somebody breaks out the multi-megatonnes...

[Bobboau]

Originally posted by pyro-manic

Personally, I think he's got weapons that can do a similar level of damage already. Large fuel-air warheads would be perfectly suited to this kind of attack (IIRC, this type of weapon was used in the Afghan mountains), and they don't have the stigma of nuclear weapons.

yeah exactly, this is just stupid beond comprehension

[vyper]

Fuel Air bombs are quite harsh - I mean do you want your lungs sucked inside out?

[kode]

Originally posted by vyper
Fuel Air bombs are quite harsh - I mean do you want your lungs sucked inside out?

yeah, why not? looks like fun, if one goes by the animation on this website:
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/dumb/fae.htm

[Gank]

FAEs are nasty but they havent the same potential for destruction as nukes. Against a cave system they're useless for example. Theres also the fact that they're massive, requiring a transport plane like a C130 to drop them, and you dont want to be flying a slow C130 into the afghan mountains full of strelas with one of these things on board.

http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/dumb/blu-82.htm
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/moab.htm

[Janos]

Aerosol bombs, baby, aerosol bombs - TOS-1 Buratino comes to mind. Combined with high-precision missile, an aerosol bomb is The Munition to destroy caves, bunkers, enforced buildings and so on with. However, it has one significant weakness: as the aerosol explosive is prone to catch fire (surprise!), small campfires or even barbeques can limit the destructive capability of such bombs.

[Gank]

Faes are aerosol bombs, and buratino's a rocket launcher, its not in the same league as nukes

[Janos]

Buratino is a rocket launcher which carries an aerosol bomb in it. The GIF looks like airburst/aerosol (the one linked), but I think Buratino works somehow differently. Russians are whackos anyways.