[aldo_14]

Originally posted by Unknown Target
If the US attacks any country with nuclear capability, they're instantly goign to get a counter-attack with nukes. Why? Because it's impossible to hit every single SCUD, mobile launch system, and hidden installation. That's another thing about MAD: even if the nukes impacted all the known nuclear launch sites, there were about 20,000 more that were hidden or mobile.

Only if you're attacking an equal superpower (if any still exist), though.  I doubt even the '2nd rate' nuclear powers like UK and France would be able to respond with anything like a devastating counter-attack.

Originally posted by Unknown Target

Not true. Iran and North Korea have nuclear capability, albeit it is limted. North Korea could probably nuke Los Angeles, and with help, Iran could use it's nukes from other countries to bomb the hell out of the US. Not to mention the international uproar. You thought it was bad over Iraq? Now imagine it if we bombed the entire country from space.

International uproar wouldn't matter much if you could destroy any country which posed a threat - economic or military - with vastly reduced risk.

AFAIK neither N.Korea or Iran have ICBM capability; I think Iran can maybe hit Israel, and N.Korea Japan, but that's about it.  Nuclear weapons doesn't entail ICBM.

Originally posted by Unknown Target
Exactly. I bet you if another country had the tech and the money, they'd do the same thing. While that doesn't mean that's it a good thing, it doesn't mean that the US is the "super evil superpower" that everyone keeps making it be.

It also doesn't make it inherently better than if, say, China, France, Iran, Pakistan, North Korea or India was to do the same, for example.  There was supposed to be an internationally agreed moratorium on these things, after all, and it was for a good reason.

IMO there's a strong likelihood that space weapon superiority = global hegemony.  Doesn't matter which hands that hegemony exists in, or whether those hands are trustworthy - as long as it exists, there's the potential for abuse of it.

[Kosh]

they seem to be hell-bent on starting their own apocalypse now....

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1206-10.htm


Read this.

as he got re-elected last year by a greater number of voters than 2000.

of those "new" bush voters were frightened into voting for him by the scare tactics employed by the Republican party.


EDIT: And what bugs me is that they have enough money to waste on this, yet the college financial id program is supposed to be cutback for next year.

[NGTM-1R]

Originally posted by aldo_14

Only if you're attacking an equal superpower (if any still exist), though. I doubt even the '2nd rate' nuclear powers like UK and France would be able to respond with anything like a devastating counter-attack.

France has the Le Redoubtable and Le Trimuphant-class ballistic missile submarines; twenty and twenty-four missile tubes, three warheads to a missile. The Brits have the capablity to nuke the US into oblivion. We should know: they use our Trident missiles for their SSBNs. Russia has been set up for such an eventuality for decades. China only has the one SSBN, an inferior one at that, but sure as hell they can destroy every major city on the western seaboard.

You see, you have to understand: survivablity of the SLBM component of the nuclear arsenal is not based on the submarines being merely hard to find: you have to find all of them. Any single Western-made or Russian-made SSBN has the capablity to devastate any nation on Earth. The Chinese could take out about twelve major US cities, possibly more: it's not public information whether their SLBMs have multiple warheads.

Originally posted by aldo_14

Granted, submarines do possess the ability to survive and respond, but it would be dependent upon that submarine not being tracked and hunted via satellite (i.e. to relay co-ords to hunter-killers in the war; I think this is already possible), an order being made in time to said sub, and indeed that the target country has subs.

...eh? I don't think so. If you refer to laser-based non-acoustic ASW, the idea was examined in the mid-80s and discarded as completely unfeasible. If close to the surface, very  close, a submarine can be tracked by infrared emissions, but the boomers are creatures of the abyssal zone. They never come up. MAD, Magnetic Anomaly Detection, gear is completely ineffective at orbital distances; even aboard low-flying aircraft it isn't always effective against deep-diving submarines.

The SOSUS network of ocean-floor sonars is located in fixed points, the G-I-UK gap and Bering Sea, with a scattering off the Eastern and Western seaboards. They're not 100% effective, and in any case missile subs know them and stay away from them.

Essentially, unless you put a tailer on the guy as he's leaving port and follow him around the whole time while remaining undetected, you're not going to know where he is. Odds are about 50/50 you'll lose him at some point anyways.