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How Russia and China Could Strike the U.S. Air Force’s ‘Achilles Heel’

27 points by _of 10y ago

srhdmdndtjeyn 10y ago
Yet another alarmist article that ignores the fact that China, Russia, and the US could never engage each other in any meaningful capacity without sparking global nuclear armageddon. No, we do not need to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to fix this "problem."
- Varinius 10y ago
  Well, that's a bunch of ignorant baloney. If Russia and China have these capabilities today, then opponents we DO engage will have them tomorrow... unless, you know, someone fixes the problem. Not to say that we have nuclear assurances against a direct conflict between the US and Russia, we don't have such assurances for US proxies engaging Russian or Chinese proxies. The US needs to have enough conventional deterrence to prevent major proxy wars - which, by the way, destabilize the world economy and make the world a crappier place for everyone, including the "third-world-lives-don't-matter" isolationists such as yourself.
Fej 10y ago
"Could" But they won't. MAD is alive and well, no matter how insane it is.
- ArkyBeagle 10y ago
  For something so ...cognitively dissonant, it sure has been effective. I stick with "the game theory of MAD is ironclad."
- 2AF3 10y ago
  MAD changed years ago, See Presidential Decision Directive-60 (PDD 60)
DominikR 10y ago
There will be no strike at anyones achilles heel, at least not if we are talking about mayor world powers like the US, Russia and China. The most any one of these powers will do (and all of them do it) is trying to subvert and destroy weak governments that are friendly to the adversary. There's not even a chance that one power might try to pit the two others against each other (I'm talking about a real war) because all of them are guaranteed to wipe out all of the others if the survival of their own state is sufficiently threatened. The reasoning for this goes something like this: If we are destroyed and only one superpower survives this (because they didn't take part in it) they'd be in a position to dominate all of what remains. Very cynical but that's how MAD works. Even Israel which is much weaker than any of those three has a similar deterrence strategy. It entails striking the West, even if they were overrun by Arabs, not Western powers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samson_Option https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samson_Option I don't like how this all works (I'm not a Sociopath) but it seems to have been very effective over the last decades because the actors were all rational. The reason why Muslim countries acquiring WMD's is so much more heavily opposed is that many strategists do believe that their ideology could threaten MAD. It is not inconceivable that some of these governments could launch an all out attack if they had the capability believing that they will all go to heaven for taking out what they perceive to be "the great Satan".
- ArkyBeagle 10y ago
  We don't "like" MAD because on the narrative plane, it's a disgusting concept. Still, here we are. This depends on whether or not you believe the ideology can travel past the level of technological sophistication necessary to deploy nukes. The ideology itself is pretty self-abnegating - it has many marques of a suicide cult. This being said, there was this weekend ( from Aug 18th, 2016 ) a repeat of Douglas Cohn's "WW4", in which one nightmare scenario is ISIS "invading" Pakistan and becoming nuke-capable. I imagine that'd get our collective attention if it looked like it was forming. I hope somebody is paying attention... Cohn also notes that, at least in the offensive role, one division of American troops could dissipate ISIS in short order. After the offensive comes the "you broke it, you bought it" part, which is why we don't just.
  - 10y ago
johansch 10y ago
... and if you only invest in this particular area (with a leading American country giving jobs to Americans, where it counts) with 50 billion USD, you could protect yourself! Would you like to learn more?

27 points by _of 10y ago

Yet another alarmist article that ignores the fact that China, Russia, and the US could never engage each other in any meaningful capacity without sparking global nuclear armageddon. No, we do not need to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to fix this "problem."

Varinius 10y ago
Well, that's a bunch of ignorant baloney. If Russia and China have these capabilities today, then opponents we DO engage will have them tomorrow... unless, you know, someone fixes the problem. Not to say that we have nuclear assurances against a direct conflict between the US and Russia, we don't have such assurances for US proxies engaging Russian or Chinese proxies. The US needs to have enough conventional deterrence to prevent major proxy wars - which, by the way, destabilize the world economy and make the world a crappier place for everyone, including the "third-world-lives-don't-matter" isolationists such as yourself.

Fej 10y ago

"Could" But they won't. MAD is alive and well, no matter how insane it is.

ArkyBeagle 10y ago
For something so ...cognitively dissonant, it sure has been effective. I stick with "the game theory of MAD is ironclad."
2AF3 10y ago
MAD changed years ago, See Presidential Decision Directive-60 (PDD 60)

DominikR 10y ago

There will be no strike at anyones achilles heel, at least not if we are talking about mayor world powers like the US, Russia and China. The most any one of these powers will do (and all of them do it) is trying to subvert and destroy weak governments that are friendly to the adversary. There's not even a chance that one power might try to pit the two others against each other (I'm talking about a real war) because all of them are guaranteed to wipe out all of the others if the survival of their own state is sufficiently threatened. The reasoning for this goes something like this: If we are destroyed and only one superpower survives this (because they didn't take part in it) they'd be in a position to dominate all of what remains. Very cynical but that's how MAD works. Even Israel which is much weaker than any of those three has a similar deterrence strategy. It entails striking the West, even if they were overrun by Arabs, not Western powers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samson_Option https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samson_Option I don't like how this all works (I'm not a Sociopath) but it seems to have been very effective over the last decades because the actors were all rational. The reason why Muslim countries acquiring WMD's is so much more heavily opposed is that many strategists do believe that their ideology could threaten MAD. It is not inconceivable that some of these governments could launch an all out attack if they had the capability believing that they will all go to heaven for taking out what they perceive to be "the great Satan".

ArkyBeagle 10y ago
We don't "like" MAD because on the narrative plane, it's a disgusting concept. Still, here we are. This depends on whether or not you believe the ideology can travel past the level of technological sophistication necessary to deploy nukes. The ideology itself is pretty self-abnegating - it has many marques of a suicide cult. This being said, there was this weekend ( from Aug 18th, 2016 ) a repeat of Douglas Cohn's "WW4", in which one nightmare scenario is ISIS "invading" Pakistan and becoming nuke-capable. I imagine that'd get our collective attention if it looked like it was forming. I hope somebody is paying attention... Cohn also notes that, at least in the offensive role, one division of American troops could dissipate ISIS in short order. After the offensive comes the "you broke it, you bought it" part, which is why we don't just.
- 10y ago

johansch 10y ago

... and if you only invest in this particular area (with a leading American country giving jobs to Americans, where it counts) with 50 billion USD, you could protect yourself! Would you like to learn more?