11 ms·

In Defense of Missile Defense

70 points by cwillu 4y ago

rougka 4y ago
Really liked the aesthetics of Aegis Ashore, they simply pulled a part of the ship and placed it on land. It’s something I imagine a software engineer would do
- TMWNN 4y ago
  >Really liked the aesthetics of Aegis Ashore, they simply pulled a part of the ship and placed it on land. It’s something I imagine a software engineer would do It's basically a virtual machine for Aegis. Similarly, when the US entered WW1, the US Navy took existing naval guns, mounted them on railcars, and sent them to bombard German positions complete with naval crews and an admiral commanding the entire effort <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/14-inch/50-caliber_railway_gun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/14-inch/50-caliber_railway_gun>.
eesmith 4y ago
> A system which stops 50% of incoming missiles means that only half as many people will die in a nuclear war, That doesn't make sense. The population isn't evenly distributed, and a target can have multiple missiles directed at it. New START set the number of warheads to 1,550. The 500 largest US cities have a population (2016) of 103,020,808. https://www.cdc.gov/places/about/500-cities-2016-2019/pdfs/500-cities-by-state.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/places/about/500-cities-2016-2019/pdfs/5... . (Note LA, Long Beach, and Anaheim are different cities, when I should be using metropolitan areas, so my estimate is low-balling things.) With 6x coverage of the largest cities, and 2x coverage of the smallest, that's a good chance of ~100 million deaths, even with a 50% missile intercept rate. While a 0% intercept rate will still leave many people alive, in the sparsest parts of the US - not a factor of 2. > [footnote] but the number of targets is cut by 50% either way Note how targets are places or cities, not people. Nuking Gann Valley, South Dakota kills far fewer people, and causes far less disruption, than nuking Seattle. > Obviously, these are one-off tests in ideal conditions Last I knew, we had no good numbers for realistic conditions. I last looked at this years ago. At the time they were doing things like including a transmitter with the missile, and excluding chaff and other counter-measures. Clearly if real-world numbers were a 5% then the entire calculation is wrong. > The last half-century has seen very little in the way of better decoy technology, and massive improvements in discrimination. Citation needed in how those improvements affect the overall intercept rate, and the cost/benefit of running an expensive defense system vs. building a few more nukes. > In practice, no leader this side of Stalin is likely to court those kind of losses unless they really need to, no matter how much they stand to gain from it Really now? No one like Curtis LeMay - willing to nuke Vietnam if that were needed to end the war - will ever become president? And ... won't that encourage North Korea to build more bombs? Because the argument seems to be that with 99% effectiveness, the 30 to 40 nuclear weapons they currently have gives a ~33% of having a strike in the US. So the US could nuke North Korea and risk it. Which means North Korea should build more nukes. Ditto for every other smaller nuclear power. > whose opposition often seemed to flow more from political opposition to Reagan than from a technical evaluation of the merits of the system We've spent how many billions of dollars since the 1980s, to build a missile defense system, and we still don't have something that could handle a 1980s-era Soviet attack? Yeah, I'm going to say the critics were right.
- Supermancho 4y ago
  I would say that: Israel has experienced realistic conditions. Any of the local hotbeds over the last few decades (Iraq, Ukraine, etc) have had realistic conditions, which are now decades old or haven't resulted in any success (effective defense). There's no good reason to expect to be able to protect any given area from a missile attack. If the coverage is good enough in a small area, a nuke right out side the defense range will do enough secondary damage to render it irrelevant. To illustrate, if you want to destroy Israel, the practical approach is to fire a nuke at Palestine.
  - actionfromafar 4y ago
    Israel has defended against slow starting, small tin-rockets from known locations. It has not defended against extremely fast ICBMs, which can detonate and create immense destruction even from a considerable height.
  - eesmith 4y ago
    Israel has no experience countering nuclear ICBMs. There's a reason the Aegis Combat System isn't the same as the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System. Pakistan can likely build a 150 kt bomb (says Wikipedia). Go to NUKEMAP and try it out. https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?&kt=150&lat=31.7733151&lng=35.1867903&hob_psi=5&hob_ft=5443&psi=20,5,1&zm=12 https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?&kt=150&lat=31.7733151&l... . What good is the Iron Dome against that? > There's no good reason to expect to be able to protect any given area from a missile attack. The defense systems in the linked-to article are meant to intercept and destroy missiles far enough away that even if they explode at that point they do not cause damage to the target. One THADD hit its target at 147 km altitude, says https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_High_Altitude_Area_Defense https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_High_Altitude_Area_De... . Try NUKEMAP again, with a 147 km altitude (use "Advanced options", select Airburst settings of "burst height", and enter 147 with "km" in the pulldown menu. You won't even see the 1psi over-pressure damage at that height.)
    - mnw21cam 4y ago
      If a nuclear warhead is intercepted, it generally doesn't detonate. It requires a very carefully-timed and managed sequence of events to make a warhead detonate, deliberately so.
sillystuff 4y ago
The article touches on this in an off-hand dismissive line, but anti-missile technology is destabilizing. If the anti-missile system is effective, then it allows for a first strike without retaliation. I.e., anti-missile systems are offensive weapons. The largest constraint against using nuclear weapons in a first strike is removed for the party with the effective anti-missile system. Even if it doesn't work well, or at all, you now need your adversary to believe that you spent billions on an ineffective weapons system. If your adversary is not convinced of this, then they have every incentive to react to (possibly false) alarms sooner. Incidents like the following might have ended differently: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_alarm_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_alar... https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/nuclear-vault/2020-03-16/false-warnings-soviet-missile-attacks-during-1979-80-led-alert-actions-us-strategic-forces https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/nuclear-vault/2020-0... https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/13/us/false-alarm-missile-alerts.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/13/us/false-alarm-missile-al...
- ceejayoz 4y ago
  > If the anti-missile system is effective, then it allows for a first strike without retaliation. That's a big if. Current and near-future ABM systems can take out a handful; great if Iran or North Korea decide to take a potshot, but those are opponents the US can essentially take out in a first strike without nukes if they don't mind the massive blowback. The US has no hope of intercepting all of Russia's or China's nukes anytime soon.
  - sudosysgen 4y ago
    There is nothing inherently stopping Iran or North Korea to build a few dozen MIRV-capable missiles.
    - chipsa 4y ago
      Aside from the fact that releasing more than one thing from a space launch vehicle accurately is actually a fair hard thing to do. Which is why multiple satellite buses are considered dual use technology, and export of them is prohibited. Release of said tech to China back in the 90s is considered to be a large player in why they have MIRV ICBMs.
dirtyid 4y ago
Nice to tuck primarly argument against ABM in the footnote - it incentivizes others to increase stockpiles to reestablish mutual vunerability, and missile exchangfes / economics favours attacker. >1. Assuming, of course, that the number of warheads remains constant. This was probably the best argument against missile defense during the Cold War, when it was at least theoretically possible that the Soviets could double their arsenal in response to the threat. It’s a lot less feasible today, given arms control treaties and the shaky state of the Russian economy. It’s plausible that China could pull it off, but they’ve long taken a rather more minimal approach to deterrence than Russia has, which means a reasonable missile defense system probably wouldn’t worry them too much. Also worth noting that yes, it’s possible to overcome a 50% effective system by shooting two warheads at each target, but the number of targets is cut by 50% either way. ⇑
openasocket 4y ago
I think they sell short the destabilization argument. In practice these systems aren't going to be able to shoot down a fixed percentage of a strike. In a strike all missiles are going to be coming in more or less simultaneously, and the ABM system will be able to shoot down a fixed number of them. So it's not a case of shooting down 50% of a strike, it's being able to shoot down 12 missiles from a strike. And that number isn't far off from how much GMD is going to be able to do. And that's the thing about GMD and other BMD systems: they aren't going to be much use against a full nuclear exchange. But what they are great for is the ragged second strike scenario. If the US goes first in a nuclear war and catches Russia/China off guard, it's possible for most of their hundreds of missiles to be taken out in their silos. And they might only be able to answer with a dozen or so missiles in response, which GMD could take care of. And that's the destabilizing aspect of this, it encourages the holder of the ABM system to go first in a nuclear exchange. Because no one cares if 12 out of 400 missiles are shot down, but they do if 12 out of 12 missiles are shot down. It then encourages the opponent to make more survivable nuclear delivery systems. Which is exactly what we see from Russia and China: hypersonic glide vehicles, fractional orbital bombardment systems (basically sending the ICBM all the way around the planet so it strikes at the US from the south instead of the north and away from where GMD is deployed), crazy stuff like nuclear-powered cruise missiles and the Poseidon bomb. It encourages further development of nuclear weapons, meaning creating an arms race. In short, I don't think the ABM systems help us very much in the nuclear war scenario (conventional short-ranged and theater ballistic missiles are a different story).
- ceejayoz 4y ago
  A single Russian nuclear submarine can carry 800 nuclear warheads [edit: Misread a number; 96 is apparently the max. Still, enough.]. The chances of Russia getting down to twelve nukes after a first strike - even if they don't get off a response while they're in flight - is slim. The nuclear-powered cruise missiles and Poseidon bomb are just Russia's versions of the V weapons in WWII; flashy, but not actually useful, and taking resources from the more staid and boring aspects like "keep your logistics vehicles' tires from exploding".
  - 4y ago
w1nst0nsm1th 4y ago
- w1nst0nsm1th 4y ago
  - stuff4ben 4y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
xg15 4y ago
> A system which stops 50% of incoming missiles means that only half as many people will die in a nuclear war, obviously a desirable result. Half as many will die on the first day of nuclear war. So assume the enemy only obliterated 50 cities when without defense it would have been 100. That's great! But those 50 nuclear explosions are probably still enough to shroud large parts of the country in nuclear fallout. Not to mention the country's infrastructure will still be destroyed, leading to chaos, diseases, famine and all the other consequences of nuclear war. It's not clear to me a defense that could destroy 50% of incoming missiles would make meaningful difference in what happens medium or long term. This is also another general argument against nuclear war: Fallout cares about borders about as much as covid did. Even if you're the attacker and your defense is so good you don't have to worry about retaliatory strikes, you will with high likelihood contaminate your allies as well.
- 988747 4y ago
  Aren't 50 nuclear explosions enough to basically cause the next global Ice Age? With the amount of dust thrown into the air, that will block sunlight?
  - Merad 4y ago
    No, definitely not. During the Cold War more than 600 nukes were exploded in above ground tests (thousands more in underground detonations).
    - twelve40 4y ago
      yeah but wikipedia says nuclear winter would come from burning cities emitting soot ("100 or more city firestorms"). All tests were done in places like Novaya Zemlya which barely has any vegetation, let alone big burning cities.
      - credit_guy 4y ago
        Wikipedia also says we've been through such an event at the end of Gulf War 1, when Saddam burned the Kuwaiti oil fields. There was absolutely nothing close to the nuclear winter effect. Sagan later conceded in his book The Demon-Haunted World that his predictions obviously did not turn out to be correct: "it was pitch black at noon and temperatures dropped 4–6° C over the Persian Gulf, but not much smoke reached stratospheric altitudes and Asia was spared." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter#Kuwait_wells_in_the_first_Gulf_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter#Kuwait_wells_in...
PaulHoule 4y ago
The trouble with anti-ballistic missiles at any scale is that the footprint that can be protected by a missile base is small. You can defend Washington, DC, Moscow, or an ICBM field, but it is not so practical to populate a large area such as "east coast cities". The US has a relatively good answer for this in that it has roughly 100 ships with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aegis_Combat_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aegis_Combat_System which can be maneuvered to have a fairly large footprint, but in the case of Ukraine there is a lot of interest in deploying anti-cruise missile defenses but very little in anti-ballistic missile defenses. That's because a cheap system like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASAMS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASAMS has a fairly good footprint against cruise missiles but something expensive like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIM-104_Patriot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIM-104_Patriot would struggle to protect all of Kiev, never mind the rest of the country.
- jjk166 4y ago
  You can cover a much larger area with midcourse defense. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground-Based_Midcourse_Defense https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground-Based_Midcourse_Defense
  - PaulHoule 4y ago
    It still has to be in the right place. Of course there is a footprint very close to the launch point where you can shoot down a missile aimed anywhere. A missile with really high acceleration should be able to do it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_High_Altitude_Area_Defense https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_High_Altitude_Area_De... but it's got to be very close to the launch point which the enemy probably won't let you do.
    - jjk166 4y ago
      But in the case of midcourse defense the right place means on the correct half of the continent. Boost phase defense is pretty much a non-starter for defense against any country except perhaps North Korea.
- 4y ago
w1nst0nsm1th 4y ago
No need for missiles or 1000s of warheads or anti-missiles. 4 five megatones bombs, which is pretty standard, smuggled in DIY kits through the mexican border, and assembled and detonated in the 4 centers of power of the US, namely Washington (political center), NY (financial center), LA (media center), and SF (technological hub) and the US go back to its founding fathers era or at best to its civil war. And if you can't trace where the nukes come from, who will you nuke back ? The whole world ? The MAD doctrine assume you know who is your ennemy... And it's not the numbers of victims that matters. It's the command centers. You could elaborate something similar to every other nuclear powers.
- gpderetta 4y ago
  Any retaliation would probably hit all potential enemies. In fact this would probably be the case even if the attacker is known.
- chipsa 4y ago
  MAD doctrine doesn't exist. No state actually assumes that it should be mutual. That's psychotic. The actual doctrine of the US is Assured Destruction: use a WMD against us, and we will assuredly destroy you. This is not necessarily on a time limit. Such a proposed attack would only harden the resolve the attacked power to make sure the "self lit parking lot" exists.
  - waffleiron 4y ago
    Sure, but two states with assured destruction doctrines makes MAD, you ought to destroy the other because they will destroy you. Why use a single WMD against the US when the final result (assured destruction) is the same as when you use a lots of WMDs.
    - chipsa 4y ago
      Maybe. But my point is that "MAD" isn't a doctrine. It's a game-theoretic idea of the outcome of a nuclear war, and it assumes pre-conditions that aren't necessarily true, especially with regard to our opponents.
fuoqi 4y ago
Deploying anti-missile systems in Poland/Romania and potential deployment in South Korea does a lot of good to the world in the sense of balance and mutual trust between nuclear powers. You can spout as much nonsense as you want about protecting allies from Iran and North Korea, but Russia and China will view it as nothing more as an hostile act, which warrants response of their own, fueling further escalation.
- ksidudwbw 4y ago
  Escalation is good for the industry
cabirum 4y ago
A modern ICBM (see: Sarmat) carries multiple independently targetable warheads (or hypersonic gliders), equipped with active missile defense countermeasures and decoys, striking from arbitrary direction (eg flying over south pole on a non-ballistic suborbital trajectory). Now try to shoot that down.
- oldstrangers 4y ago
  The Sarmat isn't even in service though, and it might not even be functional. In fact, it probably isn't functional considering the lengthy delays.
- stackedinserter 4y ago
  We can try to shoot the rocket on the first phases of flight, while it's flying in one piece.
- boc 4y ago
  > Shiva Star was also used to develop an experimental weapon known as MARAUDER for the SDI effort between 1989 and 1995. The idea appears to have been to create compact toroids of high-density plasma that would be ejected from the device using a massive magnetic pulse.[2] The plasma projectiles would be shot at a speed expected to be 3000 km/s in 1995 and 10,000 km/s (3.3% of the speed of light) by 2000. A shot has the energy of 2,27 kg of TNT exploding. Doughnut-shaped rings of plasma and balls of lightning exploded with devastating thermal and mechanical effects when hitting their target and produced pulse of electromagnetic radiation that could scramble electronics, the energy would shower the interior of the target with high-energy x-rays that would potentially destroy the electronics inside. The tests cost a few million dollars a year.[3] The project became classified, and no information about the fate of the project has been published after 1995. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiva_Star https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiva_Star Just saying, there's a reason most of the modern research on ABM tech is super classified. It's not hard to hit a missile at any speed when you're shooting a plasma cannon at .033C
  - heavenlyblue 4y ago
    I do not understand, how can plasma travel at 3.3% the speed of light in the air? Wouldn't it still need to fight the pressure of the air and by that definition the moment a projectile at 3.3% the speed of light bounces against of speck of air that plasma will immediately release most of it's energy dispersing in various directions?
purpleblue 4y ago
Because we aren't worried about ICBMs anymore. We are worried about hypersonic nuclear missiles launched from nuclear sub that are off our coastline. All you need to do is design missiles that will fly low enough and fast enough so that no type of anti-missile system would be feasible. And they basically already have this.
keewee7 4y ago
One reason US/Western missile systems are so outrageously expensive is because they're (rural/flyover) job creation programs masquerading as weapons programs.
- buscoquadnary 4y ago
  Your right how can those rural proles not see the superiority of concentrating all of our resources in a single location, or the advantages created by utilizing JIT supply chains. Don't they realize real wealth is created by complicated financial schemes that result in offshoring everything to foreign nations. These foolish flyover staters they probably think wealth is created by doing foolish things like building cars, or manufacturing goods. They don't understand that real value is created by creating a platform that allows people to arbitrage information asymmetry to better deliver metric based behavior analysis of wider demographic trends in order to capitalize on emphemeral market fluctuations? Foolish rural hicks.
narag 4y ago
Some random thoughts: Even if you don't intend to be the first to attack, you want a shield in case you're attacked. Even if the shield can't protect 100% or 50% (say just 10%) you want a shield. You probably don't want to brag very loudly about your shield. Actually, you might want to hide it as much as possible so the attackers don't feel the need to overcome it. On the other hand, if you shield is crappy, you won't talk too much about its crappyness either. Current situation has very obvious differences with Cold War and these differences are being revealed right now in Ukraine. "Experts" (I guess actual experts shut TFO) were very surprised of how reluctant Russians were to use aire force, how ineffective their tanks were, etc.
- oldstrangers 4y ago
  "You probably don't want to brag very loudly about your shield. Actually, you might want to hide it as much as possible so the attackers don't feel the need to overcome it." That's what always struck me about the US being very open about its successes and failures with missile defense. They have absolutely nothing to gain by telling the world any of this, so the only logical conclusion is that their public disclosures are very carefully controlled set pieces to essentially neither confirm nor deny the actual capabilities of the system. I imagine this also applies to the US and its hypersonic weapons program and the very public display of their "failures." Right.
  - narag 4y ago
    Another item: even if your shield performance is currently underwhelming, you still want to have it, so you can keep upgrading it as technology advances, instead of rushing it when there's a breakthrough. And when it becomes a success, you still keep your cards close to your vest.
    - bluGill 4y ago
      A large part of good vs bad performance is just iterating on bad until you solve the weaknesses. Sure there are sometimes fundamental problems that need a break through that could be years in coming, but often the only thing lacking is effort to fine tune algorithms. (figuring out which is which is left as an exercise for the reader)
more_corn 4y ago
One-off tests in ideal conditions work 50% of the time. Sooo if we have enough nuclear weapons to kill everyone on earth 4 times over that means in an ideal case we only all die twice? Of course they probably won’t all launch at once. Maybe half of nuclear weapons are in hands of the three likely parties. So maybe half get launched. In the shit show of a full-scale nuclear exchange you can predict less than perfect performance (also I’d guess countermeasures are better than advertised on both sides since countermeasures are 1,000x cheaper than intercept measures). Then again some will fail to launch since global corruption has undermined effectiveness broadly. The numbers get fuzzy, but it’s looking like everybody still dies. Best case maybe most of the northern hemisphere is unlivable. A recent study shows that even a limited nuclear exchange will toss up so much ash as to reduce agricultural yields and starve a billion people. Let’s say it’s not a limited exchange and food production is down to 25% of normal. I suppose the number who starve would be lower if half of the planet were already dead. Then again there hasn’t been a study of what would happen to the global economy and food system if large parts of the world were rendered radioactive wasteland (my gut says it’s not going to survive such a shock). I suspect food shipping wouldn’t continue as normal. So almost everyone dies and the rest fight over the insufficient remaining food. Whee! I’m coming around to the “die in the first blast” strategy.
- NoGravitas 4y ago
  > One-off tests in ideal conditions work 50% of the time. Sooo if we have enough nuclear weapons to kill everyone on earth 4 times over that means in an ideal case we only all die twice? Yeah, I was having the same thought. Half as much overkill? What value does that have? My strategy in the case of nuclear war is also to die as quickly as possible.
krunck 4y ago
A review of the discussion on this topic shows that we are suffering from the same insanity that peaked at during the Cold War. No lessons learned. And the same shitheads running the circus.
- adameasterling 4y ago
  > suffering from the same insanity It isn't exactly clear what this means, but when I read it I thought, "we all seem to be suddenly hysterical about nuclear war." I listened to the most recent episode of the Arms Control Wonk podcast[1] last night. In this episode, Dr. Jeffrey Lewis observed that yes, paid media and social media is hysterical about nuclear war right now, but also, that the underlying emotional anxiety that fuels this sort of coverage/discussion is the natural result of nuclear deterrence. It's supposed to feel tremendously frightening. He noted that the word itself, "deter," comes from a latin word that also gave us "terror." The tremendous anxiety that we all feel is totally appropriate given the threat. It feels like insanity, yes, but it actually shows that the system of deterrence, as terrible as it is, is still working. 1. https://www.armscontrolwonk.com/ https://www.armscontrolwonk.com/
- nickff 4y ago
  >"A review of the discussion on this topic shows that we are suffering from the same insanity that peaked at during the Cold War. No lessons learned. And the same shitheads running the circus." Please share the results of your review, and share the lessons you learned. As posted, this comment contains no informational or rhetorical content.
twawaaay 4y ago
I think the basic problem with the claims that good missile defence would be destabilising is advent of rogue countries that have access to long range ballistic missiles and to nuclear weapons. I simply can't understand how anybody could defend that it is actually good thing for North Korea to be able to send a rocket to Seoul, Tokyo or Los Angeles. If you keep defending game theory and mutually assured destruction, the real solution would not be to freeze the technological race but keep that race up, keep everybody unsure about progress of everybody else and keep only the largest powers actually on top of the race and the smaller ones being unable to pose harm. Because if you freeze capabilities you give smaller nations time to catch up. This creates situation with lots of players with parity (in this case ability to seriously harm everybody else). When the number of real contestants is low, the whole problem becomes a bit less complex and easier to prevent a real disaster. The proper behaviour (if we go with MAD) right now would be to keep developing missile defense systems. Because this would force others to develop new, more advanced, more costly missile systems. Which would cut off small players like North Korea or Pakistan from posing much threat.
- mwint 4y ago
  Is the real answer here some form of radical transparency? I’ve seen some decent arguments that spies prevented the Cold War from becoming hot, because both sides thought they had good info on whether the other side was going to strike.
  - TMWNN 4y ago
    >I’ve seen some decent arguments that spies prevented the Cold War from becoming hot, because both sides thought they had good info on whether the other side was going to strike. From Dr. Strangelove: STRANGELOVE >Yes, but the... whole point of the doomsday machine... is lost... if you keep it a secret! Why didn't you tell the world, eh? DESADESKI >It was to be announced at the Party Congress on Monday. As you know, the Premier loves surprises.
- NoGravitas 4y ago
  > I simply can't understand how anybody could defend that it is actually good thing for North Korea to be able to send a rocket to Seoul, Tokyo or Los Angeles. It's clearly a good thing for North Korea; look what the US does to countries that don't have nuclear missiles.
jondeval 4y ago
All things being equal, wouldn't it be better to deal with a technological arms race in ICBM defensive capabilities instead of offensive capabilities?
- somenameforme 4y ago
  Theoretical or practical? Perfect offense is never going to be fundamentally different than what we have today - any countries involved will be irreconcilably reduced to ash. Perfect defense? The reason the world has not had major open war between developed powers since 1945 is not because we've somehow grown enlightened or moved beyond war, it's because of the above. It's the same reason the Cold War isn't called World War 3. Nukes removed any sort of win condition in war. Perfect defense enables the return of win conditions, and the end of peace. That's the theory. But in practice one could reasonably claim that ever more irrational and unwise individuals seem to be making their way into positions of power. And in this scenario, nuclear war will happen. The only question is one of when. And so here obsession on defense, regardless of its cost, would probably be the optimal route. Both views seem quite reasonable to me.
LatteLazy 4y ago
Of course, what we really need to do now is encourage Russia and china to work together more closely and form an alliance against a common and dangerous enemy...
lamontcg 4y ago
> The difficulty of shooting down an incoming missile is broadly overstated. We routinely play sports (baseball, cricket, skeet shooting) where an unaided human has to intercept a ballistic target, and while those humans don’t have a perfect success rate, they also don’t have radar, computers, or multiple chances. This is not a serious argument.
- gpderetta 4y ago
  I don't play baseball, but don't baseballs travel at Match 20+, perform evasive maneuvers and split in multiple sub-balls?
  - lamontcg 4y ago
    Well the one pitcher we went up against in little league who had been held back a year or two certainly pitched like that. I couldn't hit that shit at all.

70 points by cwillu 4y ago

Really liked the aesthetics of Aegis Ashore, they simply pulled a part of the ship and placed it on land. It’s something I imagine a software engineer would do

TMWNN 4y ago
>Really liked the aesthetics of Aegis Ashore, they simply pulled a part of the ship and placed it on land. It’s something I imagine a software engineer would do It's basically a virtual machine for Aegis. Similarly, when the US entered WW1, the US Navy took existing naval guns, mounted them on railcars, and sent them to bombard German positions complete with naval crews and an admiral commanding the entire effort <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/14-inch/50-caliber_railway_gun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/14-inch/50-caliber_railway_gun>.

eesmith 4y ago

> A system which stops 50% of incoming missiles means that only half as many people will die in a nuclear war, That doesn't make sense. The population isn't evenly distributed, and a target can have multiple missiles directed at it. New START set the number of warheads to 1,550. The 500 largest US cities have a population (2016) of 103,020,808. https://www.cdc.gov/places/about/500-cities-2016-2019/pdfs/500-cities-by-state.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/places/about/500-cities-2016-2019/pdfs/5... . (Note LA, Long Beach, and Anaheim are different cities, when I should be using metropolitan areas, so my estimate is low-balling things.) With 6x coverage of the largest cities, and 2x coverage of the smallest, that's a good chance of ~100 million deaths, even with a 50% missile intercept rate. While a 0% intercept rate will still leave many people alive, in the sparsest parts of the US - not a factor of 2. > [footnote] but the number of targets is cut by 50% either way Note how targets are places or cities, not people. Nuking Gann Valley, South Dakota kills far fewer people, and causes far less disruption, than nuking Seattle. > Obviously, these are one-off tests in ideal conditions Last I knew, we had no good numbers for realistic conditions. I last looked at this years ago. At the time they were doing things like including a transmitter with the missile, and excluding chaff and other counter-measures. Clearly if real-world numbers were a 5% then the entire calculation is wrong. > The last half-century has seen very little in the way of better decoy technology, and massive improvements in discrimination. Citation needed in how those improvements affect the overall intercept rate, and the cost/benefit of running an expensive defense system vs. building a few more nukes. > In practice, no leader this side of Stalin is likely to court those kind of losses unless they really need to, no matter how much they stand to gain from it Really now? No one like Curtis LeMay - willing to nuke Vietnam if that were needed to end the war - will ever become president? And ... won't that encourage North Korea to build more bombs? Because the argument seems to be that with 99% effectiveness, the 30 to 40 nuclear weapons they currently have gives a ~33% of having a strike in the US. So the US could nuke North Korea and risk it. Which means North Korea should build more nukes. Ditto for every other smaller nuclear power. > whose opposition often seemed to flow more from political opposition to Reagan than from a technical evaluation of the merits of the system We've spent how many billions of dollars since the 1980s, to build a missile defense system, and we still don't have something that could handle a 1980s-era Soviet attack? Yeah, I'm going to say the critics were right.

Supermancho 4y ago
I would say that: Israel has experienced realistic conditions. Any of the local hotbeds over the last few decades (Iraq, Ukraine, etc) have had realistic conditions, which are now decades old or haven't resulted in any success (effective defense). There's no good reason to expect to be able to protect any given area from a missile attack. If the coverage is good enough in a small area, a nuke right out side the defense range will do enough secondary damage to render it irrelevant. To illustrate, if you want to destroy Israel, the practical approach is to fire a nuke at Palestine.
- actionfromafar 4y ago
  Israel has defended against slow starting, small tin-rockets from known locations. It has not defended against extremely fast ICBMs, which can detonate and create immense destruction even from a considerable height.
- eesmith 4y ago
  Israel has no experience countering nuclear ICBMs. There's a reason the Aegis Combat System isn't the same as the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System. Pakistan can likely build a 150 kt bomb (says Wikipedia). Go to NUKEMAP and try it out. https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?&kt=150&lat=31.7733151&lng=35.1867903&hob_psi=5&hob_ft=5443&psi=20,5,1&zm=12 https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?&kt=150&lat=31.7733151&l... . What good is the Iron Dome against that? > There's no good reason to expect to be able to protect any given area from a missile attack. The defense systems in the linked-to article are meant to intercept and destroy missiles far enough away that even if they explode at that point they do not cause damage to the target. One THADD hit its target at 147 km altitude, says https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_High_Altitude_Area_Defense https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_High_Altitude_Area_De... . Try NUKEMAP again, with a 147 km altitude (use "Advanced options", select Airburst settings of "burst height", and enter 147 with "km" in the pulldown menu. You won't even see the 1psi over-pressure damage at that height.)
  - mnw21cam 4y ago
    If a nuclear warhead is intercepted, it generally doesn't detonate. It requires a very carefully-timed and managed sequence of events to make a warhead detonate, deliberately so.

sillystuff 4y ago

The article touches on this in an off-hand dismissive line, but anti-missile technology is destabilizing. If the anti-missile system is effective, then it allows for a first strike without retaliation. I.e., anti-missile systems are offensive weapons. The largest constraint against using nuclear weapons in a first strike is removed for the party with the effective anti-missile system. Even if it doesn't work well, or at all, you now need your adversary to believe that you spent billions on an ineffective weapons system. If your adversary is not convinced of this, then they have every incentive to react to (possibly false) alarms sooner. Incidents like the following might have ended differently: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_alarm_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_alar... https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/nuclear-vault/2020-03-16/false-warnings-soviet-missile-attacks-during-1979-80-led-alert-actions-us-strategic-forces https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/nuclear-vault/2020-0... https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/13/us/false-alarm-missile-alerts.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/13/us/false-alarm-missile-al...

ceejayoz 4y ago
> If the anti-missile system is effective, then it allows for a first strike without retaliation. That's a big if. Current and near-future ABM systems can take out a handful; great if Iran or North Korea decide to take a potshot, but those are opponents the US can essentially take out in a first strike without nukes if they don't mind the massive blowback. The US has no hope of intercepting all of Russia's or China's nukes anytime soon.
- sudosysgen 4y ago
  There is nothing inherently stopping Iran or North Korea to build a few dozen MIRV-capable missiles.
  - chipsa 4y ago
    Aside from the fact that releasing more than one thing from a space launch vehicle accurately is actually a fair hard thing to do. Which is why multiple satellite buses are considered dual use technology, and export of them is prohibited. Release of said tech to China back in the 90s is considered to be a large player in why they have MIRV ICBMs.

dirtyid 4y ago

Nice to tuck primarly argument against ABM in the footnote - it incentivizes others to increase stockpiles to reestablish mutual vunerability, and missile exchangfes / economics favours attacker. >1. Assuming, of course, that the number of warheads remains constant. This was probably the best argument against missile defense during the Cold War, when it was at least theoretically possible that the Soviets could double their arsenal in response to the threat. It’s a lot less feasible today, given arms control treaties and the shaky state of the Russian economy. It’s plausible that China could pull it off, but they’ve long taken a rather more minimal approach to deterrence than Russia has, which means a reasonable missile defense system probably wouldn’t worry them too much. Also worth noting that yes, it’s possible to overcome a 50% effective system by shooting two warheads at each target, but the number of targets is cut by 50% either way. ⇑

openasocket 4y ago

I think they sell short the destabilization argument. In practice these systems aren't going to be able to shoot down a fixed percentage of a strike. In a strike all missiles are going to be coming in more or less simultaneously, and the ABM system will be able to shoot down a fixed number of them. So it's not a case of shooting down 50% of a strike, it's being able to shoot down 12 missiles from a strike. And that number isn't far off from how much GMD is going to be able to do. And that's the thing about GMD and other BMD systems: they aren't going to be much use against a full nuclear exchange. But what they are great for is the ragged second strike scenario. If the US goes first in a nuclear war and catches Russia/China off guard, it's possible for most of their hundreds of missiles to be taken out in their silos. And they might only be able to answer with a dozen or so missiles in response, which GMD could take care of. And that's the destabilizing aspect of this, it encourages the holder of the ABM system to go first in a nuclear exchange. Because no one cares if 12 out of 400 missiles are shot down, but they do if 12 out of 12 missiles are shot down. It then encourages the opponent to make more survivable nuclear delivery systems. Which is exactly what we see from Russia and China: hypersonic glide vehicles, fractional orbital bombardment systems (basically sending the ICBM all the way around the planet so it strikes at the US from the south instead of the north and away from where GMD is deployed), crazy stuff like nuclear-powered cruise missiles and the Poseidon bomb. It encourages further development of nuclear weapons, meaning creating an arms race. In short, I don't think the ABM systems help us very much in the nuclear war scenario (conventional short-ranged and theater ballistic missiles are a different story).

ceejayoz 4y ago
A single Russian nuclear submarine can carry 800 nuclear warheads [edit: Misread a number; 96 is apparently the max. Still, enough.]. The chances of Russia getting down to twelve nukes after a first strike - even if they don't get off a response while they're in flight - is slim. The nuclear-powered cruise missiles and Poseidon bomb are just Russia's versions of the V weapons in WWII; flashy, but not actually useful, and taking resources from the more staid and boring aspects like "keep your logistics vehicles' tires from exploding".
- 4y ago

w1nst0nsm1th 4y ago

w1nst0nsm1th 4y ago
- stuff4ben 4y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

xg15 4y ago

> A system which stops 50% of incoming missiles means that only half as many people will die in a nuclear war, obviously a desirable result. Half as many will die on the first day of nuclear war. So assume the enemy only obliterated 50 cities when without defense it would have been 100. That's great! But those 50 nuclear explosions are probably still enough to shroud large parts of the country in nuclear fallout. Not to mention the country's infrastructure will still be destroyed, leading to chaos, diseases, famine and all the other consequences of nuclear war. It's not clear to me a defense that could destroy 50% of incoming missiles would make meaningful difference in what happens medium or long term. This is also another general argument against nuclear war: Fallout cares about borders about as much as covid did. Even if you're the attacker and your defense is so good you don't have to worry about retaliatory strikes, you will with high likelihood contaminate your allies as well.

988747 4y ago
Aren't 50 nuclear explosions enough to basically cause the next global Ice Age? With the amount of dust thrown into the air, that will block sunlight?
- Merad 4y ago
  No, definitely not. During the Cold War more than 600 nukes were exploded in above ground tests (thousands more in underground detonations).
  - twelve40 4y ago
    yeah but wikipedia says nuclear winter would come from burning cities emitting soot ("100 or more city firestorms"). All tests were done in places like Novaya Zemlya which barely has any vegetation, let alone big burning cities.
    - credit_guy 4y ago
      Wikipedia also says we've been through such an event at the end of Gulf War 1, when Saddam burned the Kuwaiti oil fields. There was absolutely nothing close to the nuclear winter effect. Sagan later conceded in his book The Demon-Haunted World that his predictions obviously did not turn out to be correct: "it was pitch black at noon and temperatures dropped 4–6° C over the Persian Gulf, but not much smoke reached stratospheric altitudes and Asia was spared." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter#Kuwait_wells_in_the_first_Gulf_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter#Kuwait_wells_in...

PaulHoule 4y ago

The trouble with anti-ballistic missiles at any scale is that the footprint that can be protected by a missile base is small. You can defend Washington, DC, Moscow, or an ICBM field, but it is not so practical to populate a large area such as "east coast cities". The US has a relatively good answer for this in that it has roughly 100 ships with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aegis_Combat_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aegis_Combat_System which can be maneuvered to have a fairly large footprint, but in the case of Ukraine there is a lot of interest in deploying anti-cruise missile defenses but very little in anti-ballistic missile defenses. That's because a cheap system like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASAMS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASAMS has a fairly good footprint against cruise missiles but something expensive like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIM-104_Patriot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIM-104_Patriot would struggle to protect all of Kiev, never mind the rest of the country.

jjk166 4y ago
You can cover a much larger area with midcourse defense. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground-Based_Midcourse_Defense https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground-Based_Midcourse_Defense
- PaulHoule 4y ago
  It still has to be in the right place. Of course there is a footprint very close to the launch point where you can shoot down a missile aimed anywhere. A missile with really high acceleration should be able to do it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_High_Altitude_Area_Defense https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_High_Altitude_Area_De... but it's got to be very close to the launch point which the enemy probably won't let you do.
  - jjk166 4y ago
    But in the case of midcourse defense the right place means on the correct half of the continent. Boost phase defense is pretty much a non-starter for defense against any country except perhaps North Korea.
4y ago

w1nst0nsm1th 4y ago

No need for missiles or 1000s of warheads or anti-missiles. 4 five megatones bombs, which is pretty standard, smuggled in DIY kits through the mexican border, and assembled and detonated in the 4 centers of power of the US, namely Washington (political center), NY (financial center), LA (media center), and SF (technological hub) and the US go back to its founding fathers era or at best to its civil war. And if you can't trace where the nukes come from, who will you nuke back ? The whole world ? The MAD doctrine assume you know who is your ennemy... And it's not the numbers of victims that matters. It's the command centers. You could elaborate something similar to every other nuclear powers.

gpderetta 4y ago
Any retaliation would probably hit all potential enemies. In fact this would probably be the case even if the attacker is known.
chipsa 4y ago
MAD doctrine doesn't exist. No state actually assumes that it should be mutual. That's psychotic. The actual doctrine of the US is Assured Destruction: use a WMD against us, and we will assuredly destroy you. This is not necessarily on a time limit. Such a proposed attack would only harden the resolve the attacked power to make sure the "self lit parking lot" exists.
- waffleiron 4y ago
  Sure, but two states with assured destruction doctrines makes MAD, you ought to destroy the other because they will destroy you. Why use a single WMD against the US when the final result (assured destruction) is the same as when you use a lots of WMDs.
  - chipsa 4y ago
    Maybe. But my point is that "MAD" isn't a doctrine. It's a game-theoretic idea of the outcome of a nuclear war, and it assumes pre-conditions that aren't necessarily true, especially with regard to our opponents.

fuoqi 4y ago

Deploying anti-missile systems in Poland/Romania and potential deployment in South Korea does a lot of good to the world in the sense of balance and mutual trust between nuclear powers. You can spout as much nonsense as you want about protecting allies from Iran and North Korea, but Russia and China will view it as nothing more as an hostile act, which warrants response of their own, fueling further escalation.

ksidudwbw 4y ago
Escalation is good for the industry

cabirum 4y ago

A modern ICBM (see: Sarmat) carries multiple independently targetable warheads (or hypersonic gliders), equipped with active missile defense countermeasures and decoys, striking from arbitrary direction (eg flying over south pole on a non-ballistic suborbital trajectory). Now try to shoot that down.

oldstrangers 4y ago
The Sarmat isn't even in service though, and it might not even be functional. In fact, it probably isn't functional considering the lengthy delays.
stackedinserter 4y ago
We can try to shoot the rocket on the first phases of flight, while it's flying in one piece.
boc 4y ago
> Shiva Star was also used to develop an experimental weapon known as MARAUDER for the SDI effort between 1989 and 1995. The idea appears to have been to create compact toroids of high-density plasma that would be ejected from the device using a massive magnetic pulse.[2] The plasma projectiles would be shot at a speed expected to be 3000 km/s in 1995 and 10,000 km/s (3.3% of the speed of light) by 2000. A shot has the energy of 2,27 kg of TNT exploding. Doughnut-shaped rings of plasma and balls of lightning exploded with devastating thermal and mechanical effects when hitting their target and produced pulse of electromagnetic radiation that could scramble electronics, the energy would shower the interior of the target with high-energy x-rays that would potentially destroy the electronics inside. The tests cost a few million dollars a year.[3] The project became classified, and no information about the fate of the project has been published after 1995. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiva_Star https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiva_Star Just saying, there's a reason most of the modern research on ABM tech is super classified. It's not hard to hit a missile at any speed when you're shooting a plasma cannon at .033C
- heavenlyblue 4y ago
  I do not understand, how can plasma travel at 3.3% the speed of light in the air? Wouldn't it still need to fight the pressure of the air and by that definition the moment a projectile at 3.3% the speed of light bounces against of speck of air that plasma will immediately release most of it's energy dispersing in various directions?

purpleblue 4y ago

Because we aren't worried about ICBMs anymore. We are worried about hypersonic nuclear missiles launched from nuclear sub that are off our coastline. All you need to do is design missiles that will fly low enough and fast enough so that no type of anti-missile system would be feasible. And they basically already have this.

keewee7 4y ago

One reason US/Western missile systems are so outrageously expensive is because they're (rural/flyover) job creation programs masquerading as weapons programs.

buscoquadnary 4y ago
Your right how can those rural proles not see the superiority of concentrating all of our resources in a single location, or the advantages created by utilizing JIT supply chains. Don't they realize real wealth is created by complicated financial schemes that result in offshoring everything to foreign nations. These foolish flyover staters they probably think wealth is created by doing foolish things like building cars, or manufacturing goods. They don't understand that real value is created by creating a platform that allows people to arbitrage information asymmetry to better deliver metric based behavior analysis of wider demographic trends in order to capitalize on emphemeral market fluctuations? Foolish rural hicks.

narag 4y ago

Some random thoughts: Even if you don't intend to be the first to attack, you want a shield in case you're attacked. Even if the shield can't protect 100% or 50% (say just 10%) you want a shield. You probably don't want to brag very loudly about your shield. Actually, you might want to hide it as much as possible so the attackers don't feel the need to overcome it. On the other hand, if you shield is crappy, you won't talk too much about its crappyness either. Current situation has very obvious differences with Cold War and these differences are being revealed right now in Ukraine. "Experts" (I guess actual experts shut TFO) were very surprised of how reluctant Russians were to use aire force, how ineffective their tanks were, etc.

oldstrangers 4y ago
"You probably don't want to brag very loudly about your shield. Actually, you might want to hide it as much as possible so the attackers don't feel the need to overcome it." That's what always struck me about the US being very open about its successes and failures with missile defense. They have absolutely nothing to gain by telling the world any of this, so the only logical conclusion is that their public disclosures are very carefully controlled set pieces to essentially neither confirm nor deny the actual capabilities of the system. I imagine this also applies to the US and its hypersonic weapons program and the very public display of their "failures." Right.
- narag 4y ago
  Another item: even if your shield performance is currently underwhelming, you still want to have it, so you can keep upgrading it as technology advances, instead of rushing it when there's a breakthrough. And when it becomes a success, you still keep your cards close to your vest.
  - bluGill 4y ago
    A large part of good vs bad performance is just iterating on bad until you solve the weaknesses. Sure there are sometimes fundamental problems that need a break through that could be years in coming, but often the only thing lacking is effort to fine tune algorithms. (figuring out which is which is left as an exercise for the reader)

more_corn 4y ago

One-off tests in ideal conditions work 50% of the time. Sooo if we have enough nuclear weapons to kill everyone on earth 4 times over that means in an ideal case we only all die twice? Of course they probably won’t all launch at once. Maybe half of nuclear weapons are in hands of the three likely parties. So maybe half get launched. In the shit show of a full-scale nuclear exchange you can predict less than perfect performance (also I’d guess countermeasures are better than advertised on both sides since countermeasures are 1,000x cheaper than intercept measures). Then again some will fail to launch since global corruption has undermined effectiveness broadly. The numbers get fuzzy, but it’s looking like everybody still dies. Best case maybe most of the northern hemisphere is unlivable. A recent study shows that even a limited nuclear exchange will toss up so much ash as to reduce agricultural yields and starve a billion people. Let’s say it’s not a limited exchange and food production is down to 25% of normal. I suppose the number who starve would be lower if half of the planet were already dead. Then again there hasn’t been a study of what would happen to the global economy and food system if large parts of the world were rendered radioactive wasteland (my gut says it’s not going to survive such a shock). I suspect food shipping wouldn’t continue as normal. So almost everyone dies and the rest fight over the insufficient remaining food. Whee! I’m coming around to the “die in the first blast” strategy.

NoGravitas 4y ago
> One-off tests in ideal conditions work 50% of the time. Sooo if we have enough nuclear weapons to kill everyone on earth 4 times over that means in an ideal case we only all die twice? Yeah, I was having the same thought. Half as much overkill? What value does that have? My strategy in the case of nuclear war is also to die as quickly as possible.

krunck 4y ago

A review of the discussion on this topic shows that we are suffering from the same insanity that peaked at during the Cold War. No lessons learned. And the same shitheads running the circus.

adameasterling 4y ago
> suffering from the same insanity It isn't exactly clear what this means, but when I read it I thought, "we all seem to be suddenly hysterical about nuclear war." I listened to the most recent episode of the Arms Control Wonk podcast[1] last night. In this episode, Dr. Jeffrey Lewis observed that yes, paid media and social media is hysterical about nuclear war right now, but also, that the underlying emotional anxiety that fuels this sort of coverage/discussion is the natural result of nuclear deterrence. It's supposed to feel tremendously frightening. He noted that the word itself, "deter," comes from a latin word that also gave us "terror." The tremendous anxiety that we all feel is totally appropriate given the threat. It feels like insanity, yes, but it actually shows that the system of deterrence, as terrible as it is, is still working. 1. https://www.armscontrolwonk.com/ https://www.armscontrolwonk.com/
nickff 4y ago
>"A review of the discussion on this topic shows that we are suffering from the same insanity that peaked at during the Cold War. No lessons learned. And the same shitheads running the circus." Please share the results of your review, and share the lessons you learned. As posted, this comment contains no informational or rhetorical content.

twawaaay 4y ago

I think the basic problem with the claims that good missile defence would be destabilising is advent of rogue countries that have access to long range ballistic missiles and to nuclear weapons. I simply can't understand how anybody could defend that it is actually good thing for North Korea to be able to send a rocket to Seoul, Tokyo or Los Angeles. If you keep defending game theory and mutually assured destruction, the real solution would not be to freeze the technological race but keep that race up, keep everybody unsure about progress of everybody else and keep only the largest powers actually on top of the race and the smaller ones being unable to pose harm. Because if you freeze capabilities you give smaller nations time to catch up. This creates situation with lots of players with parity (in this case ability to seriously harm everybody else). When the number of real contestants is low, the whole problem becomes a bit less complex and easier to prevent a real disaster. The proper behaviour (if we go with MAD) right now would be to keep developing missile defense systems. Because this would force others to develop new, more advanced, more costly missile systems. Which would cut off small players like North Korea or Pakistan from posing much threat.

mwint 4y ago
Is the real answer here some form of radical transparency? I’ve seen some decent arguments that spies prevented the Cold War from becoming hot, because both sides thought they had good info on whether the other side was going to strike.
- TMWNN 4y ago
  >I’ve seen some decent arguments that spies prevented the Cold War from becoming hot, because both sides thought they had good info on whether the other side was going to strike. From Dr. Strangelove: STRANGELOVE >Yes, but the... whole point of the doomsday machine... is lost... if you keep it a secret! Why didn't you tell the world, eh? DESADESKI >It was to be announced at the Party Congress on Monday. As you know, the Premier loves surprises.
NoGravitas 4y ago
> I simply can't understand how anybody could defend that it is actually good thing for North Korea to be able to send a rocket to Seoul, Tokyo or Los Angeles. It's clearly a good thing for North Korea; look what the US does to countries that don't have nuclear missiles.

jondeval 4y ago

All things being equal, wouldn't it be better to deal with a technological arms race in ICBM defensive capabilities instead of offensive capabilities?

somenameforme 4y ago
Theoretical or practical? Perfect offense is never going to be fundamentally different than what we have today - any countries involved will be irreconcilably reduced to ash. Perfect defense? The reason the world has not had major open war between developed powers since 1945 is not because we've somehow grown enlightened or moved beyond war, it's because of the above. It's the same reason the Cold War isn't called World War 3. Nukes removed any sort of win condition in war. Perfect defense enables the return of win conditions, and the end of peace. That's the theory. But in practice one could reasonably claim that ever more irrational and unwise individuals seem to be making their way into positions of power. And in this scenario, nuclear war will happen. The only question is one of when. And so here obsession on defense, regardless of its cost, would probably be the optimal route. Both views seem quite reasonable to me.

LatteLazy 4y ago

Of course, what we really need to do now is encourage Russia and china to work together more closely and form an alliance against a common and dangerous enemy...

lamontcg 4y ago

> The difficulty of shooting down an incoming missile is broadly overstated. We routinely play sports (baseball, cricket, skeet shooting) where an unaided human has to intercept a ballistic target, and while those humans don’t have a perfect success rate, they also don’t have radar, computers, or multiple chances. This is not a serious argument.

gpderetta 4y ago
I don't play baseball, but don't baseballs travel at Match 20+, perform evasive maneuvers and split in multiple sub-balls?
- lamontcg 4y ago
  Well the one pitcher we went up against in little league who had been held back a year or two certainly pitched like that. I couldn't hit that shit at all.