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Kongsberg, Norway and Germany to Develop New "Super Missile"
- news_to_me 3y agoGreat, more ways for people to die.
- tticvs 3y agoAlternatively: new way to defend people.
- deely3 3y agoSure, tell that to people of Ukraine.
- JumpCrisscross 3y agoSeriously. How many lives would have been saved if Kyiv had kept some of her nukes?
- supergirl 3y agoofficially, ukraine could not use them on their own. only russia had the "launch codes". part of the reason why they gave them up in the first place. not sure how much of a problem that is in practice. in any case, ukraine would have also needed the resources to maintain them which is no easy task. so I guess the answer is: we'll never know if it had any impact.
- CrzyLngPwd 3y agoThey were soviet nukes. They had as much control over them as Germany has over the US nukes parked in Germany.
- fl7305 3y agoUS nukes in Germany are guarded by US troops. Who guarded the ex-Soviet nukes in Ukraine? Ukrainian troops, or Russian?
- CrzyLngPwd 3y agoSoviet.
- fl7305 3y agoThe Soviet Union was dissolved in 1991. We are talking about the time after that, when Ukraine became an independent country. Since Russia had to negotiate to transfer the weapons from Ukraine to Russia, it stands to reason that Russia did not physically control them. Otherwise, it would just have transferred them on its own. Do you have any sources to back up your claims in this thread?
- delfinom 3y agoThose nukes were in definite Ukrainian possession. Also, Ukraine was a significant engineering powerhouse while part of the Soviet Union, they had the people to both build and maintain nukes.
- CrzyLngPwd 3y agoNo, they weren't.
- flagrant_taco 3y agoUS nukes in Germany are actively controlled and operated by the US military. If the US dissolved you better believe Germany would have the technical know-how to begin operating those facilities and weapons themselves, if they wanted to.
- CrzyLngPwd 3y agoForget about if the US dissolved. That's just noise. What you are saying is that Germany could use US nukes, and so is de facto a nuclear-armed nation, and so is any country that hosts US nukes.
- fl7305 3y agoYou first wrote: > They were soviet nukes. They had as much control over them as Germany has over the US nukes parked in Germany. The Soviet Union ceased to exist in 1991. We are talking about what happened after that. You compared the situation with US nukes in Germany today. But that is not the same situation at all. The US has not ceased to exist like the Soviet Union did. And if it did, it is far from obvious which US states will control the nukes in the mainland ex-USA. That would be the parallel with the Soviet Union and Ukraine/Russia. Not US nukes in a foreign state.
- flagrant_taco 3y agoWhat I am saying is that if the US dissolved, similar to the Soviet Union in your example, there isn't anything technically preventing Germany from being able to take over the nukes. Do you not see a difference in comparing post-USSR Ukraine with Germany while allied with the very much alive US? Hosting US military installations that house nuclear weapons is very different from hosting abandoned nuclear weapons of a state actor that no longer exists.
- flagrant_taco 3y agoIt's hard to predict how that game of chicken would have played it. It seems likely that Russia may not have invaded of Ukraine had nukes, if they believed Ukraine would use them. The entire scenario rewrites 30 years of history, everything would be different. Would Russia have invaded? Would Ukraine have made itself more of an international player if it were on the list of nuclear powers? Would Ukraine have actually used nukes after an invasion? Could their allies have pressured Ukraine to avoid a nuclear war? Would Russia be in the same position or is today if Ukraine left the USSR as a nuclear power?
- baybal2 3y ago[dead]
- bandyaboot 3y agoYeah but at the time having fewer unstable countries with nukes was a rational decision.
- fl7305 3y agoCountless ethnic groups have been eradicated throughout history by their stronger neighbors. Was it a good thing that they could not successfully defend themselves? "If no-one has weapons..." / "If people would just be nice..." That is not the world we live in. We can only control what we do, not what other countries do.
- odiroot 3y agoMore ways to deter megalomaniac dictators.
- sertbdfgbnfgsd 3y agoYou sound like the kind of person who, when an aggressor comes, will argue for us to just surrender because "war bad".
- riku_iki 3y agoAll these high precision munitions actually decrease civil casualties comparing to ww2 carpet bombings.
- iodbh 3y agoJust leaving this here to contrast with the “murder tech good” vibe. If your greatest achievement ended up with a bunch of people dead - maybe there would have been more utility in self-destruction. If you feel like defending cool missile tech to avoid offending a potential juicy customer - maybe you need to get your family bombed and remember that “skin in the game” can be literal. If you think that violence is necessary - maybe you need to be in situation where violence is a possible outcome to remember no one wants it. Everyone deserves the receiving end of their designs.
- fl7305 3y ago> If your greatest achievement ended up with a bunch of people dead - maybe there would have been more utility in self-destruction. In other words, American Indians who were proud of their spears and axes should instead have embraced self-destruction. Yikes. My ancestors were vikings. Should their victims also have embraced self-destruction rather than make the best weapons they could to defend themselves from the vikings? > maybe you need to be in situation where violence is a possible outcome to remember no one wants it. Tell me more about how the vikings "didn't want violence"?
- xenospn 3y agoI had no idea Norway made missiles!
- pytonslange 3y agoKongsberg Defence makes NASAMS (used to protect air space around the White House), and the Penguin, JSM, NSM missiles. They also build a bunch of other stuff like the RWS which is kind of well known. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protector_RWS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protector_RWS
- jonathrg 3y agoNorway exports about $1B of weapons, missiles etc through Nammo and Kongsberg Gruppen.
- bitsinthesky 3y agoWhat's your source for this? I was also under the impression Norway had a large arms industry, but from what I can find online, it's fairly small with stats from $50 - 300 million/year
- Roark66 3y agoNice, but it is planned to be operational in next 10 years. While we(NATO) need a useful deterrent in place in Europe in next ~6 years tops. If people of EU truly believe people have rights not to be enslaved, killed, have a right to govern themselves in a democratic way, more money and effort has to be invested in mass manufacturing of currently and previously available weapons. Such as artillery shells (preferably smart, with rocket assist, but dumb too). Also systems using drones and manpads (the latter are being manufactured in Poland for example, but in two orders of magnitude too low a volume).
- 3seashells 3y agoThe Finland border affair has shown that all the effort put into ending democracy by furthering totalitarian parties can not be deterred. Why build rockets if they hit and defeat you anyway.
- yourusername 3y agoI agree we need more investment in defense but where does the 6 year timeline come from? What happens in 6 years?
- networkchad 3y ago[dead]
- trashtester 3y agoThere is no legitimate threat from Russia to Nato within the next 6 years. Russia is struggling against a technological 3rd rate power such as Ukraine. If NATO mobilized the economy for wartime production, it could quickly produce enough hardware to overwhelm Russia. And Russia's economy would have no response. China, though, is a completely different matter. Their industrial and technological base is an order of magnitude larger than Russia's.
- southernplaces7 3y agoThe curious thing about what you say is that until a few months into the Ukraine war, it was far from commonly accepted knowledge. I can't count how many analysis articles and opinion pieces from before this war spoke frequently of Russia's possible ability to attack the Nato Alliance heavily. Some people, remembering the strong WWI and WWII lessons that economics eventually always decides victory, looked at the Russian economy compared to the combined economies of the NATO alliance countries and quickly saw that a Russian invasion of anything bigger than a small nearby country (think Georgia; not even Ukraine fits the bill as small enough) would be an eventual disaster for Russia itself, but its projected image of new fighting might under Putin's supposed military modernization held just enough media sway to make this easily forgettable.
- credit_guy 3y agoThe article is very light on actual details. Out of curiosity, I did a bit of digging. There's not much to find but here it is: - this Norwegian company is known for its Naval Strike Missile (NSM). This missile is supposed to be a supersonic version of the NSM. - NSM [1] is a quite recent anti-ship missile, first deployed in 2012. It does not look like it was ever used in action, but it pleased a lot of its operators, so that the US Navy decided to mount it on all its Littoral Combat Ships [2], and the Royal Navy decided to use it to replace its "aging" Harpoon missiles [3] - the current gold standard for anti-ship missiles is the Harpoon missile. The NSM is about half the size of a Harpoon (both in total mass and warhead), but has a longer range, and more importantly various sources claim it is very stealthy. That appears to be its main advantage - so I guess the new missile will try to build on this: to continue to be stealthy, but to also be supersonic. If they deliver, it could be a game changer. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Strike_Missile https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Strike_Missile [2] https://insidedefense.com/daily-news/navy-plans-put-naval-strike-missiles-all-remaining-littoral-combat-ships-fy-32 https://insidedefense.com/daily-news/navy-plans-put-naval-st... [3] https://maritime-executive.com/article/royal-navy-signs-up-for-naval-strike-missile-to-replace-harpoon https://maritime-executive.com/article/royal-navy-signs-up-f...
- alumelot 3y ago[flagged]