The Political Thread

[TordelBack]

"Labour leadership candidate confirms that £40 billion will be made available for supporting vetearans, improving equipment and training for conventional military, and providing targeted international aid to areas worst affected by 'war on terror' ".

Wouldn't that be nice?

[The Legendary Shark]

There's big money in nuclear weapons, and where there's big money there are well paid lobbyists and pro-nuke think tanks and campaign contributions and all that jazz. So long as there's profit in constructing and maintaining nuclear arsenals, I'm afraid they're here to stay.

[Banners]

Not that I would have paid £25, but as a so-called Registered Supporter who paid £3 to vote for Corbyn last year, I was surprised I never even got so much as an email about the forthcoming Labour leadership contest.

[Jim_Campbell]

On Trident: TBH, I've always been more hawkish on defence than my (apparently) left-wing leanings would suggest to some, and I've always been more or less agnostic on our strategic nuclear deterrent, considering it (on balance) a probably necessary evil.

Recently, I've had some very interesting conversations with a friend who I consider at least equally hawkish and who is fairly well-connected in these matters (I'm pretty sure there's a copy of the Official Secrets Act in the bottom of a filing cabinet somewhere with his signature on it) that's made me reconsider.

Essentially: who are we deterring? North Korea? Their nuclear programme doesn't work and their target list begins and ends in South Korea. Plus, they're nutters, so likely wouldn't be deterred anyway. Iran? Again, we're nowhere on their list of potential targets, and were quite happy to walk back their nuclear ambitions. The biggest threat from Iran's nuclear programme is the Republican Congress's attempts to renege on the current agreements. Who's left? Pakistan? Don't see it. Again, we're waaaay down their possible target list. It's extremely likely that Saudi Arabia also has nuclear weapons (courtesy of Pakistan) but see the North Korea example; they're nutters and we're not on the list.

Who's left that we should be worried about? Israel? France? The United States?

No. We're left with Russia, and that's a mental argument for two reasons: 1) Russia regards the UK as a deposit account for uncounted billions of Russian money, and 2) take a moment to google "Russian anti-ballistic missile defence"... do it now, I'll wait... Done? Good. Then you'll have seen that Russia has missile defence systems we could only dream of. If they wanted, they could empty their silos at us and sit there in near-total confidence that they could bring down every single warhead we launched at them. Of course, there's a possibility that one or two might get through, but this is fucking Russia we're talking about. Have you seen how those guys go to war? You think they're not OK with a little retaliatory damage on their side?

And that's before we get anywhere near the fact that any new nuclear system would be slaved to the US military, almost certainly be running hackable software, and would be vulnerable to the rapidly advancing field of submarine detection.

And we still haven't considered that all the most potent threats against us aren't coming from nations whose cities we could threaten with annihilation but from terrorist enclaves in failed states. Some guy in the mountains in Pakistan sends a jihadi with a suitcase nuke into Leeds? You think he cares if we can annihilate Karachi?

Now, tacital nukes... that's a different matter. We can put a smart missile within a few hundred yards of your location that will obliterate everything in a one-mile radius of impact and liquefy rock to a depth of 300 metres? There's no cave or bunker that will protect you from that. That shit, they might be scared of. I'd argue that it'd be a far more effective deterrent against a hypothetical series of Russian incursions into border states, too, since it's a weapon we might conceivably use.

So... can we stop with the ridiculous assertions that being against the renewal of Trident means you're weak on defence, please? Spending a couple of hundred billion on a defence strategy that addresses a military situation that hasn't existed for a couple of decades is madness.

[Jim_Campbell]

Oh, and a final subsidiary point: our position on the UN Security Council is a historic one deriving from our status as one of the victorious powers of WWII. It pre-dates our nuclear capability and would be unlikely to be stripped away if we relinquished our strategic nuclear deterrent.

[The Legendary Shark]

Nukes are out of date, of course. The latest is kinetic weapons - shaped tungsten rods more or less dropped from orbit. All the bang of a nuke without the radiation, and the added bonus that the strike can be blamed on an asteroid if need be.

[TordelBack]

Nukes are out of date, of course. The latest is kinetic weapons - shaped tungsten rods more or less dropped from orbit. All the bang of a nuke without the radiation, and the added bonus that the strike can be blamed on an asteroid if need be.

Except that kinetic harpoons currently have to be hefted to orbit - and woukd have an explosive yield not that much greater than the equivalent mass of TNT. Since the cost to orbit is in and around $5K per kilo, an Hiroshima-equivalent 15 kiloton explosion would cost $75,000,000,000 per projectile -not even counting the support infrastructure or the difficulty of getting a 15,000 tonne rod (or more plausibly 1000×15 tonne rods) to orbit. So until we follow Heinlein's lead and start making them on the moon or further out, conventional explosives and nukes still hold most of the cards.

[Hawkmumbler]

"Nuke them from orbit. It's the only way to make sure."

[sheridan]

Of course, there's a possibility that one or two might get through, but this is fucking Russia we're talking about. Have you seen how those guys go to war? You think they're not OK with a little retaliatory damage on their side?

"The people? What have they got to do with it?"

[The Legendary Shark]

Unfortunately, DARPA have access to more scientists and are far more devious than Heinlen. They figured out how to pack smallish pellets into ceramic (amongst other things) shells in such a way as to greatly reduce weight whilst maintaining, and in some configurations even increasing kinetic energy release. They even addressed the question of impact or airburst - the former being good for penetration and the latter for widespread surface destruction. Further, with a hypersonic bomber flying the correct path, these things don't even need to be fired from orbit.

I don't like these things any more than I do nukes, railguns or drones. Well, that's not entirely true - these technologies could be put to good use as parts of a planetary asteroid defence network, for instance. But, leave these technologies in the hands of "government" and they'll turn them into weapons to defend their own positions and not tools for the betterment of the whole.

[Hawkmumbler]

Sharky just went full tin foil hat. XD

[IAMTHESYSTEM]

If current technology keeps expanding at the same rate we will have in less than a century AI Computing systems, bio weapons and Nano technology. Any of these are dangerous alone but together they are potentially devastating for the human species. Nuclear weapons though horrific tend to be air burst that flatten cities, Military communications centers and people. Tens to hundreds of millions will die, millions more afterwards of radiation from the inevitable ground strikes but it's not species wipe out. Bio weapons and Nano tech however are much more insidious since you'll never see them coming till it's too late. Genocide by test tube will be available to just about any government, state sponsored terrorist groups and even criminal gangs, such are the profits criminality can generate today and in the future. You know what I'm trying to say here...

WE NEED JUDGE DREDD!

[GordonR]

Nukes are out of date, of course. The latest is kinetic weapons - shaped tungsten rods more or less dropped from orbit. All the bang of a nuke without the radiation, and the added bonus that the strike can be blamed on an asteroid if need be.

Except that kinetic harpoons currently have to be hefted to orbit - and woukd have an explosive yield not that much greater than the equivalent mass of TNT. Since the cost to orbit is in and around $5K per kilo, an Hiroshima-equivalent 15 kiloton explosion would cost $75,000,000,000 per projectile -not even counting the support infrastructure or the difficulty of getting a 15,000 tonne rod (or more plausibly 1000×15 tonne rods) to orbit. So until we follow Heinlein's lead and start making them on the moon or further out, conventional explosives and nukes still hold most of the cards. I

The 'rods from God' idea just doesn't stand up.  Atmospheric re-entry might burn them up too much, causing them to go wildly off-target.  You could fit them with retro-engines to slow them down and guidance systems to keep them accurate....by which point you've basically turned them into guided missiles, which pretty much negates the idea of them.

As for the fairly idiotic idea that you can blame the destruction on an asteroid strike.  Assuming the highly unlikely proposition that no-one knows you've got this technology or has noticed you putting it into orbit, you might get away with it once, but, if 'asteroids' keep on landing on top of people you want dead, I think everyone's going to figure out the truth quite quickly.

[Modern Panther]

Ah yes, privately held nuclear weapons, for the 'benefit of the whole'.  I know I'll feel much safer when unregulated multinational corporations are the sole arbiters of who lives and dies.

WMDs in all types are an outdated and unnecessary relic of the past.  There is literally no possible scenario where vaporizing an entire city is an acceptable response.  Small scale, targeted weapons have a far greater potential for self-defence.  Unfortunately, they have the downside of making our leaders feel less important. 

Contact your mp and ask them how many innocents killed in a nuclear fire would be too many.

[GordonR]

To quote an observation I saw today:  we're told that possessing WMDs deters enemies from attacking us.  We attacked Iraq because we were told they had WMDs.