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2016-01-25 Government

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Posted by Skidmark 2016-01-25 01:01|| || Front Page|| [4 views ] Top

#1 File this under "If we could all just get along".

There are operational rules for judging a philosophy invalid. A philosophy is invalid if the answer to either of the following questions is "yes".

1. Does it only work if everybody does it?

2. Does it fail if everybody does it?

Posted by Sven the pelter 2016-01-25 15:21|| 2016-01-25 15:21|| Front Page Top

#2 This article brings up some good points, but is largely stupid.

First, $1 trillion over 30 years is $30 billion a year. Expensive, but not going to break the bank. For goodness sake the completely worthless federal education department budget is $70.7 billion per year, and only $20B of that is student loans.

Second, if the U.S. modernizes nukes then so will everyone else to the same level. No, everyone else will modernize as much as they can without regard to what we do. Pakistan, India, North Korea, and China are building bombs and missiles as fast as they can and will continue to do so. UK, France, Russia and the U.S. are the only nuclear countries, who have enough bombs and don't need any more. However, even these bombs need to work when called upon; so, modernization will happen one way or another.

Third, the thing that is causing all the other nuke powers to wig out about the U.S. isn't how many or modern our nukes are it is instead that we have a robust, tested, and deployed anti-missile capability, which makes every other nuke state's arsenal worthless (except Russia's). So, again, what we do to modernize our nukes is meaningless to our potential adversaries.

The only point in this article that has any merit, is the discussion about the delivery systems for the new modernized nukes. Creating duel capable missiles, bombers, and ICBMs is potentially destabilizing. But this is a choice we make in systems development. And their are relatively simple ways to ensure that no mistakes are made. For example, if we are going to build duel capable delivery systems, then we should take care to include observers from potential nuclear adversaries during the weapons deployment process; so, they can be assured that any duel capable system we want to use is armed only with conventional weapons and let them communicate that to their country's strategic command prior to our use of these weapons. People can argue that that is a security risk or many other problems. If that is such a big deal, then don't build duel capable delivery systems. But again, this is not an argument not to modernize, only that the path of modernization with duel capable delivery systems has a set of problems that the path with dedicated delivery systems does not.

So, in summary, largely stupid.

Posted by rammer 2016-01-25 19:29|| 2016-01-25 19:29|| Front Page Top

#3 Dual....

Posted by RJ45ACP 2016-01-25 21:41|| 2016-01-25 21:41|| Front Page Top

#4 en garde, mon ami...

Posted by rammer 2016-01-25 22:27|| 2016-01-25 22:27|| Front Page Top

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