Russian Nuclear Posture superior to the US's?

Some info worthy of discussion.

US Nuclear Primacy

Nuclear Primacy "is a fallacy"

I personally find the counter-arguement lacking. Leaving out entire portions of Lieber and Press's arguement i.e the reliability of Russia's nuclear arsenal. Criticizing the mathematical model put forward but not providing one of their own. I find their over reliance in the belief that Russia's nuclear arsenal in its present state would survive a first strike and have sufficient force to launch an effective counter strike completely idiotic.




[edit on 2-4-2007 by danwild6]

Originally posted by Harlequin
The Russian nuclear `stock pile` was never as high as the administraion wanted you to believe

why?

The American politicians always and consistently publicly underestimated ( not that they did not know better) the Russian ICBM and long range missile forces. In the middle 80's the USSR had a absolutely massive lead in terms of not only missiles but warheads to say nothing of their overwhelming lead in terms of yield the survivability of their forces , their capacity to reload and their massive passive defenses.

simple - the russians have 10+ years on thw US in the field of Bio weapons , they have a ready-to-deliver stockpile of 250 tons of weapnoized anthrax

Above and beyond their lead in both strategic and nonstrategic nuclear and conventional forces they also apparently had bio and chem weapons by the dozens of tons and seem to have weaponized far larger quantities of it.

so whereas the US has allways been `nuke nuke nuke` the russians have diversified and will deploy Biological and Chnemical agents on tehere ICMB`s

I'm just not sure if biological weapons would have ever played a large part as the Russians largely seem interested in winning the war and not killing as many Americans as possible. That seemed to have in fact been propaganda spread by those who liked MAD ( the more humans dead the better it seems ) and wanted to sell it to the American public instead of active ABM defenses and passive civil defenses.

you have incoming and don`t have a clue whether the warhead is a 10Mt city buster or 10 tons of chimera`d ebola

Which is largely a terror weapons against which antidotes can be developed if a American administration cared to do so. There is no real 'efficient" antidote to a 750 KT blast at ground level and while you can always invite a few million foreigners to make up for whatever damage the bio weapons did you can't rebuild cities in the time it takes to invite 100 000 000 South Americans to come live whatever it left of the American dream.

1 will be cleaned up after the event in a short time the other will kill a country.

Biological weapons are largely useless when proper passive protection is used ( but the US population were not prepared by any means) to say nothing of what is possible when martial law is declared and these things are contained. Biological weapons have their uses as terror weapons ( if you will i will do even worse) but i have not so far been left with the impression that the USSR would have deployed those as anything but a last resort.

Feel free to send me some links!

Stellar

[edit on 5-4-2007 by StellarX]

Originally posted by FredT
Because some of your comments are flawed IMHO. And If you are, using a book for a reference you are not citing your sources which is required here at ATS.

If he can give us the books' title, publisher and the page ( i like the page as well but newspapers don't even do that) i think one can only question the validity with your similarly sourced claims...

The CEP of the D-5 is almost the same as its land based counterpart the LGM-30 Minuteman III

www.globalsecurity.org...
www.globalsecurity.org...

A CEP of 120 meters for a D-5 indicates that the SSBN's are using inertial navigation to position themselves and how exposed do you need to be to extend an antenna and get a GPS fix eh?

I think the D-5's CEP is in fact less than the minutemen but that those few dozen meters may simply be due to the 3000 km longer it has to travel... The problem with the GPS guidance is that such satellites will be destroyed by direct energy weapons within minutes of the outbreak of the war so nothing that relies on GPS can or should be expected to function if it does not have alternative guidance which all ICBMs obviously has.

Also the D-5 has a reported range of 7360 km. The Minuteman III is greater than that at 11000 km, but are silo located in the central US. And no, they do not need to sit right off the coast to hold most targets in Russia at risk. Did you forget that missiles can be launched from the Pole, the Pacific, etc?

I did not get the impression that he forgot about that.

The ten Trident submarines which originally operated out of Sub-Base Kings Bay in Georgia
were all loaded with the Trident-2 missiles, also known as D-5. Trident-2s have the accuracy and
quick delivery time necessary to decapitate underground command posts, as well as demolishing silos.
www.plrc.org...

IF , and in my knowledge and opinion a big 'if' they reach their aiming points...

Sure thing. Scattering weapons grade plutonium in the upper atmosphere will be okay?

Mostly yes as at that height it will probably fall out over some other country and that aint a Russian problem...

Unless the Russians are going to deploy the nuclear tipped ABM's such large numbers that they are going to have one for each warhead, you are looking at area type effects that will cause physical damage to the incomming missiles and NOT total destruction.

You seem quite unaware of the fact that both the US and Russia had hit-to-kill ABM technology in the early 60's.

Bell's proposal would have to deal with bombers flying at 500 mph (800 km/h) or more at altitudes of up to 60,000 ft (20,000 m). At these speeds, even a supersonic rocket is no longer fast enough to be simply aimed at the target. The missile must "lead" the target to ensure it hits it before it runs out of fuel. This means that the missile and target cannot be tracked in a single radar, increasing the complexity of the system. One part was well developed. By this point, the US had considerable experience with lead-calculating analog computers, starting with the British Kerrison Predictor and a series of increasingly capable U.S. designs.

For Nike, three radars were used. The acquisition radar searched for a target to be handed over to the Target Tracking Radar (TTR) for tracking. The Missile Tracking Radar (MTR) tracked the missile by way of a transponder, as the missile's radar signature alone was not sufficient. The MTR also commanded the missile by way of Pulse-position modulation, the pulses were received, decoded and then amplified back for the MTR to track. Once the tracking radars were locked the system was able to work automatically following launch, barring any unexpected occurrences. The computer compared the two radars directions, along with information on the speeds and distances, to calculate the intercept point and steer the missile. The entirety of this system was provided by the Bell System's electronics firm, Western Electric.

Some small-scale work to use Nike Zeus as an anti-satellite weapon (ASAT) was carried out from 1962 until the project was cancelled in favor of Thor based systems in 1966. In the end, neither development would enter service. However, the Nike Zeus system did demonstrate a hit-to-kill capability against ballistic missiles in the early 1960s. See National Missile Defense and anti-ballistic missile systems.

en.wikipedia.org...

So even the wiki people know about the American efforts...

In March 4, 1961, in the area of the A testing ground the V-1000 ABM with a fragmentation- high-explosive warhead successfully intercepted and destroyed at an altitude of 25 kilometers the R -12 BM launched from the State Central Testing Ground with a dummy warhead weighing 500 kilograms. The Dunai-2 radar of the A system detected the BM at a distance of 1,500 kilometers when it appeared over the radio horizon, then the M-40 central computer found parameters of the R-12 trajectory, and prepared target designation for precision homing radars and the launchers. The ABM was launched and its warhead was actuated by the signal from the command post. The warhead of the ABM consisted of 16,000 balls with a carbide-tungsten core, TNT filling, and a steel hull. The warhead had a fragments field shaped as a disk perpendicular to the longitudinal axis of the ABM. The warhead was actuated by the signal from the ground with a deflection necessary for formation of the fragments field. The warheads of this type were designed under the supervision of Chief Designer A. Voronov. The M-40 central computer was designed by the Precise Mechanics and Computer Research Institute of the Academy of Sciences under the supervision of Academician S. Lebedev. The computer could make 40,000 operations per second.

The V-1000 had two stages. The first stage was a solid-propellant booster, and the second stage was a sustainer stage with a warhead which was equipped with a liquid-propellant engine developed by the Design Bureau of Chief Designer A. Isaev. In addition to the fragmentation warhead a nuclear warhead was also designed for the missile. The flight tests of the missile, which could intercept targets at altitudes of up to 25 kilometers, started in 1958. The parallel approach to the target at a strictly counter course was chosen as the method of the ABM's homing. The V-1000 was delivered to the trajectory calculated according to the homing method along the regular curve, parameters of which were defined by the predicted target trajectory. P. Kirillov was the Chief Designer of the missile's automatic pilot. On March 26, 1961, the ABM destroyed the warhead of the R-5 BM with 500 kilograms of TNT. Overall, during the trial of the A system 11 launches of ABMs were performed which destroyed warheads of BMs, and experimental ABMs with heat seeking self-homing warhead, radio -controlled fuses, and optical fuses were also launched. The S2TA version of the V-1000 ABM with a heat seeking self-homing warhead was tested at the A testing ground between 1961 and 1963. The flight tests of the V-1000 with the nuclear warhead (without the fissible material) designed in Chelyabinsk-70 were conducted in 1961. For this warhead two types of proximity fuses were designed and tested: the optical fuse (designed by the GOI under the supervision of Chief Designer Emdin) a and radio-electronic fuse (Chief Designer Bondarenko) for the R2TA and G2TA versions of the missile.

Systems for surmounting of air defenses intended for domestic BM were also tested during the trial of the A system. The launched target ballistic missiles were equipped with inflatable false targets Verba, unfolding false targets Kaktus, and Krot active jammers. Overall, the field tests of the A system showed a principle possibility of BM warheads interception. Experiments under the coded name Operation K were conducted (K1, K2, K3, K4, and K5) to check a possibility of the A system functioning under the influence of nuclear explosions at altitudes of 80 to 300 kilometers between 1961 and 1962 at the Sary-Shagan testing ground. The A system showed its capability to function even when a conventional enemy used nuclear weapons.

www.fas.org...

And the FAS people know about the Russian successes in the same general time frame....

We should not ask if ICBMs can be shot down but rather why American political leaders do not want to defend the American public by once again ( as they once briefly did) deploying these weapons in sufficient numbers to ensure that no country is assured of actually achieving a mushroom cloud over American cities.

Thus lots of aerisolized weapons grade material in the atmoshpere.

Which will simply not lead to to anything like the type of mass casualties that a 350 Kt explosion at 2 km altitude would.

Stellar

[edit on 5-4-2007 by StellarX]

Originally posted by Hiphar
Russia produced far fewer warheads than the us, only about 40,000 -vs- 70,000 US. The difference is that the US dismantled its old unusable warheads after their life spans were over. Nuke warheads only last about 12 years at best without rebuilding them, Russian/Soviet warheads rumored only lasted 6 years.

The Soviets have a first strike arsenal: at least 5000 warheads of sufficient yield and
accuracy to destroy any US military target.The US has 900 comparable warheads.
(Although the total number of US warheads is impressive, Jastrow pointed out that the
majority are carried by the "air-breathing" part of our strategic triad -- B-52s and
cruise missiles -- which would be unable to penetrate Soviet air defenses.)

www.oism.org...

Numbers are not everything , as frequently pointed out when the USSR's numbers advantage is mentioned, and i'm not sure why the USSR who operated so many more fast breeding reactors ( and they were far more efficient as well) would have ended up with so many less nuclear warheads but i suppose that is possible considering the smaller yields of the vast majority of US warheads. I am however quite sure that i remember a wide range of numbers with 40 000 being on the high conservative end.

The reason Russia has more total is that they have a lot of old warheads that will probably will "fissle", but why not throw them at an enemy anyway, in their reasoning.

Considering the expense is in the delivery vehicle this is stupid and not something they would do when they have re loadable silo's and massive numbers of fast breeding reactors; it just makes no sense even if i don't recall seeing specific numbers

Now deployed Strategic warheads, the US has a numerical advantage today. About 5,500 -vs- 3,800 Russian.

On ICBMs and SLBM's the RF deploys more and the US advantage comes from Tomahawks ( which have proven quite inaccurate against even Serbian style defenses) and B-52's/b2's which will have to deal with hundreds of air defense batteries deploying several thousands of missiles specifically intended to bring down either planes or cruise missiles. The Russian air force is obviously not the Iraqi air force either and the advantages these numbers lends exists on paper only even if one assumes no Russian ability ( and they have a very clear one) to counter the ICBM and SLBM delivered warheads themselves. .

Whose is better is to have a discussion as to what each side favored in it's decisions and tradeoffs in their design, but frankly, it really doesn't matter much because of the overkill involved.

There is no such thing as overkill in a war for survival but that logic was largely lost on the American public. The facts seem to indicate that both the Russians and the DIA believed that the USSR had developed by the middle or late 70's the capability to ensure the survival of the massive majority of the Russian populations with casualties largely occurring in urban areas that could not be evacuated effectively ( and where people thus had to hide in blast shelters under their factories and housing complexes) and where ABM could not prevent ground or very low altitude detonations that had the capability to destroy such.

How many warheads will kill either country? Count 100 targets in each country, cities, major airfields, ports. Only individual missile silos make a large number of targets, in the hundreds. Anything more than that is overkill, and each target usually has enough redundancy to assure success against any level of defense.

This is not true and such a bold claim that i would like to see which defense analyst claimed it.

In the Cold War, Moscow was suppose to recieve over 400 US/NATO warheads within it's city limits. 400 WARHEADS!! Some, or most THERMONUCLEAR!!

That's how many Warheads they felt it would take to breach the Sa-5 and Moscow's general ABM defenses as well as do enough damage to underground bunkers.... The large number of warheads allocated was not for spite or for lack of choice but due to the fact that that is what they thought it would take.

Former Secretary of Defense Melvin R. Laird claims that thousands of SA-5 interceptors have been deployed in hundreds of sites around some 110 Soviet urban areas, principally in the European U.S.S.R.37 Such a deployment could play havoc with the surviving 1440 SLBM RVs.

The SA-5 anti-SLBM defenses are unorthodox and even "sneaky" in that they exist in the context of an ABM treaty under which the United States officially assumes they do not exist and takes no actions or precautions to counteract the capability. And an SA-5 ABM capability only makes sense in an overall damage-denial scheme which negates ICBMs some other way and reduces the number of SLBM RVs by ASW efforts to levels which can be countered by active SA-5 defenses, civil defense, and hardening of key targets.38"

www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil...

By the end of the 1960s, targeting may have focused on Moscow, with all the missiles of a nuclear submarine committed to destroying the ABM system and the city. The capability of the Moscow ABM system might have limited the flexibility of British targeting by tying down most of the deployed force. Polaris appears to have been judged much more effective against the SA-5B Gammon interceptors of the Tallinn system. A 1970 study published by the British Atomic Energy Authority concluded that SA-5B interceptors were not a threat to British Polaris missiles, and that it would take only two Polaris missile payloads to saturate a standard SA-5B battery.

In 1972, the British government decided to develop a new front end for the Polaris missiles "designed specifically to penetrate [the] anti-ballistic missile defenses" around Moscow. This improved system, called Chevaline, was deployed in 1982. It carried pen-aids and three 40-kiloton maneuverable reentry vehicles that were "hardened" against the radiation effects of the nuclear ABM interceptors.

www.thebulletin.org...

But there were several dozens of batteries of just Sa-5's...

Critics of the ABM treaty argue that the
treaty is no longer binding because the Soviet
Union no longer exists and because the
Soviets were, and the Russians continue to be,
in violation of the treaty. They contend that
the Russians have more than the one ABM
system permitted by the treaty.

Joseph Arminio, chairman of the National Coalition
for Defense, states:
Not only did the U.S.S.R., unlike the
U.S., deploy the one missile defense
permitted by the treaty, ringing
Moscow with the 100 interceptors
sanctioned by law. It also littered
about Soviet territory with another
10,000 to 12,000 interceptors, and 18
battle-management radars. Together
the Moscow defense and the vast
homeland defense formed an interlocking
system—nearly all of it illicit.10

The “10,000 to 12,000 interceptors” to which
Arminio refers are SA-5, SA-10, and SA-12
anti-aircraft missiles that some ABM treaty
opponents argue have an anti-ballistic missile
capability.1

www.cato.org...

By the time the Empire collapsed, more than 10,000 dual purpose SAM/ABM interceptor missiles were deployed at SA-5/10 complexes. Yet the U.S. officially counts only the l00 interceptors of the "ABM X-3" system at Moscow, which are permitted by the ABM Treaty. ABM X-3 is a scaled up model of the NIKE-X system, vintage late

www.fas.org...

So basically the USSR not only deployed far more warheads with higher yields but it had the known capacity to shoot down a unknown but significant proportion of US weapons while reloading it's remaining silo's and rearming it's almost more than 1000 road mobile ICBM's that could with single warheads ( the CIA simple said they were non-strategic because they claimed the Russians were only deploying them with three warheads each) reach American strategic targets without the US having any known capacity to prevent them from firing however many reloads they had available.

Don't insult the intelligence of those on this board by trying to convince us that such a war could be "winnable" by either party, if such a war was between the US and Russia. Insignificant and stupid question when faced with the facts.

Then you know very little about the actual facts as not widely spread by the mass media or admitted by American politicians. The data are however freely available on the internet and i will make you aware of it whenever you present your opinions and perceptions as undeniable 'facts'.

Post 2

Originally posted by Hiphar
Your numbers are not commonly used ones to represent the respective arsenals.
US;
thebulletin.metapress.com...
Russia;
thebulletin.metapress.com...
The US has over 10,000 warheads, and if that is not enough to make the rubble bounce many more times than necessary, then I can't help you.

Of those about 3000 are deployed on ICBMs/SLBM's so Russia does in fact have a 'numerical advantage' however unimportant that is in this case. Yield, survivability and accuracy are far more important and in those areas the Russian strategic forces have clear advantageous.

Continued

In fact, of the deployed "strategic" warheads, the US leads 5,000 to 3,400 so where is this Russian numerical superiority? Tactical warheads? (Russia has a couple thousand operational tactical weapons unlike the US which has a much smaller number)

You quoted articles you did not apparently read as they made it quite clear that the RF have more warheads on both ICBMs and SLBM's and that most of theirs are deployed on ICBMs which means higher yields. The US actually have a relatively large number of tactical warheads which it has always hoped to deploy from forward airbases by breaching Soviet/Russian anti air defenses and also dealing with the Russian air force .The USSR never a realistic chance ( Cuba was largely a act of desperation but even missiles there would not have won them the war in my opinion) of deploying tactical nuclear weapons and cruise missiles with anything other than large and expensive strategic bombers while the US had a chance to do so with even long ranged figther- bombers...

Those may help keep the Chinese from taking Siberia, but they will not land on US territory as a strategic weapon would. And it is believed that Russian/Soviet warheads were -never- retired, even after their reliable usefulness is expired.

Then i suppose it's more logical to assume that they found a way to maintain them for greater periods of time of time as the means of strategic delivery is not normally cheap enough to risk with 'duds'. For some reason few make mention of the massive number ( relative to the US) of fast breeding reactors in the USSR and the massive quantities of nuclear materials they produced.

The US has a constant warhead monitoring program to keep the arsenal operational, but Russia has no "stockpile stewardship" program.

I always find these kinds of claims quite odd , why the Russians are so stupid/incompetent is never explained, and it would help if there was at least some hint of source for this claim?>

In fact a warhead is a very perishable commodaty with very expensive and complicated maintenance requirements, and has to be rebuilt every decade or so depending on the design. That is why the US is now going to build a new warhead design.

It's not that i question this 'fact' ( i believe it's overstated) but that i don't understand why so many assume with so little proof that the Russians suddenly lost the capacity to do so after 1991. I obviously used to think as you do about many of these issues but i think what i am presenting shows us a clearer picture.

Stellar

Originally posted by aylyan
Nuke-noob here,wanting to know how many of these thousands on each side would need to "function as intended" for there to be a lack of humans in America and Russia after a showdown?

25 each?

There is no evidence ( the type that holds up to scientific scrutiny anyways) to suggest that even ground detonations of every nuclear weapon now deployed could cause the death of every human being in either of those countries. Even direct targeting of civilian centers would probably kill no more than 2/3 of the American public ( assuming no active or passive defenses and just everyone hiding in whatever shelters are available) and 5-30% of the Russian population. These are only my estimates based on those conditions and in a 'real' war with nuclear weapons the casualties will be much lower on both sides.

Stellar

Originally posted by StellarX
These are only my estimates based on those conditions and in a 'real' war with nuclear weapons the casualties will be much lower on both sides.

Stellar

LOL, I am curious just how you can justify your statement, seeing as no precedent of nuclear war has ever been set, how can you can make these estimates. Ad please for every " riliable " internet source you quote there are 5 equally reliable sources who would disagree with you.

Have you even taken into acount teh long term effects of nuclear war on the health of the global populaiton ? Didn't think so.

The notion that you think nuclear war can be wn is so quaint, doens't matter if hundreds of millions of people are killed.

Originally posted by Hiphar
Well at least I am linking to some source other than my "word". Please do the same.
Pavel Podvig is Russian, same numbers;
russianforces.org...

Not a bad sources but he has never went out of his way to correct all the misinformation being spread either...

And by some credible accounts, the US is entering a period of nuclear superiority;
www.foreignaffairs.org...

These two are hardly 'credible' and neither is their fabricated fantasy reality where the US has some kind of nuclear superiority. Their claims is at best based on complete ignorance of reality and at worse misinformation meant to defend a imperialist agenda on the basis that no one can stop the imperialist.

I think their delusions and misrepresentations are for the most part exposed in the following article and if you have remaining question i am sure i can address them in any type of detail you may require.

If there were to be a purely nuclear war in one weeks time from now the United states would be destroyed with as much as half of it's ( 150 million ) population dead or dying while Russia will suffer between 1 and 10 million casualties.

Stellar

Originally posted by rogue1
After discussing this for many many years and doing far far more reading than you, I concur with what Fred says. No need to attempt to insult him, you are completely wrong about US SLBM's. The D-5 has enough range to reach any target in Russia from the central and southern Pacific and Indian Oceans. You originally quoted a range of 35oo km which is completely wrong. Furthermore the D-5 warhead is the largest warhead on any missile in the US inventory and is more than capable of counter force.

So far so good! I would point out that the tridents are a relatively new development and that for most of the cold war US SLBM's had much shorter ranges than Russian SLBM's...

Complete BS, this shows you know very little about what you're talking about.

To attack western Russia from the Pacific would be a bit of a stretch as you would come within range of Chinese and Russian hunter subs a thousand km's or so of the coast. That being said with Tridents you are never out of range for long so few American SLBM's warheads would be incapacitated in this way or for long.

No it is at least twice as accurate as that and probably more with it's GPS upgrades. It had a 120m accuracy using just stellar-inertial navigation. You do know what that is ?

According to official sources it's 90m with GPS and if i recall about half or more of the 380m of the old C4 with stellar inertial.
Even without GPS the C5 might be accurate enough to do the job with the large warheads one out of five Trident II missiles carries. I am not entirely sure if these warheads are deployed two or three per missile or all on a few subs, as is far more practical , but i don't think those few large warheads makes up for the small size of the rest given my knowledge of the Russian ABM defenses.

LOL, do you just make up these supposed facts ? There are hundreds of D-5 warheads in US subs.

They are all Trident II d5 but only one in five are mark five warheads with any substantial hard target ability. In my estimation that means only two or three Ohio's are in fact able to target Russian ICBM fields or other hard targets. I can't for the life of my figure out where he got that '93' number from so i can respect the 'lol' ....

Now really this is funny, you really do know nothing. You are talking out of your ass. I see you provide absolutely no facts about what you say

Harsh but i didn't make much sense out of that either. I think anything within 150 is probably good enough as i can't frankly imagine ( despite reading what some American intelligence people claimed ) that the shock and cratering wont destroy the, probably empty, silo...

Oh yeah tight, got any links. Or is this from the B-grade movies you've been watching ?

Not that i believe him but why do you disagree so 'violently' mister rogue?

Oh it is, which movie is this fact from ?

Not sure how effective the Russian efforts will be but they are most certainly very good and doing their best to build on it.

www.afa.org...

So someone is trying and by the scale of things i doubt their eating burgers while watching a ball game in their off time.

Oh and how are the Russians missiles more accurate, they don't have nearly the accuracy which could be provided by US GPS ?

GPS is satellite based and both countries deploys sufficient number of direct energy weapons to quickly eliminate each other GPS abilities. Few people seem to realise that the Russia GPS system is as , or more, accurate than the American one. ..

You are talking completely BS and are just making things up. No wonder no one has really bothered answering your posts. They are BS.

The Russians do in fact have a large land mobile ICBM force that is quite accurate facing no US forces that have and proved capacity to even find and track their movements.

This really made me laugh, you are comparing 2 small warheads to the use of thousands. And yes places do become highly radioactive when hit with nuclear weapons. DO some reading.

In fact high altitude air bursts results in no local fallout that has any capacity to harm civilians and even ground bursts contamination will degrade to acceptable levels within a month while allowing short excursions without protective clothing with 10 days or two weeks if the situation requires such relative risks.Thousands of warheads will just mean that the particles slowly degrades in the atmosphere before even reaching the ground in sufficient quantities to harm anyone who chooses to walk around pointlessly.

Erm right, complete bollocks. Air-burst suck up vast amounts of debris and irradiate it causing radiation to be spread far and wide. Ever heard of fallout ? Obviously not.

I think you are assuming relatively low altitude bursting ( fireball touching the ground ) while he is assuming 10 km or 15km altitude bursts meant to destroy extended cities with blast effects alone. If one attacks cities simply to kill unprotected ( people hiding in their houses or car parks etc) people you in my knowledge gain most efficiency by exploding your warheads at 5- 10 km thus giving you a much greater area effect; you only use ground bursting, that leads to relatively dangerous radioactive fallout, against hardened targets.

Originally posted by rogue1
that is actually incorrect. THe Soviets/Russians just build new warheads, they don't service their old ones.

Claimed on many occasions but never proved with much anything to do with 'facts'. Feel free to post some links!

Hence all the huge problems they've had trying to decomossion all these obsolete warheads.

Huge problems for who? Why do they mostly refuse to do it unless they can find foreigners to fund it? Why would anyone pay to decommission warheads when you could use the money to build new ones? It's in my opinion quite clear who the fools are but i suppose it's not obvious to everyone that the Russians are using western funds for building more weaponry instead of using it to decommission older stuff.

So it is tru a large number of their warheads may not even explode if used and certainy no where near the designed yield.

hehehe...

Where do you get your information from, it is for the most part wrong.

I don't agree with much of what he says but your not doing much better! Sources!

Sorry but this is the stupidest argument I've ever heard and COMPLETELY wrong. IN WW2 the combined tonnage of bombs dropped on bothe Germany and Japan was a bout 3 million tons. The equivalent of a SINGLE 3MT warhead. You do the math and think really really hard before your next post.

I must say his math was pretty damn bad even if the general intent were not completely lost on me as it was on you. While it is true that nuclear weapons bring a entirely new dimension of prompt destruction to the battlefield ,that would in the second world war have required a massively greater part of any given countries industrial resources, it does not mean that nuclear weapons are completely destructive and that passive underground sheltering can not in large part protect the workforces and critical industrial capacity of the targeted country. To suggest that we should all just give up and die because survival now requires more preparation is far more stupid than anything his said so far

The stupidity of the above statement is astounding.

Compared to the average content on ATS it's above the norm and i wish i normally had so little work to do.

Erm right so where ar ethesesirbursts exploding ? 20 000 feet in teh air. If so what is the pint of them they do almost no physical damage to teh gound. An airburst ( as you don't seem to know ) is used to increase the destructive footprint of a nuclear weapon adn sucks up immense amounts of devris.

It also happens to suck up whatever debris it does to altitudes where it wont bother anyone but those who have taken no precautions.

the fireball of a typical airburst will touch teh groud. DO SOME READING !! How old are you by the way ?

You should know better than to post without reading but more often than not you apparently can't resist. You should know that air bursting means the fireball does not touch the ground and that no material gets vaporized and in the normal sense is taken to mean that it explodes many many km's above it's intended un-hardened target. The effects of the average US Minuteman warhead is more than sufficient to do great damage if exploded at 6km altitude and the lower you go the more area damage you trade for assured destruction of a given hardened industrial center.

Erm right and how many of these tests were conducted on a city or near populated areas ? ALso about half of all tests were cinducted underground.

Global jet streams ( i think that's what their called) have certainly become contaminated yet i'm not sure if that is what is responsible for all cancer ' epidemics' we are experiencing. Whatever the case may be it ain't killing the human population very fast.

LMAO, this is your informed opinion. I really can't stop laughing.

Far more informed than what you normally come up with Rogue and you should not be laughing at all.

Post 2

Originally posted by rogue1
LOL, I am curious just how you can justify your statement, seeing as no precedent of nuclear war has ever been set, how can you can make these estimates.

Because these are the estimates given by authorities ( generals and or defense/intelligence analyst) i happen to trust given their knowledge on most of the issues normally raised as well as those not normally heard in the press.

Continued

[edit on 8-4-2007 by StellarX]

Ad please for every " riliable " internet source you quote there are 5 equally reliable sources who would disagree with you.

Then please start listening them so i may point out why i have read and disregarded those views or positions. Why have you assumed that i am simply unfamiliar with those views if i once believed almost exactly what you still do?

Have you even taken into acount teh long term effects of nuclear war on the health of the global populaiton ? Didn't think so.

As long as the majority of the blasts are atmospheric and people take proper precautions there should not be serious long term health effects for humanity in general.

The notion that you think nuclear war can be wn is so quaint, doens't matter if hundreds of millions of people are killed.

It hardly matters if i think the loss of a hundred million matters as i am not the one who created these plans. A few hundred million deaths in North America , and in the West in general ,would largely benefit the rest of the worlds billions. As i said before the Russian strategy is not based on targeting the US population base as they simply will not require such means to affect what they regard as victory.

Stellar




[edit on 8-4-2007 by StellarX]

Originally posted by danwild6
I personally find the counter-arguement lacking. Leaving out entire portions of Lieber and Press's arguement i.e the reliability of Russia's nuclear arsenal.

For which they have cited absolutely no sources in the first place. Lieber and Press indulged in wild speculation citing not even the remotest credible source that suggest that the Russian strategic forces are in fact in such disarray.

Criticizing the mathematical model put forward but not providing one of their own.

What mathematical formula? If you look at word choices you might soon realise that their paper consists of no more than idle speculation and fantasy scenario's where the US does everything right , and in perfect secrecy, while the RF has nothing that works even half as well as advertised by their usual critics.

I find their over reliance in the belief that Russia's nuclear arsenal in its present state would survive a first strike

You do realise that these 'bolt from the blue' attacks are quite unlikely to come as the surprise to the Russians that these two have suggested? Why would the US stage such a attack against a country who wields weapons that are far more dangerous( as secretary of defense Cohen admitted) than nuclear weapons? Where do they take account of Russian direct energy weapons or their thousands of S-300 missile waiting on their launchers to intercept warheads and missiles?

and have sufficient force to launch an effective counter strike completely idiotic.

What i find completely idiotic is that these two are allowed to publish such a bunch of nonsense allowing people like you to indulge yourselves in fantasy realities where the US still dictates world policy based on some illusion of nuclear primacy.

If you want to make more specific claims based on the words of these two liars feel free as next time round i will be less kind by exposing their lies in ever more detailed fashion.

Stellar

Those who say the Russian military is weak only serve the Russians, because they make Westerners feel comfortable, they make them think that the Russians no longer threaten the West. They do.

Currently, Russia is more powerful than it ever was. Not only it has a military weaker only than the US military, it controls more of the world's surface than we Brits ever did.

Russia:
1) will soon shift its Black Sea fleet to the Med (this fleet will be shifted to Syria)
2) controls the Transnistria
3) supports Iran and North Korea, both of which threaten the West
4) has more theatre bombers than the US
5) has more SSBNs than the US

The Russians currently have 16000 nuclear warheads, and their arsenal is growing quickly because they have many reactors, which produce plutonium.

(US) [Russia]

ICMBs (701) [800]
Warheads (2,451) [4,030]
SLBM (464) [592]
Warheads (3,776) [2,424]
Bombers (315) [117]
Warheads (1,731) [908]

Total (1,480) [1,509]
Warheads (7,958) [7,362]

Incorrect numbers. The correct numbers: www.globalsecurity.org...

Originally posted by danwild6
worthy of discussion

US Nuclear Primacy

The author of that article is wrong:

1) He claims China has only 1 SSBN. He is wrong. No Chinese SSBNs sank. China currently has 2 SSBNs. Reference: www.globalsecurity.org...
2) He claims the PLAAF is weak. How can someone be so ignorant? The PLAAF has 80 H-6 bombers and 40 H-5 bombers. All of these planes can fly to the US. And the PLAAF also has 14 HY-6 tankers.

Not that the PLA would be superior to the US Military, but the claim that China is so weak that it couldn't retaliate is preposterous.

Originally posted by StellarX
So far so good! I would point out that the tridents are a relatively new development and that for most of the cold war US SLBM's had much shorter ranges than Russian SLBM's...

Not at all, you could say that the ranges were almost even and the US but the uS deployed the missiles ( with comaparble ranges )several years before teh USSR. You can compare the SOviet SS-N-6 to the C-4 Posiedon. they came out at roughly the same time. Yet teh C-4 was MIRVed.

To attack western Russia from the Pacific would be a bit of a stretch as you would come within range of Chinese and Russian hunter subs a thousand km's or so of the coast. That being said with Tridents you are never out of range for long so few American SLBM's warheads would be incapacitated in this way or for long.

Assuming of course that PLAN and Russian subs could even track a Ohio SSBn, let alone deal with it's escorting SSN.

GPS is satellite based and both countries deploys sufficient number of direct energy weapons to quickly eliminate each other GPS abilities. Few people seem to realise that the Russia GPS system is as , or more, accurate than the American one. ..

I've got no idea where you got this info from, teh Russian system moire accurate lol. PLease you tlaking about GLONASS. It deploys far fewer satellites emaingin it is far less accurate, not to mention the technology probably isn't up to US standard. As well teh US are starting to deploy their next generation GPS.
Also I haven't heard of ay directed energy weapons being able to reach out to a GEO orbit 33000 miles high. Please link to some info about this.

I think you are assuming relatively low altitude bursting ( fireball touching the ground ) while he is assuming 10 km or 15km altitude bursts meant to destroy extended cities with blast effects alone. If one attacks cities simply to kill unprotected ( people hiding in their houses or car parks etc) people you in my knowledge gain most efficiency by exploding your warheads at 5- 10 km thus giving you a much greater area effect; you only use ground bursting, that leads to relatively dangerous radioactive fallout, against hardened targets.

Bursting warheads that high will do far less damage to targets even soft ones that 1-3 km above ground. What size warheads are you tlaking about 20+MT. Because 1MT warheads would cause bugger all damage being burst that high.

Claimed on many occasions but never proved with much anything to do with 'facts'. Feel free to post some links!

LOL, how about all that rotting junk they ave lying around. And many many links have been posted in teh past, you should read them. But the Sovs were notorious for their lack of care.

It also happens to suck up whatever debris it does to altitudes where it wont bother anyone but those who have taken no precautions.

well it has to fall somehwere doesn't it.

You should know that air bursting means the fireball does not touch the ground and that no material gets vaporized and in the normal sense is taken to mean that it explodes many many km's above it's intended un-hardened target. The effects of the average US Minuteman warhead is more than sufficient to do great damage if exploded at 6km altitude and the lower you go the more area damage you trade for assured destruction of a given hardened industrial center.

Actually an airburst means any detonation with doesn't accur when the warhead touches the ground, kinda very obvious. Also the Minuteman wrhead would detonate far coser to teh ground than 6km, more like 2 or less. This would cause far more damage to soft targets from the dynamic surface shockwave created.

Russia has, for a long, long time, controlled more surface-area than anyone in, arguably, the history of the world, save for the Soviet Union. This is nothing new, and certainly not directly representative of a nation's strength.

Further, might we have some evidence on the first link?

Two is nothing new, and has never had much of a severe impact.

Iran, yes -- It's a major arms dealer, and much-anyone would like to keep a continued client, especially in times of rising hostility. However, much like China, they've relatively abandoned the pariah-state of North Korea.

Links to the bombers? Perhaps some claim as to actual working bombers, including crews with sufficient training-hours to run said machines?

Lastly -- Of course the Russian's will have more missiles. The United States has all-ways been the driving force in nuclear-arms reduction, counter-balanced by a technological nuclear superiority, and because of Russia's poor practice of zero-maintenance, they've arguably never removed a missile from service since conception, save for safety concerns and international treaties.


Edit: Yes, China did lose a type 092 SSBN. Further, because they disclosed the arrival of an 094 months prior to this man's article -- Despite being launched in '04, I could argue simple ignorance.

[edit on 10-4-2007 by Iblis]

Originally posted by Iblis
Russia has, for a long, long time, controlled more surface-area than anyone in, arguably, the history of the world, save for the Soviet Union. This is nothing new, and certainly not directly representative of a nation's strength.

Only an ignorant person would say so. The Russians control most of the world, and yet you think they do so accidentally?

Further, might we have some evidence on the first link?

Huh?

Two is nothing new

Yeah, the best way to behave when someone disproves you is to claim that Chinese SSBNs are irrelevant.

Iran, yes -- It's a major arms dealer, and much-anyone would like to keep a continued client

They don't do so just because Iran is their customer, but also because they hate the Americans and want to defeat them. So rather than fight against the Americans themselves they help the Iranians.

Links to the bombers? Perhaps some claim as to actual working bombers, including crews with sufficient training-hours to run said machines?

www.globalsecurity.org...
www.globalsecurity.org...
www.globalsecurity.org...

Lastly -- Of course the Russians will have more missiles.

I'm not talking only about missiles, but about nuclear warheads too.

Originally posted by INeedHelp

Originally posted by Iblis
Russia has, for a long, long time, controlled more surface-area than anyone in, arguably, the history of the world, save for the Soviet Union. This is nothing new, and certainly not directly representative of a nation's strength.

Only an ignorant person would say so. The Russians control most of the world, and yet you think they do so accidentally?

Well for someone labelling people as ignorant, your above statement is quite so. Care to enlighten us ignorant people to just how Russia conrtrols most of the world ?

Iran, yes -- It's a major arms dealer, and much-anyone would like to keep a continued client

They don't do so just because Iran is their customer, but also because they hate the Americans and want to defeat them. So rather than fight against the Americans themselves they help the Iranians.

They hate the Americans and want to defeat them ? Someone seems a little paranoid. How are they going to defeat them and defeat them at what ?
Russia's biggest problem will be CHina in the future. China will become the next world superpower and it wants what sits in the ground in Siberia, a region of only 7 million people.

I'm not talking only about missiles, but about nuclear warheads too.

As has been mentioned in mnay posts just how reliable are old Russian warheads ? Over 15 years old ? They have a bad record of maintanence.

Originally posted by rogue1
Well for someone labelling people as ignorant, your above statement is quite so. Care to enlighten us ignorant people to just how Russia conrtrols most of the world ?

Russia:
1) will soon shift its Black Sea fleet to the Med (this fleet will be shifted to Syria)
2) controls the Transnistria
3) supports Iran and North Korea, both of which threaten the West and which the West won't attack
4) controls many European countries (Croatia, Serbia, Romania, Greece, Italy, Sweden, Finland, Bulgaria and Ukraine)
5) is the world's #1 natural gas exporter and #2 oil exporter

Yet you claim that Russia is not the world's most powerful state? Keep wishing. Let me know how you will be singing when the Russians stop selling you oil.

[edit on 10-4-2007 by INeedHelp]

^^^^^

You still haven't explained how Russia controls most of the world. You haven't even explained 1% of how they possibly could. I'm still waiting.
Also you haven't explained how they control these countries, go on please do