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Comment by superbrama | Hacker News Reader

It’s fun to speculate and worthwhile to perform thought experiments. However, is there any basis for your theories regarding Russia/China and NK?

Also, why is it a only triad? Where’s space in all of this? Wouldn’t paranoid sociopathic policy makers with their inflated USA military budgets have already considered the scenarios you’ve described and put multiple contingency plans into place? Just asking.

To offer an alternative, I’d speculate that between USA, Russia and China, all three have privately advanced their own technology to maintain deterrence for the foreseeable future. Just pure speculation of course, I’m not a government employee nor do I have any clearance or special info. Just seems improbable that the USA hadn’t planned for a superpower or alliance trying to disarm all of their nuclear arsenal at once.

Thanks.

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Basically, the US military declared itself the victor of the cold war and stopped worrying about China/Russia. After 9/11, it reoriented its resources around anti-terrorism and and smaller "rogue states" like NK and Iran.

At the same time, China and Russia have gone on massive military spending sprees that are entirely aimed at global war.

World peace relies on a single point of failure: the US nuclear forces, which rely primarily on obsolete ICBMs. Failing that, Russia and China could easily take over the world using conventional forces and their own nuclear power.

The US nuclear triad is highly vulnerable, relying on 3 incredibly obsolete and vulnerable delivery mechanisms.

1. US ICBMs were supposed to be replaced and were not due to government bureaucratic bungling. The contracts to replace it are being awarded in 2017. There are 400 ancient ICBMs, in fixed silos, that can't be called back after launch and so may not be launched in time.

2. The 18 Ohio SLBM subs are old and easily found by major enemy navies, and are just one nuclear torpedo each away from being gone. Some may survive but not enough. They should've been replaced long ago.

3. The few dozen ancient B-52s have to fly for many hours to be able to launch their cruise missiles, which means they'll be shot down. Their their run ways may get destroyed before most even take off.

How does world peace/deterrence rely solely on the obviously aging USA triad?

What info do you have on adversarial capabilities beyond speculation and belief about their recent military expenditures?

Do you believe that the USA hasn’t considered your scenario already and put plans into place? Do you believe civilians would know the full extent of our nuclear capabilities?

Why do you believe China and Russia are possibly planning to disarm USA’s triad, and why do you believe they’d have the intelligence to do so? Something about leaks, the nsa, whistleblowers.. is there a connection here? Just speculating based on your notion that USA may be getting ganged up on by China and Russia.

Frankly your line of thought is valuable and worth exploring, and I’d like to see what info can be put on the table to explore your ideas further.

1. The US told its allies that it would handle MAD. The US system relies primarily on aging land-based ICBMs. None of the US' trusted allies have significant nuclear forces of their own.

2. The US has every reason to publicize and brag about nuclear capabilities. The entire point of nuclear deterrence is to make your enemy aware of how dangerous an attack would be. The US has done a ton of press on our nuclear programs. There are probably some contingency plans to arm airplanes with gravity bombs but probably nothing effective.

The US recently tested a Minuteman III by shipping a random missile across the country and reassembling it for launch.

Why did it have to be disassembled, shipped, and then launched? Why couldn't someone tell a random silo to remove its warhead and launch? Why can't they show how accurately it hit its target? It's supposed to be 100% reliable, what's the risk?

3. Putin and Xi Jinping have a lot of incentive personally, even if their countries take millions in casualties.

There's an opportunity gap right now while the US works on its next-generation military systems that will make attacks on the US impossible and preemptive attacks by the US possible.

4. The Chinese and Russian militaries are at incredibly high levels of readiness. Large-scale drills and snap drills can get everything in place without leaking any plan whatsoever. The only two people that have to know the plan are Putin and Xi Jinping themselves.

I wouldn't say the ICBMs are obsolete, any more than an AR-15 is obsolete. They both function as intended. The Minuteman uses a solid booster; can't get more reliable than that. Subs aren't going to get any stealthier. Maybe orbital weapons would give the fastest launch; just drop it. Though they would not be stealthy either.

Though I always thought the proposed tunnel network carrying rail based ICBM was kind of cool. In the event of a nuclear apocalypse, it would be a good place for the mole people to live.

The U.S. has 20 aircraft carriers. The next country down has 1 aircraft carrier. The U.S. also has more naval and air units than both Russia and China combined...aircraft with far superior technology.

With the exception of ground troops and tanks which are sort of becoming obsolete in modern war with things like drones and tomahawks and long range missles combined with the need to cross oceans to deploy...the US has a far superior military.

Combine that with NATO countries who would Ally with us?

It seems like Russia and China even if they combined forces.. wouldn't stand a chance in a non-nuclear global war.

Although I'm open to being wrong.

Your whole thread of comments simply sounds paranoid and detached from the reality that the US maintains and funds the continued development of the most advanced strategic warfare system in the world.

The Russians and Chinese can't even deploy a reliable survivable force. Their boomers are either rusting or poorly tested and their forces underfunded.

They can't even regularly deploy attack submarines to the Atlantic Ocean -- how are they going to simultaneously fix, track, and neutralize the US boomer force?

Your entire train of thought on US/RF/PRC deterrence relationships is fantastical.

Fantastical, is it? Oh...really. Then why are there Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse?

Donald Trump + Xi Jinping + Vladimir Putin + and Kim Jun Un

Checkmate.

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