Russia's Putin reveals 'invincible' nuclear weapons | Hacker News Reader

Russia's Putin reveals 'invincible' nuclear weapons

bbc.co.uk

43 pointssjcsjc115 comments

> invincible in the face of all existing and future systems

Hmm, all future systems too, eh? One might almost think he was exaggerating, but it was reported seriously so I suppose he can’t be, right?

It could be something like the WU-14 that China's developing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WU-14

https://thediplomat.com/2016/04/china-tests-new-weapon-capab...

In addition to the maneuverability aspect, my understanding is that such weapons also target an altitude that current US antimissile systems aren't designed to operate at. IIRC, there's a gap between the top altitude of one of the systems and the bottom altitude of the other.

If it's a nuclear ramjet SLAM, while you could in principle shoot it down, if it's anywhere near your territory when you do so, it's pretty much as bad as not shooting it down, as both result in radioactivity spread over a large area.

So, short of force fields and teleportation, there is no defence.

The Americans knew this when they were developing the technology in the 50's/60's, and axed the project in the interest of not encouraging the Soviets to make the same unstoppable doomsday weapon.

> If it's a nuclear ramjet SLAM, while you could in principle shoot it down, if it's anywhere near your territory when you do so, it's pretty much as bad as not shooting it down, as both result in radioactivity spread over a large area.

So obviously the only reasonable solution is to develop a system to shoot it down way before it gets near you. To say that such a system can't be developed in the future is not short-sightedness or a lack of imagination, but simply propaganda.

Unless it's launched by a submarine on your doorstep, which would be the strategically intelligent thing to do. Same line of reasoning that led to the development of SLBMs.

No, even in that case, though there the “system to shoot it down” consists of ASW supremacy and a policy of preemption if tensions escalate to the point where a launch seems plausible; the less valuable post-launch defense is against a weapon system, the more it encourages preemptive attack.

Shooting one down over your territory would suck, but it would suck about a million times less than having a hydrogen bomb detonate over a city. Nowhere near “pretty much as bad.”

Well, if it renders areas uninhabitable, leaves infrastructure intact but radioactive, and kills the population - apart from the physical destruction bit, the effects are just as bad.

It's not the big explosions that are a problem in nuclear war - it's the fallout.

> It's not the big explosions that are a problem in nuclear war

No, I'm pretty sure those are definitely a problem.

> it's the fallout.

That's also a problem, but a thermonuclear ground burst is going to produce several orders of magnitude more fallout than a nuclear ramjet.

Fallout is bad, but not “a couple million people fried in an instant” bad.

It would suck to have a large area contaminated, and hundreds or thousands of people might die, but that’s still way better.

It's a lot worse to have the on-target thermonuclear detonation at the end, so, no, it's not “pretty much as bad” to shoot it down. It's still bad, sure, but it's a huge difference in how bad.

But, yes, it does reduce the utility of missile defense, and is exactly the kind of thing that opponents of Bush’s decision to withdraw from the ABM Treaty were worried about encouraging.

I think it clearly shows who he is targeting - definitely not intelligent people.

What if we could knock the missile off course instead of just shooting it down?

Like knock it into space, have it explode out there. Is that possible?

Couple of questions for anyone who knows about this kind of hardware.

(1) Is the nuclear arms "race" still on? Ie, Is the US still playing a game of my offence/defence is better than yours with The States?

(2) does this count as a new bar or milestone or somesuch, and if so when was the last "milestone." Ie, something that changes the strategic dynamic between major powers in a somewhat meaningful way.

1) yes, the race is still on. I don't want to go deep into the politics and talk about who triggered what, but the breakpoint was the USA withdrawal from Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty(1972-2001)[1] and development of Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System(2002)[2] and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense(2008)[3] and some other projects in that field. It can look like not a big deal, but it is actually a crucial step to escalation, because if you don't feel safe enough (without anti-missile system good enough to protect you) you will never strike first. But if you have such a system what stops you from using nuclear weapons? At least that was the main idea behind the first ABM Treaty (1972). Back in the days USSR had huge progress in that field, and now USA can easily create superior systems in a couple of years. While China and Russia don't have the same resources, the only thing they can do is to improve nuclear weapons(because it is cheaper). And after all SALT I (1969–1972), the ABM Treaty (1972), SALT II (1972–1979) are all part of the same deal. So yes, we can say that the world is changing and old system of mutual nuclear disarmament is not working anymore. And it can't actually work in the world where new nuclear power emerge every 10 years or so...

2) don't think so. Some leader bragging about some 'invincible' weapon before the elections is not a big deal.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Ballistic_Missile_Treaty

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aegis_Ballistic_Missile_Defens...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_High_Altitude_Area_De...

The US had to do something like this because of North Korea. We trust deterrence with Russia much more than we do with North Korea.

I don't thing ABM defenses really change things. Russia can throw 2000 warheads at us. Can we stop them all? No way. But would we have a chance at stopping one North Korean nuke? Yes.

So I think this is only destablilizing if Russia and China decide that it is. If Russia is looking realistically at the situation, there is exactly zero chance that the US will willingly take the amount of damage that Russia could cause, even with ABM defenses reducing the damage.

ABM defenses change things in a context of mutual nuclear _disarmament_ not in ability to annihilate each other. If USA stops playing according to the agreements, why others should?

Yes, USA is saying that it has to come up with something like this to counter rogue states and I can believe that. But why should Russia/China or any other country keep their part of the mutual nuclear disarmament bargain in that case? (ABM defenses is part of the deal here) Everyone has a different view on how to enforce peace. There is actually a theory in international relations that the safest earth can get is when everyone have nuclear weapons capable of destroying everyone else.[2] And it is part of a neorealist theory so Russia and China are pretty "realistic" in their approach. To be honest the safest way for any country is to have such a weapon that can crush the earth if used. Is it safe for humanity? No. But it is definitely the safest way to ensure your regime.

"The US had to do something like this because of North Korea" Well, USA never did anything about Israel, Pakistan, India. There are 10+ more countries "being one screwdriver's turn" from the bomb. Why bother now? And here is another POV: Initially ABM defense was advertised to stop Iran ballistic missile development and USA sold lots of Aegis parts to Europe/Turkey/Saudi Arabia. And Russians freaked out about radars in Poland covering most part of western Russia and backed Iran... And I think they had their reasons for concern because Poland wasn't even in range of Iranian missiles at that time. And it goes on and on, but anyway it pretty much started the new race on a global scale. Doesn't matter who was the first: India/Pakistan/NK/Iran, ABM escalated it to a completely new level. Btw i doubt many ppl know that it was Pakistan who started NK nuclear development in 2002.[2]

"But would we have a chance at stopping one North Korean nuke? Yes" And that's the real danger. If someone in Japan or South Korea think the same, that they are truly protected with this shield, they will have strong desire to influence/provoke North Korea/ try a regime change... And that can cause a full scale war with nuclear state. The point here: is it really secure or just an illusion of security? And btw North Korea probably has more that just 1-10 or even 100 nukes at this point.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_peace

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korea%E2%80%93Pakistan_r...

> Well, USA never did anything about Israel, Pakistan, India.

Under current circumstances, neither Israel nor India are going to even try to attack the US. Pakistan might be tempted, but I believe they don't have a ballistic missile capable of reaching the US. So there was less reason to do anything about them. (Iran, now, is more worrying.)

> If someone in Japan or South Korea think the same, that they are truly protected with this shield...

But I don't think anybody believes that. Could it stop a North Korean nuke? Hopefully, yes. Is anyone confident enough to want to try it? I doubt it; nobody believes that ABM defenses are anything like 100% reliable.

> And btw North Korea probably has more that just 1-10 or even 100 nukes at this point.

I think it's about 10-20 warheads. Do they have 10-20 ICBMs that are operational? I doubt it, but I don't know for certain.

Well, you may be right, it is just a matter of interpretation. But when it comes to defence in international relations it is basically a variation of Prisoner's dilemma[1]. It doesn't matter what reasons USA has to develop ABM. Russia, China, NK and everyone else will never choose to disarm when their oponent is arming.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma#In_intern...

1) No. Both principal sides have a fraction of the warheads they had at the end of the cold war.

2) It's hard to tell. The standoffs have been (fortunately) much talkier. Periodically, the US makes noises about nuclear arsenal modernization, smaller tactical nukes, 'theater missile defense' etc. Similarly, the Russians announce unstoppable super-missiles. There's always the risk these moves could lead to a full-blown nuclear weapons arms race.

1) Absolutely yes. Here's a quote from the New York Times from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/04/us/politics/trump-nuclear... :

> Yet when President Trump called on Congress to “modernize and rebuild our nuclear arsenal” in his State of the Union address last week, he did not mention his administration’s rationale: that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has accelerated a dangerous game that the United States must match, even if the price tag soars above $1.2 trillion. That is the latest estimate from the Congressional Budget Office, one that many experts think is low by a half-trillion dollars.

The CBO report is at https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/115th-congress-2017-2018/re... .

Sure, the US has fewer warheads. It's still something like 5,000 warheads which is far more than is needed for any sort of retaliatory strike.

It is what's needed if you want a first-strike capability to take out all of Russia's hardened launch sites.

"Makes noises"? Aren't we actually doing that, and have been doing that, for decades? The most recent is super-fuze. Quoting https://fas.org/blogs/security/2017/03/super-fuze/ :

> Under the cover of an otherwise legitimate life-extension of the W76 warhead, the Navy has quietly added a new super-fuze to the warhead that dramatically increases the ability of the Navy to destroy hard targets in Russia and other adversaries. ...

> “As a consequence, the US submarine force today is much more capable than it was previously against hardened targets such as Russian ICBM silos. A decade ago, only about 20 percent of US submarine warheads had hard-target kill capability; today they all do.” ...

> In the article we conclude that the SSBN force, rather than simply being a stable retaliatory capability, with the new super-fuze increasingly will be seen as a front-line, first-strike weapon that is likely to further fuel trigger-happy, worst-case planning in other nuclear-armed states.

There are three factors to consider with "unstoppable super-missiles":

1) The US pulled out of the ABM treaty. This was predicted to destabilize things, because it implies the US might want first-strike capability, with the ability to prevent a retaliatory response. Since the US upgrades mean we can take out hardened targets, that means Russia will have to switch to launch-on-warning rather than launch-on-impact.

2) There has always been a strong argument against ABM systems because they are extremely expensive, they don't work well, and the counter-measures are cheap.

3) The "unstoppable super-missiles" are what you must have if you believe that a retaliatory second strike is a deterrent against a US first-strike attack. We have only to look at history to see how high-level people in the US have wanted to use nuclear weapons. The current president appears to be one of those.

On the flip side, consider the nuclear drone torpedo. This cannot be used as a first-strike attack because it can only destroy coastal cities. It cannot take out the US nuclear triad. It therefore more effective for retaliation, by the threat of destroying millions of Americans should the US decided to nuke Russia.

This is more less the same thing I said, with lots and lots of details. Similar things were taking place during the Bush administration. There is a lot of realignment, a lot of posturing, it is certainly a risk but it very much does not amount to a 'nuclear arms race'. If that's a nuclear arms race, the nuclear arms race never stopped. That's not an entirely unreasonable position but if you take that position, for you, the mere existence of a nuclear arsenal of any sort on either side constitutes a perpetual 'nuclear arms race'.

I disagree. I think I am saying something quite different.

I think the current arms race started in 2002 when the US pulled out of the ABM, followed by the "upgrades" which started under Obama. (The research for those upgrades of course started long before - it's the deployment I'm interested in.)

I think adding super-fuze to US nuclear weapons - "In the case of the 100-kt Trident II warhead, the super fuze triples the killing power of the nuclear force it has been applied to. https://thebulletin.org/how-us-nuclear-force-modernization-u... - is an example of not just of the "mere existence of a nuclear arsenal", but a determined effort to tilt the balance very much in favor of the US.

Why did we need that upgrade?

I think the US has developed its systems far enough in that direction that Russia is now forced to spend money to keep up, as otherwise MAD is no longer effective.

And that's why I call it an re-uptake of the arms race.

What would you expect to see if there were a new nuclear arms race?

Why did we need that upgrade?

There are about a zillion reasons you can come up with for that, to match the entire spectrum of political outlooks and levels of cynicism, none of which have to include 'to start a new nuclear arms race'.

What would you expect to see if there were a new nuclear arms race?

Well, for one thing, I'd expect the race to include at least two parties. If Russia truly believed something on the US side is actually putting the global strategic nuclear balance in question, I imagine their response would be more robust than running a missile-naming competition on the internet.

The reporting on these issues always stresses the risk of starting a new nuclear arms race - the NYT piece you linked to does, as has much of what has been written over the last 15-odd years at least. The risk is surely real but this does imply that we have not, in fact, been in a nuclear arms race. So far.

I would like to hear a few of those zillions of reasons which make sense given an opponent who wants to maintain a second-strike response.

Because I can't think of any.

You mention wanting something "more robust than running a missile-naming competition on the internet". How does the RS-28 Sarmat not count as one example? Quoting from https://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/russia/ss-30.htm :

> On 07 September 2016, a defense industry official told Russian media that the mass production of the RS-28 Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile, a new multi-warhead, super-heavy missile designed to defeat anti-missile systems, would begin in 2018, two years ahead of schedule. ...

> Russia's State Rocket Center V. P. Makeyev of (Miass) and NGO's Engineering (Reutov) along with NPO Mashinostroyeniyais is developing the new sarmat / Sarmatian heavy liquid-propellant intercontinental ballistic missile to overcome the U.S.’s prospective missile defense system, Strategic Missile Forces chief Lt. Gen. Sergei Karakayev said 16 December 2011. The decision had been made to create a new silo-launched heavy missile that will have “enhanced capability to breach a hypothetical US missile defense system,” he said.

That's exactly what I would expect as part of a nuclear arms race, as a response to US efforts to get ahead in the race.

> Why did we need that upgrade?

Do you even know how old American missiles are? They are from 1970-80s. US made no new developments here since 1991, when all ICBM programs were canceled.

> Is the nuclear arms "race" still on?

Yes, though it's a capabilities race and not a numbers race, mostly. Geopolitical conflict with Russia restarted very quickly after a brief pause at the end of the Cold War, and an integral part of that conflict is jockeying for a dominant position should it come to war (mostly, because being perceived as having such a position is a powerful tool in that conflict without escalation to war.)

Evolution of military capabilities an arms race does not make. Otherwise pretty much everyone is in an arms race with everyone else, making the term pointless.

Why?! 21st century and one of the super powers still sees 'has world ending superweapon' as an election point.

Only one? Most of the countries with nuclear weapons program seem to be adding to their arsenal at differing paces, but adding nonetheless. Is there a country whose nuclear weapon stockpiles are absolutely static or has even shrunk, or will shrink in the near future?

No, western countries are reducing their nuclear weapons stockpiles dramatically, and have been for decades. Some others are as well.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_nuclear_weapons_sto...

Nuclear weapons are still a big election topic in the UK and the unwillingness of one candidate (Corbyn) to have/use them is seen as a weakness by many.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/31/us/politics/trump-nuclear...

While true, that's because those weapons are more precise and robust. There's no need to have so much redundancy.

Eg, with super-fuze all of our submarines have hard-target kill capability. That wasn't true a decade ago.

Ukraine?

IIRC the Ukraine handed all the nuclear weapons based on its territory back to Russia after the Soviet Union broke apart.

The condition was that the boundaries of the Ukraine were respected by the Russians.

So, today the Ukraine is nuke-less. Oh, and Crimea-less.

Ohh gee, didn't someone promise a wall to win an election? Might have something to do with the active research and development on missile defense tech by the US. Let's not forget rail guns and lasers. Maybe it's just their way to respond to the peaceful American way? Who knows? It's all so complicated. /s

Because MAD only works if destruction is assured. Missile shields prevent that so Russia has to figure out a way to penetrate those shields to bring MAD back.

I wonder if NATO continuously deploying ever more weapons on the Russian border might play any role there.

Pretty sure Putin isn’t worried about losing elections, dictators don’t have that petty little concern.

US show of force sends Russia a message in Black Sea

"You get ships up in the Black Sea, that makes them feel more threatened," the official added.

https://edition.cnn.com/2018/02/19/politics/us-russia-black-...

Imagine Russia sending their warships to the gulf of mexico. Would that be ok?

So, you are saying that Russian warships never visited Cuba?

Last ditch effort of a failing regime. The Russian economy should be much larger considering their size. The oligarchs will use nukes to strong arm the international community into reducing the embargoes so they can bail on their failed state. Then they will take their plunder to south america, where they will live out the rest of their lives in paranoid ecstasy.

because NATO is getting closer to our borders, we can't leave it without response

yeah, NATO occupying one chunk of neighbouring country and igniting and fueling armed rebellion in another chunk is certianly reason to be worried.

oh wait, that wasn't NATO, was it?

Would you prefer it the other way around? Let's say hypothetically Russia puts their bases and ICBM in Canada and assures everyone, it's only to target Mexico, in case a large narco or terrorist threat appears there.

Are you implying that US or NATO put their bases and ICBMs in Ukraine?

i would prefer Russia to not interfere with internal political processes. like giving Yanukovich $15bn loan on the eve of signing EU association which ultimately led to tens of thousands of people being killed.

That's avoiding my question.

But meddling into internal political processes seems like bread and butter for any would be superpower. Or are Iraq and Afghanistan invasion somehow not interference with political processes?

your question poses a false dichotomy. the choice is not between russia occupying ukraine versus russia behaving differently somewhere else, the choice is between russia occupying ukraine and russia not occupying ukraine. i prefer russia not occupying ukraine.

yes it was NATO who fueled it, just like many other revolutions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colour_revolution

well for sure, comrade putin and his friends are the best so any protest against them must surely be a CIA coup! your logic is impeccable tovarish!

https://www.unian.info/politics/2183494-mfa-ukraine-demands-...

funny, please read more about current relationship between Ukraine and Poland, Hungary, Romania (all NATO members). they supported the revolution at first, but now they treat them to acquire Ukrainian territories https://www.unian.info/politics/2184929-certain-statements-i...

do tell which territories have Poland, Hungary and Romania have occupied? because russia is already occupying crimea and parts of some eastern regions via puppet governments funded and armed by russia.

Surprisingly, there wasn't a single word about 'NATO fueling' in that article.

s/S/Uns/

It's not a invalid point per se, but I think everyone knows NATO's recent moves against Russia are a direct consequence of Russia invading and annexing Crimea.

It probably won't end well if everyone decides to "one-up" each other, though, similar to how WW1 started.

> invading and annexing Crimea

This is one of few times I've seen "invade" used to describe Russia's actions in Crimea. I find it strange that even western media talks about "annexation" when they usually employ exaggerated terminology for all kinds of trivial events.

edit: I'm not saying the invasion was trivial, I'm saying the media response was/is understated compared to non-events they exaggerate

Well, at least media don't play the Russian-proposed "we were heroic defenders" tune, like it was with Georgia in 2008.

Wasn't NATO putting missile bases/defences in Turkey long before all this though?

Russia saw that as a provocation and a breach of previous agreements.

try digging deeper, like ready history of NATO from 90s til current days. you will find something new for yourself

Ambiguous "read history" statements aren't helpful. If you have a point, we'd love to read it.

And why is NATO getting closer to your borders? It's not because NATO is expansionistic, seeking bases to launch an invasion of Russia. No, it's because countries like Poland fear Russia invading them, and so they seek protection via NATO.

What should NATO do, when Poland asks to become a member? Say no, because Russia has the right to meddle in Poland? Say no, because not upsetting Russia is more important than Poland's future? Say no, because defending the western half of Europe is all we should care about?

If Russia doesn't like everyone wanting to join NATO, it's really easy for them to fix: Stop making everyone feel threatened by Russia.

(Now, in the real world, that may not work, because Russia is paranoid, because of a couple of guys named Napoleon and Hitler who, starting from further west than the eastern edge of Poland, got all the way to Moscow - or within 15 miles of it, in Hitler's case. So Russia has some grounds for concern based on history. Nevertheless, NATO has exactly zero interest in invading Russia. My main point, however, stands - it's Russia's fault that NATO is expanding, not NATO's fault.)

To me this looks like a way to provoke even more international backlash and perpetuate an image of Russia as a "sieged stronghold" in the eyes of its people.

Come to think of it since it worked last time, why shouldn't it now?

A nuclear cruise missile with “unlimited range”... the unwelcome return of Project Pluto?

It's the only thing it possibly can be, to have limitless range. The Americans mothballed it as it was considered "too provocative".

The technology is totally feasible, and not even that complex - it's just that it's pretty much the most evil thing man could devise.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pluto

From the Wikipedia article:

"After delivering all its warheads, the missile could then spend weeks flying over populated areas at low altitudes, causing tremendous ground damage with its shock wave and radiation from its unshielded reactor. When it finally lost enough power to fly, and crash-landed, the engine would have a good chance of spewing deadly radiation for months to come."

"Too provocative" was a pretty mild way of putting it.

They also couldn’t figure out how to test it. Once you turn it on, you can’t stop it, and if you lose control it could go anywhere on the planet.

Can you not stop it by sending it commands to turn off the reactor?

Then it’ll crash and you’ll have a nice Chernobyl to deal with.

Several orders of magnitude less than Chernobyl. The reactor that lost containment was a gigawatt production plant. A gigawatt nuclear ramjet would be so huge there would be no trouble detecting it and shooting it down near the launch site.

Most of Chernobyl’s material stayed in the reactor, though. A hypersonic crash would disperse a much bigger proportion of the material. I don’t know how the two factors balance out exactly.

Just crash it into the ocean, sea water is an excellent neutron moderator.

This is pretty terrifying, but weren't we already living in a world where sub mounted cruise missiles could bypass most defense systems? Anybody know a lot about modern ICBM strategy?

Submarines with nukes that cannot be easily located is where the deterrence is. There is virtually no good defense against such capabilities, so this long range low altitude nuke changes nothing.

There is still however a chance of defence against SLBMs, between hypersonic anti-missile-missiles, and THAAD - https://www.lockheedmartin.com/us/products/thaad.html

With a SLAM spewing radiation as it goes, however, you're stuffed either way.

Tangential, but just wondering: who is this website for?

Surely there are no private citizens buying ballistic missile defence weapons and if a nation state had enough resources to consider buying something like this, would they not also have enough resources that they wouldn't be searching for their defense armament online?

I imagine it’s for the workers who make up a big part of the decision-making process for military acquisitions.

If you ride the DC Metro through the Pentagon stop, you’ll see a lot of ads for high-end weapons systems where other subway systems might have ads for lawyers and universities and such. It’s amusing and peculiar.

Its for warlords.

If you shoot it down at high altitude, wouldn't winds carry most of the radiation around the planet? Doesn't make it better for humanity but means the country (esp if it's a small one) wouldn't be as affected.

For the US, if a missile coming from the east is shot down over the Atlantic, radiation would probably hit Europe and Russia rather than the US.

We were not, these weapons (and medium range missiles) were banned under treaties, but Russia tore this up.

I found a couple of recent articles with some of the details here. It looks like USA was known to have submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) but only recently announced adding cruise capabilities [1]... but I don't see a mention of a treaty there, although the other article [2] mentions these new developments as a way to pressure Russian compliance with existing treaties.

Is INF the treaty you are mentioning being ignored? Is Russia's announcement a direct response to the USA's? Disappointed that recent history hasn't been even mentioned in most reporting around the announcement -- it's a pretty shocking headline to wake up to without context.

[1] https://www.defensenews.com/space/2018/02/02/the-us-could-be... [2] https://www.defensenews.com/space/2018/02/06/will-the-us-tra...

> It looks like USA was known to have submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) but only recently announced adding cruise capabilities

No, the US had nuclear cruise missiles deployable on subs since the 1980s or possibly 1970s (I can't find a good date for introduction of the TLAM-N, only that development began 1972 and it was announced they would be transfered to storage in 1991 and they were retired between 2010 and 2013.)

What your source reports is a recommendation to introduce a new nuclear cruise missiles replacing the retired TLAM-N.

Let the dictator world-destroying dick-measuring contest begin.

If there is a US president that will jump in and build a bigger missile without considering all the ramifications, it’s Trump :(

One of those 'revelations', picturing rockets descending on Florida, was a Russian TV clip from 2007. Link (in Russian): https://tvrain.ru/articles/grafiku_iz_filma_2007_goda_na_nej...

We got the Apollo program out of the last arms race, maybe this time we'll get a settlement on the Moon or Mars?

Because the motivation comes from having to flee the inevitable radiated craters in Europe etc.?

Trump is not going to handle a confrontation with Russia well. Worse if China allies with Putin.

While we could probably dust off Project Pluto and have an arsenal from other comments here, Trump has too much turmoil internally to be trusted with safely navigating a nuclear escalation like this.

I'm so glad the generation that lived through the cuban missile crisis saw it fit to elect a president into office that would bring those terrors back so that my generation could experience it as well.

Putin was set on world domination long before Trump was elected. Obama and Clinton thought they could "reset" relations with Putin, but Putin was playing them the whole time.

By the way, I voted for Clinton.

Edit: typo

> Putin was set on world domination

I guess this is one of examples of Putin's quest for world domination, right?

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/04/nato-deploys-troops-p...

Isnt that a fairly rational defensive response to Russians invading and annexing parts of Ukraine? If Russia wants to strengthen defenses against Nato in response, fine, as long as they don't go invading pad those borders as well.

That was but one example, there are plenty from before Ukrainian conflict started, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_missile_defense_...

Imagine US reaction if Putin tried to set up a "missile defense system" in Cuba. Oh wait.

This all happened AFTER NATO put misssile defences in Turkey, bordering Russia's sphere of influence which they agreed not to do.

If NATO isn't going to maintain the agreement why should Russia?

Not that Russians have a real choice, but they voted too.

Russia:1, NKorea:1, US/Europe:0

The times are changing...

You are welcome to move yourself and your family to Russia or NK and tell us all about how you get on..

Besides the fact that the only thing I know from theses countries are what the (occidental) media say (basically, lies, framed truths,...) I was just pointing at the fact that I’d expect US/Europe to answer just for the sake of political influence over their own citizens. But they don’t. So I think that the balance of power is moving. It’s already been reported years ago in some newspapers or documentaries so nothing surprising. But considering the absence of response of US/Europe, I’d say that confirms the balance of power has really moved now.

Just 3 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16470788

Is that a good enough response for you? Does it make you happy that Putin decided to tear up treaties banning intermediate range missiles and start a new arms race?

The most important power had not been military for a long long time.

Metal Gear?!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com