See Vice's coverage of SOFEX on Youtube for a good showcase of delusion.
SpaceX vehicles are a firmware update away from being high precision ICBMs (and their CEO has said they’d take DoD work and build weapons systems). No one on here is calling for somber treatment of that kit and their YouTube launch streams. Condemn the action, not the tool.
So it's fine to stockpile chemical weapons as long as we don't use them because they're just a tool?
Do you feel better about using a nuclear weapon over a chemical weapon? Why or why not? Once death is assured, we’re just arguing time and the experience.
War in general is terrible and merciless, and should be avoided at all costs. I can be a pacifist but still want to pull out all of the stops when the devil comes knocking.
I dunno... I think a very small percentage of people alive at the time of using nuclear weapons on Japan would have actually done so. My own opinion is that the same percentage today would advocate for using nuclear weapons on another populace. The problem is that the people in charge of these things aren't in the majority - they are psychopathic power-hungry war mongers. Have you ever heard of an instance where a pacifistic head of state ruled a nation, beyond Tibet? I have not - those types of people tend not to interested in becoming head of state in the first place. People who aspire to dominate a nation(ie presidents, prime ministers, emperors), don't have a huge moral leap to make(if any at all) before they are willing to murder another nation's people.
tldr; anyone who is capable of being made a leader of a nation, should never be allowed to do so. they tend to be willing to murder people to get what they want, and that's generally bad for the rest of us living on planet Earth.
Ever talked to any older Asians from nations who were occupied by the Japanese before and during the war? They would have happily used as many as the United States was willing to provide.
It's amazing how many people forget the immense scale of the atrocities that the Japanese committed before and during WWII, eclipsing even that of the Germans.
The 300,000 innocent Chinese civilians dying PER MONTH, the estimated 1,000,000 US soldiers estimated to die in the invasion, the countless Soviet soldiers who might have joined them in an invasion, the 10’s of millions of innocent Japanese citizens who would have died in an invasion, all might disagree with you.
And weird how you mention Tibet without mentioning the slow rolling genocide taking place there thanks to their Pacifist leaders.
Of course, the threat is only good if the nation doing the threatening is willing to use it, so the merits of stockpiling are still arguable. With that said, they were something of a tool for a while. It has been argued that Wilson lacked foresight due to his decision to drop nukes, but what would you have done? Would you have been willing to condemn a half-million young American men to die, given the choice?
It's the classic argument, debated since the time of Pericles: is a javelin gone astray responsible for a death?
There was no need to invade the islands. For the last year of the war, the Japanese had severe problems importing supplies. A significant fraction of their imports were coming in on tiny wooden ships: larger ships and steel ships would probably be sunk by US submarines or US aviation before making even a single delivery, and Japan had almost none left. The US could have simply waited and gotten the same result that they got with nukes. The reason it did not wait is worry that Stalin would invade northern Japan.
The first sentence of the wikipedia page on mining in Japan is, "Mining in Japan is minimal because Japan does not possess many on-shore mineral resources". Although the Japanese homeland does have coal reserves, the extraction costs are much higher than they are in the US and in Europe. It has and had very little petroleum reserves. The wikipedia page I mentioned says that "in 1941, Japanese petroleum production was . . . 0.1% of world petroleum production" and that the US produced about as much petroleum in a day as Japan did in a year.
I don't know how many Japanese would have died because of a siege, but it seems likely that if the siege took an extended amount of time, it would be more than died during the bombings.
Additionally in the alternative scenario where the Soviets invade, you'd still likely have a higher death toll. And there is also the continuing deaths of Civilians and POWs in Japanese occupied Manchuria that would have continued until the Soviet invasion was successful.
I don't think I could order a nuclear attack or support a politician who did--but from a purely utilitarian perspective, it's not an easy decision.
While strictly speaking true, as an ICBM booster the Falcon 9 would be going on 6 decades obsolete. Cryogenic propellants for ICBMs have been obsolete since the early 60s.
So if your aim is to chuck nukes, a Minuteman-III is plainly superior to a Falcon 9 in every respect save payload. What about payload then? A Minuteman-III can carry up to three warheads with hundreds of kilotons of power each. That's a lot of damage. The Peacekeeper missile, removed from service in 2005, could deliver up to 10 warheads. Of course that cost more, a little more than a Falcon 9 launch, but still had the advantages of being a solid fuel rocket. Still in service, the submarine launched Trident-II can carry as many as 8-14 reentry vehicles, but in practice is limited by various treaties to a fraction of that. If there was the political willpower to violate those treaties and have an ICBM carrying more warheads than either the Minuteman-III or Trident-II currently carry, they would simply put more warheads onto the Trident-II. That'd be a lot simpler than re-purposing the Falcon 9, and a lot more useful.
Something else to consider though is range. Minuteman-III has enough range to hit Russia from the North, but not from the South. That might seem like a pretty severe limitation, but that's actually the way people want things to remain. Back in the 60s the Soviets designed something called the Fractional Orbital Bombardment System (FOBS). Basically, it was an ICBM capable of putting the warhead into orbit, giving it unlimited range. So, in essence, Russia could nuke America over the South Pole, instead of the North Pole, thereby bypassing all of the early warning systems that were looking North. Because this system was seen as a way of bypassing early warning systems, it was seen as a first strike weapon and therefore a destabilizing force. These sort of systems are now prohibited by treaty, and Falcon 9 would be in violation if it were an ICBM. But as a first strike weapon, a Falcon 9 is pretty shit. They take a long time to load and fuel, and their launch sites are high profile. A first strike is all about having the element of surprise; in an Falcon 9 FOBS/ICBM scenario, there are too many opportunities for detection. Particularly when you remember that SSBNs exist.
(There is another option though. The first ICBMs (as well as the Falcon 9) used cryogenic liquid propellants, and modern ICBMs use solid propellant, but in between these two technologies was a third: storable liquid propellants. The Titan II ICBM for instance burned aerozine and n204, both of which are liquids at room temperature, therefore the Titan II can be stored in a fueled state, ready to fly. These missiles could fly on very short notice, but they're also pretty dangerous to be around.)
For reference, the Hypervelocity Projectile (made by BAE Systems) that Railgun fires comes down to a unit cost of $86,000-$90,000 per shot depending on what source you read. So ~$90,000 per railgun shot gives you ~53 shots from the railgun for every single SM-6 when it comes to cost. This is entirely game changing from an economics perspective with similar capabilities. By lacking rocket motors or being explosive, it is also much safer to transport so you can likely pack more ammunition onto a ship.
In the context of a new canon to be installed on the Navy's ships I think it fits pretty well. It does not sound nationalistic or over the top to me.
The other videos are on personal channels so they are inconsequential.
Railguns, rockets, explosions, lasers... fast cars, fighter jets, massive supercomputers... all impressive engineering "magic" that spark some childish awe in a certain type of person.
As an adult, I know the why behind the technology. That "awe" grows into "awesome" or "awful"... but it always starts awe.
Actually yes, but the application of on the other hand...
Only a tiny few of the multiple conflicts since WW2 have been helpful or even justified. Many have been hugely counter-productive. Yet I can't deny that wars and military spending have given huge impetus to advance many capabilities. Capabilities that have ended up having huge applications in peacetime too. Whether rocketry or WW2's improvement of the cavity magnetron, or early computers. Who knows how many decades later some of the stuff we take for granted might have arrived, or sat on a dusty shelf as interesting but impractical or non-commercial? Even the humble tin can got its start supplying food to the navy, in the age of sail.
People often overstate this. For instance, when pointing out that the Mercury and Gemini programs used ICBM boosters, people sometimes insinuate that NASA was in fact developing those rockets for the military and all the manned spaceflight stuff was just a nice cover story to make the rockets seem benign. In fact, the rockets were already in military use by the time NASA got their hands on them. Those IBCMs were not created using NASA as a PR cover-story. They were weapons from day one which were later repurposed for civilian use.
Another big example is the Saturn V. Unlike it's predecessors, it was never an ICBM. NASA designed that one from the ground up for lifting people. Of course there are more military applications for rockets than implementing ICBMs. Satellites have obvious military applications, so any sort of space launch technology will have military applications and anybody who advances the state of the art for launching satellites will be, in that sense, contributing to the advance of military technology.
Especially since a lot of the benefit has gone the opposite direction a lot of times - how many of our space telescopes started life as extra reconnaissance satellites?
Case in point: I had to get a double bunionectomy when I was in the Army after spending a year in Iraq and got my feet wrecked. They surgically broke my big toe in 2 places and drilled 2 holes. They then put "pins" in each hole made of pig cartilage. This procedure allows the body to heal and then it absorbs these "pins" which prevents arthritis. At the time I got this surgery, in 2004, it was not available to the general civilian population. Now, it is. It was pioneered to help the military and now the entire populace can benefit from the exact same technology.
Problem spaces that push boundaries of engineering ultimately result in better engineer for everyone.
Some people are hoping for a return of the battleship era, with nuclear powered ships slinging shells at each other across the horizon with electric cannons. But I'm pretty sure that is wishful thinking.