US withdraws from nuclear treaty with Russia, prepares to test new missile | Hacker News Reader

US withdraws from nuclear treaty with Russia, prepares to test new missile

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24 pointsga-vu6 comments

> The end of the INF pact leaves the US and Russia with just one nuclear arms agreement, the New START Treaty, which governs strategic nuclear weapons and delivery systems for each side. If New START isn't renewed or extended by 2021, the world's two largest nuclear powers would have no limits on their arsenals for the first time in decades.

Except logic (if it could for once be applied to the military). The strategic arsenal is basically a doomsday device that blows up half the world. You only need a certain number of missiles to do that and we have built way more than needed. So, New START or not, the US should just come to it’s sense and drawdown it’s nuclear arsenal for those common sense economic reasons. The threat of total annihilation is just as good at 200% of necessary force as it is at 1000% of necessary force.

Part of the stuff that's not being said is that our current nuclear capabilities are all 1960s era technology and safety standards. While it pains me to say this, it does deserve a technology refresh, for the safety factor among many other things.

As always, we don't need a 1000 nukes, just enough to pack a punch if we were nuked first, and no more.

Some of the new technologies were intentionally limited to not upset MAD, such as MIRV technology that would allow a trivial amount of silos to hold enough nukes for an effective counter-force first strike. Keeping limited nuclear armament technology is fine as long as all the world actors are honest about it

I don't think we can realistically put the genie back in the bottle :/

I agree. The only real issue to me is testing of warhead detonations (pretty bad all-around regardless of where you do it), which I don't believe this treaty covered. The test ban treaty is still in effect, so this losing the INF really just means potentially more missiles.

Not if you count potential saboteurs and the fact that most arsenal locations are probably already located and dare I say monitored. Intel penetration of US from various state actors is at a high level already.

Modernization and increasing capabilities are the only thing that will keep the status quo solid.

Force will have to be used in the near future and hopefully it wont be miscalculated and devastating.

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