ICBMs Still Matter | Hacker News Reader

ICBMs Still Matter

realcleardefense.com

14 pointsdrocer8825 comments

The argument is not quite well constructed. Let me try to improve on it a little:

1. The program is dirt cheap as far as military expenditures go: it will cost about $86 BN for a lifecycle of 50 years, which comes to less than $2 BN per year [1]. For comparison only maintaining the nuclear stockpile safe and ready costs about $4 BN per year [2]. Another comparison is the cost of the French submarine launched missile M5.1: €3-4 BN for 10 years [3], which will cover only between 16 and 64 missiles (1 to 4 submarines, 16 each), versus 450 for the American ICBM project.

2. While it is true that currently all the nuclear deterrence can be performed by the nuclear submarines, it's difficult to be 100% sure there won't be some technological breakthrough during the next 50 years to make them vulnerable. The Columbia class boomers will cost $110BN [4], and that's without the missiles they'll carry. Currently those missiles are Trident II, and their latest version is supposed to be good until 2042, after which there needs to be a replacement that will come at a cost too. So one can think of the $86 BN price tag for the ICBMs as a somewhat inexpensive insurance policy for the SLBMs.

[3] The main role of the ICMBs is to be a magnet for the enemy's missiles. They are all positioned in deserted areas. Whoever intends to perform a decapitation strike will need to take all of them down. As explained in the article, one would need to spend about 1000 nukes for that. 1000 nukes that don't go towards dense urban areas. Compare this with the SLBMs: if you can synchronize a torpedo attack against all of them, you only need to sink at most 14 subs, and you don't even need nukes for that.

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

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

[3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M51_(missile)

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia-class_submarine

Can the USA even build a new ICBM without using made-in-china electronics? And then there is not just the missile itself, but all the ground support equipment.

Most likely yes. The US military is well aware of its supply chain, and realizes that in times of war you don't want to have part of it in enemy's hands.

Here's a visualization of F35's supply chain [1]. You can only NATO and other close allies like Israel, Japan, South Korea and Australia.

[1] https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/products/f-35/f-35-glob...

Of course.

It seems to me that the United States is more likely to be the aggressor given its record of interventionism, not to mention Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Russians and the Chinese are far more peaceful - they do not position military bases aggressively around the world, do not fund proxy armies, and do not fund countries like Saudi Arabia that are responsible for the ongoing Yemeni famine (I've refrained from touching the more contentious topics in US foreign policy). The idea that the United States is under threat, rather than the threat, is laughable.

If any country is well positioned to de-escalate a nuclear arms race, it is the United States, and this is the action that it should take.

China spent half a billion on a military base in Djibouti at the mouth of the Red Sea less than three years ago.

Russia funds separatist anti government groups in Donbas and annexed Crimea, while maintaining military bases across Eurasia specifically near their former subjects.

Russia funds Iran, responsible for the ongoing Yemeni famine, and as a cherry on top, Iran funds various groups across the middle east through Russian instruments.

(This is all ignoring the idea that they’ve refrained from projecting power more often at a global scale due to being peaceful, as opposed to lacking the capability entirely due to being relatively poor and weak.)

> Russia funds Iran, responsible for the ongoing Yemeni famine

Iran is responsible for the Yemeni famine? Now I’ve heard it all.

The US is actively supplying funds to Saudi Arabia, which is culpable for the Yemeni famine. Reading the wikipedia page of the Yemeni famine is enough to establish which country is culpable for it.

Even if Iran is partly culpable, the US is not supplying funds to Iran, and is in fact sanctioning it (incl. medical supplies) during a global pandemic. I mean look at the military bases around Iran alone: https://i.redd.it/2x46rg6uid631.jpg

The current Iranian regime came into power as a result of a US coup of a democratically elected prime minister for the benefit of British oil. China doesn't even come close to the US foreign presence.

The US was clearly not the aggressor in WWII.

Mao and Stalin were too busy purging tens of millions of their own citizens to develop the global reach that the US established post WWII, but China is certainly headed in the same direction now

ok I'll bite. How many tens (of millions)? Can any country purge ten million own citizens to improve their global reach? Is it like a warcraft movie spell?

I think djohnston's point was that China's global reach started expanding after they stopped killing tens of millions of their own citizens, which was around the time Mao died.

Well the USSR used over 30 million people as slave labor in their gulags, which were mostly involved in construction works and natural resources extraction.

That can certainly advance things.

> ...too busy purging tens of millions of their own citizens to develop the global reach...

I think you misread 'to' in this sentence to mean 'in order to'. The intent by the parent comment was 'too busy...instead of develop[ing] the global reach'

I'm not defending Mao or Stalin. I'm critiquing utopian thinking, including that of Mao and Stalin. Communists pursued a utopia, and neoconservatives are pursuing their own utopia modelled on Chicago school economics and liberal democracy.

We should pursue a non-interventionist foreign policy and not force our way of life, which itself is a compromise between different groups, onto other countries. Other countries need to come to a different modus vivendi compromise between themselves and with us, and have as much right to sovereignty as we do.

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