US arms advantage over Russia and China threatens stability, experts warn
US arms advantage over Russia and China threatens stability, experts warn
Academics say vulnerability of the two countries’ nuclear launch sites makes dangerous mistakes more likely
a) How are they destroying the submarines with cruise missiles?
b) This is only an issue if China or Russia seriously believed that the US would be likely to start World War 3, which seems pretty hard to believe.
I too found it odd that there was no mention of missile submarines considering China has 6 and Russia has at least 8. This is as close as the article gets to mentioning them
“Our analysis predicts that only Russian mobile and Chinese deeply buried strategic systems may be considered at all survivable in the face of conventional missile attacks and are far more vulnerable than usually considered,” they add.
Anti submarine missiles are a thing. Cruise just means slow long range. If it deploys an anti submarine weapon at the target. I hanve no clue if they exist, but it's not impossible
If the US thought they could attack China and get away with it they wouldn't at first, but ten years in? You bet there'd be people questioning why the US is allowing [insert real or imagined Chinese human rights violation] on their watch. Is [current administration] really American enough?
That's my assessment as a Canadian. You average CCP guy probably thinks it would be immediate, and would involve Han Chinese being treated the way their regime treats minorities.
MAD only works because it's a Nash equilibrium not requiring good faith.
Edit: But yes, this specifically is not a good example of a MAD-threatening technology.
Nah Americans don't go to war over anything but self interest. That might be on the right side of history but there must be a gain to be made.
However.. wars start over perceived future weakness in comparison. If <insert country> thinks war with <insert adversary> is inevitable, and adversary will grow stronger over time, the best moment for war is.... Now.. or at some close future date. If the country thinks their adversary will grow comparatively weaker over time, war waits.
War has very high costs. The US knows what most of their costs are.. since they have been at war for most of the last 100 years. But a first strike on china makes no sense.. not militarily Nor economically. They need their allies in the fight.. and that will not "just" happen.
Russia just found out the hard way how long a
600whoops... 300 billion warchest lasts.. or does not last. We're down to ~50 billion now.China however has no clue what the costs will be.. just prognoses and projections.
Yes, starting stupid wars and botching them in front of the whole world makes you vulnerable.
You mean the US?
Did invading France and Poland make nazis vulnerable? Ppl forget how close they got to totally annihilate Russia and win the WWII.
There are, the authors estimate, 150 Russian remote nuclear launch sites and 70 in China, approximately 2,500km (1,550 miles) from the nearest border, all of which could be reached by US air-launched JASSM and Tomahawk cruise missiles in a little more than two hours in an initial attack designed to prevent nuclear weapons being launched.
Emphasis mine, I'm pretty sure even Russia can notice hundreds of cruise missiles are heading directly at their silos and figure out that this looks like an attack on their strategic nuclear arsenal in two whole hours, given that ICBMs take around a quarter of that from launch to impact.
And even if these cruise missiles were completely undetectable, it would still fail unless the strike takes out 100% of the enemy nukes. If even one is able to survive, you risk a nuclear holocaust.
Being able to theoretically wipe our all the enemy nukes without using any of your own is strategically nice to have, but on its own it isn't enough to negate the threat of a nuclear exchange. At best, it should make your enemy more reluctant to retaliate with a nuclear launch, assuming they realize that they aren't getting nuked and that a launch would potentially change that.
Yeah, the West pushing the first strike and anti-second-strike envelope is a real problem, but that's not a good example.
Launch to impact.. how long is it to get ready to launch?
The whole idea of nuclear ICBM warfare and MAD is that you are prepared to launch at least some of your missiles before your attack capability can be removed. So, to maintain MAD capability, at least some of your missiles have to be launch capable at any time in order to effectively respond to a first strike. Of course, that readiness level can be increased if the perceived threat is higher. What that means is that a response strike needs to be able to launch in less than 30 minutes. Two hours is very generous. The first strike advantage is that you can launch most of your missiles. The MAD doctrine assures that all victories on this stage are pyrrhic.
It would be amazing if all their ICBMs could be just wiped out, but I'm a bit skeptical whether that's actually true. Even without considering all the submarines.
Sucks to suck?
Ill have to tell ya all. Im not real concerned on that front. IF china was a neighbor that india, japan, korea, and such was good with they could have a nice european union thing going.
Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against arms control agreements if they're interested. Are they interested though?
Remind me again who pulled out of arms control agreements first?
The real question is if the US would be interested.
I'd imagine yes, but primarily since they're behind.
That still counts
The Guardian - News Source Context (Click to view Full Report)
Information for The Guardian:
MBFC: Left-Center - Credibility: Medium - Factual Reporting: Mixed - United Kingdom
Wikipedia about this sourceSearch topics on Ground.News