Speaking over the weekend at a defense forum, US Secretary of Defense Ash Carter talked up the massively expensive plan to revamp the entire US nuclear weapons arsenal, presenting it as something wholly about “Russian aggression” and the dispute over the status of Ukraine.
Far from a sudden reaction to Ukraine, however, the Obama Administration has been pushing this scheme, and its ever-growing price tag, since early 2010, several years before Ukraine, and amid some of the better US-Russia ties in a generation.
Estimates on the cost grew and grew, with the “official” price tag in the $348 billion range, and many NGOs arguing that the cost will be far more, and well in excess of half a trillion dollars, a budget-breaking amount in a time when Pentagon expenses are already spiraling out of control.
That Russia is a sudden excuse likely reflects the Pentagon’s growing desperation to avoid serious debate about bankrupting another generation with more and more advanced nuclear arms decades after the Cold War’s conclusion. With Russia serving as a ready-made excuse for hasty escalations elsewhere, there’s probably not going to be much pushback in Congress.
Mr Ditz is no doubt correct. Nuclear weapons are militarily useless. They're much too crude to use other than as terror bombs. Thus, any country that launched a nuclear first strike would turn itself into an international pariah and the victim of the strike would in fact have no need to retaliate. The real purpose of all this may be to provoke Putin into an arms race (to bankrupt him) and into making nuclear threats (to further discredit him).
Have you tried getting mental help?
The real purpose is to take half a trillion dollars out of the pockets of the American tax-payers, and place it in the bank accounts of large shareholders in the defence and security industries. Carter, and other administration figures involved in selling this plan, will be richly rewarded for their services after leaving office.
Yeah right. Do you actually believe that if Russia or China or anyone else destroyed one of our cities with a nuclear weapon, that we wouldn't retaliate with nuclear weapon(s)? Use of nuclear weapons on Japan didn't seem to make us a pariah state.
I think that instead of buying new nuclear weapons, we should be trying to get more use out of the ones we already have. The thing is, exactly what is it about a 2015 40-megaton warhead that makes it perform better than, say, a 1980 40-megaton warhead? Just like our stocks of conventional bombs, shouldn't we try to use our older weapons first and get them out of the inventory to make room for more new ones?
Sure, so everyone is looking toward the skies for missiles being launched- we could always go full Strangelove and send the B-52's in at treetop level. You know a pilot- a good pilot- can wing one of those babies in at treetop level…. frying chickens in the barn. And even if they spot a B-52 inbound, they couldn't track and chase down every refurbished F-105 Thunderchief screaming in, each with a nuke in its bomb bay.
And let's not forget how easy it would be to just load up a delivery van and park it in a convenient spot for ground zero. Boom, indeed.
We've got PLENTY of options when it comes to getting our money's worth out of our existing stocks of both nukes and older aircraft.
~~~~~
I am sick to death of hearing about 'upgrading' our nuclear weapons. They're useless for modern warfare, and dangerous to even possess- and they're made even more dangerous by those we entrust with their safeguarding and employment. Smash them- smash them all, now, and be rid of the problem.