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Minuteman III Missiles Are Too Old to Upgrade Anymore, STRATCOM Chief Says
(www.military.com)
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this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2024
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Morality and such concerns aside, these missiles are pointless beyond boomer dick-wagging.
If the US military desires to destroy the world, the submarine nuclear arsenal is fully capable of doing so. If the US is hit with a first strike nuclear attack, again, the subs are fully capable of retaliating and ensuring only cockroaches are left.
These bases and their missiles are an antiquated relic from the Cold War. Hey here's a crazy idea: the US agrees to an open destruction of the warheads and missile sites. China, Russia, etc. can send observers to verify the destruction. At the beginning of this process just publicly announce something like "we're willingly and freely reducing our nuclear stockpile. It is our hope that other nations match us."
Oh, damn, I must have been off in some commie daydream for a second. What I meant to say was we should pay Boeing $10T over the next decade to update the terrestrial ICBM silos.
I never really understood the point of continuing to make nuclear weapons once we've reached the doomsday threshold. If you have enough nukes to wipe out the civilization, making more is just a complete waste of resources. If only any nuclear arms agreements were still in place maybe they wouldn’t rebuild them, could’ve been a golden opportunity for arms reduction assuming Russia has the same problem with 50 year old missiles.
It becomes a game of who can destroy all of their opponents missiles and still have enough of their own left to do genocide. The US would make more missiles to make sure that after their first strike, they not only would have enough to stop any feeble retaliation, but also to continue on with what they actually want to do which is wipe out the opponents population. In order to prevent them from doing this the USSR had to then increase their own stock with missiles that were good enough to threaten the US missiles. So the US would then build more and better missiles to overwhelm the soviet's missiles again. Like yellow Parenti said, it's not an arms race,it's one side trying to catch up so they don't get wiped out while the other side increases their stock in order to be able to wipe them out.
So it may only take X number of missiles to kill the enemy but it takes Y number of missiles to ensure the opponents missiles don't hit you then it becomes and equation of X - Y missiles to kill the enemy and not yourself. So every time the soviet's increased their own stock, Y goes up, so X has to go up to compensate. At least this is how I understand it
But realistically speaking, interception of missiles is incredibly difficult, and once you get enough nukes it doesn't even matter whether they hit the target or not. It turns out even a small nuclear exchange could have catastrophic consequences https://www.wired.com/story/even-a-small-nuclear-war-could-trigger-a-global-apocalypse/
You also have to consider the other points Parenti makes. Every time the US escalated and the USSR had to play catch up, it was a burn on valuable resources for the USSR. They employed everything they could think of to burn down the USSR, both militarily and economically. Making more, bigger, better nukes, had the bonus of doing both I would imagine. Not to mention you are bringing the logic, of caring about life in general, to an equation that involves the US oligarchy. These are people that only have one thing in sight, absolute domination and ownership. I have no doubt a decent number of them had/have the mindset of "if I can't have it no one will." In addition, I'm sure some private military contractors were making a lot of money off all the construction that goes into making nukes, bases, submarines, etc.
So make more bombs, spend more money for our military contractors, build more bunkers and submarines. Force our targets to have to burn more of their own resources. This is what I imagine their thoughts processes were back then. Idk about now. I haven't kept up with what we have been doing with the nuclear stock pile as of recent.
We can argue about why make so many and that it doesn't make sense but none of that really matters because they did it. I'm just trying to give a hypothesis of what the reasons may be.
I do think that the cold war was primarily an economic war of attrition. US bloc was ahead from the start because US was profiteering from WW2 and building out its industry while the rest of the world burned. USSR was forced into a defensive position from the very start. That said, USSR leadership lacked imagination and courage in post Stalin era. They basically tried to compete with the west using western metrics like GDP.
I'm sure at some level (setting aside the obvious desire to funnel public money into the MIC) there's planning for how future technology might make parts of the nuclear arsenal obsolete, and redundancy built in to compensate.
Missile interception is incredibly difficult now, but in 10-20 years? Submarines are undetectable now, but in 10-20 years (see the recent post about China developing new sub detection tech)? At least through the very limited lens of nuclear planning it makes some sense to give yourself different options to be flexible in the event one part of your strategy can be effectively countered at some point.
For sure, there are also new developments happening with stuff like Burevestnik, which effectively gives missiles unlimited range. A lot of the missile defence is predicated on the idea that missiles are going to come on a particular trajectory, and Burevestnik negates that assumption. Hypersonics is another example of missiles that aren't possible to intercept currently.
Russia and the US both still have the START treaty
However, Russia stepped back due to the whole Ukraine thing.
And yes the Russian Federation inherited the aged (even at the time) missiles which were equivalent to the US' Minuteman III and others which have been decommissioned. Peacekeeper, Atlas, etc.
To be the most fully fair to the US, the Peacekeeper missiles were decommissioned and their former locations were (most of them) fully destroyed as to never be useable again.
Not that it matters much, but the US stepped down the Minuteman III to only carry one nuclear warhead (possible of 3 max). The Peacekeeper missiles could carry 10 warheads.
The reduction to one warhead and subsequent decommissioning of the Peacekeepers was due to US/USSR cooperation.
We did it before. We can do it again. There's absolutely never been and never will be a reason for a country to have so many nukes.
It wasn't so much because of Ukraine, but US failing to honor its end of the deal. I think nuke reduction absolutely needs to happen, but it seems like we're now moving in the opposite direction.
the actions of the US make it crystal clear that only with nukes can a country retain its sovereignty. so we're doing nuclear proliferation at the moment.
Basically this. One of the only recourses they will have left to try to maintain power is a "we will end the world of you don't let us do what we want" button.
"you have to let us end the world... or do you want the CHINESE to end the world?"
And yet they DID make that many. I'm not saying they should have, or that they shouldn't reduce those numbers now. A question was asked as to why do it. I gave a potential reason. The US is psychotic and genocidal.... and I'm sure making nukes is a profitable endeavor for many private contractors on some level.
It's insanely profitable to Boeing mostly, yes.
They held (still hold) most of the contracts for the operating silos to this day. All the equipment had to be designed to withstand a first strike nuclear attack from the USSR. Not necessarily like a direct attack, but a nearby attack on its equivalent sites. 15 missile alert facilities per base. 10 missiles per alert facility. Three bases. Total 450 operational ICBMs under the ground with predetermined coordinates meant to strike at the most valuable military targets of the USSR, China, etc. (used to be more but Peacekeepers and others were dismantled).
Boeing designed a ton of proprietary equipment for these sites. Since it has to be hardened to EMP, radiation, heat, vibration, etc. it's over-engineered (and probably done well since it was the 1960/70s before full enshittification struck). Proprietary equipment, most of it classified for national security reasons, has to be within very strict guidelines, etc. Boeing basically holds a pistol to the Air Force's head with this shit. They can demand anything they want. Which is, of course, the entire point to a lot of this stuff. Enrich private corporations.
Those reductions don't matter and were meaningless gestures on a strategic level. Nuclear sub-boats carry MIRVs with over a dozen independent warheads each and as the US always was most likely to be the one doing a first strike, a missile boat they could park off an enemy coast with only 5-10 minute's warning was always going to be a preferable choice for committing such a crime and thus preferable as something to keep and invest in. Land-based missile sites are too easily discovered and monitored as well as static targets for the enemy compared to nuclear subs and air-based attacks with bombers.
Best of all bombers (once in the air) and missile subs are immune to being overrun with anti-nuclear-war liberals trying to stop the destruction of the world once it's apparently imminent which was a fear as well as communist revolutionaries should the revolution ever hit US shores, any cut off or exiled US government would still in theory wield roving bands of death hidden beneath the waves located around the world in its oceans capable of destroying rebellious US cities or any other country and effectively bringing about the end which I'm sure was attractive as an idea as well at the height of the cold war.
Boeing buys back $9T of stock, the panels fly off the new missiles