Posted on 11/21/2014 4:10:21 AM PST by lbryce
Russia certainly thinks so.
Their new round of nuclear weapons, their new aggressive posture and their new spurning of joint nuclear programs with the United States, all point to a disconcerting trend in Russian thinking.
Americans have short memories. Russians don’t. It’s only been 25 years since the Wall came down, but in Russia’s mind the Cold War didn’t end. If Russia’s invasion of Ukraine isn’t enough of a heads-up, then maybe their new generation of tactical nuclear weapons is.
That’s right – new tactical nuclear weapons - as in “yeah, we might use them since their only tactical.” No one would risk World War III over that.
Here in America, we’ve been a little full of ourselves, thinking we were so superior to Russia and everyone else in technology and weaponry. I mean, we could turn them into dust, right? But lately, in our obsession with drones and cyber warfare, we haven’t been paying attention to the whole nuclear weapons thing.
On September 10, Putin said Russia will develop a new guaranteed nuclear deterrent to counter the United States and NATO.
Actually, they already have. Russia’s tactical nukes are now better than both ours and NATO’s (NYTimes). NATO member countries have only 260 older tactical weapons. Sited in Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Turkey, the U.S. has 200 nuclear bombs with an overall capacity of 18 megatons. France has 60 atomic bombs.
As discussed in a report outlined in PRAVDA, Russia has 5,000 nuclear weapons of different tactical classes including Iskander warheads and torpedo, aerial and artillery warheads, all right next to Europe.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
Russia needs the Ukraine to feed its people during the coming mini ice age.
Putin does what it takes to protect his people and our dufus POTUS does everything in his power to weaken and threaten his.
I would take Putin over this current Jack-Lilly any day.
“Russia needs the Ukraine to feed its people during the coming mini ice age.”
That was 20 years ago.
Now Russia is now a net EXPORTER of wheat.
Russia Wheat Export Price Falls for 1st Time Since July on Glut
http://www.agweb.com/article/russia-wheat-export-price-falls-for-1st-time-since-july-on-glut/
In the last 15 years, they have opened up huge tracts of land for agriculture.
No one “wins” a nuclear world war 3. That said, there have been in the past and will be in the future criminally insane individuals who are given or who steal ultimate power in their country and are willing to try to “win” such a war anyway. That’s why who has this sort of weapon has always mattered.
Of course it may only be delaying the inevitable.
Im not sure Russia or China need better weapons systems. They only need to assure liberals & RINOs continue to run our country.
America’s atrophy in political will/intelligence will open itself up to getting beat. America has the political equivalent of AIDS, you get increasingly incompetent politicians, and your nation gets increasingly vulnerable to internal decay, corruption, and attack. SO I will call America’s problem APDS, or Acquired Politicial Deficiency Syndrome.
If the Current Occupant could somehow be dismissed from his job, it would be almost welcome for Vladimir Putin to send a viceroy to govern that territory once known as “the United States of America”. Putin could then call upon the resources of this territory to defeat his REAL opposition, the Muslim extremists both within the Russian Federation, and in the surrounding provinces, all with a ruthlessness the Current Occupant will not display toward Islam.
Russian is unlikely to backslide into the kind of Communism practiced under Stalin and his successors, but they have a well-developed sense of governing through a high and powerful oligarchy, still a largely centralized government that farms its operations out to favored “crony capitalists”, but without the ideological twist that is expressed in the territory once known as “the United States of America”.
That global warming really sucks, causing these ice ages.
If one tactical missile should detonate over a western country,that will be the end because that geni will not be returned to its bottle.
The west will have to retaliate.
The biggest mistake in this scenario is assuming that Obama and Putin are at odds.
Win? How sick is this?
The author lost me at "their".
I’m a nuke from the generation that built the stuff we currently have,yea, a really old nuke that has been around!
The majority of us who designed that stuff are no longer here. A meeting I attended 5 years ago made it clear that the DOD knew the all the nuke designers were gone since we had won the cold war (barf) and old nukes from the sputnik generation were gone;their experience walked out the door not to be replaced. According to Secretary Gates, the US was the only nuclear power that no longer had the capability to design and build a new nuclear weapon!
I have been wandering when someone out there realized what I know. Some of the old nukes have vacuum tube technology. Warheads degrade in power. The old launch systems can’t blow their silo blocks in snow, let alone a couple hundred feet of rubble. No nukes are loaded on the B52’s, B1’s, or B2’s we have (as if in a first strike someone will give us a timeout!) The only system that may work are the navy boomers and a great deal of those have been fixed with conventional Warheads (huh?). If the nukes we have are used, chances are we will be throwing duds. In answer to my concerns, the Russians have figured it out and that may be enough for them to give it a shot.
The Congress and administrations for the last 30 years through their short sightedness has put our nation in peril to the point of treason!
I read this and it triggered a memory.
I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of someone named “John Titor”. Back in the late 90’s, someone by that name was posting on Usenet in a few newsgroups, claiming to be a time traveler from somewhere in the 2030’s or such. The story has been talked about on ‘Coast to Coast’, and there are a couple websites dedicated to the guy.
In any case, one of the claims he made was that in 2015, Russia launches a nuclear war against major US cities, essentially destroying the US, but not totally. Five separate countries rise up in it’s place. In the aftermath, the attack is seen by the world...and the US survivors... as a GOOD thing, since the government was getting out of control.
He never gave an exact time for the attack, but did say it was in mid-January, 2015.
Now, granted...he also predicted a multi-year civil war leading up to the attack...which obviously hasn’t happened.
Do I believe this “John Titor” or whoever he was? No, not really. Still, it triggered the memory of what I read about him.
Anyway...back to the thread.
No one can “win” a nuclear war, unless you define “win” as surviving.
I’m not sure what would be worth a nuclear exchange. What are we doing that Russians want to stop, and what are they doing that is worth nuking them? It isn’t like we’re seeing hordes of tanks advancing across Europe.
I’d be more worried about ISIS or some other little player setting off a nuke. Ever hear of mutually assured destruction (MAD)?
Coast to Coast is a great source of information. It lets you know how many mentally ill there are out there.
“The biggest mistake in this scenario is assuming that Obama and Putin are at odds.”
Shut down the phone lines, we have a winner.
Russian nukes are likely in the same shape. The Russia's manufacturing ability has collapsed, some parts of the production chain are in Ukraine. New designs often fail tests (like the seaborne "Bulava") old ones (same "Sputnik" era) are still in service, like "Satan". "Satan"'s control systems are as obsolete as American ones, if not worse. 
Soviet control panel
.
Some carriers, like Tu-95, fit a museum collection more than an Air Force.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.