Who Will Start the Nuclear Holocaust?

[Patroklos]

Actually, once the US is confident enough in its anti-missile capabilities, it can be emboldened into thinking attacking a major military power becomes a viable strategy (as such a scenario takes place in the future, I'm mostly thinking about China, Russia, possibly India).

Wow, I am glad YOU have such confidence in our anit-missile tech, because the US military doesn't.

However, the US won't nearly have the same conventional superiority against a major military power than it had against Serbia, Iraq or Afghanistan... A conventional war would look quite bad. But a swift nuclear attack would be able to prune the enemy military, without fear of retaliation.

We can go over a US/China war again in another thread, but of the three China would be the easiest to take out conventionally (depending on what the victory conditions are of course), Russia the hardest. But all three could be done, albiet nowhere near as easily as Serbia. Hell, the conflict might get more than 5 minutes of the nightly news even.

Obviously, the prez won't push push on the red button just for laughs, but only in the case of an acute crisis (be it objective or fantasized).
The American society has a serious warlike streak to it, and quite an unidimensional view of foreign countries: I find it definitely possible that, at some point, you guys consider nukes as a solution.

I love when Europeans talk like this. It is such sweet self pawnage.

In any case, again, what objective do we absolutely need nukes for in the near future besides holocaust for its own sake?

Neutering a potential rival before they attempt to attack you?

And why do we need nukes for this?

[Krill]

[q=Spiffor]Actually, once the US is confident enough in its anti-missile capabilities, it can be emboldened into thinking attacking a major military power becomes a viable strategy (as such a scenario takes place in the future, I'm mostly thinking about China, Russia, possibly India).

However, the US won't nearly have the same conventional superiority against a major military power than it had against Serbia, Iraq or Afghanistan... A conventional war would look quite bad. But a swift nuclear attack would be able to prune the enemy military, without fear of retaliation.
[/q]

[Patroklos]

So you are saying just because we have a full proof anti-missile shield (a ridiculous idea in and of itself) we will go ahead and shelve our perfectly capable conventional weapons and go straight for the nukes?

This hypothetical missile shield is so pathetic an idea futher discussion is really not needed. I didn't know Spiffor was a Putin mouthpiece

So again, now or in the near futre, what do we need nukes for that conventional arms could not accomplish?

[Krill]

They would save (American) lives. I thought that USians favoured US lives over none US lives?

[Alinestra Covelia]

Why would you even want to carpet bomb Afghanistan?

I mean, come on.

They've already got the best carpets in the world.

[Krill]

Yeah, and just think how high all the farmers will get off the fumes. It'll probably affect the entire continent.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Patroklos
So again, now or in the near futre, what do we need nukes for that conventional arms could not accomplish?

Let's see:

- Conventional missiles can only partially destroy the target, especially if it's bunkerized. Bombers can be shot down by the enemy aircraft - those are pretty significant problems if you're considering attacking an enemy whose conventional weaponry matches your own. Remember that I'm talking about future scenarios, I know the US military is currently aware of its shield's suckiness.

- If the enemy has no SDI, ICBMs are pretty much sure to destroy their target. It allows to prune all military infrastructure in a large country in a coordinated wave of missiles - without risk of the plan failing.

[SlowwHand]

Iran.

[Whoha]

Originally posted by Patroklos
So you are saying just because we have a full proof anti-missile shield (a ridiculous idea in and of itself) we will go ahead and shelve our perfectly capable conventional weapons and go straight for the nukes?

This hypothetical missile shield is so pathetic an idea futher discussion is really not needed. I didn't know Spiffor was a Putin mouthpiece

So again, now or in the near futre, what do we need nukes for that conventional arms could not accomplish?

keep up the good work with the disinformation.

[SlowwHand]

Originally posted by Spiffor

Let's see:

- Conventional missiles can only partially destroy the target, especially if it's bunkerized. Bombers can be shot down by the enemy aircraft - those are pretty significant problems if you're considering attacking an enemy whose conventional weaponry matches your own. Remember that I'm talking about future scenarios, I know the US military is currently aware of its shield's suckiness.

- If the enemy has no SDI, ICBMs are pretty much sure to destroy their target. It allows to prune all military infrastructure in a large country in a coordinated wave of missiles - without risk of the plan failing.

I don't think you know jack**** what the U.S. military has OR thinks.

[Krill]

Nice effective double negative there Sloww

[SlowwHand]

Thank you. I had to leave something that could be corrected.

[Krill]

yeah, but you can't DanS anyone now

[Donegeal]

Either North Korea (by nuking Japan) or some radical independant group that gets ahold of one.

[Patroklos]

- Conventional missiles can only partially destroy the target, especially if it's bunkerized. Bombers can be shot down by the enemy aircraft - those are pretty significant problems if you're considering attacking an enemy whose conventional weaponry matches your own. Remember that I'm talking about future scenarios, I know the US military is currently aware of its shield's suckiness.

Please feel free to point out any of these impervious sites. I would love to see you provide a single example of a hardened target that has resisted our current arsenel.

Even missile silos are vulnerable to current bunker buster munitions. Which is irrelevant, because the point is to nuetralize these by NOT using nuclear weapons.

Sure, there are targets that CAN be taken out nukes, but so far you have failed to provide a reason WHY they should be taken out by nukes.

And even if you could come up with a military reason, there are other costs to consider.

- If the enemy has no SDI, ICBMs are pretty much sure to destroy their target. It allows to prune all military infrastructure in a large country in a coordinated wave of missiles - without risk of the plan failing.

And why can that not be done with conventional weapons now, especially since it has been done with conventional in the not so distant past?

You are basically rehashing a tired Cold War debate, and doing so poorly. The only real would "use" of nuclear weapons is the deter their use. The only valuable nuclear weapons are the unused variety.

And please, where are you getting this missile shield crap? At the very least use the most likely technology for your fearmongering, which is direct energy weapons.