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U.S. Arms Control Association considers it necessary to stop funding programs for the deployment of medium-range missiles and I think it is right.  In addition to huge costs, the development of missiles can provoke Moscow and Beijing, leading to a new arms race, since the INF Treaty is no longer in force. The question is - does the Washington government think of anything other than «protecting»  allies in the Asian region against Russia?

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7 hours ago, WestCanMan said:

I have no doubt that they are always secretly improving/deploying even when they're theoretically obeying the treaty. It's not hard to make "next gen" missiles that fit the same silos or whatever they're in. Things usually get smaller instead of larger.

The principle destabilizing effect of this next generation of INF's is speed.  Hypersonic.  More than five times as fast as the previous generation.

So where before you might have had thirty minutes to determine if there was really an attack in progress or it was just a false alarm, soon you will only have five minutes.

Makes the chances of an accidental launch on false warning much greater.

That being said, nobody has perfected them yet.  When it's going that fast the friction of flying through the air is like a blowtorch.

So the rocket science in this case is material science, a missile made of stuff which can take the heat but still find the target and maneuver to it.

Edited by Dougie93
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At the strategic level tho, the reason to do away with INF's was that they were undermining the Mutual Vulnerability regime which the public refers to as MAD.

After the near miss of the Cuban Missile Crisis,  the Americans and Soviets agreed that the purpose of the nukes was deterrence.

Both sides claimed that they didn't want a nuclear war and were not going to start one, the Balance of Terror was supposed to prevent a war not incite one.

The Soviets however broke out in the late 70's by deploying INF's to the European theater.

Because the INF is a theater thermonuclear weapon, it is not a deterrent weapon, the INF is made to be used, to fight a theater thermonuclear war.

This was destabilizing because it basically sent the message that the Soviets were in fact preparing to fight and win a nuclear war, so MAD was no longer in effect.

The American response however was to massively double down on everything, Reagan Administration across the board build up, including INFs,

So ultimately the Soviets decided to back down in 1987.

Edited by Dougie93
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37 minutes ago, Dougie93 said:

....Because the INF is a theater thermonuclear weapon, it is not a deterrent weapon, the INF is made to be used, to fight a theater thermonuclear war.

This was destabilizing because it basically sent the message that the Soviets were in fact preparing to fight and win a nuclear war, so MAD was no longer in effect.

The American response however was to massively double down on everything, Reagan Administration across the board build up, including INFs,

So ultimately the Soviets decided to back down in 1987.

 

Good points all....we are simply resetting back to the early 1980's.

Reagan called the Soviet gambit and raised them with nuclear armed ALCMs and Pershing II missiles.

Nuclear warheads for Tomahawk cruise missiles were also removed from inventory by the early 1990's.

The EU weenies freaked out but ultimately benefited with the re-unification of Germany and the end of the 1st Cold War.

...now it is on to another force-counterforce escalation, with China and some other minor players joining the game.

 

 

 

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Indeed. 

Now this counterforce escalation started with the Bush administration withdrawing from the ABM treaty.

So the Russians counter escalated by redeploying INF's

Particularly in response to the deployment of Aegis Ashore in Romania, although that was Obama not Bush.

Reason being that the Aegis Ashore ports the missile launching system of the Aegis warships from sea to land.

Those missile systems can also load Tomahawk. The Americans hadn't deployed Tomahawk, but the Russians say that the mere fact that they could makes it a GLCM system.

The Tomahawk at sea is allowed, land based Tomahawk was not.

This  Russian response basically made it so the Americans can now deploy Tomahawk INF ashore which they hadn't actually done.

This is of course because the real Kremlin objective is to incite a confrontation with the Americans in order to use the fear of the Americans to keep people rallying around the Kremlin, as per usual, same as the Soviets.

Edited by Dougie93
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12 hours ago, Dougie93 said:

The principle destabilizing effect of this next generation of INF's is speed.  Hypersonic.  More than five times as fast as the previous generation.

So where before you might have had thirty minutes to determine if there was really an attack in progress or it was just a false alarm, soon you will only have five minutes.

Makes the chances of an accidental launch on false warning much greater.

That being said, nobody has perfected them yet.  When it's going that fast the friction of flying through the air is like a blowtorch.

So the rocket science in this case is material science, a missile made of stuff which can take the heat but still find the target and maneuver to it.

I saw a video a few years back of a lockheed martin hypersonic missile coming towards a building and hitting it. 

It looked like a normal missile off in the distance when it started but it was coming so fast at the end I doubt if you could have seen it from the side, if not for the trail of smoke. 

I wonder how fast the area 51 stuff is now.

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3 minutes ago, WestCanMan said:

I saw a video a few years back of a lockheed martin hypersonic missile coming towards a building and hitting it. 

It looked like a normal missile off in the distance when it started but it was coming so fast at the end I doubt if you could have seen it from the side, if not for the trail of smoke. 

I wonder how fast the area 51 stuff is now.

Mach 25 is pretty much the upper limit.

There are two types of Hypersonics, there's the Hypersonic Cruise Missiles (HCM) which are going about Mach 5 using Scramjets.

Then there's the Hypersonic Glide Vehicles (HGV)

So that's like a MIRV from an ICBM, but instead of following a parabolic ballistic trajectory, they dive back down after reaching sub orbital velocity and come in under the coverage, super fast like a MIRV, but maneuvering down low to avoid detection and Ballistic Missile Defense.

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