Really? So the hundreds of billions of dollars we've spent on missile defense doesn't exist?
Sure it exists. The money isn't wasted. It's still out there, circulating, buying beer and broads.
We even still have the research and the limited hardware.
Furthermore, have you heard of the weapon system called the Patriot Missile Battery and it's various upgrades?
Yes. PATRIOT is a theatre defense system not intended for defense against hypersonic stealthed war heads detectable only upon re-entry.
I guess being a hack in one view means you reject educating yourself in all views.
Yes, you proved that adequately.
And they will be retaliated with massive overkill. MAD works on basically every state.
And being a hack means you never had to ask what MAD entailed.
Let's examine theory.
1) Mutual Assured Destruction. Assumes, firstly, that the United States will be willing to respond to the attack. The United States will not be allowed to turn all of Iran into a glass sinkhole for vengeance. Russia won't like it, China won't like it, Pakistan won't like it, India won't like it. Since you're self-confessed hack, the Mayor will see fit to inform you that all of those nations have significant nuclear capabilities, and over half the world's population to back up their desires.
2) MAD assumes the attacker can be identified. This is baseless.
3) MAD assumes the other nuclear nations are led by sane people. Iran does not fall into this category, nor does North Korea, nor does Venezuela. Also, the future leadership of Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Syria, etc, is uncertain but good bets put al qaeda and Hamas in positions of significant influence.
4) Scenario: Assume Iran smuggles an ICBM to Hamas in Gaza, which launches at New York. With plausible deniability, the chance that the United States will not launch against Tehran are hight. The chance that the United States will launch against Gaza is zero. Hence, no assurance of mutual destruction.
5) Scenario: Your daughter is lying on the floor of the makeshift hospital, with every other member of her elementary school, ****ting blood and leaving blood shards of skin behind when she moves because someone's irresponsible reliance on MAD allowed the enemy the assurance that his launch would reach it's target. You're happy that the United Staes will lauch one hundred nuclear weapons at the attackign nation within the hour, so you can tell your daughter that the people who killed her will join her in heaven when she dies that afternoon.
THAT is the reality of MAD. It's effin' pathetic that the people who insisted eveyrone read On The Beach in high school (bet you never read "Triumph" by Philip Wylie) as a lecture on the evils of nuclear war are willing to perpetuate the nightmare of the sixties, seventies, and eighties simply because their viagra doesn't work when there's nothing there for it to work on.
MAD is fit for children. MAD will kill children. It barely worked with only two players. It cannot work with proliferated network of arms now in existence.
Note to hack: Iran hasn't completed it's nuclear weapons development program yet. However, it's missile launch system tests are impressive. They'll be able to launch their bombs when they finish building them.
Who's managed to keep a cold war with Saudi Arabia from going hot despite having sufficient chemical weapons to wipe out most of the population.
You mean, despite their reluctance to melt Mecca? Or despite the fact that Iran and SA don't share a common border, but share a common export, making it difficult for them to wage any kind of a war at all.
To invest the necessary resources to have a viable, effective and reliable ICBM is at minimum a billion dollars.
Yes, we are discussing Iran. Hmmm....what does Iran export? Oh, yeah, hundreds of millionsn of barrels of oil, for sale at a hundred bucks each. Believe it or not, your computer is also a calculator, so you have no excuse for not doing the math.
Besides which, were you attempting to gain a role in the reprise of Austin Powers?
It makes
far more sense to spend half that and smuggle a dozen weapons and use them by panel van and bypass all of the expensive outlays. Not to mention you can hide most of your weapons program that way as well.
Well, you need to learn how to put yourself in the shoes of your typical muslim national leader cum terrorist. Their urge to open their raincoats and scare the little girls with their dangling participle is overwhelming and the phallic attraction of missiles is pathological for people like that.
The problem with neocons like you
yes, you feel the urge to devolve to petty insult because the long eleven letter word (starts with an "L", see it) is too hard to say for hacks that lack the imagination to construct valid arguments.
is that you can't put yourself in someone else's shoes to see how they would think.
Sorry, the Mayor beat you to it. That he read your post first doesn't mean anything when playing by Calvinball rules.
It's a reason why Iraq went so poorly for years. Why bother with spending a billion for a single ICBM when you can get a dozen smuggled in for less than half without any risk of missile defense?
You mean why get a dozen imaginary warheads smuggled in without any risk of the imaginary missile defense.
Iran doesn't have nuclear weapons. Yet.
The United States doesn't have missile defense. Yet.
Other than those inconvenient truths, your point was almost valid. But only almost.
Considering how badly we inspect for radioactive material, it's one reason I think God exists. In 10 years we haven't gotten nuked by a smuggle weapon. Divine intervention.
The reality is that the TSA is really good at feeling up six year old girls, and no one's detected a nuclear weapon yet because the jihadists don't have them.
Yet.
Probably more then you. Have you ever wondered about the rumors of orbital insertions of nuclear weapons? That's better then SSBN second strike.
It's irrelevant how the vengeance weapons are delivered, once we've already suffered casualties here.
No. The Mayor has the unusual ability to type without moving his lips, though his must admit that typing about typing without moving his lips gives his lips an urge to dance.
You want to shuffle nuclear weapons on RAIL? Rail that's open to spying? Rail that has accidents? Rail that can be sabotaged?[/quote
Amazingly, how is a nation to target a choo-choo train on the rails? Will the spy have on the minute awareness of when his masters will launch? Will he be transmitting continuously updated information regarding the location of the MX missile carriage? How will the spy know which carriages carry active missiles and how many carry Quaker guns? Perhaps the entire MX missile system can be a diversion to consume enemy resources. And, amazingly, it's not easy to sabotage a rail system patrolled and monitored by the military, and naturally if threats of sabotage are of concern, it's a simple matter to run train convoys to that dummy trains will pass over the suspected areas without damage to the weapons.
MX was a valid concept. The Soviets hated it, which is why the American left hated it.
That's almost as bad of a system as the Soviet method of transporting their nukes.
What did they use, donkeys?
We could have hit every single Soviet mobile launch pad after figuring out their design. SSBNs are far more of a preferable survivable alternative.
Certainly boomers will always form an essential core reserve offensive capacity.
The MX or a similar system could form a cost effective alternative. An Ohio-class submarine cost a quarter billion dollars.
