Nuclear warheads and their silos.

The simple point is that as soon as we realized the capability of the Zero we easily and quickly designed a plane(s) capable of combating it.

The Yak-3 didn't enter the war until 1944, at which point the war had massively turned in Western Theatre. For the bulk of the conflict, they were using the Yak-1.

The Mig 25 and Mig 31 are both interceptors, they are designed to fire from distance and evade. The Su 35 is designed for Air Superiority. We have held the edge in our capabilities for years compared to them.

Every expert I know of is skeptical of China's claimed Railgun weapon. As to why they would bother mounting it and making claims, why not? It is brinkmanship, making us think they have more capabilities than they do.

The laser rifle is a crowd deterrent weapon. It would serve almost no purpose in infantry combat because it cannot kill. Yes, it can burn things and cause pain, but that is all. Again, this was claimed to be far more effective than experts think during our diplomatic arguments over China's use of blinding lasers on aircraft. We have no hard evidence of it's capability.

Yes, Russia could sell such a missile to our enemies versus using it directly against us. The problem is that as soon as they do so, the genie is out of the bottle. It will be reverse engineered quickly and could be USED AGAINST THEM. No country gives or sells away it's absolute top level weaponry except to it's most trusted allies. Allies which, for all intents and purposes, know that using such a weapon against another nation state risks full out retaliation against not only them but the country that sold it to them.

Our carriers are excellent mobile platforms, but they are not our only way of mounting air strikes. If we were somehow in a conventional war situation, we could easily fly over and base our aircraft in allied countries for combat. Most of our nuclear capable aircraft are not carrier launched anyway. Even if somehow all of our carriers were taken out and somehow our SAC bombers were destroyed as well, we would still have more than enough land launched and submarine launched nuclear warheads to easily blanket our enemies.

My points remain:

1. It is in the greatest interest of our enemies to boast about weapon capabilities even if they are not effective yet.

2. Most well regarded experts consider many of these weapons to either be still in the research stage, early production stage (IE not available for years), or they are wildly over hyped.

3. There is no logical reason for our enemies to use these weapons or proliferate them to their closest allies unless the weapons can prevent a nuclear response. Merely mentioning a weapon that would have such a capability creates a situation that could lead to nuclear war, like SDI did. I don't know if you recall, but I do clearly, how massively freaked out the Soviets got over our SDI claims. For two years they started threatening nuclear war as being inevitable if we continued on the path we were, all the while aggressively trying to destabilize our relations with our allies. 1983 to 1985 was pretty fucking tense, not Cuban missile crisis level maybe, but damn scary. Putin has acted similarly over our attempts to set up a missile barrier in former satellite states of Russia, although we still haven't got to the SHTF level of the early 80's.

I dunno man, this guy comes of as too conspiracy-theorish without enough hard facts. A China nuclear first-strike would be utterly suicidal. China has a nuclear arsenal of around 300 nuclear warheads compared to America's 7000. America alone could nuke the entirety of the country to dust and that's not even considering U.S. allies like the U.K. who would probably launch in retaliation as well.

For a much better fact-based analysis of China's nuclear policies see here.

They could have used this in the '80s when the US deployed Pershing II missiles around small villages in Germany. I know of one case where they got stuck on a tight corner and couldn't move back or forward. After several days they had to pay a farmer so they could demolish and re-build a corner of his house to get the thing free.

I'm not sure if the nuclear warhead was installed the whole time.

Oh, you mean the small area between Poland and Lithuania? The one that Russia is pouring troops and weapons, -- including missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads, into at such a rate that the region is now one of Europe's most militarized places?

Moscow is stationing "thousands of troops, including mechanized and naval infantry brigades, military aircraft, modern long-range air defense units and hundreds of armored vehicles in the territory."

I mean, it's only scaring the piss out of two of our friendly countries in the region. Well, more if you consider that Russia's military buildup in the region allows them direct coverage of Sweden, Germany, and other nations that really don't trust the former USSR.

So, to use your example, I would absolutely expect Russia to get antsy and not sit by idly if we suddenly moved a LARGE portion of our active military forces to the Florida Keys. All of this is more posturing and sword rattling by Putin, a direct throwback to the USSR leaders of old. If he thought he could get away with it without open warfare, he would be rolling tanks into all the old USSR satellite states.

It isn't just this incident alone, either, as Russia has been steadily stepping up calculated shows of force and close encounters with our forces well away from anything close to their territory. Primarily, if you ask me, because the world outcry over the Ukraine situation stifled their little miniature coup attempt from taking over the entire country.

***Edit***

I just wanted to add, I don't want to go to war with Russia. I agree that many of the things that we are doing, such as considering adding former Soviet states to NATO, are antagonizing them. But I feel that in some cases our hands are tied by the fact that Putin, directly or indirectly, is making a lot of those former states think that he is planning on re-absorbing them under the umbrella of a new USSR. If he would keep his nose out of their internal affairs, I am pretty sure we wouldn't be building up in response.

Then slow down with theories of our impending demise, the IPCC doesn't support it. You want to talk about not denying the science, then you don't get to preach gloom and doom. Don't claim a large percentage of farmland is going to be lost to sea level rise by 2100. Don't claim coastlines are going to be pushed back 10 miles by a worst case 1 foot rise of sea level by 2100.

We are talking about advancements solving problems like a maximum sea level rise of a foot in the next 100 years, with best guesses being lower than that. I think it's modest to suggest our children's children will have figured out how to raise the dikes around places like New Orleans by a foot in the next 100 years.
The concord and moon trips are no longer happening because they are expensive. We can do them if we needed to, and more easily than the first time around. Finding out people aren't willing to pay the premium to shave an hour off their flight doesn't mean the technology no longer exists. Just because America no longer needs to prove they can lift massive quantities of nuclear warheads into orbit doesn't mean we couldn't still go to the moon again if it was needed. There's just no reason to do it, the tech exists still none the less.
Yes, there are social problems that confound the use of new technology. You fail to notice that is also the problem with feeding everybody. Food production isn't the problem, but rather the men with guns that control distribution. Stalin's mass starvation of millions was a social problem, not climate change or technology. Mao's was the same. North Koreas the same. All over Africa is the same. We have more than enough food, and plenty of charities work hard to send food over to places like Africa. Once the food gets there though the men with guns take most of it and people still starve. The reason Africa has so many crop failures is the violent displacement of the farmers. Exactly the same problem that saw millions starve in Russia, China and North Korea.
You are right that a changing climate could compound Africa's ag industry a bit, but it's a small hit compared to the violent displacement problem. Also, don't neglect to consider to impact of meaningful CO2 emission restrictions around the globe. A large scale global economic downturn probably means a lot more war, bloodshed, and starvation. If you do not reduce emissions enough to trigger that downturn and instead just 'marginally', you get stuck with both because Africa is still going to see virtually the same climate changes through the next hundred years.

And if you are worried about losing the glaciers in the Himalayas by 2100 there is very good reason to believe that's gonna be alright:
http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S41/39/84Q12/index.xml?section=topstories

So, they found a guy who likes money a lot and who admits he can easily promise anything. He fed them totally uncorroborated story that he sold a nuclear warhead to some French guy, and refuses to show the reporters anything that would confirm the story.

Did I miss something?

And speaking of the gun control thing, I totally agree with @Fletch and @dannym3141 (the nuclear warhead scenario is allways the one i try to bring up talking with gun loving people)

I had a friend who would have a steel pipe lying under his driver seat in case of such incidents (On a side note, sometimes he was the one raging, but mostly to himself). The thing I (for)told him was, that someday if he walks out of his car with the steel pipe to "calm down" (read intimidate) the raging guy of the other car, that guy may draw a knife. Which was exactly what happened to him one day. Luckily nobody of them snapped and did something stupid. They just screamed at each other for a little while until they realised that they didn't wanted to die that day.

My point being, in Germany we have a very strict gun law and I think thats a good thing. Look at the situation I just described, someone might say that they could have killed themselves as easily, as if they had guns, and at least with a gun you could make sure that you could defend yourself. But there is a general mistake in that logic. It takes far more "effort" and willingness to attack someone head on with a knife or a steel pipe. And the whole attacking process can be stopped at any given time (in the unusual event that the guys come to their senses). But on the other side, every freaking kid in the world would be able to kill anyone with a gun. It doesn't take much skill, practice or time, just a slight movement of the finger and pointing the end into the right direction.

I never understand the argument "if x person had a gun, it would have stopped the whole thing before it started."

In this example, the lunatic had a car and the victim had a car - so they have approximately equal "weaponry". The lunatic clearly used his weapon with utter disregard for anyone's safety and without warning. I'd like to know why people think that raising the weaponry stakes would change anything. Let's rewind the whole situation and without any hindsight give both of them a gun. Now the victim would be dead because he had no idea of the danger he was in until it happened, and if a gun was involved then that would have happened and been over very fast.

I have been accosted in my car about 4 times now (i travel to uni, it's an occupational hazard) after having to brake hard from someone's poor driving (for example). In that situation i am the one who is entitled to be aggrieved, if i had a gun then of course i wouldn't use it - because i am not going to shoot someone for driving like that and rightly so because i'd go to jail.

So the mad person is always going to shoot first, and he's always going to have the initiative of knowing what's going on and what he needs to do.

Why is escalation EVER a solution? We don't say it about nuclear warheads? Surely if everyone had a nuclear warhead we'd all be a lot safer. It might seem ridiculous to say that but why do people think it's good to upgrade the madman's potential weapon from a car to a gun!?

Without having watched that episode... how the hell did a nuclear warhead get into a pool inside a building next to a woman in spandex?

And also

What the hell IS this?

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:

Ironically, I think the police would be less violent if the only weapon you gave them was a nuclear warhead.


You are not alone.
Stephen Coleman: The moral dangers of non-lethal weapons

Ironically, I think the police would be less violent if the only weapon you gave them was a nuclear warhead.

>> ^EMPIRE:

Maybe they cut something out that would have better explained his decision to crash the plane into the ice. To be honest, I would have prefered the Ultimates version, where he grabs on to a rocket with a nuclear warhead, about to launch, headed for the US, and basically disables it from the inside, and it crashes on the north pole. THAT way, there was really nothing he could have done.


It's probably hard to have a touching goodbye from atop a rocket.

But then, if they didn't let logic interfere with the official ending, I suppose there's no reason they couldn't have made yours work.