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Originally Posted by SebC
Yes, the theory is that launching your missiles from closer gives you a higher chance to obliterate your enemies before they can respond, which means there's not mutually assured destruction as a deterrent any more.
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The nightmare scenario was especially for the US was the depressed trajectory shot from a sub off of the West coast. There would because of where Washington was literally a few minutes of warning which meant that for the Russians a true decapitation strike was possible.
Moscow was better defended by geography from scenarios like that. Even with a ballistic missile from a submarine they'd have more warning to evacuate the government.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SebC
Latvia is a NATO member and is also 600 km away, the Baltic Sea is 650 km, the Barents Sea is 900 km. We aren't talking orders of magnitude of difference. I don't see Ukraine having particular strategic importance in a nuclear scenario. In fact, the only thing that I think would matter is a defense system with extreme technological superiority over offensive systems, and I do not believe that exists.
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Russia and the United States were in a race for a ballistic missile defense, the American's with Star Wars, the Russians with their directed energy project. In the end you can spend as much money on defense as you want. a small change to your offensive weapon usually invalidates it. That's why Hyper sonic weapons is taking a leap forward.
Currently America is working on its National Missile Defense program including the development of ABM hypersonic missiles to counter hypersonic ballistic missiles.
the Russians are following the same path. But there's no good defense against Ballistic missiles except to keep them in the silos, remove them through diplomacy, or have really accurate missiles that can hit them before they launch.
I think the fundamental conflict that will be difficult to resolve pertains to human rights. The West (ostensibly, at least) believes in rights for minorities, democracy, and that it has a responsibility to advance these rights for all people, no matter where they may be. That presents an existential threat to the Russian autocrats. Even while the threat can be mitigated through power or the pragmatism of deal-making, the underlying conflict remains unresolved. I don't think the West can or should compromise on these values, so the path to truly set the Cold War behind us lies in further Russian progress on these files.[/QUOTE]