Quote:
Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch
Putin might be crazy but he isn't dumb. There's a reason why he put out a nuclear alert and increased the readiness of his tactical and strategic forces across the board.
a disarming first strike depends on missiles needing prep time before they launch, knowing the location of all of the missiles and having a firm fix on the Russian Missile submarines.
Usually in a lower state of alert or no alert, missiles aren't fueled, and target packs on silo's are always loaded as are submarines. But mobile missiles (and the Russians have a lot of mobile launchers. need to be targeted and that takes time as does fueling liquid fueled missiles.
As soon as the alerts went out. The missiles were fueled and ready to launch and target packs were confirmed. Missile boats were probably ordered to dive deep and evade any American surveillance and mobile missiles were moved to new locations and oriented.
in gun terminology, when the Russian's are not at a heightened state of alert, its the equivalent of getting a gun out of your locker, putting a magazine in it, taking off the safety, chambering a round and aiming it. Now it sounds like a lot but rotating missiles to a firing position from a non alert status probably takes about 30 minutes to an hour.
Right now, the gun is loaded and the safety is off, and the finger is literally putting pressure on the trigger of an aimed gun.
Also Russian surveillance satellites are zoomed in on American missile silo's looking for a indication of prefiring or ignition.
For an American disarming strike to work, they have to know the location of about 5500 warheads deployed in silos, submarines and mobile platforms. This is where the overkill works in MAD. The Russian's don't need 5500 warheads to devastate the United States and Europe. They need at most less then 10% of that number to launch and reach their target. It goes to the theory that its impossible to thin out the Russian nuclear arsenal enough for it not to destroy you before you destroy them.
Its also more then likely because of the heightened state of the Russian nuclear arsenal that American bombs and missiles are hitting empty silo's and spent mobile launchers because the missiles left in mere minutes after the detection of an American launch, or even detonation of a missile off of a stealthy platform.
Trust me when I say this, even if we imagine that a large percentage or majority of the Soviet Missiles are non functional due to bad maintenance, and American missiles somehow carry out a fairly successful disarming strike and this knocks out 75% or 80% of the missiles (unlikely). We're still talking a calculation not of what's killed, but how many times over we've been killed or how fair the debris flies.
Just as an addon, Its likely that the Russian targeting package would look like this with the largest cities
150 warheads aimed at washington, 150 warheads aimed at new york, 100 warheads for LA 100 war heads at Chicago, 100 war heads at London. Etc etc etc.
Small correction out of the 6000 nuclear weapons possessed by the Russians, 1600 are on their land based ballistic missiles and sea based SLBM. These 1600 missiles are strategic weapons which are city busters. The rest are mounted on things like cruise missiles, bombs, torpedeos, mines etc.
But you get my drift.
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So what you're saying is the world should just take Putin's nuclear blackmail?
Bombing innocent kids in their beds is enough for me to loose my mind
If he gets away with this he and others like him won't stop with this type of madness, his bluff needs to be called, all NATO nuclear nations should go to defcon 1 and tell him the complete end of Russia for the next 1000 years is moments away. Lets see if his cabinet and oligarchs are truly willing to follow him then.
I personally don't want to live in a world being blackmailed by a little sawed off narcissistic thug.