This article was written for the Unz Review: http://www.unz.com/runz/making-sense-of-the-super-fuse-scare/
For weeks now I have been getting panicked emails with readers asking me whether the USA had developed a special technology called “super fuses” which would make it possible for the USA to successfully pull-off a (preemptive) disarming first strike against Russia. Super-fuses were also mentioned in combination with an alleged lack by Russia of a functioning space-based infrared early warning system giving the Russians less time to react to a possible US nuclear attack.
While there is a factual basis to all this, the original report already mislead the reader with a shocking title “How US nuclear force modernization is undermining strategic stability: The burst-height compensating super-fuze” and by offering several unsubstantiated conclusions. Furthermore, this original report was further discussed by many observers who simply lack the expertise to understand what the facts mentioned in the report really mean. Then the various sources started quoting each other and eventually this resulted in a completely baseless “super fuse scare”. Let’s try to make some sense of all this.
Understanding nuclear strikes and their targets
To understand what really has taken place I need to first define a couple of crucial terms:
- Hard-target kill capability: this refers to the capability of a missile to destroy a strongly protected target such as a underground missile silo or a deeply buried command post.
- Soft-target kill capability: the capability to destroy lightly or unprotected targets.
- Counterforce strike: this refers to a strike aimed at the enemy’s military capabilities.
- Countervalue strike: this refers to a strike on non-military assets such as cities.
Since strategic nuclear missile silos and command posts are well protected and deeply buried, only hard-target kill (HTK) capable missiles can execute a counterforce strike. Soft-target kill (STK) capable systems are therefore usually seen as being the ultimate retaliatory capability to hit the enemies cities. The crucial notion here is that HTK capability is not a function of explosive power, but of accuracy. Yes, in theory, a hugely powerful weapon can compensate to some degree for a lack of accuracy, but in reality both the USA and the USSR/Russia have long understood that the real key to HTK is accuracy.
During the Cold War, intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) were more accurate than submarine launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) simply because targeting from the surface and from a fixed position was much easier than targeting from inside a submerged and moving submarine. The American were the first to successfully deploy a HTK capable SLBM with their Trident D-5. The Russians have only acquired this capability very recently (with their R-29RMU Sineva SLBM).
According to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists just a decade ago only 20% of US SLBMs were HTK capable. Now, with the ‘super-fuse’ 100% of US SLBMs are HTK capable. What these super-fuses do is very accurately measure the optimal altitude at which to detonate thereby partially compensating for a lack of accuracy of a non-HTK capable weapon. To make a long story short, these super-fuses made all US SLBMs HTK capable.
Does that matter?
Yes and no. What that means on paper is that the US has just benefited from a massive increase in the number of US missiles with HTK capability. Thus, the US has now a much larger missile force capable of executing a disarming counterforce strike. In reality, however, things are much more complicated than that.
Understanding counterforce strikes
Executing a disarming counterforce strike against the USSR and, later, Russia has been an old American dream. Remember Reagan’s “Star Wars” program? The idea behind it was simple: to develop the capability to intercept enough incoming Soviet warheads to protect the USA from a retaliatory Soviet counter strike. It would work something like this: destroy, say, 70% of the Soviet ICBM/SLBMs and intercept the remaining 30% before they can reach the USA. This was total nonsense both technologically (the technology did not exist) and strategically (just a few Soviet “leakers” could wipe-out entire US cities, who could take such a risk?). The more recent US deployment of anti-ballistic missile systems in Europe has exactly the same purpose – to protect the USA from a retaliatory counterstrike. Without going into complex technical discussions, let’s just say that this point in time, this system would never protect the USA from anything. But in the future, we could imagine such a scenario
- The USA and Russia agree to further deep cuts in their nuclear strategic forces thereby dramatically reducing the total number of Russian SLBM/ICBMs.
- The USA deploys all around Russia anti-ballistic systems which can catch and destroy Russian missiles in the early phase of their flight towards the USA.
- The USA also deploys a number of systems in space or around the USA to intercept any incoming Russian warhead.
- The USA having a very large HTK-capable force executes a successful counterforce strike destroying 90% (or so) of the Russian capabilities and then the rest are destroyed during their flight.
This is the dream. It will never work. Here is why:
- The Russians will not agree to deep cuts in their nuclear strategic forces.
- The Russians already have deployed the capability to destroy the forward deployed US anti-ballistic system in Europe.
- Russian warheads and missiles are now maneuverable and can even use any trajectory, including over the South Pole, to reach the USA. New Russian missiles have a dramatically shorter and faster first stage burn period making them much harder to intercept.
- Russia’s reliance on ballistic missiles will be gradually replace with strategic (long-range) cruise missiles (more about that later).
- This scenario mistakenly assumes that the USA will know where the Russian SLBM launching submarines will be when they launch and that they will be able to engage them (more about that later).
- This scenario completely ignores the Russian road-mobile and rail-mobile ICBMs (more about that later).
Understanding MIRVs
Before explaining points 4, 5 and 6 above, I need to mention another important fact: one missile can carry either one single warhead or several (up to 12 and more). When a missile carries several independently targetable warheads it is called MIRVed as in “multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle”.
MIRVs are important for several reasons. First, one single missile with 10 warheads can, in theory, destroy 10 different targets. Alternatively, one single missile can carry, say 3-4 real warheads and 6-7 decoys. In practical terms what look like one missile on take-off can turn into 5 real warheads, all targeted at different objectives and another 5 fake decoys designed to make interception that more difficult. MIRVs, however, also present a big problem: they are lucrative targets. If with one of “my” nuclear warheards I can destroy 1 of “your” MIRVed missiles, I lose 1 warhead but you lose 10. This is one of the reasons the USA is moving away from land-based MIRVed ICBMs.
The important consideration here is that Russia has a number of possible options to chose from and how many of her missiles will be MIRVed is impossible to predict. Besides, all US and Russian SLBMs will remain MIRVed for the foreseeable future (de-MIRVing SLBMs make no sense, really, since the entire nuclear missile carrying submarine (or SSBN) is a gigantic MIRVed launching pad by definition).
In contrast to MIRVed missile, single warheads missiles are very bad targets to try to destroy using nuclear weapons: even if “my” missile destroys “yours” we both lost 1 missile each. What is the point? Worse, if I have to use 2 of “mine” to make really sure that “yours” is really destroyed, my strike will result in me using 2 warheads in exchange for only 1 of yours. This makes no sense at all.
Finally, in retaliatory countervalue strikes, MIRVed ICBM/SLBMs are a formidable threat: just one single R-30 Bulava (SS-N-30) SLBM or one single R-36 Voevoda (SS-18) ICBM can destroy ten American cities. Is that a risk worth taking? Say the USA failed to destroy one single Borei-class SSBN – in theory that could mean that this one SSBN could destroy up to 200 American cities (20 SLBMs with 10 MIRVs each). How is that for a risk?
Contrasting the US and Russian nuclear triad
Strategic nuclear weapons can be deployed on land, in the oceans or delivered by aircraft. This is called the “nuclear triad”. I won’t discuss the aircraft based part of the US and Russian triads here, as they don’t significantly impact the overall picture and because they are roughly comparable. The sea and land based systems and their underlying strategies could not be any more different. At sea, the USA has had HTK capabilities for many years now and the US decided to hold the most important part of the US nuclear arsenal in SSBNs. In contrast, the Russians chose to develop road-mobile intercontinental ballistic missiles. The very first one was the RT-2PM Topol (SS-25) deployed in 1985, followed by the T-2PM2 «Topol-M» (SS-27) deployed in 1997 and the revolutionary RT-24 Yars or Topol’-MR (SS-29) deployed in 2010 (the US considered deployed road-mobile strategic missiles, but never succeeded in developing the technology).
The Russians are also deployed rail-mobile missiles called RT-23 Molodets (SS-24) and are about to deploy a newer version called RS-27 Barguzin (SS-31?). This is what they look like:
Russian road mobile and rail mobile ICBMs
SSBNs and road and rail mobile missiles all have two things in common: they are mobile and they rely on concealment for survival as neither of them can hope to survive. The SSBN hides in the depths of the ocean, the road-mobile missile launcher drives around the immense Russian expanses and can hide, literally, in any forest. As for the rail-mobile missile train, it hides be being completely indistinguishable from any other train on the huge Russian railroad network (even from up close it is impossible to tell whether what you are seeing is a regular freight train or a missile launching special train). To destroy these systems, accuracy is absolutely not enough: you need to find them and you need to find them before they fire their missiles. And that is, by all accounts, quite impossible.
The Russian Navy likes to keep its SSBNs either under the polar ice-cap or in so-called “bastions” such as the Sea of Okhotsk. While these are not really “no-go” zones for US attack submarines (SSN), they are extremely dangerous areas where the Russian Navy has a huge advantage of the US (if only because the US attack submarine cannot count on the supper of surface ships or aircraft). The US Navy has some of the best submarines on the planet and superbly trained crews, but I find the notion that US SSNs could find and destroy all Russian SSBNs before the latter can launch unlikely in the extreme.
As for the land-based rail-mobile and road-mobile missiles, they are protected by Russian Air Defenses which are the most advanced on the planet, not the kind of airspace the US would want to send B-53, B-1 or B-2 bombers in. But most importantly, these missiles are completely hidden so even if the USA could somehow destroy them, it would failed to find enough of them to make a first disarming strike a viable option. By the way, the RS-24 has four MIRVs (make that 4 US cities) while the RS-27 will have between 10 and 16 (make that another 10 to 16 US cities vaporized).
Looking at geography and cruise missiles
Finally, let’s take a look at geography and cruise missiles. Two Russian cruise missiles are especially important to us: the Kh-102 and the 3M-14K(?):
| KH-102 | 3M-14K | |
| Range: | 5500km | 2600km |
| Launcher: | Strategic bomber | Aircraft, ship, container |
| Warhead: | Nuclear 450kt | Nuclear (unknown) |
What is important with these two cruise missiles is that the KH-102 has a huge range and that the KM-14K can be fired from aircraft, ships and even containers. Take a look at this video which shows the capabilities of this missile:
Now consider where the vast majority of US cities are located – right along the East and West coasts of the USA and the fact that the US has no air defenses of any kind protecting them. A Russian strategic bomber could hit any West Coast from the middle of the Pacific ocean. As for a Russian submarine, it could hit any US city from the middle of the Atlantic. Finally, the Russians could conceal an unknown number of cruise missile in regular looking shipping container (flying Russian flag or, for that matter, any other flag) and simply sail to the immediate proximity to the US coast and unleash a barrage of nuclear cruise missiles.
How much reaction time would such a barrage give the US government?
Understanding reaction time
It is true that the Soviet and Russian space-based early warning system is in bad shape. But did you know that China never bothered developing such a space based system in the first place? So what is wrong with the Chinese, are they stupid, technologically backward or do they know something we don’t?
To answer that question we need to look at the options facing a country under nuclear missile attack. The first option is called “launch on warning”: you see the incoming missiles and you press the “red button” (keys in reality) to launch your own missiles. That is sometimes referred to as “use them or lose them”. The next option is “launch on strike”: you launch all you got as soon as a nuclear strike on your territory is confirmed. And, finally, there is the “retaliation after ride-out“: you absorb whatever your enemy shot at you, then take a decision to strike back. What is obvious is that China has adopted, whether by political choice or due to limitation in space capabilities, either a “launch on strike” or a “retaliation after ride-out” option. This is especially interesting since China possesses relatively few nuclear warheads and even fewer real long range ICBMs .
Contrast that with the Russians who have recently confirmed that they have long had a “dead hand system” called “Perimetr” which automatically ascertains that a nuclear attack has taken place and then automatically launches a counterstrike. That would be a “launch on strike” posture, but it is also possible that Russia has a double-posture: she tries to have the capability to launch on warning, but double-secures herself with an automated “dead hand” “launch on strike” capability.
Take a look at this estimate of worldwide stocks of strategic nuclear warheads: While China is credited with only 260 warheads, Russia still has a whopping 7’000 warheads. And a “dead hand” capability. And yet China feels confident enough to announce a “no first use” policy. How can they say that with no space-based nuclear missile launch detection capability?
Many will say that the Chinese wished they had more nukes and a space-based based nuclear missile launch detection capability, but that their current financial and technological means simply do not allow that. Maybe. But my personal guess is that they realize that even their very minimal force represents a good enough deterrent for any potential aggressor. And they might have a point.
Let me ask you this: how many US generals and politicians would be willing to sacrifice just one major US city in order to disarm China or Russia? Some probably would. But I sure hope that the majority would realize that the risk will always remain huge.
For one thing, modern nuclear warfare has, so far, only been “practiced” only on paper and with computers (and thank God for that!)? So nobody *really* knows for sure how a nuclear war would play itself out. The only thing which is certain is that just the political and economic consequences of would catastrophic and totally unpredictable. Furthermore, it remains very unclear how such a war could be stopped short of totally destroying one side. The so-called “de-escalation” is a fascinating concept, but so far nobody has really figured this out. Finally, I am personally convinced that both the USA and Russia have more than enough survivable nuclear weapons to actually decide to ride out a full-scale enemy attack. That is the one big issue which many well-meaning pacifist never understood: it is a good thing that “the USA and Russia have the means to blow-up the world ten times over” simply because even one side succeeded in destroying, say, 95% of the US or Russian nuclear forces, the remaining 5% would be more than enough to wipe-out the attacking side in a devastating countervalue attack. If Russia and the USA each had, say, only 10 nuclear warheads then the temptation to try to take them out would be much higher.
This is scary and even sick, but having a lot of nuclear weapons is safer from a “first-strike stability” point of view than having few. Yes, we do live in a crazy world.
Consider that in times of crisis both the US and Russia would scramble their strategic bombers and keep them in the air, refueling them when needed, for as long as needed to avoid having them destroyed on the ground. So even if the USA destroyed ALL Russian ICBM/SLBMs, there would be quite a few strategic bombers in holding patterns in staging areas which could be given the order to strike. And here we reach one last crucial concept:
Counterforce strikes require a lot of HTK capable warheads. The estimates by both sides are kept secret, of course, but we are talking over 1000 targets on each side at least listed, if not actually targeted. But a countervalue strike would require much less. The US has only 10 cities with over one million people. Russia has only 12. And, remember, in theory one warhead is enough for one city (that is not true, but for all practical purposes it is). Just look what 9/11 did to the USA and imagine of, say, “only” Manhattan had been truly nuked. You can easily imagine the consequences.
Conclusion 1: super-fuses are not really that super at all
The super-fuses scare is so overblown that it is almost an urban legend. The fact is that even if all the US SLBMs are now HTK capable and even if Russia does not have a functional space-based missile launch detection capability (she is working on a new one, by the way), this in no way affects the fundamental fact that there is nothing, nothing at all, that the USA could come up with to prevent Russia from obliterating the USA in a retaliatory strike. The opposite is also true, the Russians have exactly zero hope of nuking the USA and survive the inevitable US retaliation.
The truth is that as far back as the early 1980s Soviet (Marshal Ogarkov) and US specialists had already come to the conclusion that a nuclear war is unwinnable. In the past 30 years two things have dramatically changed the nature of the game: first, an increasing number of conventional weapons have become comparable in their effects to small nuclear weapons and cruise missiles have become vastly more capable. The trend today is for low-RCS (stealth) long range hypersonic cruise missiles and maneuvering ICBM warheads which will make it even harder to detect and intercept them. Just think about it: if the Russians fired a cruise missile volley from a submarine say, 100km off the US coast, how much reaction time will the US have? Say that these low-RCS missile would begin flying at medium altitude being for all practical purpose invisible to radar, infra-red and even sound, then lower themselves down to 3-5 m over the Atlantic and then accelerate to a Mach 2 or Mach 3 speed. Sure, they will become visible to radars once they crosses the horizon, but the remaining reaction time would be measured in seconds, not minutes. Besides, what kind of weapon system could stop that missile type of anyway? Maybe the kind of defenses around a US aircraft carrier (maybe), but there is simply nothing like that along the US coast.
As for ballistic missile warheads, all the current and foreseeable anti-ballistic systems rely on calculations for a non-maneuvering warhead. Once the warheads begin to make turns and zig-zag, then the computation needed to intercept them become harder by several orders of magnitude. Some Russian missiles, like the R-30 Bulava, can even maneuver during their initial burn stage, making their trajectory even harder to estimate (and the missile itself harder to intercept).
The truth is that for the foreseeable future ABM systems will be much more expensive and difficult to build then ABM-defeating missiles. Also, keep in mind that an ABM missile itself is also far, far more expensive than a warhead. Frankly, I have always suspected that the American obsession with various types of ABM technologies is more about giving cash to the Military Industrial Complex and, at best, developing new technologies useful elsewhere.
Conclusion 2: the nuclear deterrence system remains stable, very stable
At the end of WWII, the Soviet Union’s allies, moved by the traditional western love for Russia, immediately proceeded to plan for a conventional and a nuclear war against the Soviet Union (see Operation Unthinkable and Operation Dropshot). Neither plan was executed, the western leaders were probably rational enough not to want to trigger a full-scale war against the armed forces which had destroyed roughly 80% of the Nazi war machine. What is certain, however, is that both sides fully understood that the presence of nuclear weapons profoundly changed the nature of warfare and that the world would never be the same again: for the first time in history all of mankind faced a truly existential threat. As a direct result of this awareness, immense sums of money were given to some of the brightest people on the planet to tackle the issue of nuclear warfare and deterrence. This huge effort resulted in an amazingly redundant, multi-dimensional and sophisticated system which cannot be subverted by any one technological breakthrough. There is SO much redundancy and security built into the Russian and American strategic nuclear forces that a disarming first strike is all but impossible, even if we make the most unlikely and far-fetched assumptions giving one side all the advantages and the other all the disadvantages. For most people it is very hard to wrap their heads around such a hyper-survivable system, but both the USA and Russia have run hundreds and even thousands of very advanced simulations of nuclear exchanges, spending countless hours and millions of dollars trying to find a weak spot in the other guy’s system, and each time the result was the same: there is always enough to inflict an absolutely cataclysmic retaliatory counter-strike.
Conclusion 3: the real danger to our common future
The real danger to our planet comes not from a sudden technological breakthrough which would make nuclear war safe, but from the demented filled minds of the US Neocons who believe that they can bring Russia to heel in a game of “nuclear chicken”. These Neocons have apparently convinced themselves that making conventional threats against Russia, such as unilaterally imposing no-fly zones over Syria, does not bring us closer to a nuclear confrontation. It does.
The Neocons love to bash the United Nations in general, and the veto power of the Permanent Five (P5) at the UN Security Council, but they apparently forgot the reason why this veto power was created in the first place: to outlaw any action which could trigger a nuclear war. Of course, this assumes that the P5 all care about international law. Now that the USA has clearly become a rogue state whose contempt for international law is total, there is no legal mechanism left to stop the US from committing actions which endanger the future of mankind. This is what is really scary, not “super-fuses”.
What we are facing today is a nuclear rogue state run by demented individuals who, steeped in a culture of racial superiority, total impunity and imperial hubris, are constantly trying to bring us closer to a nuclear war. These people are not constrained by anything, not morals, not international law, not even common sense or basic logic. In truth, we are dealing with a messianic cult every bit as insane as the one of Jim Jones or Adolf Hitler and like all self-worshiping crazies they profoundly believe in their invulnerability.
It is the immense sin of the so-called “Western world” that it let these demented individuals take control with little or no resistance and that now almost the entire western society lack the courage to even admit that it surrendered itself to what I can only call a satanic cult. Alexander Solzhenitsyn prophetic words spoken in 1978 have now fully materialized:
A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today. The Western world has lost its civic courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, in each government, in each political party, and, of course, in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling and intellectual elites, causing an impression of a loss of courage by the entire society. There are many courageous individuals, but they have no determining influence on public life (Harvard Speech, 1978)
Five years later, Solzhenitsyn warned us again saying,
To the ill-considered hopes of the last two centuries, which have reduced us to insignificance and brought us to the brink of nuclear and non-nuclear death, we can propose only a determined quest for the warm hand of God, which we have so rashly and self-confidently spurned. Only in this way can our eyes be opened to the errors of this unfortunate twentieth century and our hands be directed to setting them right. There is nothing else to cling to in the landslide: the combined vision of all the thinkers of the Enlightenment amounts to nothing. Our five continents are caught in a whirlwind. But it is during trials such as these that the highest gifts of the human spirit are manifested. If we perish and lose this world, the fault will be ours alone. (Tempelton Speech, 1983)
We have been warned, but will we heed that warning?
The Saker
Any counterstrike must annihilate Israel, Saudi and Wall Street and this should be publicly known. Then there won’t be a first strike.
This is the tragedy. To believe that any country(s) can win a nuclear war and to further believe that one or more thermo-nuclear bombs can annihilate the other side to the extent that they can’t or won’t retaliate.
Peer-reviewed studies make it clear that even a “successful” US or Russian nuclear first-strike against the other will likely result in the deaths of all those on the “winning” side. See the article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists by Robock and Toon, entitled “Self-Assured Destruction: The climate impacts of nuclear war” at http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/RobockToonSAD.pdf
The political and military leaders of the nuclear weapon states have failed to publicly acknowledge and discuss the scientifically predicted long-term environmental consequences of nuclear war. Some top US leaders have made it clear that they reject the validity of the studies, although they provide no explanation for their rejection. See “Turning a Blind Eye Towards Armageddon: US leader reject nuclear winter studies” at https://fas.org/2017/01/turning-a-blind-eye-towards-armageddon-u-s-leaders-reject-nuclear-winter-studies/
Nuclear deterrence depends upon rational behavior, as well as the absence of human and technical error. All systems of control must function perfectly, all leaders who control the weapons must remain rational 24/7, there must be no false warnings of attack believed to be true, no unauthorized launches even with pre-delegation . . . and there must be leaders who are restrained by the loss of their populations and cities . . . what exactly is “unacceptable retaliation”? One city, ten cities, 100 cities? Is is all that impossible that a leader will come along who is not constrained by such losses?
A single failure of nuclear deterrence can lead to the destruction of most, if not all, of the human species, along with most large animals. In other words, nuclear deterrence must work perfectly, forever. Does that seem likely?
You hit on the single most important point. It is not about the technology. It is about the rationality of the players. Trump himself lacks any grasp of the consequences and has surrounded himself in his Cabinet with old Cold War Warrior generals who still think they are fighting the old Soviet Union. His whole circle of advisors are divorced from reality. Recently the British Tory Secretary of Defence Fallon also advocated launching a nuclear first strike against Russia. These people have no grasp on reality.
That is without even contemplating two irrational leaders confronting each other as is the case with USA v North Korea
Rational players? What a joke!
How do they back out after 911?
It’s a matter of doubling down after doing something really stupid.
It’s a fight to the death now.
Or, one simple announcement:
“We have developed a hack of your missile’s software. Once fired they will return to point of origin.”
Seems like a good ruse to me, and quite possible. Most of the US’ ICBM are still controlled from the ground by 1970’s 8″ floppy discs.
See here. http://edition.cnn.com/2016/05/26/us/pentagon-floppy-disks-nuclear/index.html
Dont forget London ;-).
As long as Israel does not want nuclear war the servants of Israel will not start one.
Could you explain what Solzhenitsyn means by “courage”? Lack of courage doesn’t seem the most glaring of our faults in the West (not to deny that it is a fault).
*moral* courage. the submission of the self to higher values and principles.
Thanks. He certainly got that one right, alas!
And then there’s the sheer size of Russia on a map. It seems unlikely that even a well planned attack could level the whole country. Russia could maintain a ‘ride-out’ policy, and still pick off US cities one-by-one in the aftermath. ‘Nuclear winter’ could be problematic, though.
Really, it’s depressing that this has been going on for more than half a century. Nothing substantive has changed since Dr. Strangelove, and the George C. Scott character: “I’m not saying we wouldn’t get our hair mussed… “.
But as our computing and automation technologies advance, it’s looking like warfare may devolve into a battle of the robots. Cruise missiles and robot planes, versus various ECM, EW, and cyberwar efforts.
Yes, Kaliningrad (Königsberg) to Khabarovsk, that’s 7000 km. The monstrously corrupt funny farm which is the West is no match for Russia’s Armed Forces, but Russia (and others) need to drop the petrodollar.
Russian Anthem – 2017 Victory Day Parade in Khabarovsk:
https://youtu.be/U-LRRUenFVU . . . https://youtu.be/xVkIDYEf0lI
But are the warheads resident in Europe aimed at Russia or are they rather aimed at their hosts.?
They are great big red blinking targets on their hosts.
If the nuke weapons are as poorly maintained as domestic infrastructure (such as the Hanford site, *cough*), most of them will be duds anyway. Doesn’t matter where they are aimed. But they are still high-value targets.
If our nuclear weapons are as poor as our tomahawk missiles fired at Syria, where only about 1/3 even hit the target and failed to even damage the runway in plain sight, we better be prepared for similar incompetence and poor results from our other military toys.
It might be safe to say, the hit-miss ratio with the tomahawk cruise missile strike in Syria is not characteristic of its usual performance, and the MSM reports, and White House statements, are probably less than accurate, as far as the true purpose of the strike goes. Perhaps the truth will become clear later on, but those are cards that are being played close to the vest right now.
Thank you for reading and contributing on The Vineyard of the Saker~ mod. DG
Many thanks, Saker. A really detailed and authoritative summary – and I, for one, feel a good deal better than after I had seen the panic-mongering accounts of the “super-fuze” and its possible consequences.
Seems like today, only “higher value” is expressed in zeroes behind dollar amount digit. Also, there are commodities, and let’s make our life complicated because it is not challenging. Let our children if we have any leave us as soon as possible, so we can “enjoy” our life, our fast cars and cruises.
So yes, now there is no enterprise that one want to commit to unless there is a dollar worth in it. So, solidarity is basically dead, communication is dead… there is no empathy, all is just about me…
So, there is no need for courage any more, except if it will make ME in front of others, as the best, the fastest..
It all comes back to selfishness and self sufficiency.
Saker: “These people are not constrained by anything, not morals, not international law, not even common sense or basic logic. In truth, we are dealing with a messianic cult every bit as insane as the one of Jim Jones…”
The Untold Story of the Jonestown Massacre: The Black Hole of Guyana, by John Judge,
1985, https://ratical.org/ratville/JFK/JohnJudge/Jonestown.html
“The idea that a large community of Black people would not only stand by and be poisoned at the suggestion of Jim Jones, but would allow their children to be murdered first, is a monstrous lie, and a racist insult.[266]”
266. “Psyching Out the Cult’s Collective Mania,” Drs. Delgado & J West, LAT, 11/26/78; “The Appeal of the Death Trip,” Robert J. Lifton, NYT Magazine, 1/7/79; NYT, 11/22/78, Robert Lifton (“explains”), 12/1/78 (Carter quote); 12/3/78 (“never know,” Reston); 12/5/78 (Billy Graham, “Satan”).
“The ultimate victims of mind control at Jonestown are the American people. If we fail to look beyond the constructed images given us by the television and the press, then our consciousness is manipulated, just as well as the Jonestown victims’ was. Facing nuclear annihilation, may see the current militarism of the Reagan policies, and military training itself, as the real “mass suicide cult.” If the discrepancy between the truth of Jonestown and the official version can be so great, what other lies have we been told about major events?
History is precious. In a democracy, knowledge must be accessible for informed consent to function. Hiding or distorting history behind “national security” leaves the public as the final enemy of the government. Democratic process cannot operate on “need to know.” Otherwise we live in the 1984 envisioned by Orwell’s projections and we must heed his warning that those who control the past control the future.
The real tragedy of Jonestown is not only that it occurred, but that so few chose to ask themselves why or how, so few sought to find out the facts behind the bizarre tale used to explain away the death of more than 900 people, and that so many will continue to be blind to the grim reality of our intelligence agencies. In the long run, the truth will come out. Only our complicity in the deception continues to dishonor the dead.”
Jim Jones Cult. CIA project. Just one of thousands.
You are talking to rationale people and you know your subject.
Yet I don’t think that the McCain and co. are rational people. They probably believe to their own propaganda and their media are able to convince the American people of their unvulnerability.
That is for me the threat but I hope that the Pentagon has a similar understanding and therefore will be clever enough to cool the US politicians willing to test Russia
@ Jean de Peyrelongue
‘I don’t think that the McCain and co. are rational people.’
They used to be called ‘aristocrats’. It took Pitt to point out that, after the plunder of the ‘reformation’, for three hundred years these people excluded from their view and consciousness the people that were starving a few hundred meters from their gate houses.
They are not non-rational. The same period threw out Darwin, Newton, Edison, etc. It is just that they constructed physically on their estates, and intellectually in the political and religious system, the same thing we all construct around ourselves and ideas. A cordon sanitaire, a ring fence, a safe zone.
Same as it ever was.
Interesting article.
Besides, what kind of weapon system could stop that missile type of anyway? Maybe the kind of defenses around a US aircraft carrier (maybe),
I read the following article last night, as it goes, on this very subject….
http://exiledonline.com/the-war-nerd-this-is-how-the-carriers-will-die/all/1/
Thanks Saker, for this excellent and detailed article.
I just want to add that the delusional hunger for power of the neocons is something that worries me too. In fact, I’m worrying that they will start to believe their own wish-thinking and BS.
To illustrate the point, yesterday I was stupified when reporters were allowed to ask questions to Sergei Lavrov, visiting Washington. Maybe they were thinking themselves that they were the guardians of free speech and public opinion of the indispensable nation, towards the highest Foreign representative of one of the most powerful nations of the earth, but what I saw was kind of a bunch of schoolkids asking about ‘Russian hacking of the elections’ and ‘what he thought about the firing of James Comey’.
Is this really the present level of the press in the USA?
Lavrov stayed calm, when they would have done that to his spokeswoman Maria Zakharova they would have got her brilliant verval beatings…
Even higher up I am starting to worry. All kind of senators like John McCain, Chris Christie and there are many more, I cannot take them serious anymore.
And then this Nikki Haley, representative for the USA at the UN. The first time I saw here speech, I thought that she had spent some time in a cave doing drugs.
When I compare that to people like Lavrov, Putin and Zakharova, then I start to wonder how such stupidity is possible.
Oh, and btw if retaliation might occur, I would suggest to drop the first bomb on the City of London. But I do hope this not necessary.
“Is this really the present level of the press in the USA?”
Short answer “yes”. But those questions weren’t asked to “really” get true answers. They are part of the MSM’s 24/7 attack on Trump. They want to discredit him so much (not that he doesn’t sometimes help them himself) that impeachment will be easy.Just read the US Twitter storm over the pictures from that meeting. Their “entire” purpose (besides lusting for war with Russia) is to bring down Trump. By making the US population think he is a “Putin puppet”.
@Rob
‘I just want to add that the delusional hunger for power of the neocons is something that worries me too. In fact, I’m worrying that they will start to believe their own wish-thinking and BS.’
As hard as it is to accept, these people are true patriots. You are not. They absolutely have the US citizenry’s back, and they absolutely know the game and what the cost of losing is. At the same time, they are wicked, whereas you are probably not.
The continued success and prosperity of the US is entirely (not 80%) dependent on the continued use of the worthless dollar as world reserve currency. Most of her internal and external bills are paid, and the wealth of its citizens and corporations rely on money pouring into the country from foreign nations who must swap their profits and currencies for dollars – issued by the US out of thin air – to continue to have access to the dollar denominated world markets, and to pass 64% of transactions throught the US banking system (where it is skimmed). Try to withdraw and you die (Iraq, Libya, Total fuel etc).
Clinton, McCain, Israel et al are willing to do anything to defend this debt system because without it, the US (and Israel) is zero.
It is the conundrum of modern politics. Vote against these people and you really are bringing ruin on your children. Vote for them, and you really are bringing ruin on someone else’s.
Thanks, everyone, for your insights and comments. I believe it was General Patton who said “no soldier ever won a war by dying for his country –(instead)– he won the war by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country”… ouch. Then we are confronted with the situation where “we have won the war but lost the peace”. Ah, the stench of victory. Over the years we have visited a number of the battle sites from the War Between the States and paused among the endless rows of tombstones in the national cemeteries. I know there are huge military cemeteries over in Europe as well. When will “our” patriotic lawmakers understand that enough good people have died? If the neocons are such true patriots, too bad they don’t personally lead the charge head-first into the wars they want so badly! In the grand scheme of things, how is the battle for this earth going, really? Are they tired of winning yet?– “what does it profit a man, if he gains the whole world, but loses his soul?”
This is the exact point, and an area of discussion that is somewhat underrepresented on this blog.
If you simply look at the military facts, or even the geopolitics of the race for resources&commodities (pipelines etc) without mentioning the pyramid game of fractional reserve banking and the petrodollar, you will not see it.
The Neocons are actually totally rational in this regard, they know that their “Freedom and the American Way of Life ™” (which is just another way of saying “living in luxury at someone else’s expense by means of financial extortion”) will disappear the second enough trades are conducted in Yuan/Gold/Whatever…(ask Gaddafi or Saddam what happened when they tried). This is also why they are joined at the hip with the Saudis, not because “they need the oil”.
The main battlefront then is rather the proposed (or is it already operating?) de-dollarized commodity market in St Petersburg, the progress of the re-nationalization of the Russian central bank, the indigenous replacement of the Swift-system, etc.
Since the neocons are a globalized lot, they likely care about the actual american people (deplorables) as much as they care about the petrodollar and the fractional reserve system. Taking lethal risks on behalf of the people to preserve the pyramid game for the elite thus makes perfect sense…unfortunately
they likely DO NOT care about the actual american people (deplorables) as much as they care about the petrodollar and the fractional reserve system.
…is the correct sentence.
The ruin of financial collapse in the US would be a blessing in disguise. This would restore control back to the traditional American nation and away from the parasite class. Painful but not fatal.
Diogenes, yours is a perfect example of the delusion which prevents the American / western politician from dealing honestly with its public. They should be able to say ‘We are going to invade Syria sooner or later, because if we don’t the consequence down the line will be that we can’t build roads, educate your kids, grow enough food, and you will all be as poor as church mice.’
The idea that letting go of the extortion system will be a nice soft landing is about as far from realism as it is possible to get.
The Eu, Japan, Canada, UK and the US are as poor, unstable and vulnerable as Brazil, Zimbabwe etc, Venezuela, without the golden shower of extorted global money. Until you understand that the alternative to the current system is unspeakable poverty – you know, can’t afford to buy new underpants, let alone petrol for a car, or a new plough, or a bit of steel, and spades and forks are unavailable – THAT kind of poverty – you will not see that the western politicians are fighting and making huge moral compromises on behalf of their citizens. Killing and invading are ‘necessary evils’, and ‘acceptable prices’ to this end.
As Aivazovsky writes above, more time ought to be spent looking at the infection of fractional reserve banking rather than inspecting the resultant face pimples that are war tools. They let in a little evil with the world banking system in 1913, thinking liberally that evil is a manageable force and a construct of human artifice, and not a real entity with a will of its own. ALL discussions lead to this.
Rob:
When I compare that to people like Lavrov, Putin and Zakharova, then I start to wonder how such stupidity is possible.
Stupidity? Don’t underestimate the neocons. Admittedly most of their “think tank” ideas are stupid. But their tactics and their reasoning to get closer to their goals is quite sophisticated. Replace “stupid” with evil and you’re right on the money.
Is this really the present level of the press in the USA?
It is even worse than that – this is the level of the entire political discourse in the USA. And yes, this is very, very scary…
The USA has far, far more nukes than is understood in the public domain. But the Russians have far far far far more than their official numbers as well. Russia always knew the USA played a ‘British’ game- ie., always massived undertstated their true arsenal. And Russia has always liked to lean on absolute (as high as possible) numbers- meaning that Russia has overkill nuclear options that would make any naive Russaphobe collapse in a dead faint if they gained an inkling as to Russia’s actual doomsday potential.
A war between Russia and the West would leave 100% destruction in the West, but significantly less than this in Russia. Why do you think Britain II, the UK’s Frankenstein’s Monster more commonly known as the USA, has never come close to confronting Russia directly. All the war games and war planning in the world cannot make the insane superiority in nuclear weapons that Russia holds go away.
Any large industrialised nation with first class mathematicians and phyicists and access to excellent natural resources can nuke itself up to the gills if given the opportunity. Russia’s response to WW2, prior invasions, and empire manoeuvering was to ensure that if push came to shove, Russia’s attackers would be the guaranteed losers in any major conflict. Really informed military peeps in the West know this all too well.
But the military industrial complex doesn’t run on truths- that would never pay the bills. Naive optimism that places billions of dollars into the bank accounts of ‘friends of Israel’ is the rule of the military R+D game in the USA. And when you have a total brainless POS like Trump take power, the Deep State Demons hope that president clown shoes will fall prey to the ‘Tom Clancy’ type of warmongering US supremacy fiction, and press the button if enough ‘bright young men’ inform Trump of how hopeless Russia’s military readiness really is.
Most of you here cannot get your heads around what actually 21st Century nuclear war would be like- since your understanding is more than fifty years out of date. The most modern nuclear weapons tech in the public domain (neutron bombs) is from the 1950s. How far have computers come since then? Nuclear science has advanced just as much.
The yield and radiation output from nuke warheads is now fully programmable after launch. And the biggest ‘bangs’ make the big bangs of the 1960s look like fireworks by comparison. The ***only*** chance of survival is a mutual agreement by Russia and the West not to hit the new deep facilities where the ‘important’ people will be hiding. Since Tony Blair, Britain has built brand new deep complexes under London with the specific agreement that these will be left alone if Moscow’s equivalents are also left alone. The Deep State Demons know that ‘persuading’ their servants to ‘press the button’ is predicated on the certainty that many of these servants have that their families will be ‘safe’. Our greatest fear should be that the Demons will win their psychological campaign, and convince their servants that nuclear war is a reasonable option.
So don’t try to understand the ‘big picture’ by any kind of bottom-up ‘nerdy’ concerns of whatever missiles etc are current- that’s not how nuclear war works. All major players will always have the best ‘armour’ and ‘anti-armour’ (a metaphor from the earliest days of modern warfare). Magic new tech never wins major wars, as Hitler found to his cost. Instead rewatch the film ‘Wargames’ and play close attention to the message.
And the biggest ‘bangs’ make the big bangs of the 1960s look like fireworks by comparison.
Actually, the overall megatonnage of Russian and US weapons has been going down since the 1970 and will continue to do so because modern nukes are much more accurate than the early ones. Huge nukes have very little purpose, really.
Besides, consider the choice of targets! US still think this is a game of checkers [wipe out as many of the opponents ‘pieces’ as possible], while Russia play chess [maybe loose a smaller piece to enhance the reach and power of larger pieces].
Many believe it’s a game of cities – Las Vegas for Chelabinsk, or some such nonsense – it is not!!!
I’m sure the russian ставка (High Command) are more knowledgeable than me, and have set their targets on much more ‘profitable’ targets; I dare not to list them in order of significance, but
– US carriers, gone within a few minutes, even with no nuclears
– Listening and tracking post; Mennwith Hill, Thule Airbase, and the like
– Major bases; Andrews air force base, Rammstein (Germany), and so on
– Headquarters; ‘Brass Hat’ (Cheyenne Mountain Complex), NSA center (Washington), etc.
– Any system or location needed to continue military or civilian leadership
You get the idea; of course this will bring ordinary us citizens at risk (major cities are located close to these ‘targets’ and *Will* suffer.
What I propose here is that no matter how Russia retaliate, the US will cease to exist as a nation – no center of power, no authority, no one to ‘lead the way.’
While I concur – no one will win the nuclear war – Russia has one more Significant favour; her people! Besides, positions and organization of the Russian leadership and continuation of power is much more diversified and secret than the anglozionist! If one remembers, they even Burned To Thr Ground the Capitol, to ensure Napoleon did not achieve victory (and we all know what his fate was!), and Hitler believed that the Soviet would surrender once the “door to the house is kicked in” – need I remind what happened then???
The biggest problem and threat to All Of Us, is that there is no sane persons (I am reluctant to call them people or humans), left in power in the ‘west’ – they have all succumbed to the sweet elixir of power, believing in their ‘supreme’ and ‘exceptional’ right to decide and determine what is the fate of us all!
Thank God, sane people have the courage and wisdom to stand up to them – Vladimir Putin, Sergei Lavrov, etc., and their compatriots, President Xi, and others.
Beware though, the future looks uncertain!
Иван Грошни:
… they have all succumbed to the sweet elixir of power, believing in
Absolutely correct! That’s may be the point to get them. Power and money often can be used synonymous. Everything boils down to money (All Wars are Bankers’ Wars). Aside from military targets financial centers should be on the list as well (nearly at the top). If you make sure that the financial centers are wiped out, you’ll get those who are pulling the strings.
There are persuasive indications in open sources – essentially what’s public about Project Orion et sec and in Richard Rhodes’ books on the gadgets – that suggest quite strongly that very substantial focus and directionality in nuclear explosives, as well and creating reliable small devices – is now possible. Since in the arena of conflicts words mean nothing and capabilities (always unknowable) form the foundation of situational awareness, subsequently refined by historical observation, All “nuclear states” must assume that directional and small-ish gadgets exist. If memory serves Ted Taylor spoke to directionality – based on observations he made at Bikini. And keep in mind that the “classical super” operates by a radiation-induced and focused explosive caused by radiation transport in material that’s more or less polyethylene – so the interest in focus and directionality isn’t odd at all…
Such gadgets might make their appearance in “the field” and instant tunneling”. They also have application and somewhat different and pacific (if essentially fascist) space travel. Orion was Mars in two weeks with 500 ton ship that made the trip directly from surface to surface and back in a single stage… And that was in the late 1950’s…. You tell me what’s now possible…
I suspect that at least one has actually been used in Syria – based on a single video – but I’ll reserve my view on that until more and similar event, videos, present and make the possibility clarify.
the west only has itself to blame for lack or decline in courage. The rapacious and individualistic nature of their brand of capitalism is a disintigrating influence on cohesivness, it attacks communities and stresses the me or mine before sharing, it is a kind of seperatness that permeates even families who are just collections of self interested or self obsessed individuals always wanting something, always looking for something for ‘me’. It is purposeful and fully exploited to prevent any collective organised co operation that may then become opposition to their ‘exceptionalist’ ideals. The fear that drives this sort of top down reductive fragmentation is the very thing that ultimately ensures its demise.
I like that idea of Pandos in the fipo….
Adding to all the tech stuff, I would like to add an article that made a simulation of 100 small Hiroshima-style boms delivered between India and Pakistan, resulting in nuclear winter and large famine all over the world: http://www.nucleardarkness.org/warconsequences/fivemilliontonsofsmoke/
Maybe some filthy rich elite people will survive this in their elocated bunkers, but when they will come out after a few years, what are they going to find? An empty earth, without people to reign upon. Good luck with finding fuel, food and the like.
The Saker
An excellent read, really informative. The article couldn’t have come at a better time, especially the point on Kalibrs.
Just read a snarky article on how bad it is that Russia is going for a Frigate centric navy. So I’ve just started an article based on that.
Yours aye
LeDahu
What strikes me as a large omission–that no one seems to care about the welfare or the ability or the right to defend the rest of the world. Let’s recall that Russia and US combined have a population of roughly half a billion. What about the other 6.5 billion people: do they have no place in this world?
Wasn’t the core promise of the NPT not that the original nuclear powers will denuclearize. In the light of this major let down by the big four, was it not then the moral obligation or each and everyone of them to walk away from the NPT?
Even during the cold war, there was some kind of promise of protection to the nations belonging to the two groups (which was probably foolish and self-delusional). I wonder if Germany, Japan, and others, could not have also acquired thousands of weapons, had their leaderships not lacked moral courage. I think Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea at least did something to assert their moral obligation to their people–even if appears to be symbolic.
The truth is that when people like Saddam and Qaddafi–disarmed they let down the people they were responsible to protect. Their fates are warning to the rest of the world to go their own way, since only the gullible nations and their leaders have shirk their responsibility. We must recall that the foremost responsibility of a government is to protect their population against external threats.
NPT was an evil doctrine, and people who waited did not sign it probably were more pragmatic than the rest. If Lennon, Syria, Egypt, Libya, South Africa, Argentina, Brazil, and others had just hung in there they could have probably staved of a lot of arm twisting and giving in to naked interference in their internal affairs. This led to all the NPT (excluding the original member of the nuclear club) signatories essentially declaring that they were less human than the others. What a shame?
I can assure you that possession of even one nuclear weapon by a small, poor, and otherwise worthless country (only in perception–no one is worthless) which cannot be located will make large entitled countries think hard before screwing with them.
I think it will be better if everyone walks away from NPT and acquires a few weapons on the market, if they are allowed and even forced to buy garbage conventional weapons by mortgaging their entire GDP, what rational is there to stop them from building or buying such weapons.
Now that will be a realistic MAD, where everyone will have to walk the line as an there will be a credible threat to everyone who tries to put their foot on someone Else’s neck.
Before people claim that what about non-governmental idiots acquiring such weapons, I will point point out that governments are the biggest culprits these days, much more than any insane idiot. Why should one group of mad men (none of them developed the science, they are just social theorists) be allowed to hold other insane people under nuclear threat?
How about this: a really level playing field?!
Jenn
Jennifer L Shannon
“I think it will be better if everyone walks away from NPT and acquires a few weapons on the market, if they are allowed and even forced to buy garbage conventional weapons by mortgaging their entire GDP, what rational is there to stop them from building or buying such weapons.”
Because, unlike the conventional weapons, you can’t just store the nuclear weapons in your garage, It decays over time, and those non-state agents would need an entire industry just to keep it up and secure.
Ah, but does that mean that conventional arms do not require upkeep. The rest of the world is being milked by a few arms supplying countries. I believe these countries are the evil ones. In all fairness, I have to include Russia and China in this evil enablers, with France, UK and Germany not much farther behind.
Self-defense is a biological imperative: no exceptions. If there are still some people here who believe that there are some countries which cannot produce nuclear weapons, because they are too stupid or backward, they need to wake up.
When some countries (by extension their people) are born into an entitled existence, they forget that they are the beneficiaries of political, military, and financial terrorism being committed by their countries. As long as a person lives on the fruits of another, through willful participation or just by the fact of being born: it does not change the fact that they are living off the shakedown of other people and nations through thuggery.
As the saying goes “ignorance of law is no excuse”, ignorance of the source of your livelihood is also not an excuse. In that regard it is an act of wilful omission or either being immoral, being too stupid, too institutionally controlled (lemmings), or just being too self-centered. All immoral.
No it is time that people wake up and walk away from NPT. Why should one set of people have to go through hoops, like the reference to the NPR, while imbeciles like Trump can just bomb the hell out of people just because they can?
It is actually mind boggling, that most of the NSG is comprised of nations which are themselves victims of this Western rape. Take Niger for example, the poor bastards supply all the uranium to the EU but the EU and UK go around dictating terms to them.
We supply them movies, porn, cigarettes, coke (coca cola), McDonald’s, KFC, banking, arms, and in return we take their brain power, their energy, their agricultural produce, their minerals, their water (Fiji water). France sells us Cheese, wine, and uppity brand names (a Chanel purse can only get better to a level, after all it is just a purse), so when Chanel sells it for a couple of grands, and the Chinese sell it for ten bucks, there is no difference both are made exactly at the same place, with the same materiel, the care. The only way to tell what is “original” is not through any functionality, it is just that some have a serial number which can be tracked and the others don’t.
In exchange for selling violence, voice, and excrement to others–we get to have an Africa command, a pacific command, a Europe command–like we are masters of the rest of humanity. Of course this hubris flows downhill–as long as there is some country, city, neighborhood, or person whom we can abuse, we have a reason to live and feel proud. No matter how much abuse we are being subjected to. Of course in the beast is made of its own colony, where the worker bees fare no better than their long distance copy but with bragging rights: my dad can beat your dad!
We need to grow up a bit. Start practicing real morality. Stop the injustice, step in when we see injustice is being done.
Jenn
@Jennifer L Shannon:
You might be interested in this 2014 article from NPR. There are many ways for a non-nuclear state to have some deterrence.
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/02/05/272015606/sniper-attack-on-calif-power-station-raises-terrorism-fears
“The attack began just before 1 a.m. on April 16 last year, when someone slipped into an underground vault not far from a busy freeway and cut telephone cables.
Within half an hour, snipers opened fire on a nearby electrical substation. Shooting for 19 minutes, they surgically knocked out 17 giant transformers that funnel power to Silicon Valley. A minute before a police car arrived, the shooters disappeared into the night.
To avoid a blackout, electric-grid officials rerouted power around the site and asked power plants in Silicon Valley to produce more electricity. But it took utility workers 27 days to make repairs and bring the substation back to life.”
According to Foreign Policy, which was less definitive about whether the attack was the work of more than one person, at least 100 rounds were fired from at least one high-powered rifle.
Just read a snarky article on how bad it is that Russia is going for a Frigate centric navy. So I’ve just started an article based on that.
I hope that you will explain that Russian decision. I am much more worried about rumors that Russia wants another aircraft carrier (I am not a fan of these at all). Seems to me that Russian frigates are a very balanced and modern solution. If I was in Korolev’s position, I would focus on building more frigates and more Proekt 885 Iasen SSNs. I would not build more aircraft carriers, but I do think that Russia needs 6-12 amphibious assault ships to replace the ill-fated Mistral order, maybe some combination of a modernized version of the old Soviet Proekt 11780 (similar to the modern “Lavina” project) and of the Proekt 11711.
What do you think?
Kind regards (and tons of thanks for your superb articles!!)
The Saker
An Asia-Pacific carrier would be very useful. That’s a long ride from Far East to Singapore. A Carrier would be nice to have. Added to two from China, makes a three-platform combo.
I look at China-Russia as a combined force against the Hegemon.
And the Chinese are planning a super-super carrier. Massive thing.
Carriers are history.
I also believe that carriers are history. They are also too vulnerable and I don’t see any reason for Russia to waste money on that kind of power projection capability. IMNSHO The Pacific is nor carriers, but for attack submarines :-)
The Inner Islands passage from Sea of Japan, Yellow Sea, East China Sea, Straits of Taiwan, South China Sea are the waterways and where the action will be. Not out in the blue water of the Pacific.
The Chinese have no plans for pushing to battle out in the open Pacific.
The use of carriers by China is for airpower. And one thing the Chinese have done is build a massive aeroforce of drones. They have every variety and capability and thousands of them. A carrier from launch to combat ready with fighter or strike planes is a five to eight year build up to train enough pilots. With drones, it’s a platform on launch.
The know better than anyone how vulnerable carriers are to missile attack. But, they have a variety of enemies or challenges. Japan is one major problem. US Navy is another. Taiwan is another. Vietnam is another. The Hegemon’s PATO (they want to build) is another and includes Australia and probably Canada. And then there is India with a powerful navy. Each of these potential combatants poses unique problems for the PLA Navy.
I think the Russian concept of planes and missiles on their carrier makes sense. And if it makes sense in the Baltic and it was used in the Mediterranean for Syria, then one over in the Far East makes sense, too.
China’s PLAN and military command has a contingency plan incase things are/.were about to reach , or get to the point of open hostilities in the South China Sea, and nearby Sea regions.
They will simply take a few thousand of the many thousands of mega-large container ships and super-tankers and outfit them with missile launchers.
They plan on saturating the seas with these ships and within no time, China thus can have a beautifully gigantic naval presence and power in the near shores, and perhaps beyond.
By the way, Neo-cons to my translates to a specific race of people, whom are originally from Khazaria, turned Ashkenazi’s, and now posing as real Jews. Problem is, the vast majority of the worlds Jews buy into, or are dooped by the tribal elders.
Don’t want war, or nuclear war? The Talmud needs to be banned completely, under punishment of death, across the entire world. Quite possibly, the whole ;Jewish’ thing has to go.
Thank you for the comment. I’m not personally a fan of them, since we got probably a hair’s breath of being terminated by one once. That’s another story.
I totally agree on your comment on the Yasen, which I put in the comment in 1 of the Briefs about an US admiral top submariner who had a model of one made for his office, so impressed was he by the Severodvinsk. That’s speaks volumes doesn’t it.
This is a good ‘un too, Donald trump advised the military to get rid of the electromagnetic catapults on new aircraft carriers apparently. Didn’t go down too well with the top brass.
I don’t think Russia is enamoured by building an aircraft carrier, its the shipyard design bureau that’s pushing it. Same goes for the Lider class, again on the back burner. They’ve bitten off more that they can chew for such ambitious projects, since they need to get the Grigorovich (improved) sorted out.
Russia needs to replace badly its Ropuchas.
More of Project 11711 should have been ordered rather than just 2, unless they have something else up their sleeve. It depends on how they envisage deploying them.
But at the same time, they’re doing well on the special purpose ships, which again is getting NATO. & US attention. In particular the Arctic ships.
Yours aye
LeDahu
But at the same time, they’re doing well on the special purpose ships, which again is getting NATO. & US attention. In particular the Arctic ships.
Agreed.
and it is a real privilege to have you post your analyses here
thank you!
The Saker
You guys were mentioning vessel types I had not heard of (e.g. Severodvinsk class submarines) so I got busy. The following links may help others with a similar lack of familiarity. Just to show the depth of my prior ignorance, I didn’t realize there was a designation such as SSGN.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/russia/885.htm
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/russias-next-super-submarine-almost-ready-war-15610
It’s in my Brief
/naval-brief-nb-0817-april-25th-2017-by-ledahu/
Go to part 2 on submarines.
I try to divide up the Brief into News and a topic.
some musings
one carrier might be useful for putting out fires in distant places (if they cant secure bases in a diplomatic way) – also if you build one that works well then others might want to buy (long term investment perhaps) as only major industrialized nations can undertake such things.
as for the frigates – i guess they can pump them out faster and they have a lot of bang for buck – (as apposed to expensive hifh value target ships that are a significant loss if taken out)perhaps they think they can spread them around the coastline better
i know they are the only navy ships that can move from the black sea to the caspian.
but can they traverse other rivers to other seas (one artickle said they could get to the white sea through the rivers – not sure) – if so they are a great mobile asset for defence that can move around safly
One must be grateful that the US is surrounded by oceans, making war unnecessary, and that Russia has deep forests, making war impractical.
The number I use for Russian warheads is 9100. I suppose they have well more than 7000, and considering the obvious containment, destabilization and NATO growth, they would, since 2008 and especially, 2014, have expanded their nuke warheads.
The SPACE-based weapons are growing. US and China are clearly developing them, and though basing them in SPACE is forbidden, anything goes. When dealing with end of the world strategies, no nation would pass up SPACE as a theatre of warfare. Simply, nothing is off the table.
The Russian advantage now is, as Saker points out in detail and with the video link, with cruise missile capabilities that make defense systems highly improbable. This is good for MAD. This is good for the warmongers to see that they always lose in their simulations.
Russian technological innovation is leading edge where it truly matters—military weapons and defense systems.
The US greatest power is in the sea. What matters most is under the sea. Its strategic submarines are one component. Its hunter subs are another component. Also, its anti-communication weaponry and SIGINT under the oceans are excellent. There is not a lot of open source info on the Russian subsea potential. Basically, it is passive and powerful. Subs have strategic missiles that are safe enough to know that they will launch a counter-strike that will obliterate the West.
Also, as the threats from the Hegemon grow (as they are growing) we can see the capabilities of Russia and China growing coordinating means to deal with, at least, in the Asia-Pacific region. These will create redundancies and the resultant necessity to destroy not only Russian nuclear weapons but China’s also. Thus, the Hegemon will be fighting against two superpowers if it fights against either one of them.
This hatred of Russia will have to grow into hatred of China, also.
Though it sounds harsh, this is a good thing. The madness of the neocon cult, so far, has not linked the two other civilizations as one. It was far easier in the old Commie Days. So, the problem set is exponentially more difficult than just the US targeting Russia. And China has it “programmed” in their doctrine that any loss of Russia would subject China to permanent vassalage or number two, far beneath the Hegemon. That is unacceptable to all Chinese, not just their leadership.
Nuclear war is not in the cards for the Hegemon. Not until the critical mass of the cult of godless, soulless warmongers grows larger and more ignorant. Undermining that cult is the ascendance of China and the resilience of the Russians. Time is on the side of the sane humans. Everywhere we see the heavy footprint of the Hegemon, things are going badly for the monster.
Here’s one thing I always wanted to ask: How do you know which country fired off nuclear missile/ missiles if it is launched from a submarine? Who do you strike as a retaliation if you dont know who attacked you.
That is good question, but if someone fires one, others will follow and after all, you could simply turn on CNN and find out.
What if the crazies decide to take out only Moscow with just one missile? How do you know which country(UK/US/France) fired at you, if done from a submarine?
At that point, it doesn’t really mater, who did it, they are all in it together.
@anonymous The point is not about the West firing missile at Russia. Situation could be reversed by replacing Moscow with Washington. In that case how would the US decide who(Russia/China India or Israel) fired against it? The point is how would a nation detect which other nation fired at it?
If things get really bad for the Neocons there is a danger of a false flag against an American target.
@ Whoever
I’m more concerned about the Demons-US firing at the US.
Then blaming RF. And then of course “retaliating”.
Good ole false flag.
Why? Cui bono? Dunno. But they luv a false flag, do the Demons.
Analyse the radiation and the nuclear material residue, they can see where it was taken out of the ground or in which reactor it was synthesized. Takes a couple of hours but then then know. Only potential problem is use of stolen or illegally sold nuclear material.
On this entire bombastic page, as far as I can tell from skimming, your remarks appear to be the only ones guided by reason and critical thinking.
Now let them trolls’n’shills or perhaps even Saker or one of the bona fide posters come up with a sensible answer! (Don’t hold your breath.)
Check out the heiwaco tripod bomb pages for the very funny reality about this thermonuclear nonsense on intercontinental stilts.
You don’t know who attacked you. But crimes always suggest agency. Expert criminals always arrange that there are more than one beneficiary.
In the case the provenance of the gadget itself and the “poot” (leftovers in fallout indicate quite a bit about the device and the special materials used. But nothing says who brought the diabolical machine, or who set it to operate, or even who built it – pretty much all that can be known is technical. The politics of the matter will always be obscure…
VELA incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vela_Incident Who did it? They’re not sayin’, but if they spoke it might be a Semitic language…or Dutch…
However, rest assured that uncle sam will be sure to tell you that they know for a fact that Putin did it. And who sent the special stuff to Israel? This is all a public secret… Like 911, or Pearl Harbor, or JFK, Martin, Bobby, Fred Hampton…or the South Korean dictator attacking the North Korean counterpart – so says IF Stone…
US has an entire department that is supposed to have nearly magical abilities to divine the one thing that cannot be known, who did it… I consider that to be, in value, total bs….but there’s nothing new about bs, eh?
People speak of ballistic missile. All that’s needed is a jeep….
Good question!
Yeah right. Courage. Some understand courage as the ability and resolve to do the right thing (this is not so wrong), and too many understand the right thing as “strike Russia now.” Courage? Yes, courage. I think Mr. TheOneWhoLies was urging exactly that: the west’s resolve in the drive to obliterate Russia, then in Soviet Union form
We just saw the American people vote for a different policy. Trump never campaigned as a peacenik, but it did state what the American people have wanted to hear by saying that these wars of regime change were wrong and that America should get out of NATO.
That message at least in part caused the upset in the Republican primary as the next Bush scion and crazy, I-want-nuclear-war-and-I-want-it-now, Lindsay Graham were defeated opposing candidates. And when the neocons and the neocon controlled press tried to rally around “The Butcher of Libya”, the American people again defeated her in another upset.
The last two Presidents have both been elected as candidates who were “anti-war” or at least opposed to current policies.
We’ve then seen the power of the Deep State, the power of the money that controls American policies oppose this. We’ve also seen the power of the media in the Western societies and their ability to shape the thoughts of people (recently “Trump fired Comey because of Trump’s ties to Russia”).
Polls regularly show that Americans want the wars to wind down and the troops to come home and the defense budgets to decrease. There was a stretch during Obama when it almost looked like that might occur a tiny bit, but Obama and the military fought off the calls to cut the defense budgets and then ISIS appeared or was created to end that momentum for peace.
Maybe some who know more about the fall of the Soviet Union can comment, but today the situation in the US seems much like I imagine it must have been in the Soviet Union pre-Gorbachov. People know something is badly wrong. People know things must change. But they live in a highly controlled society where speaking out is increasingly dangerous to ones live and livelihood and they feel that nothing they can do can really change anything. Elections are controlled and quite likely rigged. Peaceful protest has been made ineffective by permits and regulations and a controlled media that no longer reports such protests. And its increasingly being made completely illegal.
I’m not sure what the Saker expects from the people of the west, but avenues that don’t tend to destroy a society such as elections and civil disobedience appear to be blocked in a society that increasingly monitors and controls everyone and that lacks a free press that isn’t controlled by big money and the war machine.
Not that there isn’t hope. In the US we’ve seen the anti-war forces arise in the previously unshakeable Republican party and defeat the pro-war candidates and elect an outsider. Something that was completely unthinkable and probably unforeseen back as recently as when Dubya and Cheney controlled that party. There is still an antiwar power base within the Democratic Party as well, even though they completely lacked a candidate and Colonel Sanders was too chicken to dare to oppose Hillary on the issue, and instead campaigned as the pro-war, pro-Pentagon Socialist. But there were a lot of voices that wanted an anti-war opposition within the Democrats, so don’t be surprised if that movement arises from the dead in the next election when both Hillary and Sanders are off the stage.
But still, it seems a bit unfair to talk about how the West has ‘let’ the crazies take power. There’s been a huge campaign of propaganda and misleading candidates that have led to this. We’ve seen recently the pro-war, blame-Russia tilt in the major media, and we’ve seen the power of the Deep State in opposing change. And its a sure bet that previous antiwar movements have been disrupted by spy agencies from within. The bottom line, is that people have been trying to resist. They are just completely beaten by the power of the state and the power of big money in a society that has emphasized both in the last few decades.
Great in-depth analysis. If the US leadership were rational and logical, they would not contemplate such things as first strikes on Russia or China with nuclear weapons as realistic. Unfortunately, they are mostly irrational and illogical.
I have done some research about the issue of reporting this “super-fuse,” but not necessarily the fuse itself. .
Dangerous risks of W76-1/Mk4A with new AFS
/dangerous-risks-of-w76-1mk4a-with-new-afs/
If I were a crazy neocon, I’d launch a *few* strategic missiles at Russia, but turn them into duds and self-destruct at the final stage. The hope would be that Russia launches a *few* retaliatory missiles (which could be intercepted or even absorbed). Then they could use this as justification for an immediate offensive, on both military and political fronts.
That is how I initially interpreted the “super-fuse” scare.
It doesn’t matter. The west will be gone by then.
Why all that effort if the West is expert in committing false flags?
The Venezuelan embassy was attacked in spain by facist groups. Violent protests are happening in very few places in Venezuela with no a lot of people supporting them, all of them in places where the opossition rules.
The country has problems but in my opinion an oposition’s goverment will be a catastrophe for Venezuela. It will became a civil war like Ukraine because these people are full of hate and are facists.
The chavism as a whole is pretty much calm and seeing the situation at the moment. If things get really bad you will see a reaction.
Russia warned us about it. USA wants an intervention.
US war criminals do not care how many people die in a nuclear war. They only care about “the emergence of a postwar world order compatible with Western values”.
Top Air Force Official Told JCS in 1971: “We Could Lose Two Hundred Million People [in a Nuclear War] and Still Have More Than We Had at the Time of the Civil War”
http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb580-JCS-chairmans-diary-from-1971-reveals-high-level-deliberations/
SIOP-3:
http://web.archive.org/web/20070401081613/http://www.nd.edu/~klieber/Foreign%20Affairs%20article%20documents/2005_SIOP-3.pdf
“Victory is Possible
by Colin S. Gray and Keith Payne
…
Surely no one can be comfortable with the claim that a strategy that would kill millions of Soviet citizens and would invite a strategic response that could kill tens of millions of U.S. citizens would be politically and morally acceptable. However, it is worth recalling the six guidelines for the use of force provided by the “just war” doctrine of the Catholic Church: Force can be used in a just cause; with a right intent; with a reasonable chance of success; in order that, if successful, its use offers a better future than would have been the case had it not been employed; to a degree proportional to the goals sought, or to the evil combated; and with the determination to sparre noncombatants, when there is a reasonable chance of doing so.
…
Small, preplanned strikes can only be of use if the United States enjoys strategic superiority — the ability to wage a nuclear war at any level of violence with a reasonable prospect of defeating the Soviet Union and of recovering sufficiently to insure a satisfactory postwar world order.
…
The United States should plan to defeat the Soviet Union and to do so at a cost that would not prohibit U.S. recovery. Washington should identify war aims that in the last resort would contemplate the destruction of Soviet political authority and the emergence of a postwar world order compatible with Western values.
…
Strategists cannot offer painless conflicts or guarantee that their preferred posture and doctrine promise a greatly superior deterrence posture to current American schemes. But, they can claim that an intelligent U.S. offensive strategy, wedded to homeland defenses, should reduce U.S. casualties to approximately 20 million, which should render U.S. strategic threats more credible.”
http://home.earthlink.net/~platter/articles/80-summer-payne.html
Why can’t Russia counter incoming with a patterened carpet bombing of their trajectories with tactical nukes? Don’t need much accuracy for that and you could launch those babies from anywhere.
And just use the same small nuke to obliterate every American sattelite. Nail ’em all. Then, having them ready on stand-by, quick launch your own replacements.
I know that Russia is working on an “electronic switch” that can haper/destroy the avionic of warplanes & cruise missiles, but I don’t if such a switch can be effective against balistic missiles. My guess is that they rely less on guidance in the terminal phase
And they travel at extreme high speed, measured in miles per second. Best to take em out before they are on their final ballistic trajectory.
Thanks very much for a superb analysis Saker. It has certainly clarified a few things and brought some perspective to the discussions on Scott Humor’s article on the super-fuze:
Dangerous risks of W76-1/Mk4A with new AFS
as well as the discussions on the article (Scott again) on the bill empowering US inspections of ports in connection with North Korea:
The US Bill H.R. 1644 to kill Russian food export and Chinese trade
You’re absolutely correct that the biggest danger comes from the loonies running the ‘nuclear rogue state’, those intent on goading Russia into a nuclear confrontation.
But I have to disagree on the lack of impact of technological improvements such as the super-fuze and ABM systems. I think there is great impact on the lawless cabal infused with hubristic groupthink.
To a cool analytical mind the super-fuzes do not make much difference to the nuclear equation — which is correct — but that is not the target audience of the report. Despite its rather lurid title, the FAS report was actually meant as a warning, mainly to thinking Americans I would suggest, of the dangers such improvements pose to the stability of the main pillar of the nuclear deterrence doctrine, ie MAD. The organisation has been bringing to the public’s notice the dangers of both intentional and, perhaps more importantly, accidental launch of nuclear weapons by nuclear states for decades. I have no reason to suspect their integrity. Let’s not forget one of the co-authors is Theodore Postol who effectively debunked the ‘chemical attack’ blamed on the Syrian AF by the terrorist White Helmets not so long ago.
At its core, MAD as a doctrine depends on the belief held by all sides that nuclear war is a no-win situation for everybody. That belief is losing its grip on the West when we have not only politicians but even generals (people who we think should know better) mouthing its lack of usefulness in the present day. Technological advances to nuclear weapons, such as fuzing technology, and missile defence play a very important part in the calculus. Rightly or wrongly, irrespective of whether they work or not, the crux of the problem is that these technologies give a false sense of security to the already unhinged war mongers in the Empire, people who want to believe that they can win a nuclear war; who believe that a nuclear war is good for them. So therein lay the significance of the recent advances which undermine ‘deterrence stability’.
These developments will add to the ‘impending danger’ expressed by President Putin when he addressed a troop (as in baboons) of US journalists on nuclear confrontation:
“You people in turn do not feel a sense of the impending danger – this is what worries me. How do you not understand that the world is being pulled in an irreversible direction? While they pretend that nothing is going on. I don’t know how to get through to you anymore.”
In a “normal” world the military would constrain the crazy civilians, since the military men theoretically are aware of the realities and probabilities. However, the appearance we observe is that “our” military leadership is equally unbalanced with the neo-cons. If that is so, the danger is in fact enormous. Who will refuse a mad order??
Wouldn’t satellites be the first target?
They are indispensable for accurate guidance of the missiles.
Excellent analyse.
I hold my cards on Solzhenitsyn. We, the cowards are the real danger.
We must not forget that the Satanic Cabal could never get away with their plans or have their key positions, if the majority did not supported, paid and hailed them.
Every American or European soldier and officer has family and friends who sold them out.
To be free to live a soft-ice eating crybaby life in Nike shoes and coloured sun glasses without personal responsibility for other than selfish lifestyle problems.
Putin´s claim is not limited to US journalists. Its simply a common attitude among Western people also seen in comments to this article.
They couldnt care less of what could and will happen, even when they are faced with all the lies. Somebody else must step in.
The Cabal and their puppets are simply voted in as people´s scapegoats to escape their own co-responsibility.
“I never realised how cool wars could be until Obama started them!”
Super-fuse is a bluff. During cold war they wouldn’t make so much noise, so why now? They paused development of nukes and sudenly there’s a super. They simply trying to cover up a failure that they are lagging behind Russia in nuclear armament.
What about this little toy?Russia calls the system “Ocean Multipurpose System ‘Status-6,” and it is allegedly capable of traveling underwater to distances of to 6,200 miles.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a24216/pentagon-confirm-russia-submarine-nuke/
America is the most genocidal of nations. I cannot think of a nation in all of human history more genocidal than we. “White” Americans (to reify a racist concept) have been killing other peoples since the Pilgrims first massacred the very Native Americans who saved them from starvation. And we’ve been killing Non-“Whites” and Off-“Whites” in the millions ever since. To the point that we are now Death–the Destroyer of Worlds.” And unlike the Saker, I have no doubt we shall destroy this one. As individuals we have become so narcissistic that we have lost all sense of sin. As a nation we are so possessed and perverted by our “exceptional” Satanic pride that we believe ourselves collectively to be “as gods”–acting with ever increasing depravity and insanity “beyond good and evil” in our own demonically deluded minds. Thus (as Shakespeare prophesizes in Troilus and Cressida, Act 1, Scene 3, lines 122-7) we have become “a universal wolf” that–as both predator and prey–“at last eats up himself.”
I would like to expand on my earlier remarks and say that Western psychologists, of whom I am one (having been in licensed practice in NYC since 1977), cannot conceive of someone wholly given over to evil in “scientific”/”psychological” terms. To call the person “antisocial,” “psychopathic,” or “narcissistic” just doesn’t cut it. Actually these terms are in the nature of what our psychoanalytic brethren would call “interpretations upwards” in that they lead us to look away from the true, inhuman–indeed demonic–face of Evil (literally) Incarnate to what Hannah Arendt wrongly (but for the West, attractively) humanizes as the “banality of evil.” (Adolf Eichmann as obsessive-compulsive yes-man accountant.)
Russian psychologists–being Russian Orthodox Christians (to be a bit theologically redundant) first–are much more clear-eyed when it comes to recognizing Evil Incarnate as exactly that: namely, someone wholly possessed by Inhuman Evil. Whether one conceives of Inhuman Evil as a Supernatural Force or a Supernatural Being, the religious treatment is the same. According to one recent study I do not have at hand, it was found that when most Russian psychologists encounter Evil Incarnate in a patient, they send that person to a Russian Orthodox priest for exorcism–having diagnosed the patient as being demon possessed. And these exorcisms (which can be seen on YouTube) are exactly what one would expect if Satan and his minions were/are real beings. And the “cures” also seem real enough–where the demon is cast out. Satan himself may sometimes have the power (as in The Exorcist) to stay.
Such seems to be the case with Hillary Clinton. Watch Clinton having the Satanic equivalent of orgasm on camera (still available on YouTube) on hearing the news from an off-camera aide (Huma Abedin?) of the anal mutilation-murder of Gaddafi with a bayonet by “her” recruited, trained, and armed al-Qaeda terrorists (whom she visited in Libya just a week before his horrific death). And perhaps to repay her Satanic gifts (paid for by us US taxpayers) they made an amateur “snuff film” of Gaddafi’s mutilation-murder with their US smart-phones which then went viral, and which is also available online in a sanitized form on YouTube. But it still is death-porn.
According to Sy Hersh in Military to Military, Putin himself watched this “snuff film” no less than 3 times. But not for anal-sadistic-thanatophilic reasons, as in Clinton’s “sick” case. But in Putin’s case, by way of Christian atonement out of the great guilt he felt for having been conned by the Americans into voting at the UN Security Council to authorize NATO to use military force against Gaddafi on the trumped up charge that he was about to commit genocide against a “rebel” city–when regime change was what Clinton was really after.
But watch the 60 Minutes film of Clinton’s inhuman reaction to Gaddafi’s bayonet-rape and murder and see if you think she looks possessed. One famous RO exorcist-priest (also interviewed on YouTube) saw the clip and concluded she was definitely possessed by Satan himself. But don’t watch the short version: which starts with her clapping her hands while she imagines herself The Second Coming of Julius Caesar as she laughs with a devilish laugh: “We came! [Last week.] We saw! [Our al-Qaeda proxies.] HE DIED!!!” No. By then she’s already she’s just “banally evil” again. (Which is why the mainstream media prefer it.) No. Watch the long version and go frame by frame as the Russian exorcist did. You will see her go backwards in her chair; turn glassy-eyed; and then flutter the bottom of her jacket, as if cooling herself from the Hellfire within her. Draw your own conclusions.
I recently saw a photo of Harry Truman in front of a mike–grinning ear to ear–just before he went on air to announce the incineration of Hiroshima. With nearly 100,000 vaporized! And he’s grinning ear to ear! Just like Clinton.
I wish the Saker would speak to these moments that are beyond my own ability and that of Western scientific psychology to grasp, I believe. But with his profound knowledge of Christian theology, on the one hand, and his own encounters with Evil Incarnate, on the other, I believe that God will grant him the wisdom to illuminate these moments of Satanic possession and what they mean for us all in ways I cannot.
Dr. Bill
.
Dr. Bill,
First, there is no doubt in my mind whatsoever that the people who run the Empire today are diabolically possessed, whether they themselves realize that or not. Furthermore, I also fully understand that demonic assault is absolutely real. I don’t like to speak about this, but I have seen it with my own eyes. Frankly, my approach has been to try to re-familiarize my readers with the world of spirituality and original Christianity, and that has already been a bumpy road. If I now begin to tell those who only exposure to Christianity is the Papacy or the various tele-evangelical cults about the reality of Satan and demonic assault they are going to freak out. TMI exists: Too Much Information. This is why I don’t dwell on these topics, even if I do mention them regularly.
I am sure that you fully understand that demons never reveal themselves to those who do not believe in their existence in the first place. They only do that to those who have already come to the conclusion that demons are real (indeed, why hide from them at this point). Since the vast majority of my readers do not believe in the reality of demons, they will never be able to even imagine the real life experience of those who have come face to face with that kind of evil. There are topics which should not be raised before an unprepared audience, I think and I hope that you agree.
This being said, Hillary is a unique case. Even a novice can see on her face the kind of demonic ecstasy which is so characteristic of possessed people. She literally radiates evil I think. The fact that so Americans held their nose and voted for Trump just to save their country from his monster is a sign that no all is lost yet.
But she is just the tip of the iceberg: the entire worldview of rabbinical Judaism, Zionism, Trotskism and Neoconservatism is basically satanic: it is a worldview which wants to punish the “betraying Creator” by killing His creatures. At the very core of their entire worldview these guys are theomachs, богоборцы in Russian, followers of Satan. This is why agnostics will never defeat them (but don’t tell that to the well-meaning if confused agnostics).
Saint Paul directly referred to this when he wrote :For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
Our real opponents are not people, of course, not races, or parties, or countries, or religions, or anything else human, our only real opponent is Satan himself, the Prince of this world, and his followers amongst the theomachs who are trying to wrestle our entire planet and all of humanity away from God Himself.
I have no problem writing all this, it’s really no big secret, but I don’t find it helpful to dwell on this for this blog, at least not at this point in time: let people come to their own conclusions, all we can do is show them the way and maybe offer them a few shortcuts.
Kind regards,
The Saker
A lot of truth here, Saker, including about the many who are not ready to hear or handle more truth about the things that Saint Paul talked about.
I’m a Nigerian pentecostal but this is exactly what we believe here too, word for word. The only difference is in the eschatological details.
This exchange between Dr. Bill and The Saker is so deeply illuminating on so many levels! I wish there could be more published on this site in connection to the points made here: the disappearance of courage in American society and its impact on our morality; the real nature of Evil at both a societal as well as an individual level; the Satanic cult nature of American leadership (the neocons). I am particularly struck by Dr. Bill’s observations about Hillary’s video clip. I was astounded after watching it as to how accurate the description is! As important as it is to understand the political landscape, I think it is equally important to be able to anchor it in the moral, psychological, and spiritual deterioration of American society. Would be great to have more exchanges or articles of this level.
You are a good shepherd, Saker. And you are my shepherd too—especially around matters of war and peace—let alone the careful tending of your ever-growing flock, of which I hope you’ll let me count myself one. For I know—as all of your followers do—that by the Grace of God, your own, calm, “lowly wise” words (as the Archangel Raphael suggests all humans be in Paradise Lost) flow from a life-enriching river of understanding, both expansive and profound—quiet because it’s so deep. Like Twain’s and Eliot’s “Mighty Mo”—which through them God’s River once rolled. And clearly God’s plan for you is to be a Voice of That Baptismal River Jordon of the Negro Spirituals now briefly too.
So when you tell me as my shepherd that it would be “too disruptive” to speak of the Reality of Satan. It becomes self-evident to that it would be. But then is there a way of NOT talking about Satan while still talking about Evil and the Satanic? As manifested in the notion, for example, that the US is so “exceptional” as a nation as to incapable to sin! And that as long as Americans are acting in behalf of the nation—be it as CIA black ops planners or nuclear bombers—they too, by extension, are incapable of sin.
And where does that leave me? What is God’s Plan for me? Why am I here for this one brief time in all eternity?
“To suffer the extremes of Evil even in your own flesh, Bill,” I believe has been God’s Message to me throughout my life: “That you may come to share the pain of others so completely that they no longer feel alone.” For if Evil always involves our being isolated from God’s Love through some cruel inhuman act, then the only way back to God’s Love may be for the victim to feel that another human being actually feels their pain as only another human can whose heart is joined with theirs.
I know this (neo-Platonic) idea of leading people back to God’s love through the re-experiencing of human love in the form of feeling-with another’s pain may seem impossible outside of the context of a pre-existing love relationship of a fairly deep kind (such as that with a parent or child). But actually that’s not true. Quite the contrary, by the Grace of God or blind evolution, take your pick–humans (and, in fact, most mammals) are so wired that the more injured we are—the closer to death we are—the more willing we are to let others (such as a nurse, priest, or doctor) assume the role of loving spouse or parent. I know it’s happened a thousand times over with me as a “doctor” (in loco parentis). Though many Western therapists (especially of the Freudian psychotherapy-as-surgery school) may trash me for my crying with my physically or emotionally injured patients, that spontaneous act (borne of my own similar suffering) is infinitely more healing of the damage done by Evil to their humanity and relationship with God than any emotionless interpretation I could make.
As for talking about Evil on the geopolitical level WITHOUT talking about Satan as a real being (which sounds so “Medieval”), we must—with your wise guidance and counsel, I hope, Saker–find a way to do so quickly, as these demonically deluded neocons—who can only rival God by destroying His Creation as you say—are currently putting a huge amount of pressure on their wholly owned think-tanks and universities to come up with convincing evidence, however “fake,” that they can “win” a full-scale nuclear war without a “nuclear winter” setting in. As Herman Melville prophesized over 150 years ago in Moby Dick, Trump or his successor (Hillary in 2020?) may be the ultimate neocon, Captain Ahab–pursuing their Hell-bent need for hegemony over God and nature both (see the chapter, “The Whiteness of the Whale”) to the destruction of the entire human specie
Thank you for honoring my comment with one of your own, Saker. I was very touched that you would take the time
Dr. Bill
Dr Bill.
The one thing I am most definitely not, is any kind of shepherd. A fellow traveler in the quest for truth, yes, if you want me in that capacity. But I sure ain’t no shepherd, if only because I can barely shepherd myself because I have to fully rely on my much wiser wife to guide me through life. I thank you for your kind words, but I ask that you think of me only as a fellow traveler in the same quest or, maybe, a “fellow student” :-)
Kind regards,
The Saker
Detailing the theology of will surely distract the saker. Several authorities exist on this and any diligent observer will find these clear as daylight manifestations.
Saker, kindly concentrate on your niche in this battle against darkness. Although I think this blog has actually exceeded your initial desire to stop the empire war on Russia. It’s really a war against mankind with Russia as the last state based player before the hard grinding global man by many hunt (final inquisition) “if they succeed”.
Many are even fooled into accepting a staged armageddon to the benefit on the empire. Hence the exceptionalists announcement of full spectrum dominance.
So how about this then? An older, but still youthful, brown-bearded Tom Sawyer (that’s you) and an older, bare-footed, white-bearded Huck Finn (that’s me; born 1942, a few months after Viktor Putin, age 1, died of starvation, if you believe in reincarnation, I’m not sure if I do) floating down the River of Temporal Time together, with our loving. loyal, hard-working, care-giving wives and life-partners–along with all our friends and families and the whole Saker community–flowing on–towards the Land of Eternal Life–hoping to see Christ finally, there at the end, if He will forgive our sins–not as through a glass darkly as now we do, but rather Glorified Face to Glorious Face! That Ah! So Radiant, Resplendent Face!
In the meantime, I do want to write about the remorseless march of our neocon rulers towards a First Strike against Russia, followed by nuclear winter–telling themselves that Putin will back down, kneel down, and accept our Satanic hegemony, rather than have Russia subjected to a Second Strike that will likely end all humanity. But what of that? As Nixon’s favorite coach, Vince Lombardi once said: “Winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing! And the neocons are “down” with that! At least they think they can convince him of that. Secretly they think he’s such a “wuss.” (Trust me on this one..) The way he keeps calling them “our American partners.” Hell-bound Hillary and Obama both mock him–mistaking Putin’s respect for protocol for weakness. As in his bowing to an opponent at the start of a Judo match. They do not understand the nature of true strength. Quiet Russian strength. They are Ahab not comprehending “the Whiteness of the Whale” in the form of a 10-year long, world-wide, white Russian Winter.
One series of articles I want to write has the overall title: “Genocide Nation.” In which I trace our craven, cannibalistic lust for genocide (for both literal and symbolic cannibalism are rooted in the cowardice of which Solzhenitsyn speaks in that it involves a ravenous craving–or “lust”–to “eat” and so become-one-with the denied, denigrated, yet unconsciously-recognized, superior strength of the racially inferiorized “other”) from the Pilgrim’s massacre of the very Native Americans who saved them from starvation thru the extermination of nearly all Native Americans on “Indian reservations” (which Hitler and his American architects used in their design of concentration camps, such as Auschwitz) during the 19th century, coupled with our genocidal policies toward Africans and African Americans throughout our history, thru the genocide of the Filipinos under Teddy Roosevelt in the American-Philippine War of 899-1902, thru our genocidal policies towards off-white and non-white populations (including Slavic peoples) during WWI and the Bolshevik Revolution (here I could use some help), thru the funding of Hitler’s rise to power and the building of his Wehrmacht by such leading bankers, oilmen, and Industrialists as J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, Henry Ford, Joe Kennedy (the father of JFK), and Prescott Bush (the father of George Bush, Sr., and the grandfather of George Bush, Jr.), thru the genocidal wars against Japan and North Korea (including the fire-bombing of every NK city, town, and village and the torpedo-bombing of every NK dam–resulting in the extermination of 20% of the NK population, according to official US estimates) under Truman, thru our genocidal war against the Vietnamese under Johnson and Nixon, thru the rise of Cheney, Rumsfeld, and the neocons (cogently described in the 4-part BBC documentary, “The Power of Nightmares) under Gerald Ford, thru the rise of Zbigniew Brezinski, the creation of the Mujahadeen, and the genocide of the Afghan people under Carter and Reagan, thru the rise of Robert F. Ford (of “Salvadoran/ Iraqi/ Libyan/Syrian “death squads” fame) and the genocide of South American peoples under Reagan, as well as our selling of poison gas to Saddam for genocidal attacks against the Iranian and Kurdish peoples under Reagan, thru the devilish cunning of George H.W. Bush in tricking Saddam into invading Kurdish so as to give the US an excuse to attack Iraq in the First Gulf War…all the way thru Rwadan, Serbian, and Chechnyan genocides, and continued Iraqi genocide under “Co-President” Hillary Clinton while her satyrmaniac husband pursued his own lusts in exchange… thru the controlled demolition of 3 WTC buildings and the resulting War on Terror, resulting in the further destruction of Afghanistan and Iraq under Bush, the further destruction of Afghanistan and Iraq, the destruction of Libya, and the partial destruction of Syria and now Yemen under Hillary Clinton and Obama (with the ongoing assistance of Robert F. Ford)… with Trump secretly prepared to follow in their bloody footsteps if the massacre at al-Ghayil Yemen and the 2-hour denial of medical treatment to “Nora” Nawar al-Awlaki till she finally bled to death (while 6 wounded SEALs were quickly medevaced out to the many waiting trauma surgeons in the ORs of the USS Makin Island) from what my own investigations show.
No nation in the history of the world has been as depraved–as cannibalistic–as Satanic–as we. As Herman Melville saw so clearly, we are Captain Ahab to a “T.” (If you haven’t read it, there is nothing like it in terms of revealing our national quest for self-destruction and damnation.)
But where can I get my articles published where serious readers will see them? I know you invite known writers to post from time to time. But will you ever consider an unsolicited article? I will certainly understand if you don’t. I’m a nobody, after all.
Dr. Bill
Dr.Bill,
I was impressed by your deep evaluation of Evil on the geopolitical level. As a Christian and a Russian citizen I have a great worry about Russian-American political relationships. When you mentioned the role of Satan it became clear to me that you are right. I was also feeling like you but could not express my thjoghts and emotions. Do you think that there is a way today to stop the demons to ruin the lives of people of two great nations?
Ordinary Americans do not want a global empire. They want to live in peace with other nations; grow up in loving families and have loving families of their own, free of want and fear. They also want to ive in a society where they are free to think and believe and worship and join with others as they please. In short, they want Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms, as guaranteed by the United Nations.
Unfortunately, the richest 1% of Americans–who collectively own 50% of the world’s wealth–are totally given over to avarice and the lust for power. They want to rule rule over all and consume it all. Yes, even the goose that lays their golden eggs. And they hate to the point of murderous madness and beyond whatever limits them–whatever opposes them–whatever reminds them that they are merely momentary humans. As America’s Dostoyevsky, Herman Melville, shows us in his metaphysical masterpiece, written in 1859 on the eve of the Civil War, Moby Dick, about a Wilsonian-Trotskyite,Neocon whaling captain, Captain Ahab, who appeals to the greed and pride of his crew into sharing his Satanic quest to destroy the very symbol of their common mortality and finiteness–God’s Leviathan, Moby Dick–the Great White Whale–Who destroys them all in the end.
In the case of the US, the 3 main countries which oppose the global hegemony of the US are China, Russia, and Iran. And the leader of this troika of nations is clearly Vladimir Putin, who, in my opinion (and I believe, The Saker’s also) is the perfect human foil to these Satanic elites (as his namesake, Vladimir I, was in his day) in that he has all the best qualities that could be instilled in him by both his own mother and his “second mother,” Vera Gurevich–together with his own father and his “second father” and Judo sensei, Anatoly Rakhlin–together with his KGB education (as informed and inspired by the film, “The Sword and The Shield,” which Putin saw as a teen and determined his career)–together with his fiery conversion to his mother’s Christianity (like St. Augustine’s) at the age of 42 when a fire at his newly built dacha consumed all of his worldly possessions and earthly “vanities” such that nothing, not even one ruble, was left–save for the simple pendant Cross his mother had given him back in 1991 when she told of his secret baptism as an infant in the Cathedral of the Transfiguration on St. Michael the Archangel’s Feast Day, and asked him to have the Cross blessed by the Patriarch of Jerusalem when he visited the Holy Sepulcher that year with his family .
Thus St. Michael is Putin’s guardian angel and St. Vladimir is his patron saint. Talk about being loaded for Satanic bear, as we say out West. If only we did.
Needless to say, The Saker is far better informed than I when it comes to addressing the iconography of Putin’s Baptism and subsequent Conversion, as well as his KGB training, which Western propaganda has made so sinister, but which Putin himself saw as ennobling (a la “The Sword and The Shield” which I am now studying). And these aspects of Putin’s education and character formation need to be examined and analyzed (again, I hope, by The Saker as our primer inter pares) for what they tell us about this man who, more than anyone, stands between us and nuclear annihilation.
What I see as a Christian psychologist as 3 of Putin’s most important qualities in dealing with the West are his modesty, his humility, and his selfless love of others–beginning with the Russian people and extending outwards to all of life, including endangered species. Together these 3 qualities–which are as real in him as they are Russian and Christian, and basic to the moral philosophy of the “gentle path” of Judo too–indeed serve to immunize him against the West’s various attempts to bribe, flatter, humiliate, intimidate, or anger him towards one impulsive course of action or another. He won’t “bite.” Not in Syria. And not in the Ukraine. If he fails to see something coming–like the coup in Kiev, which was timed to coincide with the end of the Sochi Olympics when he would be most distracted–he simply accepts the fact and moves on. He isn’t thrown off balance by his opponent’s surprise move as the narcissistic West believes he would be because he accepts his own imperfection–his own humanity–in a way that Western elites do not. They are too given over to pride and vanity. They are too given over to Satan in a word. Putin is the exact opposite. He sees and accepts his own limitations and those of the Russian people, the Russian military and all humankind. Indeed all of life. Indeed the whole cosmos. Only God is limitless. And if we are to survive as a species, those are very good things to know,
Dr. Bill
Saker, I found hearing the truth about the battle with evil here both helpful and clarifying.
That is indeed a very insightful analysis of American attitudes and Putin’s psychology. But what if America does something that really hurts the Russian people and pride (I mean the good kind of pride)? Like down a Russian plane, or shut down Russian hospitals by attacking computer systems, leading to many deaths of new born Russians. Will Putin the Tiger be forced to take action that could escalate matters? Does he have a strategy for those eventualities? Perhaps The Saker or Dr. Bill can clarify that. Because it seems we could be on that brink even now.
I don’t have a good sense yet of how things work on The Saker;s web page. But my hunch is that when an article gets minimized and put off to the side as The Super-Fuse Scare just has, it means that The Saker’s attention has now turned to other things; and we won’t be hearing from him anymore here. My own guess about the question you raise is that Putin will do everything he can to avoid hitting American forces directly. But he has hardliners in Russia to worry about too. So if Trump does strike something clearly Russian directly in a bid to save his Presidency, I am sure Putin will respond with lightning speed in an unexpected direction. Putin’s Judo coach and sensei, Anatoly Rakhlin, describes that as Putin’s fighting style in winning the Leningrad Judo Championship in 1975. And that has carried over to how he fights military campaigns. Bye for now.
Dr. Bill
Thanks Saker!!!
Your conclusion… I’ve quoted it on Facebook…
Either humankind wake up and has a vision and dare see beyond its “human-ous”, dare see and envision himself/herself has co-creator with divine power or we lose our co-creative POWER by default.
As far as I’m concerned, I’m part of the heroes, courageous, “seagulls” who will dare envision a world where human beings have “MUTATED”, have activated their pineal gland and will be able to see beyond the veil, beyond death-and-birth on this planet, and start living from a “spirit” level.
Our Brothers and Sisters of neighboring planetary systems are waiting for us to “graduate” at that level where telepathy is a common way of communication.
I might sound totally off the wall… but this is my vision and I stand courageously by it… exactly like “Jonathan Livingston Seagull” (Jonathan Livingston Seagull book by Richard Bach)
dared to stand infront of the clan and accept to be banned only to discover the REAL reality behind this material world.
With LOVE and JOY,
gabriel… the seagull
http://www.gabrielseagull.com
“What we are facing today is a nuclear rogue state run by demented individuals who, steeped in a culture of racial superiority, total impunity and imperial hubris, are constantly trying to bring us closer to a nuclear war. These people are not constrained by anything, not morals, not international law, not even common sense or basic logic.”
G.K. Chesterton had more nuanced version of this. As he so piercingly noted: “The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. He is the man who has lost everything except his reason.”
Such a man was Thomas S. Power. As CIC, Strategic Air Command, when the RAND thinktank proposed a counterforce strategy at the opening of a nuclear war, as opposed to a countervalue strategy, Power countered with:
“Why are you so concerned with saving their lives? The whole idea is to kill the bastards. At the end of the war if there are two Americans and one Russian left alive, we win!”
Power was prototypical of the madman Chesterton was talking about. How many Powers sit in the Pentagon’s Decision Tree? How many sit in the DoD’s? They seem to be legion in Washington’s ubiquitous Neocon think tanks. How much influence do they really have in the Pentagon and DoD decision making process?
The short answer is we don’t know. Unfortunately, that also seems to be the long answer.
Superb piece, comrade!
As is always the case, I find the military analysis provided the most valuable anywhere found on the internet or anywhere else.
many thanks indeed for the effort and sharing.
Cheers,
JN
“President Trump is preparing to reverse the Obama-era policy banning the sale of advanced guided missiles to Saudi Arabia. However, Russian observers say if the deal goes through, it will be a crushing blow to Grom-2, a Ukrainian program to create an analogue to Russia’s Iskander short range ballistic missile system.
On Thursday, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir confirmed that the Trump administration had taken steps to modify the Congressional notification program in order to advance the sale of over $1 billion-worth of Raytheon Paveway precision-guided missiles and Penetrator warheads to Riyadh.
The deal is expected to be just a part of weapons contracts worth tens of billions of dollars currently being negotiated by US defense companies and Saudi Arabia ahead of Trump’s visit to the country later this month. Al-Jubeir said that the president’s visit would be “historic,” and welcomed his administration’s tough rhetoric against Iran….”
etc
https://sputniknews.com/military/201705061053344468-saudi-ukrainian-missile-deal/
———————————————————
“An ancient temple dedicated to god Mithras was unearthed by archaeologists in the vicinity of the Turkish city of Diyarbakir.
The underground 4th century temple was discovered by archaeologists working at Zerzevan Castle located in Diyarbakir province, and apparently served as a gathering place for Roman nobles who participated in the cult of Mithras.
“The followers of this religion are from a closed community because their religious ceremonies are completely secret and no information was leaked to outsiders. Mithras represents both the sun god and also ‘consensus.’ Their temples are usually built underground. There are three niches on the eastern part of the temple. A very thoroughly constructed one is in the water basin. There is also a pool. We believe water was very widely used in Mithras ceremonies and about 40 people attended ceremonies held here,” Aytac Coskun, assistant professor at the Department of Archaeology at Dicle University and head of the excavation, told the Turkish newspaper Daily Sabah.
According to Coskun, the temple measures 35 square meters; its ceiling is about 2.5 meters high.
It should be noted that archaeologists working at the site had earlier unearthed an underground church and an underground shelter capable of housing up to 400 people, along with a series of subterranean passages.”
sputniknews.com/art_living/201705031053243778
maybe these people had a very advanced sense of foreboding?
The sought cover from the dangers they were exposed above ground. Most likely asteroids that struck around 12,500 yrs ago/10,500 BC. Biggest pieces probably hit the ice cap on the north american continent, raising sea levels by 100 ft at least. It was a close call, very recently on a planetary time-span.
Gobekli Tepe is an archaeological site that dates back to that date, only about 15% excavated so far. Oldest admitted site found to date. Close to the city Gaziantep in eastern Turkey.
One thing that has amazed me as an American, a son and grandson of State Department people who opted out of family tradition and went into business, is the total dependence of rank & file Americans on a public dole, that requires opposition to basic American principles such as free speech and general supremacy of patriotism over officialdom. Alexander Solzhenitsyn got it right, apparently, a total hollowing-out of American character for the sake of a paycheck and a pension. The latest initiatives are the testing of American surrender by episodes like martial law in Boston after the “bombing,” dragging a passenger off a United Airlines flight and more to come, I am sure. And when total surrender is assured? Then what? I don”t think they know. It is just the next logical step in subduing the people with bread, circuses and yes, the mother of all opiates, a paycheck and a pension.
“The continued success and prosperity of the US is entirely (not 80%) dependent on the continued use of the worthless dollar as world reserve currency. Most of her internal and external bills are paid, and the wealth of its citizens and corporations rely on money pouring into the country from foreign nations who must swap their profits and currencies for dollars – issued by the US out of thin air – to continue to have access to the dollar denominated world markets, and to pass 64% of transactions throught the US banking system (where it is skimmed). Try to withdraw and you die (Iraq, Libya, Total fuel etc).”
@proper gander
I completely agree with your description of the ‘petrodollar’. Yet, the strategy of Russia, as formulated first by Putin-advisor Glaziev, is to ditch this. The whole idea of OBOR (one belt one road), the railway system connecting some 100 nations on the Eurasian continent, is to set up trading. The ‘belt’ is way inland and unreachable for Tomahawks. And the intention is to do the trade in gold-backed yuans.
And therefore the neocons are getting nervous.
How about an additional in depth article comparing / discussing American plowshares and Russian plowshares?
Talk of war.
Talk of peace.
In addition to my last post, I would like to invite everyone to read the book ‘A century of war’ by F. William Engdahl. When you start a search engine on it, you will find a link where it can be read and download as a pdf.
(For legal reasons I am not posting that link here.)
It describes many well-informed details about the actions from the USA to control the oil trade. It’s quite a read, but there will be surprises.
Hi Saker,
I still do not understand why any government might want to “ride-out” first strike. The consequences of all these nukes exploding would be devastating for the biosphere – people and environment, and not just for the attacked country. Wouldn’t you want to minimise that at any cost? Wouldn’t you want to take out as many incoming missiles as possible? Because if you don’t, there might be no point in any counter-attack, since the sustained damage might be incompatible with life, so regardless of how successful your counter-attack might be, nobody in the country may be left to care.
Am I making sense?
Please could you explain why anybody would ever consider the ride-out option?
Thanks,
Russian Heart
Well, Russia has limited ABM capabilities around Moscow, but that’s about it. So riding out or not riding out is not about saving lives, it is about whether you believe that losing 80 or even 90 percent of your retaliatory capacity is too much. If we assume that Russia has 7000 warheard, then losing 95% means losing 6650 and having only 350 left. If that enough to wipe out the USA? Hell yeah it is! And losing 95% is never going to happen in reality, that is a preposterous figure I used to make my point. You can ride out the attack simply to give yourself more time to think, and I think that this is very desirable situation. It’s the “use them or lose them” case which is most dangerous. In the real world you want to double, triple and quadruple check your facts before launching nukes and you want to think long and hard about what exactly you are trying to achieve. Riding out the attack removes the time pressure and that is a very good thing in my opinion.
HTH, kind regards,
The Saker
Thank you for the explanation. It makes more sense now.
The USA has completely lost the plot about how to be a good human. Its become diabolical.
That was a very precise abstract thought work out Saker! It was also interwoven with the physical universe. It concludes -where every idea or particle started-the Spititual domain. BRAVO Saker. One of your very best! There is Hope!
Paul Craig Roberts – Are You Ready to Die?
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2017/05/11/are-you-ready-to-die/
“On April 26—16 days ago—Lt. Gen. Viktor Poznihir, Deputy Chief of the Main Operations Directorate of the Russian Armed Forces, stated at the Moscow International Security Conference that the Operations Command of the Russian General Staff has concluded that Washington is preparing a nuclear first strike on Russia.”
“Alone either Russia or China can destroy the US. If they act together, the destruction of the US would be redundant. What is the intelligence, if any, and morality, clearly none, of the US leadership that recklessly and irresponsibly invites Russia and China to preempt Washington’s attack on them with an attack on the US?”
Wow thanks. This is a very well written insightful article. The real threat in my opinion is the the widespread ignorant belief by many poorly educated Americans that USA is invincible and therefore that nuclear war can be won. That ignorant self confirmation bias also extends to President Trump who is remarkably ignorant himself.
It became very apparent when Trump ordered a cruise missile strike on Syria that he is incapable of grasping consequences, but more importantly foreseeing potential consequences. No doubt this relates to the bullying style of the man with a rich daddy, that he could bluster, threaten and bully others around him and constantly get away with it shielded from consequences. That is not how most people lead their lives making Donald Trump probably the most dangerously ignorant person to ever hold the Presidency of the United States.
For deterrence to work requires logical participants. Trump defies logic and does not care for the consequences.
Andrew Korybko has an interesting article on how America plans to defeat Eurasia through something called the Third Offset Strategy, which involves 3 key technologies:
1. Tomahawk Anti-Ship Missiles
2. Electromagnetic rail guns
3. Hybrid man-machine soldiers
How the Pentagon plans to defeat Eurasia and roll out Robotic Warfare (II)
http://orientalreview.org/2015/06/18/how-the-pentagon-plans-to-defeat-eurasia-and-roll-out-robotic-warfare-ii/
Also, one reason that American elites may be so hot for war is that they believe they can survive a nuclear armageddon in their Deep Underground Military Bases (DUMBs).
It would be good to hear military experts here comment on the reality of DUMBs, as this topic is often considered a fringe conspiracy theory.
The USA supposedly has a vast underground network of mini-cities and even a transportation network not only under the continental US but even under the ocean floor.
According to some people, DUMBs even include an underground US transcontinental rail system based on Maglev technology.
I probably won’t have the time to write a full analysis about this, but I assure you that this three step plan (1. Tomahawk Anti-Ship Missiles 2. Electromagnetic rail guns 3. Hybrid man-machine soldiers) is also hype.
My problem?
It takes 500 words to hype up a story. It takes 5000 to debunk it. And I don’t have the time. Just a pointer: technologies do not, repeat NOT, win wars. Also, the effect of technologies is incremental, over time, there ain’t no such thing as a magical weapon. It’s all hype. It’s all hype.
The Saker
Jumping in…
Someone mentioned railguns?
“Not only is this game-changing technology expected to be deployed amongst the naval units that are likely to lead the charge in “breaking into the theater”,”…
Not likely to happen for a decade or two. It is at an experimental stage and the cost is absolutely HUGE, so more so, given all of the technical niggles that the US is experiencing at the moment. Just look at the farce surrounding the Zumwalt class and F35, to give you a perspective.
Yes, we’re probably at the cusp of a new weaponary age, just the move from muskets to magazine rifles, or more like front loading cannons to naval guns that we see nowadays.
To put into context, take 1 step down from the railgun, just look at the problem of the USS Zumwalt’s high tech gun with LRLAP rounds that has been sidelined. Never mind, the next step onwards – operational railgun. http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/navy-ships/a23738/uss-zumwalt-ammo-too-expensive/
Viability and cost-effectiveness of weapons will be the test.
Not to say that Russia isn’t at the same stage of technology, they are, in robotics and rail guns. Here’s some info: https://sputniknews.com/russia/201701091049399104-russia-railgun-tests/
That what worries the US and her proxies.
The war of physicists is on…
Just when we begin to see the “fuse” issue as not as bad as it seems. Now we have an issue possibly much worse to consider. In an important two part report,Andrew Korbybko details the US plans for attacking Russia,China,and Iran. This is a program of pure evil. And he shows the military technology the US intends to use. I’d like to read a military analysis (hint Saker) on what to be made of this:
http://orientalreview.org/2015/06/17/how-the-pentagon-plans-to-defeat-eurasia-and-roll-out-robotic-warfare-i/
http://orientalreview.org/2015/06/18/how-the-pentagon-plans-to-defeat-eurasia-and-roll-out-robotic-warfare-ii/
And on another article about a possible new weapon Russia is developing:
http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a24216/pentagon-confirm-russia-submarine-nuke/
Your general argument that a nuclear exchange is unwinnable is sound, though it seems to me that the ‘superfuse’ has an advantage in killing a rail- or road-mounted mobile target that cannot be tracked: It is a soft target, and with optimal burst height, you can just wipe out its whole approximate location. With the US emphasis on submarine-launched missiles, the ‘superfise’ would then be an asymmetric response by the US, just like the Kalibr and mach 2.5 cruise missiles are an asymmetric response by the RF.
Regards, Shyaku.
Well, I guess we should wait to see if the americans are prepared to die horribly then.
More bad science fiction story is possible. Suppose a small well-engineered gadget went off in a remote place in north america,,, just suppose… Assume that it was “delivered” to the site by donkey – alas now a vaporized donkey.
Maybe nobody was nearby, and maybe it was a fairly “clean burn” and pretty small – say 5 kt.
That’s it.
Now play with the possible results…
Nobody knows who, or why, or whence… Great Doubts would follow…and be forgotten by the masses, but not by the rulers….
Like I said, bad sci-fi… right?
The super fuse is especially useful to take out underground bunkers even at a 1000 feet deep, some say even up to 3000ft deep. To detonate a shaped hydrogen nuclear charge meters above or below the ground so that the thermonuclear plasma lance can cut right into the ground with a few million degrees.
The most import thing needed to construct a super fuse is a chip capable of making decisions/giving commands a million times per second, I think even 1000x a second would be enough. Those warhead carrying reentry vehicles have speeds between 7 and 10 kilometer per second. 10km/s = 10.000 meter/sec divided by 1000, for a millisecond capable fuse, gives a accuracy of 10 meters. So then you should be able to detonate the warhead anywhere on it’s trajectory with steps of 10m.
And if I am correct we are in the billions of instructions per second so I would imagine that it is possible for most nuclear powers to construct these type of fuses.
We always talked about the two nuclear powers but I would like to get some knowledge about other nuclear power countries in Europe and their capabilities. At the end again it’s wonderful analysis from The Saker. Highly appreciated. Cheers and hugs ;)
Another great piece… Saker.
Some topics must be put on hold (satanic,evil,… battles amongst elite massons, etc…), especially if no resilient critical mass is ready to assimilate the challenge.
Hope, yes… There is a state of absolute peace from where the wise man can say: ” We shall see (hopefully)”. The projection of this ‘parashanti’ is our timeless protection without any unecessary fighting. Light invades darkness once we have opened shutters to it… not the otherway around. Then capacity to endure is our resilience rather than resistance (blindness).
One cannot imagine the play of hands by any Divine presence in time of near apocalypse. The whole set of extreems is already engaged within the Self, identity being projected in its shortcomings… tripping any house fuses.
But… anyone could easily imagine being placed in some absolute mental state: some unshaken spot of light from where everything emanates and yet… nothing really happens. Thus thriving in the paradox rather than trying to avoid it or tripping over it, in action vs ‘innaction’ compared to inertia (no action) or fearful reactions.
In other word taking the responsibilty of surrendering… Doership. The surrender of our ultimate inner Self to this almighty Divine hand, letting free Will of this creative work of the human race showing itself as united, integrated with open ‘arms’ of peace.
There is no doubt… illumination of the Self will win over any forces of darkness without any other principles being triggered in action, just by remaining open to engage more and more light within… in peace, truth and absolute love… Inherently cloning in non violence.
There wont be a nuclear war. Why? Because Mr. Putin has told Netanyahu that the first Russian missile launched is headed straight for Tel-Aviv.
In fact, Shoigu and Putin should launch one as a dress rehearsal at Tel-Aviv with an empty warhead. Just act the fool. Its the only way to get ahead of these war-mongering crypto Jews.
If only this would be true.
The only way for peace is to defeat the zionazis.
But what if atomic bombs are a hoax and doesnt work ? This guy thinks so: http://heiwaco.com/bomb.htm#17
Was Hiroshima a bluff, they just carpetbombed it with napalm, like Tokyo ? The few houses not made of wood and paper are standing structurally undamaged near ground zero.
an awesomely great article. an instant classic.
An excellent analysis.
Two questions:
(1) Neutron bomb has been dubbed as “the ultimate capitalist weapon”, since it causes minimal (or no) damage to physical objects, while it wipes out all life within its radius of action. Does it leave any residual radioactivity (and if it does, how much)?
(2) Is there any known “work in progress” on a nuclear bomb that leaves no residual radioactivity (whether it destroys the physical objects or not)?
It is clear that this must play a role in any “doomsday planning”: if there indeed were such a weapon as described in “(2)”, this obviously would significantly lower the “acceptable threshold” in a “mutual destruction scenario”.
wikipedia, for all its shortcomings, can answer both those questions, 2questions for saker.
1. It depends on what type of neutron bomb would be used and where, surface or air burst, it detonates. But generally the radiation is way less persistent. With air bursts the local contamination in the blast area would mostly spread out in the atmosphere, minimal local after effects.
2. Modern nukes produce WAY less long lasting radioactive pollution compared to the older models.
from wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_bomb
“However the most effective use of a neutron bomb with respect to area denial would be to encase it in a thick shell of material that could be neutron activated, and use a surface burst. In this manner the neutron bomb would be turned into a salted bomb; a case of zinc-64, produced as a byproduct of depleted zinc oxide enrichment, would for example probably be the most attractive for military use, as when activated, the zinc-65 so formed is a gamma emitter, with a half life of 244 days.[80]”
those the gods would destroy, they first drive mad.
Saker,
I doubted your numbers for Russian nuclear weapons based on:
http://www.scout.com/military/warrior/story/1757643-russian-nuclear-weapons-101
Here are two more studies that support you numbers:
http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/images/documents/Publications/modernization/assuring-destruction-forever-2017.pdf
FACT SHEETS & BRIEFS (https://WWW.ARMSCONTROL.ORG/TAXONOMY /TERM/2)
Last thing I heard was that US and Russia both have enough nukes to destroy the every human used surface of the earth 1.5x each. Previously they had more then double capacity.
Finally had time to read through this article. Very well done piece.
What the zionazis/nazis/right-wing freakshow are currently working at is a non nuclear first strike capability. The ability to take out an opponent’s nuclear deterrent without using nuclear means. This strategy is much more dangerous, for obvious reasons, especially among the thoroughly indoctrinated zio-west.
@Saker
Your’s is a thorough and carefully considered analysis.
As a long time student of Russia, I consider your assessment of the U.S. accurate; to a fault, in that we have crazies in positions of power who cannot possibly be controlled by normal governance.
It’s those nutsoes I worry; not TPTB in Moscow.
Putin is one of the most rational world leaders we have today; and I think he is largely responsible for the rare sanity in today’s international policies…
Three things:
1) “What we are facing today is a nuclear rogue state run by demented individuals who, steeped in a culture of racial superiority, total impunity and imperial hubris, are constantly trying to bring us closer to a nuclear war. These people are not constrained by anything, not morals, not international law, not even common sense or basic logic. In truth, we are dealing with a messianic cult every bit as insane as the one of Jim Jones or Adolf Hitler and like all self-worshiping crazies they profoundly believe in their invulnerability.” – Well said, in a nutshell.
2) I’m not a military expert yet I think from what I read that hitting the military bases would be much more useful and important at first than hitting enemy cities (which are at risk only for a retaliation); at the same time I’m not a nuclear expert and I’d like to know something the article doesn’t tell. What if a nuclear warhead hits and destroys (on whatever side) a nuclear site with nukes inside? A chain reaction of multiple nuclear explosions is started or not? Depending on this a huge amount of radiations and overall mess is to be considered too. Of course, unfortunately, there are both missiles to do both things (military bases, nuclear site plants AND cities) but I would be more worried for a direct hit on the second kind rather than a city. Big cities are usually quite spread on the territory and while hitting one of them would be lethal for those living there, probably hitting a nuclear site would kill much less people at first but much more in a second moment.
3) The next question is directly depending on the previous also for another reason. Would Italy be on the aiming target of anyone ? We DO (unfortunately) have the US bases in Ghedi and Aviano which are said to store about 70 nukes
Dino, good news and bad news:
On question 2, the chances of one nuke setting-off another nuke are nil. Today’s nukes are concentric shells of explosives around a sub-critical core.The timing is super-critical in setting off the entire shell at once to compress the core evenly; otherwise, you just get radioactive debris scattered-about (nasty, but very local). An outside shockwave coming-in from another nuke would detonate those explosives asymettrically. So, no big boom – just plutonium-contaminated ground. Also, the plutonium in the warheads might be vaporized (or possibly broken-down into lesser elements) by the heat of the ‘outside’ nuke detonation, if it were close enough. As this is a sub-critical amount, no additional nuclear boom would occur. Local contamination yes, widespread destruction no.
On question 3, it depends on how ‘deep’ the confrontation becomes. Nuke storage areas would certainly be gone, as well as any airfields harboring nuke-capable aircraft. (NATO) This includes seaports capable of same with ships. If it gets nasty, any aircraft, ship, or military-vehicle production facility will be gone. If it gets really nasty, they will go after strategic tunnels, passes, bridges, harbors, etc. Italian cities as ‘countervalue’ targets will probably be the last to go. Sorry…
Thanks very informative and clear. I don’t see many Italian cities in the crosshair of any nation, maybe left Neaples which is basically the mediterranean NATO HQ. I was more worried for the possible contamination of the two aforementioned sites, not forgetting the huge amount of nuclear sites just west of the French border which might potentially be even more dangerous for the life of the whole northern Italy.
Just to lift a general point here, how clinically crazy are the Neocon “basement crazies” really?
Let’s for a moment assume they are rational in terms of their own internal logic and beliefs. Let’s also assume that they don’t see themselves as the “bad guys” (vey few people really do).
What structure do they then build their actions on? Do they see themselves as superior intellects that unfortunately have to break some eggs to make an omelet (i.e. sacrifice a few million third-world useless eaters to save the financial extortion system that underpins western economy- and thus save the “wellbeing” of millions of people in the west)?
For instance, IF they would see themselves as unsung heroes, saving western freedom and prosperity (mainly for their own good, but still), I could buy that they are evil, inhuman psychopaths, but are they batshit crazy irrational?
In the end, I terms of their ultimate effect on the rest of us, maybe it doesn’t matter. But in terms of strategy when opposing them, I still think it matters whether we have some Baphomet-necklace-wearing super rich, demon-possessed evildoers or rather a bunch of careerist psychopaths caught in groupthink.
Any thoughts on the nuances here?
Saker, anything you want to add on the current contract political events in France and actions of Trump? Would be interesting to see what you are thinking.
If it was really that big an advantage, it would have been kept as a secret. The fact that it was made public means US government also does not consider it as a strategic advantage
Plus there’s the fact that people like Ivanka and Jared grew up after the end of the First Cold War. That, basically, was 28 years ago, so when they went to school they weren’t drilled in duck-and-cover (that was always a stupid exercise, and I’m sure the kids knew it, but at least in made them aware of the danger). We were fed an enormous amount of propaganda (still are), but the tales of the dangers of nuclear war and the fact that is was unwinnable were counter to the desires of the Oligarchy, so I tend to believe them. Truly, though, the insanity of the neocons is just mind-boggling. As The Saker says, it’s like a satanic cult. opaque to outsiders.
I think your article shows the exact opposite of the point you are making. If fact the BHCSF seriously stabilizes the balance of power: precisely because of the delusions of rabid military policy makers who are overconfident in their own brilliance … that first strike can succeed, that nuclear war is winnable. A CEP of 80 meters means 120′ lateral deviation from target. The fuse means optimized vertical detonation.
Wise people would do well to be frightened by the illusion of winnable nuclear warfare; and not be fooled by any assumption that the person who orders launch understands MAD, that MAD can be beaten by surprise deployment and the ballistic advantages of a BHCSF controlled detonation; or that nuclear winter is a peace-nicks fantasy.
The fact that the technology is in play indicates that inside the cult of nuclear policy makers and weapons engineering is a belief that being quicker and more accurate at HT kills is feasible. This should give the educated analyst a great deal of concern because grandiose claims reveal intention and threat (or at least posture scenarios) that make potential targets bite first.
I think your article shows the opposite of the point you are making. If fact the BHCSF seriously stabilizes the balance of power: precisely because of the delusions of rabid military policy makers who are overconfident in their own brilliance … that first strike can succeed, that nuclear war is winnable. A CEP of 80 meters means 120′ lateral deviation from target. The super fuse means optimized vertical detonation.
Wise people would do well to be frightened by the illusion of winnable nuclear warfare; and not be fooled by any assumption that the person who orders launch actually understands MAD, that MAD can be beaten by surprise deployment and the ballistic advantages of a BHCSF controlled detonation; or that nuclear winter is a peace-nicks fantasy.
The fact that the technology is in play indicates that inside the cult of nuclear policy makers and weapons labs is a belief that being quicker and more accurate at HT kills is feasible. This should give the educated analyst a great deal of concern because grandiose claims reveal intention and threat (or at least posture scenarios) that make potential targets bite first.