Stuart Mackey wrote:With America's force of ultra top secret B1's B52's, all crammed with bleeding edge technology, so bleeding it suffers from blood loss,
Just "blood loss?" Isn't "cutting through the bone" more appropriate? Or "bleeding to death?"
Can you tell, as an aside, I read a lot of Tom Clancy before writing SDR?
Phongn and Ma deuce, you are right about the casualty ratio. The problem is that China could take the losses. They didn't have commitments elsewhere, so if they lost 100,000 here, 50,000 there, they could keep fighting.
It's like one gambler at the blackjack table with a million dollars on him and the other having $50,000. No matter how well he does, the $50,000 dollar man will probably be cleaned out or forced out as long as Mr. Million keeps raising the stakes.
Elfdart wrote:Phongn and Ma deuce, you are right about the casualty ratio. The problem is that China could take the losses. They didn't have commitments elsewhere, so if they lost 100,000 here, 50,000 there, they could keep fighting.
Uh, no, the Chinese were acutely aware that such losses were unsustainable. They aren't just going to throw away 50000 men, 100000 men, etc.
Elfdart wrote:Phongn and Ma deuce, you are right about the casualty ratio. The problem is that China could take the losses. They didn't have commitments elsewhere, so if they lost 100,000 here, 50,000 there, they could keep fighting.
But even China hasn't (or ever had) the necessary manpower by a longshot to win a war against the United States while sustaining 20 casualties for every one they inflict on the enemy. Even today, their army outnumbers the US Army by a rate of 4 to 1 and of course their total population outnumbers the total US population by the same ratio (that ratio still applied during Korea, IIRC). In order for the US to have taken equivilent casualties as the Chinese during Korea, they would have to have lost something like 250,000 men.
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"A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself." --J.S. Mill
Why dont the US just sell/allow Taiwan some nukes?
Not that I'd ever wish it ever get used..... (hell, as an ROC citizen I'd still rather perfer joining up with China provided they develop at the current rate, than fight a destructive war)
Stuart Mackey wrote:With America's force of ultra top secret B1's B52's, all crammed with bleeding edge technology, so bleeding it suffers from blood loss,
Just "blood loss?" Isn't "cutting through the bone" more appropriate? Or "bleeding to death?"
Can you tell, as an aside, I read a lot of Tom Clancy before writing SDR?
I did notice
Via money Europe could become political in five years" "... the current communities should be completed by a Finance Common Market which would lead us to European economic unity. Only then would ... the mutual commitments make it fairly easy to produce the political union which is the goal"
MKSheppard wrote:Put simply, the world isn't big enough for the both of us, and I would like to be immune to the Chinese threats of destroying our
cities when that happens.
We already are immune to those threats. The PRC doesn't have the nuclear force to have a hope in hell of matching us and they aren't suicidal. The looming oil shortage problem isn't something that anybody can conquer their way out of; not the Chinese, not us. Nobody. So it's not a good idea to base foreign or military policy upon paranoid delusional fever-dreams which aren't feasible on any level.
When ballots have fairly and constitutionally decided, there can be no successful appeal back to bullets.
—Abraham Lincoln
People pray so that God won't crush them like bugs.
—Dr. Gregory House
Oil an emergency?! It's about time, Brigadier, that the leaders of this planet of yours realised that to remain dependent upon a mineral slime simply doesn't make sense.
—The Doctor "Terror Of The Zygons" (1975)
MKSheppard wrote:Put simply, the world isn't big enough for the both of us, and I would like to be immune to the Chinese threats of destroying our
cities when that happens.
We already are immune to those threats. The PRC doesn't have the nuclear force to have a hope in hell of matching us and they aren't suicidal. The looming oil shortage problem isn't something that anybody can conquer their way out of; not the Chinese, not us. Nobody. So it's not a good idea to base foreign or military policy upon paranoid delusional fever-dreams which aren't feasible on any level.
History has repeatidly shown that regardless of how stupid an idea is, some idiot leader is bound to try it. Just look at how many people were stupid enough to attack Rome.
Devolution is quite as natural as evolution, and may be just as pleasing, or even a good deal more pleasing, to God. If the average man is made in God's image, then a man such as Beethoven or Aristotle is plainly superior to God, and so God may be jealous of him, and eager to see his superiority perish with his bodily frame.
MKSheppard wrote:Put simply, the world isn't big enough for the both of us, and I would like to be immune to the Chinese threats of destroying our
cities when that happens.
We already are immune to those threats. The PRC doesn't have the nuclear force to have a hope in hell of matching us and they aren't suicidal. The looming oil shortage problem isn't something that anybody can conquer their way out of; not the Chinese, not us. Nobody. So it's not a good idea to base foreign or military policy upon paranoid delusional fever-dreams which aren't feasible on any level.
History has repeatidly shown that regardless of how stupid an idea is, some idiot leader is bound to try it. Just look at how many people were stupid enough to attack Rome.
Not exactly the best analogy. Attacking Rome was only "a stupid idea" as long as she had the power to make it a stupid idea. Once Rome had spent herself into bankruptcy and built walls to try to hang on to a bloated and decaying empire, it shortly ceased to be a stupid idea.
When ballots have fairly and constitutionally decided, there can be no successful appeal back to bullets.
—Abraham Lincoln
People pray so that God won't crush them like bugs.
—Dr. Gregory House
Oil an emergency?! It's about time, Brigadier, that the leaders of this planet of yours realised that to remain dependent upon a mineral slime simply doesn't make sense.
—The Doctor "Terror Of The Zygons" (1975)
Vympel wrote:Replace Rome with Russia (as in the nation state, not the land), voila, operating analogy.
If even 10% of Russia's nuclear arsenal still works, it would be an act of madman for the Chinese to attack her!
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"So have I, and I'm going to do them all to you." - Sylar to Arthur 'Heroes'
phongn wrote:I'm wondering if the Chinese nuclear force is even sufficient to take down Moscow?
How much damage does it take for you to consider it "taking down" Moscow? One working 5-megaton DF-5 warhead that manages to hit within a mile of the Kremlin (or wherever the Russian top leadership works these days) would go a long way towards paralyzing Moscow and C4I.
Even if they used their nuke-based ABM system and shot down all the weapons, using so many nukes over Moscow just CAN'T be good for it.
Unless the SA-10 batteries they placed around Moscow are now equipped to deal with ICBMs and I just never noticed.
Elfdart wrote:Besides, defensive measures like SDI, the Maginot Line, Hadrian's Wall, the Great Wall instill defeatist attitudes in those who build them and is an important reason why they almost always fail. The surest deterrent isn't a suit of mail -it's a sharp sword.
A space-based missile defense system is a tad different.
It is the proverbial sharp sword, and not a suit of mail.
It works by firing something on a target!
It isnt a passive defense system, but needs to be actively used.
"Okay, I'll have the truth with a side order of clarity." ~ Dr. Daniel Jackson.
"Reality has a well-known liberal bias." ~ Stephen Colbert
"One Drive, One Partition, the One True Path" ~ ars technica forums - warrens - on hhd partitioning schemes.
You know, governments primary(I would argue only) responsibility is to protect its citizens.
North Korea Admits to having nuclear weapons, Kim is crazy enough to use them
We are obligated by treaty to defend Tiawan if the PRC attacks
China has nukes that iiRc are capable of reaching the US
A space-born missile defense system makes sense. Hell, I would argue for space-borne offensive weapons, like hug tungsten spears launched from orbit. Frankly anything that protects the US from attack and gives us some room to maneuver in an internations crises is worth it.
Chicom general: "If you defend Tiawan we will destroy the west coast"
Powell: "Ok asshole... If you launch nukes, we will intercept your nukes and then bombard Bejing with either nuclear weapons, or our orbital weapons sattelites. Does that make you happy?"
(Yes, I did just use the word chicom[CHInese COMmunist])
GALE Force Biological Agent/
BOTM/Great Dolphin Conspiracy/ Entomology and Evolutionary Biology Subdirector:SD.net Dept. of Biological Sciences
There is Grandeur in the View of Life; it fills me with a Deep Wonder, and Intense Cynicism.
Kazuaki Shimazaki wrote:
How much damage does it take for you to consider it "taking down" Moscow? One working 5-megaton DF-5 warhead that manages to hit within a mile of the Kremlin (or wherever the Russian top leadership works these days) would go a long way towards paralyzing Moscow and C4I.
The C4I systems would not be paralyzed. The Russians have been preparing for that eventuality for the entire Cold War- the whole country is littered with hardened C4I centres and there are numerous tunnel systems leading from government buildings to shelters/ command facilities etc from Moscow. Moscow would probably be destroyed, but paralysis is just not going to happen.
Unless the SA-10 batteries they placed around Moscow are now equipped to deal with ICBMs and I just never noticed.
The S-300PM batteries are in the process of being replaced with the first S-400 batteries. It doesn't have a NMD capability though.
Despite what people tell you, the missile defense shield is offensive strategically.
Lets see a number of possible foreign relation match ups with the US.
1. non nuclear/non icbm capable
Not affected by missile shield.
2. MAD capable
Not affected by missile shield.
3. minor nuclear powers with a few ICBMs
Now there are two possibilities.
1. suicidal attack by said minor power against the US. Since there are mutiple delievery systems other than ICBMs avaible against the US, and that the US can not effectively stop all of them in peace time, the missile shield is largely ineffective.
2. US attack against a ICBM equipped nation. While there are a number of delievery systems that can transport nuclear weapons to the US, only ICBMs are useful without stealth. It is comparatively easier to deal a first strike in peacetime than to attack on a war footing (which can justify security measures otherwise unsustainable), and even harder to plant ready to strike weapons near the US for prolonged periods of time for the purpose of deterrance agianst the US.
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Now you say we need nuclear offensive capacity to defend our allies against other nuclear powers, but I don't find that argument too strong, since simply giving the said allies nuclear weapons should be more than sufficient. Since most of the allies being threatened by invasion is too close to their opponent for ICBM to be used, and with nuclear weapons the US do not need to protect the threatened allies to begin with, leaving the US out of the MAD loop altogether.
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Also China do have the resouces to build more nuclear weapons and more ICBMs if they are required to overwhelm the missile shield, and they will probably attempt that if the shield is set up.
Which is why we build a more effcient defense grid-like missile shield. If we can land more nukes than they can, they will find launching nukes even less useful. It would become possible to come out less damaged from a nuclear war.
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Now you say we need nuclear offensive capacity to defend our allies against other nuclear powers, but I don't find that argument too strong, since simply giving the said allies nuclear weapons should be more than sufficient.
Kind of hard when defending Tiawanese independance. Seeing as they are controled by mainland china.
GALE Force Biological Agent/
BOTM/Great Dolphin Conspiracy/ Entomology and Evolutionary Biology Subdirector:SD.net Dept. of Biological Sciences
There is Grandeur in the View of Life; it fills me with a Deep Wonder, and Intense Cynicism.
Kazuaki Shimazaki wrote:
How much damage does it take for you to consider it "taking down" Moscow? One working 5-megaton DF-5 warhead that manages to hit within a mile of the Kremlin (or wherever the Russian top leadership works these days) would go a long way towards paralyzing Moscow and C4I.
Not at all, Moscow isn't the primary Russian command center in the first place. And the bunkers that are Russians command centers are so heavily protected that the USAF plan for destroying them required dropping 9 megaton bombs into the craters blown by pervious bombs of similar yield to dig down and finnaly knock the things out.
Even if they used their nuke-based ABM system and shot down all the weapons, using so many nukes over Moscow just CAN'T be good for it.
They won't be expoding over Moscow, they'll be exploding hundreds of miles away and a few hundred thousand feet up in the sky.
"This cult of special forces is as sensible as to form a Royal Corps of Tree Climbers and say that no soldier who does not wear its green hat with a bunch of oak leaves stuck in it should be expected to climb a tree"
— Field Marshal William Slim 1956
I did notice 
