Obama: NATO to erect missile shield for Europe

[Questor]

NATO has been sharing air defense radar data since the 1950s and jointy owns operates the second largest E-3 fleet on the planet.

Who owns and operates the largest?

Is this a joke?

I'll give you one guess as to who owns and operates the largest Boeing E-3 fleet in the world.

I think their logo is a stylized eagle.

[Simon_Jester]

Actually, the usual "worst case scenario" presented by its critics is that it negates MAD, convinces the leadership of the defended country that they can win a nuclear war and causes the loss of millions of lives.

Except it doesn't at least not for America and Europe: Before the Cuban Missile Crisis NATO had overwhelming nuclear superiority to make a first strike option a viable method of winning the Cold War then and there, the European NATO powers would've gotten a pretty serious bloody nose and America would've take a handful of ICBM but the USSR would most certainly have lost.

So what? You talk as if "a handful of ICBMs" would be something other than a massive disaster. And I'm sure the Europeans would have loved being America's human sacrifice. And that's all assuming you are right.

Damage from "a handful of ICBMs" would have been... I would think on par with or less bad than the damage the USSR took in World War Two, in relative terms.

Honestly, I suspect the whole "gives us delusions of invulnerability and causes us to strike first for stupid reasons" concept is a red herring: unless you have a really truly ironclad defense, good enough that the outcome of the war is really, really lopsided, you won't strike first. Even then you won't do it lightly, because the resulting economic disruption and indirect effects on your allies are still going to be one hell of a lot worse than just not fighting the war.

I think that's Schatten's point. Even knowing in 1958 or whatever that the US had a window in which it could (apparently) break through Soviet air defense and devastate the USSR while taking only 'moderate' damage (as in, damage that can be recovered from in a decade or two of rebuilding)... why? What would be the incentive to do such a thing?

Also, this theory ignores the question of what happens in the event of an accidental war. There is a nonzero chance of a simple mistake causing nuclear war: unnecessary provocations, random events being mistaken for a missile launch, and so on. Such accidents are far more destabilizing when both sides know that they are doomed the moment the first missile flies because of inevitable retaliatory strikes.

The pressure to launch first and make sure the enemy is really really flattened, as opposed to being merely badly damaged, should not be underestimated. And yet both sides will feel this pressure once they come to believe that nuclear war is truly inevitable. If I see a missile flying my way, I have to make the decision to launch very quickly, with minimal time to reconsider. Otherwise I risk letting an enemy MIRV get a free shot at some territory within my country (my own missiles, my cities) before my retaliatory strike can do anything to thin out their strike capability.

Unless, of course, I can simply shoot that missile down.

Another point to consider is that MAD by itself, while theoretically stable, leaves much to be desired as a political stance. It is perverse for a government to turn to its people and say "no, we have no plans for what to do after the missiles fly, and no way to protect any of you; we are basing all our hopes on the assumption that because neither we nor our enemy can protect anyone, we will both be extra-careful to avoid anything that might result in everyone dying."

That does not strike me as a reassuring position. It is even less reassuring to allies of a state engaged in MAD. If I'm a non-nuclear state allied to nuclear state A for fear of nuclear state B (be that state Russia or Iran), I do NOT want to hear "we have no way to protect you, but we can engage in mutual annihilation with B if we want after you're dead."

Among other things, there's no way in hell I can count on A to agree to mutual suicide with B after my country has already been taken over. MAD is not a security guarantee for third parties; the offer to deploy ABM systems can be.

[adam_grif]

-Accidental lauches-
-Stuff about stability-
-No guarantees for third parties-

The ideal system would be cooperative missile defense between all major nuclear powers, wherein both Russia and America (+UK, China, France etc) would have the keys to turn the system off (or at least some trivial means to destroy the system), such that accidental launches, hijacked weapons (however unlikely that may be) or launches from rogue states would be intercepted by the system, but that if Russia for some reason went crazy and actually did want to nuke the United States, they could simply turn the defense off and do so.

Any intentional attack would thus coincide with the system being disabled from the other end, making the circumstances in which an accidental launch could be construed as a deliberate attack insurmountably unlikely. So MAD is preserved, but little Kim and accidental launches are basically a non-issue. Best of both worlds.

Finally, the idea that Iran could conceivably nuke a third party and not expect overwhelming retaliation is absurd. Iran knows this and so does Iran's enemies. Citizens of other nations under the umbrella of the United States nuclear arsenal have nothing more to fear than people in the United States do. And once again, the above hypothetical system could prevent small scale attacks anyway.

[Phantasee]

NATO has been sharing air defense radar data since the 1950s and jointy owns operates the second largest E-3 fleet on the planet.

Who owns and operates the largest?

Is this a joke?

I'll give you one guess as to who owns and operates the largest Boeing E-3 fleet in the world.

I think their logo is a stylized eagle.

I assumed the US E-3s were part of the NATO fleet. I didn't realize they were separate.

[Ritterin Sophia]

No, NATO operates some units separate from it's constituent nations. Squadron 1-3 and the Training Squadron are separate from the USAF, they're registered to Luxembourg and are based in Geilenkirchen, Germany. They have 18 total aircraft.

The USAF E-3 fleet is spread between three major units. The 960th AACS and 963-966th AACS' attached to the 552nd Air Control Wing in Tinker AFB, Oklahoma. The 962nd AACS attached to the 3rd Wing in Elmendorf AFB, Alaska. Finally the 961st AACS attached to the 18th Wing in Kadena AFB, Japan. With a total of 32, 27 of which are in the 552nd ACW.

[Questor]

Who owns and operates the largest?

Is this a joke?

I'll give you one guess as to who owns and operates the largest Boeing E-3 fleet in the world.

I think their logo is a stylized eagle.

I assumed the US E-3s were part of the NATO fleet. I didn't realize they were separate.

NATO's E-3's are actually owned by NATO, and have multinational crews. I think they operate a couple transports that way as well.

The difference is that the US E-3s operating with NATO would still be under US command, while the NATO ones are always under the command of NATO.

EDIT: Need to read all posts in thread before responding.

[Ritterin Sophia]

I think they operate a couple transports that way as well.

Yeah, the Heavy Airlift Wing operates three Globemaster IIIs, it was only recently activated July of last year.

[Thanas]

Pointless Stark/Schatten stuff split.

[Rogue 9]

Actually, the usual "worst case scenario" presented by its critics is that it negates MAD, convinces the leadership of the defended country that they can win a nuclear war and causes the loss of millions of lives.

Except it doesn't at least not for America and Europe: Before the Cuban Missile Crisis NATO had overwhelming nuclear superiority to make a first strike option a viable method of winning the Cold War then and there, the European NATO powers would've gotten a pretty serious bloody nose and America would've take a handful of ICBM but the USSR would most certainly have lost.

So what? You talk as if "a handful of ICBMs" would be something other than a massive disaster. And I'm sure the Europeans would have loved being America's human sacrifice. And that's all assuming you are right.

Of course he's right. There was a window after World War II, right up until 1949, in which we could have (bloodily) ended the Cold War right at its start because the Soviets had nothing to retaliate with. You may notice that didn't happen. I know you have a hard-on for irrational hatred of the United States, but really, can you at least try to keep the doom and gloom to realistic proportions, please?

[Ritterin Sophia]

Of course he's right. There was a window after World War II, right up until 1949, in which we could have (bloodily) ended the Cold War right at its start because the Soviets had nothing to retaliate with. You may notice that didn't happen. I know you have a hard-on for irrational hatred of the United States, but really, can you at least try to keep the doom and gloom to realistic proportions, please?

Whilst correct, I was talking about that extending into the sixties.

Compiled using information from the National Resources Defense Council. As per the graph the disparity in throw-weight was absurdly vast.[/Shep]

[Rogue 9]

I'm aware, but his argument was that even a few nuclear strikes would be a devastating enough deterrent; I was pointing out that even with no possibility of any nuclear retaliation whatsoever, the U.S. still didn't go around first-striking people.

[Thanas]

Oh please, not this stuff again. The Soviets would have started blasting Europe into a bloody mess, the European allies would have gone WTF? and the USA would have shot itself into the foot. So please, let us not go all high and noble, when the very truth of the matter is that nuking the USSR at that time would have hurt the USA a lot more than continuing the cold war would.

[Ritterin Sophia]

Oh please, not this stuff again. The Soviets would have started blasting Europe into a bloody mess, the European allies would have gone WTF? and the USA would have shot itself into the foot. So please, let us not go all high and noble, when the very truth of the matter is that nuking the USSR at that time would have hurt the USA a lot more than continuing the cold war would.

Maybe in the early to mid fifties, but past that point there would be no European Allies to go 'WTF'.

[Thanas]

Maybe in the early to mid fifties, but past that point there would be no European Allies to go 'WTF'.

Really? The fallout would be enough. Oh, and Germany sure as heck would break all ties with the USA, as the USA would have just nuked half of all Germans and pretty much irradiated the rest with fallout. I guess East Germany doesn't ring any bells? You nuke half of Germany, kill about one third of all Germans and you think Germany will just sit back and say "Aw, shucks"? Likewise with the Polish, Hungarian etc. You think there are no family ties, shared cultural heritage or so?

Only an american can say that. Hey, why don't we just nuke the east coast and find out whether the rest of America likes it?

[Ritterin Sophia]

Really? The fallout would be enough. Oh, and Germany sure as heck would break all ties with the USA, as the USA would have just nuked half of all Germans and pretty much irradiated the rest with fallout. I guess East Germany doesn't ring any bells? You nuke half of Germany, kill about one third of all Germans and you think Germany will just sit back and say "Aw, shucks"? Likewise with the Polish, Hungarian etc. You think there are no family ties, shared cultural heritage or so?

Only an american can say that. Hey, why don't we just nuke the east coast and find out whether the rest of America likes it?

Maybe in the early to mid fifties, but past that point there would be no European Allies to go 'WTF'.

Since you apparently lack reading comprehension skills, I'm giving you another go at that except I'm bolding the important part.

In short: I AGREED WITH YOU.

Except after a certain point Europe's concerns become irrelevant, because at that point there wouldn't be enough of it left to matter anyhow.

[Thanas]

Really? The fallout would be enough. Oh, and Germany sure as heck would break all ties with the USA, as the USA would have just nuked half of all Germans and pretty much irradiated the rest with fallout. I guess East Germany doesn't ring any bells? You nuke half of Germany, kill about one third of all Germans and you think Germany will just sit back and say "Aw, shucks"? Likewise with the Polish, Hungarian etc. You think there are no family ties, shared cultural heritage or so?

Only an american can say that. Hey, why don't we just nuke the east coast and find out whether the rest of America likes it?

Maybe in the early to mid fifties, but past that point there would be no European Allies to go 'WTF'.

Since you apparently lack reading comprehension skills, I'm giving you another go at that except I'm bolding the important part.

In short: I AGREED WITH YOU.

Except after a certain point Europe's concerns become irrelevant, because at that point there wouldn't be enough of it left to matter anyhow.

My apologies, but your statement could easily be misread as "after Korea everybody would agree that nuking was a good idea".

[Sea Skimmer]

No, NATO operates some units separate from it's constituent nations. Squadron 1-3 and the Training Squadron are separate from the USAF, they're registered to Luxembourg and are based in Geilenkirchen, Germany. They have 18 total aircraft.

The USAF E-3 fleet is spread between three major units. The 960th AACS and 963-966th AACS' attached to the 552nd Air Control Wing in Tinker AFB, Oklahoma. The 962nd AACS attached to the 3rd Wing in Elmendorf AFB, Alaska. Finally the 961st AACS attached to the 18th Wing in Kadena AFB, Japan. With a total of 32, 27 of which are in the 552nd ACW.

NATO has 17 aircraft now; one of them slid off the end of the runway and broke the airframe in half in1996. No casualties though. NATO had wanted 19 airframes as this is what the USAF actually calculated was necessary for sustained operations over NATO central front, but politics seem to have trimmed one away. I can’t tell if that happened during the purchase or before the deal was signed.

Its worth noting that NATO also jointly owns and operates a number of training bases, some of which are being used to train personal from Iraq and Afghanistan. They’ve also got a fair number of joint communications systems and facilities, and command bunkers, though the trend since 1991 has been to pass ownership of said bunkers to the host nations since many of them are now only kept in ‘warm storage’ rather then continuously occupied. The alliance doesn’t directly share a whole lot of assets, but what it does share is highly important. We may see some kind of joint NATO EuroHawk squadron in the future.

[Simon_Jester]

Oh please, not this stuff again. The Soviets would have started blasting Europe into a bloody mess, the European allies would have gone WTF? and the USA would have shot itself into the foot. So please, let us not go all high and noble, when the very truth of the matter is that nuking the USSR at that time would have hurt the USA a lot more than continuing the cold war would.

This is pretty much my point: even when the first strike option existed, it wasn't used for reasons that had very little to do with fear of nuclear annihilation.

Mutually assured destruction is somewhat overrated.

The ideal system would be cooperative missile defense between all major nuclear powers, wherein both Russia and America (+UK, China, France etc) would have the keys to turn the system off (or at least some trivial means to destroy the system), such that accidental launches, hijacked weapons (however unlikely that may be) or launches from rogue states would be intercepted by the system, but that if Russia for some reason went crazy and actually did want to nuke the United States, they could simply turn the defense off and do so.

I disagree, because that removes the sense of security regarding the system. I can't rely on the strength of my defense to protect me against enemy attacks, even small ones, because a malicious enemy might very well turn off the system in mid-attack.

Also there's the security risk of people 'outside the system' (like rogue states) obtaining whatever method lets people turn off the system, making it useless against their attack.

Any intentional attack would thus coincide with the system being disabled from the other end, making the circumstances in which an accidental launch could be construed as a deliberate attack insurmountably unlikely. So MAD is preserved, but little Kim and accidental launches are basically a non-issue. Best of both worlds.

That relies on MAD being a good defense. I'm not confident that it is.

Finally, the idea that Iran could conceivably nuke a third party and not expect overwhelming retaliation is absurd. Iran knows this and so does Iran's enemies. Citizens of other nations under the umbrella of the United States nuclear arsenal have nothing more to fear than people in the United States do. And once again, the above hypothetical system could prevent small scale attacks anyway.

That's questionable. If Iran had useful ICBMs that could hit the US, how could someone in, say, Kuwait be confident of the US being willing to launch a nuclear strike on Iran (and take the inevitable deterrent attacks) to avenge the nuking of their country?

Why would we accept massive losses for the sake of revenge for an ally who was never critical to us in the first place?

As long as we can bomb Iran with near-impunity, I suppose it's reasonable to assume that we'll keep our promise to do so in the event that our allies are attacked. But if Iran had a meaningful deterrent of its own, one with the range and reliability to work on us, and one we did not have ABM systems to defend against... that assumption doesn't work. We'd have to be crazy to accept twenty million American dead to stop the Iranians from taking over Kuwait, for instance.

Of course he's right. There was a window after World War II, right up until 1949, in which we could have (bloodily) ended the Cold War right at its start because the Soviets had nothing to retaliate with. You may notice that didn't happen. I know you have a hard-on for irrational hatred of the United States, but really, can you at least try to keep the doom and gloom to realistic proportions, please?

Whilst correct, I was talking about that extending into the sixties.
[graph]
Compiled using information from the National Resources Defense Council. As per the graph the disparity in throw-weight was absurdly vast.[/Shep]

Is that number of warheads, number of megatons... what is the graph measuring?

[Lonestar]

My apologies, but your statement could easily be misread as "after Korea everybody would agree that nuking was a good idea".

No it couldn't.

[Ritterin Sophia]

Is that number of warheads, number of megatons... what is the graph measuring?

It's a measure of warheads available, discluding those that were being dismantled.

[Thanas]

My apologies, but your statement could easily be misread as "after Korea everybody would agree that nuking was a good idea".

No it couldn't.

Why not?

[Lonestar]

Why not?

Because we're talking about nukes, a graph has already been shown shown nuke totals in that era, and the phrasing of

"but past that point there would be no European Allies to go 'WTF'

Suggests a lack of continued existence on the part of the European Allies. Nothing in that phrase suggests that the European Allies are making a change in policy, it's suggesting they are no longer there. Adding the "to go" to the phrase is what makes it one that says that the European Allies are no longer there, either as allies or they simply don't exist.

[MKSheppard]

This is a piece of shit. Listen to what Dmitry Rogozin demands:

Bulgarian Media

In his interview for "Izvestiya", Rogozin reveals that Russia insists on certain restrictions to the future missile shield, and that Russia's potential inclusion in the system will require serious concessions on part of the North Atlantic Alliance.

"We tried to convince the Americans that it is necessary to agree on restrictions about the missile defense system – on the zones for locating elements, the number of the interceptor missiles, and the speed of the interceptor missiles," Rogozin says.

[Pelranius]

So much for the grand alliance of western civilization to stop Iranian and North Korean ballistic missiles.

[K. A. Pital]

As much as I hate Rogozin, who is a bigoted nationalist fucktard, the demands he gives are more than sensible. If you cooperate with someone, you have to give them full information and guarantees that this and that will be located in certain places and only in certain amounts.

Though right now I even support Russia being utter fucktards. If their foreign policy collapses, perhaps that will lead to internal changes.