RAF to become smallest since 1914...

[Pelranius]

There are rumors that the Chinese DF-31 and DF-31A ICBMs use several thousand of kilometers worth of tunnels to hide in, but personally I think that rumor is credible as the DF-21D anti ship ballistic missile.

[JointStrikeFighter]

I thought the AShM IRBM was all but confirmed to exist?

[Sea Skimmer]

I thought the AShM IRBM was all but confirmed to exist?

It pretty much is, certainly the US DOD has said it exists a number of times. Chinese rumors also claim that planned future deployment is two brigades with 17 launchers each; numbers which true or not are at least very plausible and give an idea of the scale of the threat that could be anticipated. DF-21 is a big expensive 32,000lb missile; the Chinese could buy a small pile of supersonic anti ship missiles for the same price, so it’s never going to be too numerous. The biggest advantage of the ASBM is simply the low reaction time to reach long range, not any missile for missile super effectiveness.

Some people think that once you get past the usual propaganda, and the eagerness of the USN to exploit the threat to gain more funding, the navies of India and other local forces are much more probable targets then US warships anyway. China knows its oil flows past India and that it would be very hard for it to counter Indian naval power in home waters even if China had its own aircraft carriers. Blowing away the Indian carriers and top end destroyers, which don’t any have ABM capability would make much easier and the PLAN could dream of escorting convoys past without carrier support.

As for Chinese tunnels, they certainly have hoards of random underground facilities for all purposes, but nothing like the US missile deployment plans. The US idea requires special launchers which physically break through the roof of the shallow tunnel, so they can fire from any point. That means an attack has to nuclear barrage the entire length of the tunnel system to destroy the missiles. Such launchers were tested full scale, you can find videos on youtube. If China was doing that the evidence of the tunnels and launchers would be massive. The mobile Chinese TELs certainly may hide in hard rock tunnels some of the time, but in the end the main idea is mobility between soft launch sites. They do have a few silo based missiles too.

[JointStrikeFighter]

Would the MX shelters have been adequate to ensure that the missiles could not be located? One of Stuart's memes if you will is that decoys never work, or if they do they cost as much as a fully functional example.

[Sea Skimmer]

Would the MX shelters have been adequate to ensure that the missiles could not be located? One of Stuart's memes if you will is that decoys never work, or if they do they cost as much as a fully functional example.

That problem was called ‘Preservation of Location Uncertainty’. No one was ever fully confident of it, or any one of the dozens of other MX basing concepts, which is why MX ended up in existing ICBM silos with plans for rail mobile launchers (cheapest mobility option)

The 1970s trench concepts had to be shallow buried to allow the missile to break out it was very unlikely that the Soviets would be unable to detect the movements of the launchers. Radar can see through shallow earth. The result was plans for decoys and incorporating passing tracks into the tunnel system so decoy and real missiles could shuffle around. Thus the Soviets would quickly be stuck blasting the whole system anyway. As an evolution of the trench concept was racetrack, I believe the last version accepted, in which the trench systems became circular and connected into a series of medium hardness shelters. The Soviets would then have to both precision attack the shelters and area barrage the trenches.

Decoys factored into many MX basing concepts, a lot of which relied completely on deception and more launcher shelter capacity then live missile launchers to preserve the missile force (or force the Russians to fire far more warheads then the MX missiles themselves contained to destroy). Decoys are a little more reasonable when they are huge and on a dedicated transporter truck, rather then something you have to pack onto an aircraft or a ship or an ICBM when low weight is critical to the decoy making any sense. I don’t know how costs would have worked out, the schemes called for as many as 24 decoys to 1 live missile and about 200 actual MX missiles deployed so they couldn’t be allowed to be super expensive.

The US favored systems of shelters or tunnels or other ‘closed’ systems, even to the point of wanting earthen walls around deployment areas so the TEL can’t drive away, over road or rail mobility for missiles because all those ‘truly’ mobile concepts would actually just sit in fixed garrisons most of the time. The security and safety problems with moving missiles continuously on civilian roads or raid roads are just too great for regular ‘patrols’. One bad traffic accident and you have an MX missile and 10 nuclear warheads on fire, then you get to dig up the whole road to remove the Plutonium dust. Or something similar to that which is bad for public relations. Moving the missile only within government land was much easier and safer.

The Soviet and Chinese mobile missiles suffer from this problem too. Even if the launcher leaves the garrison on alert, the enemy can aim to barrage a wide area around the garrison; this is worst for train mobility since rail lines are less extensive then roads (also railroad junctions tend to be in cities, bad place to put MX bases). An MX TEL would need big roads too, only the highway system was realistic roaming ground for it. That was a reason for the follow on small ICBM Midgetman, its TEL would be far more realistic on normal roads and could also dig itself in for slight protection from blast. Normal missile TELs will be easily overturned by atomic blast. Trains really don't like this either, so of course someone proposed trains that clamped themselves to the rails like a roller coaster to avoid being knocked off easily.

This safety-sanity problem of course did not stop people from spending money to look at lots of crazy mobility concepts. One of my favorite ones was called cruise-ballistic. Here the MX is carried by a cruise missile which launches on warning like a bomber, but then can land and refuel automatically to sustain airborne alert. On command to fire the cruise missile breaks up and releases the MX missile. They also had ideas for MX air launch planes that would zero length launch using JATO packs. No waiting for minimal interval takeoff!

Another endless problem is that the missile force survivability is only as good in the first place as the command and communications system survivability. Otherwise no one gets the order the fire the damn thing after an attack, and if you only plan to fire before or during an attack then the ICBM force has little real point. More then one concept could provide launcher survivability but presented awful command and control and reaction time problems. Anything mobile is bad and expensive. All the more so in the 1970s and 1980s when many kinds of satellite communications antennas didn't work very well from moving vehicles or planes and had very limited bandwidth. You don't need much bandwidth to order missiles to fire, but you do need it for shifting around attack plans and collecting detailed status reports. Today that isn't such a big deal with EHF satellites now being in service and lots of other things, but back then is a whole different world of communications capacity.

[Sea Skimmer]

These two links are highly relevant. The videos show one of the full scale tests of the tunnel breakout MX launcher designs, the pdf is a report on a number of the more serious MX basing concepts and addresses the command and control problem. Another good MX basing pdf exists on DTIC which covers more of the crazy stuff, I know I have it somewhere but I can’t remember the title for a search at the moment.

http://www.fas.org/ota/reports/8116.pdf
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7t6JLdaNC0

[Iosef Cross]

The military expenditures of a country are proportional to the relative importance of that country in the world order and the direct threats that such country faces. UK is not a major world power right now, it is a middle weight country, in the same league as Mexico.

So, reality is finally setting in UK: They simply doesn't have the economic/industrial/demographic size to be a major world power anymore, and they didn't have for the last 40 years. So, it is irrational to spend a large proportion of your GNP into the military if your country doesn't have any hegemonic function in the world order.

The US needs to have the world's best military and spend a large proportion of their national income into the military because they still have great warmaking potential and are the current hegemons of the world and need to serve as the police of the world. As result, they provide the world with a public service as the world's police force. UK apparently tried to continue to provide this public service well after the country ceased to be the major world power. That's mainly the result of national pride, tradition and arrogance.

Military expenditures in proportion to GDP (2008):

US - 4.16%
UK - 2.45%
Japan - 0.94%
Mexico - 0.39%

source: http://www.google.com/publicdata/explor ... l=en&dl=en

UK is a country like Japan and Mexico: They are inside the American sphere of influence and are protected by the American military. Why does UK spend so much more than they should in the military? Well, the main reason in addition to the reasons already enumerated, is that UK won WW2, and as result maintained a certain military structure that Japan, for example, didn't.

[Kanastrous]

'Write it in English, not in Pentagonese. It's not 'Preservation of Location Uncertainty;' it's called we don't want the Russians to know where the fucking missiles are.'

[Simon_Jester]

The military expenditures of a country are proportional to the relative importance of that country in the world order and the direct threats that such country faces. UK is not a major world power right now, it is a middle weight country, in the same league as Mexico.

"Same league" my foot; the UK has more than twice Mexico's GDP despite having only 60% the population. If you'd compared to Japan I would find it easier to believe that you know what the hell you're talking about, but Mexico?

So, reality is finally setting in UK: They simply doesn't have the economic/industrial/demographic size to be a major world power anymore, and they didn't have for the last 40 years. So, it is irrational to spend a large proportion of your GNP into the military if your country doesn't have any hegemonic function in the world order.

Isn't that a recursive argument? My nation isn't "hegemonic" and therefore shouldn't pay for enough firepower to be "hegemonic;" your nation is "hegemonic" and therefore must pay for enough firepower to be "hegemonic?"

The US needs to have the world's best military and spend a large proportion of their national income into the military because they still have great warmaking potential and are the current hegemons of the world and need to serve as the police of the world.

Several problems with this:


-Your interesting definition of 'need'
-Again, circular argument: the US needs to spend the money to have the world's best military because it "has great warmaking potential..." largely because it spends the money to have the world's best military.
-If the US chose not to spend so much money, would you say that they had become a non-hegemonic power, and thus must not spend so much money?

UK is a country like Japan and Mexico: They are inside the American sphere of influence and are protected by the American military.

What if the UK doesn't want to be in the American sphere of influence? What if they would prefer to be in, say, the European sphere of influence, being as how Europe is about 100 times closer to them than the US? Perhaps then they would have to join in sharing the burden of serious defense spending across the European continent, in order to make sure Europe had enough strength to defend itself without the US's permission?

[TC27]

Invalid comparisions: Mexico is a second world nation next to a hyperpower and Japan is only allowed limited self defence forces by the same hyperpower.

The UK had distinct interests and obligations that more than justifies the tiny proportion of GDP we spend on defence.

So, reality is finally setting in UK: They simply doesn't have the economic/industrial/demographic size to be a major world power

What a load of blather - no one in the UK has seriously thought this since the 1950s. Whats going on at the moment is simply the MOD taking the pain like all areas of goverment spending because of the level of our borrowing.

[Kanastrous]

Mexico has made the leap to second-world?

Good for them.

From what I have been reading I don't think the US holds veto power over Japanese military planning. Maybe there are certain policies we'd try to discourage but if anything my impression is that the US would rather like Japan to step forward and assume more military responsibility in the region. Although I doubt Japan's neighbors would care for the idea.

[Phantasee]

I don't quite recall when Mexico went Red. Perhaps someone can refresh my memory?

[Elfdart]

The UK had distinct interests and obligations that more than justifies the tiny proportion of GDP we spend on defence.

Such as?

[Simon_Jester]

I don't quite recall when Mexico went Red. Perhaps someone can refresh my memory?

Look, the "second world are communists" idea died in 1990.

Think about it logically. We live in a world where the prevailing two forms of government seen are republics and various forms of autocracy- no communist bureaucratic states of real size. Practically all countries embrace varying degrees of capitalism.

And yet we still use "first" and "third" world to define countries.

It used to be that "first world" meant "US-aligned," second meant "Soviet-aligned," and third meant "un-aligned," with an overtone of "poor." But with the collapse of the old Second World, the terms have changed: "first world" now means "rich" and "third world" now means "poor."

So if we're going to keep using this perverse holdover of nomenclature, it does make a lot of sense to start saying that "second world" countries are those of intermediate wealth: not highly prosperous, but with enough industrial and military clout that they form a tier above the typical "third world" country. This is the direction China and India are pushing up towards, that Russia is sliding down towards, and that the US is arguably sliding down towards as we neglect infrastructure investment and economic reforms in ways that imperil our future as a highly prosperous state.

[Big Orange]

I'm not too bothered by the downsizing of the RAF - in a recent interview a Royal Air Force officer has clamed that the RAF since WWII has not shot down a single enemy aircraft and it's been the Royal Navy's aircraft that's got most of the action in the last seven decades.

[Iosef Cross]

The military expenditures of a country are proportional to the relative importance of that country in the world order and the direct threats that such country faces. UK is not a major world power right now, it is a middle weight country, in the same league as Mexico.

"Same league" my foot; the UK has more than twice Mexico's GDP despite having only 60% the population. If you'd compared to Japan I would find it easier to believe that you know what the hell you're talking about, but Mexico?

Today Mexico has 75% of UK's GDP and Mexico will soon be above UK in terms of GDP. And a larger population means more manpower. It is an advantage, hence if you have two countries with the same warmaking potential and GDP, and one with greater population, that country will be the most important of the two.

Mexico VS UK

PPP GDP (2008), millions of dollars

UK - 2,178,205
Mexico - 1,549,490

Source: World Bank

Population

Mexico - 108,396,211
UK - 62,041,708

Source: Wikipedia

Steel production (millions of tons) (2008):

Mexico - 17.2
UK - 13.5

Source: World Steel Association, crude steel production

Motor vehicle production (2008), cars, trucks and other commercial vehicles, thousands:

Mexico - 2,168
UK - 1,649

Source: Ward's, Motor Vehicle Facts & Figures (Southfield, MI: Annual Issues).

GDP composition:

UK - Ag. 1.2%, Ind. 23.8%, Ser. 75%
Mex - Ag. 4%, Ind. 26.6%, Ser. 69.5%

Physical goods are produced by agriculture and industry, while the services sector doesn't usually produce goods that are tradeable, and hence, it is the production of physical goods that determine the country's relative importance in the world economy.

Value of production of physical goods (PPP GDP x (Ind.+Ag.)), billions of dollars (2008):

Mexico - 472.6
UK - 544.5

Total volume of trade, Imports + Exports, billions of dollars (2008):

UK - 824.9
Mex - 458.2

At least in this aspect UK surpasses Mexico by a good margin. This is understandable, since UK is a trading island.

Since Mexico's economy is growing while UK's economy is stagnating, the tendency for the next decades is for UK to be placed on a lower league than Mexico in economic terms.

So, reality is finally setting in UK: They simply doesn't have the economic/industrial/demographic size to be a major world power anymore, and they didn't have for the last 40 years. So, it is irrational to spend a large proportion of your GNP into the military if your country doesn't have any hegemonic function in the world order.

Isn't that a recursive argument? My nation isn't "hegemonic" and therefore shouldn't pay for enough firepower to be "hegemonic;" your nation is "hegemonic" and therefore must pay for enough firepower to be "hegemonic?"

Well, actually you hit in an important aspect of the functions of hegemon: If a country is hegemon today, it tends to stay hegemon tomorrow. However, the potential of exerting this hegemony doesn't exist for UK as it existed 50-60 years ago, when it was one of the top 5 countries in the world.

The US needs to have the world's best military and spend a large proportion of their national income into the military because they still have great warmaking potential and are the current hegemons of the world and need to serve as the police of the world.

Several problems with this:
-Your interesting definition of 'need'
-Again, circular argument: the US needs to spend the money to have the world's best military because it "has great warmaking potential..." largely because it spends the money to have the world's best military.
-If the US chose not to spend so much money, would you say that they had become a non-hegemonic power, and thus must not spend so much money?

Warmaking potential is not determined by present military expenditures. It is determined by industrial production/capacity, technology/intellectual resources and manpower. UK's present posture in the world is not consistent with the underlying reality.

UK is a country like Japan and Mexico: They are inside the American sphere of influence and are protected by the American military.

What if the UK doesn't want to be in the American sphere of influence? What if they would prefer to be in, say, the European sphere of influence, being as how Europe is about 100 times closer to them than the US? Perhaps then they would have to join in sharing the burden of serious defense spending across the European continent, in order to make sure Europe had enough strength to defend itself without the US's permission?[/quote]

It is not very rational for Europe to maintain a military as strong as the US (they certainly could) because it is a burden. What is the function of the hegemon? The hegemon functions as the state that maintains world order, it is a public service that the US does to other countries by maintaining the world's top military.

For example, when Iraq invaded Kuwait, the US came and stopped it. Other countries complemented the US forces, but were symbolic gestures more than anything else.

UK was the world's hegemon from 1815 to 1939. However, by the early 20th century other countries could exert this function better, Germany and the US, after two world wars, the US became the world's foremost hegemon. Why does UK still maintains a stronger military than Germany and Japan, countries with greater hegemonic potential? First because UK won the war and didn't have to dismantle her military like Germany and Japan had, second, because UK was the world's hegemon for a long time, UK has some inertia in adapting to the present conditions of the world.

[Iosef Cross]

The UK had distinct interests and obligations that more than justifies the tiny proportion of GDP we spend on defence.

It is not tiny. 2.5% of GDP is a huge proportion of national income spent on the military, unless you compare with WW2 levels of ~50%.

I would say that 1% is the ideal level of military expenditure for UK, the same proportion as Germany and Japan.

[Iosef Cross]

So if we're going to keep using this perverse holdover of nomenclature, it does make a lot of sense to start saying that "second world" countries are those of intermediate wealth: not highly prosperous, but with enough industrial and military clout that they form a tier above the typical "third world" country. This is the direction China and India are pushing up towards, that Russia is sliding down towards, and that the US is arguably sliding down towards as we neglect infrastructure investment and economic reforms in ways that imperil our future as a highly prosperous state.

Russia sliding down? Russia was never a high income country, historically Russia had per capita GDP levels of the same proportion to the US's than Mexico is today. It was a high middle income country. And today Russia is a emergent power, and will one day become a greater power than it ever was as compared to other European countries, at least in economic terms.

The correct classification of countries as used by the world bank is the following, based on per capita income:

High Income - US, France, UK, Japan, etc.

High Middle Income - Mexico, Russia, Brazil, Poland, Argentina, etc.

Lower Middle Income - China, Indonesia, Vietnam, etc.

Low Income - Pakistan, India, Nigeria, etc.

Note that a country can be low income and be more important than a high income country (like India and Denmark).

The Cold War classification was the following:

First world - The parts of the world based on capitalism form of social organization.

Second world - The parts of the world based on the socialist form of social organization (on paper only, actually).

Third world - The parts of the world without any form of social organization.

This method of classification was obviously imperfect and should never be used by anyone.

[K. A. Pital]

Russia sliding down?

I think Simon doesn't refer to GDP/capita only.

But I'm not amazed your tiny brain can only comprehend "economic terms" of human development.

[Kane Starkiller]

Today Mexico has 75% of UK's GDP and Mexico will soon be above UK in terms of GDP. And a larger population means more manpower. It is an advantage, hence if you have two countries with the same warmaking potential and GDP, and one with greater population, that country will be the most important of the two.

In other words UK still has 25% larger economy despite having almost two times smaller population therefore has much more money to spare for military expenditures than Mexico. Furthermore what does "most important" mean exactly? Most important to who? Each country is the most important to itself and this is how it plans its defense.

Warmaking potential is not determined by present military expenditures. It is determined by industrial production/capacity, technology/intellectual resources and manpower. UK's present posture in the world is not consistent with the underlying reality.

UK has the sixth largest economy in the world as well as an advanced civilian and military industry. It is also an island dependent on secure maritime lines of communication. How is its posture not consistent with underlying reality?

It is not very rational for Europe to maintain a military as strong as the US (they certainly could) because it is a burden. What is the function of the hegemon? The hegemon functions as the state that maintains world order, it is a public service that the US does to other countries by maintaining the world's top military.

For example, when Iraq invaded Kuwait, the US came and stopped it. Other countries complemented the US forces, but were symbolic gestures more than anything else.

US military is not answerable to European countries which means UK or France can't rely on it to do what they want. Sometime their interests might align but that's it.

And today Russia is a emergent power, and will one day become a greater power than it ever was as compared to other European countries, at least in economic terms.

That is quite a claim seeing as how in 1991 "Russia" lost 50% of its population when the USSR collapsed. In late 1970s-early 1980s USSR economy was 2.4 times larger than UK economy and 1.6 times larger than German economy. Today Russian economy is roughly equal to that of UK and 75% of German economy. How and when exactly do you envision Russian economy growing back to more than 2.4 UK GDP and 1.6 of German?

[mr friendly guy]

Today Mexico has 75% of UK's GDP and Mexico will soon be above UK in terms of GDP. And a larger population means more manpower. It is an advantage, hence if you have two countries with the same warmaking potential and GDP, and one with greater population, that country will be the most important of the two.

In other words UK still has 25% larger economy despite having almost two times smaller population therefore has much more money to spare for military expenditures than Mexico. Furthermore what does "most important" mean exactly? Most important to who? Each country is the most important to itself and this is how it plans its defense.

I can't believe I am defending him, but he clearly states most important means in regards "world order" as well as defense. Presumably what he means by world order is in regards to ability to become a hegemon for the purpose of being a global policeman, thus a better question might be to clarify exactly what he means by "world order" rather than what is "most important".

And today Russia is a emergent power, and will one day become a greater power than it ever was as compared to other European countries, at least in economic terms.

That is quite a claim seeing as how in 1991 "Russia" lost 50% of its population when the USSR collapsed. In late 1970s-early 1980s USSR economy was 2.4 times larger than UK economy and 1.6 times larger than German economy. Today Russian economy is roughly equal to that of UK and 75% of German economy. How and when exactly do you envision Russian economy growing back to more than 2.4 UK GDP and 1.6 of German?

Russia in the last few years has had good economic growth and being one of the BRIC countries. While I haven't studied such claims in detail , I have seen this claim being waved around mentioned in passing. In fact if you google russian economy of the future this is the first link I find and it mentions in passing that this view is backed by financial experts such as Price Water House Cooper. It remains to be seen whether it can do it with a population which has been falling in the last few years (only achieving net positive growth last year). Stas could probably tell you more, but I suspect these claims are most probably what Iosef is using for his argument, so he most probably didn't just pull this one out of thin air.