Does Russian really have so advanced missile weapon?

Discussion in 'World Events' started by Saint, Mar 4, 2018.

  1. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

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    Question: why should we care? What is Russia going to do, nuke florida?
     
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  3. RainbowSingularity Valued Senior Member

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    thats 1 way to prevent climate change from being forced to be recognised by the US government.
    it also solves the problem of the pure capitalist government funding sick elderly democrats.
     
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  5. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    It doesn't matter what they're going to do; it only matters what the American voting residents fear they could conceivably do.
     
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  7. Andrew256 Registered Senior Member

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    The fact that people in power in this day and age are still considering the possibility of wiping out millions of innocent lives with weapons of mass destruction for any conceivable reason, seems the most sickening thing in this world to me, hands down. There is no punishment too cruel for person who is capable of pushing the button, no matter if to attack or to retaliate.

    By the away, I'm from Russia, so if you have questions about our gov from the inside, fire away. Though I'm just a simple sheep being brainwashed like everyone else here, but at least I don't believe our bullshit media.

    By the way, does anyone know if it's true that any nation can start dropping undetectable, unidentifiable, impossible to intercept nuclear ballistics from space, which use only gravity (therefore doesn't have a heat source), and the only thing that's stopping us from deploying such weapons are treaties and agreements?
     
    Last edited: Apr 19, 2018
  8. CptBork Valued Senior Member

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    That makes no sense. Even the most cold-blooded capitalist knows you need poor people working the lower levels of the food chain in order to make sure things can get done at the top, they're not entirely expendable.

    As for Russian nukes...

    1) The US still doesn't even have an effective defense against what Russia was fielding during the Cold War. They could maybe shoot down a dozen missiles or so, but if there are hundreds coming in via sea and space, not much can be expected to survive. America's best bet is to count on Russia's capabilities having been largely degraded due to low budget and poor maintenance, but it's a guessing game as to how far those capabilities have degraded, and Putin loves playing Poker.

    2) None of the existing or proposed weapons systems are invincible. There are lots of technologies for detecting shooting down cruise missiles, space-based weapons platforms and even the stealthiest of submarines. In practice, however, with the current state of NATO defenses, the chances of successfully detecting and intercepting everything are extremely small even without the addition of hundreds or thousands of long-range ICBM's and IRBM's.

    3) The US experimented with nuclear-powered cruise missiles back in the 1960's (I believe they actually generate some kind of miniature nuclear explosion for propulsion, not just heat). The project was quickly abandoned and labeled insane because of the amount of radioactive pollution generated along the flight path.

    4) Russia is on the verge of bankruptcy; they don't have unlimited budgets for wonder weapons and, for the time being, such weapons aren't needed. Putin's speech depended largely on computer simulations and test footage from as far back as 10 years ago.

    The reality is that we're dealing with a nuclear-armed Russian Mafia, and the only way to face them down is by being prepared to sacrifice everything in the event of an escalation, rather than just letting them take whatever they want or feel they can get away with, and allowing them to hold us hostage. For our part, our best weapon is economic sanctions against an extremely weak Russian economy and a fragmented Russian society- such weapons have barely been touched up to this point.
     
  9. Andrew256 Registered Senior Member

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    100
    A question - imagine if during Cold War one of the countries, for any reason, lost the ability to use their nuclear arsenal at all, and this became publicly known. The other side gained military advantage and started to dictate their conditions and rules. The side without nuclear weapons resist and doesn't agree to anything no matter the pressure. Would the side with nuclear advantage then perform a nuclear attack on general population, like USA did in Japan?

    I think not, and especially in our day and age the probability of nuclear attack is almost 0%. The goal is to prove the advantage to the other side, and they will give up under pressure of assured destruction. If one side can't gain the advantage, the mutually assured destruction will also hold them back with almost 100% probability.

    So, we can rest easy, right?
     
    Last edited: Apr 19, 2018
  10. Andrew256 Registered Senior Member

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    100
    I don't know how countries on the verge of bankruptcy are looking from the inside, and if I really saw economic degradation around me, I would call bullshit on Putin. But the thing is, in the last decade the economic situation around me have sky rocketed significantly, and I'm not living in the capital, where it's grown even higher. The quality of living went up, the wages went up, and even though I'm not the highest earner, I'm not experiencing any difficulties with finances. The technology and service spheres in our large cities are now on the same level with Europe, I know some people who came to Russia from Japan and London, and were quite impressed to how it was different from their expectations.

    So, I don't know, maybe mr. Putin is telling the truth after all.
     
  11. Kittamaru Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Adieu, Sciforums. Valued Senior Member

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    You are operating on the assumption that all sides are rational and sane... which, sadly, is not necessarily the case any longer.
     
  12. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    I'm guessing they applied stealth technology to a nuke tipped cruise missile. There's no technical reason it couldn't work. We probably have them too.
     
  13. CptBork Valued Senior Member

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    Well you seem like a likable guy, so if you're not personally feeling any downturn then maybe that's a good thing. On the other hand, my parents visited Russia a few years ago and there are plenty of reports from popular Russian alternative media such as the Moscow Times, which tell a different story. Sochi was supposed to be a great Potemkin village to impress the west, but ended up instead showing everything that was wrong with the country because even the Potemkin stuff didn't work properly. You're probably a young, well-educated professional of some sort, not a retired pensioner or a factory worker making defunct products, who are reported to be the ones getting the worst of the economic shaft.

    Even by Russia's own accounting, oil and gas exports are the only things keeping the Russian economy afloat while nearly all other categories of products and services have been in decline for the past decade. Putin benefited from high oil prices in previous years and now most of the money saved from those years has been spent, and without selling government bonds on European markets, the central government would have already run out of cash. Ownership of Russian industry is consolidating rather than diversifying, the central government already creates more than half of the country's GDP.

    So maybe the mainstream western media has it totally wrong, but it's hard to paint a portrait of Russian prosperity, you just don't see the normal indicators for it. It's also hard not to notice how every little challenge to Putin's authority leads to jail time for fraud and tax evasion, a practice which isn't generally known to lead to prosperity. Other than Putin's personal phobias, I think real, comprehensive, painful economic sanction are the only tool we currently have to pressure him into cooperating with democracies and respecting human rights, and limiting the damage he can do if he refuses to be rational.
     

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