RIP INF Treaty: Russia's Victory, America's Waterloo

Oh, it's worse than Obama's mere stupidity.

The ANSWERnik in Chief knew about the INF violations in 2010 but failed to report them to Congress, as he is required to do by law, until 2014. Even then, after four years and breaking the law, he was forced to do so by a report that exposed the violation and his administration's knowledge of the violation.

Personally, I think he knew about it before 2010, but he was too busy kissing Putin's ass at the time to say anything about it. The Russian GLCM that violated the INF (there may be more than one now) was launched in 2007 and I suspect that it was one of the reasons why Bush pushed for the missile defense system in Eastern Europe that Obama scrapped. While Bush was still in office the Russkies were playing shell games with the launch platform and the range of the missile had yet to be established, so the question of compliance was still up in the air. However, establishing a missile defense system in Poland and elsewhere would have been a wise precaution given that it was only a matter of time until they had evidence of a violation.

On the other hand, it appears that Russia would have gone ahead with the program whether Obama reported the violation in 2010 or not. Obviously, the Kremlin didn't scrap the GLCM system after the initial reports and complaints went out five years ago, so as SoS Pompeo pretty much made clear Putin & Co. don't care, and then they made that even more clear when they chose to pull out of the INF instead of returning into compliance. Furthermore, if they just wanted to revise or pull out of the INF earlier in order to deal with potential threats in Asia they could have approached the U.S., and if I recall correctly some of the GLCMs have already been deployed along Russia's European frontier, so that pretty much debunks the narrative that the Kremlin is only worried about China, NoKo and other Asian countries.

So here we are with Trump putting an end to this charade...

 

Complying with federal law, I've had $ withheld for SS starting in 1963. Under the law, I am entitled to get my money back, plus some.

There is nothing wrong with being entitled to get my $ back.

Trying to make "entitlements" into a bad word is a sure sign of not having an argument.

The military industrial complex and their false wars are what drive federal spending, in case you haven't been paying attention.

 

Let’s talk about why the original INF Treaty came into being.

In the late 70’s, the Soviet Union deployed the SS-20 road mobile IRBM. It had a range of more than 3,000 miles, 3 MIRV warheads, and was considered highly survivable. With that range, it allowed the Soviet Union to reach every major city and military installation in Europe from well within Soviet territory and was seen by NATO as an offensive weapon, one designed to split NATO by threatening Europe without threatening America as ICBM’s do.

The US and NATO responded by deploying the Pershing 2 IRBM to West Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands, and by deploying the GLCM (basically a ground-launched nuclear Tomahawk) to England and The Netherlands. The GLCM could be launched very stealthily and fly under radar coverage to their targets, potentially giving zero warning before detonation. The Pershing 2 had a flight time to Moscow of less than 8 minutes.

The threat of a NATO-launched decapitating strike and the possibility of having their Capitol destroyed with almost no warning pushed the Soviets to agree to negotiate for the removal of all intermediate nuclear forces from Europe rather than live under that threat.

Now in the context of today, the Russians have reintroduced intermediate range nuclear forces to Europe, violating the treaty. What we should do is deploy our own intermediate range forces to NATO once again until the Russians agree to scrap their systems.

Except this time, we station them in Poland and the Baltic States and their flight time to Moscow becomes less than 2 minutes.

 

You could have retired 20 years earlier if you had control over your own retirement. SS is the world’s largest Ponzi scheme.

 

Perhaps, but SS has served many well. That the government has "borrowed" funds from SS over the years is not the fault of the design of the system, but a demonstration of poor management.

I agree that it needs to be updated and modified. If the government wasn't so busy chasing around the mythical Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear, we might have accomplished that.

 

No, it isn't.

He lies and is completely ignorant on the matter.

The INF Treaty specifically bans ground-launched cruise missiles within the intermediate range.

It does not ban air-launched or sea-launched missiles of the same class. Neither the US nor the Russians removed air- or sea-launched missiles in their inventories, because those missiles are permitted.

In case you forgot, the US launched quite a few sea-launched cruise missiles targeting a Syrian air base a while back.

Both you and the idiot author have been totally confused by the Lame-Stream Media and the Federation of Ass-Clown Scientists.

I'm referring to the indiscriminate, misleading, deceptive term "nuclear capable."

Yes, China does have intermediate range missiles, but they have no nuclear warheads for them.

China has fewer than 250 nuclear warheads in their stock-pile, but the deceptive Lame-Stream Media and Federation of Ass-Clown Scientists don't bother to tell you that stock-piles include warheads that are not capable of being used, for any number of reasons.

China has fewer than 200 warheads deployed, and none are tactical warheads. They're all strategic warheads. Every single warhead in use is mounted on a silo-based or road-mobile ICBM, or SLBM or is a gravity bomb (to complete the triad).

Clinton gave the Chinese the "football" and missile technology and satellite technology, but it has been more than 20 years, and the Chinese appear not to have done much of anything with that information.

Most Chinese ICBM and SLBM warheads are single 5 megaton warheads. When you're going to miss the target by 4 miles, you need 5 megatons to destroy the target, and that was the case in the 1960s.

But, when the missile, satellite and computer technology improves to the point you're only going to miss the target by 10 meters to 100 meters, you only 400 kt to 750 kt to destroy the target, not 5 megatons.

A 5 megaton warhead would not only destroy a US city, it would destroy the surrounding suburbs as well, while a 400 kt to 750 kt would destroy a city and spare the suburbs. That was Clinton's motivation for giving the Chinese that technology.

While Chinese intermediate range missiles are not presently nuclear capable, they may or may not be able to retro-fit a nuclear warhead on those missile systems.

Whether or not they can, depends on whether the warhead would alter the flight characteristics of the missile.

The Nike is the classic text-book example.

When it was discovered that the neither the radar associated with the Nike-Ajax nor the software could distinguish individual aircraft within a formation of aircraft, like a formation of Russian Bison or Badger bombers, the air defense system was useless.

The US tried to retro-fit a nuclear warhead on the Nike-Ajax, but it altered the flight characteristics and performance so severely that the missile no longer performed as intended.

At great cost and expense to US tax-payers, the US Army had to develop a new missile that could carry either a conventional or nuclear warhead to replace the Nike-Ajax, and that also including modifying all of the existing Nike-Ajax bases.

That was the Nike-Hercules.

One of the primary differences between US tactical missile systems and Russian missile systems, is that all Russian missile systems were capable of using either a conventional or nuclear warhead, and both were produced. For example, the SS-20 intermediate range missile was a MRV (not a MIRV) that could carry either three 60 kt warheads or three 4,000 pound conventional warheads.

US intermediate and short range missile systems, like the Pershing I/IA and Pershing II, Jupiter, Redstone, Honest John, Lance, Sergeant and Corporal were all nuclear only.

Anyway, all Chinese short and intermediate range missiles are conventional only, and they may or may not be able to retro-fit nuclear warheads for them, and if they cannot, then they'll have to design and build new missile systems, and even if they could, the warhead yield might be far less than 10 kt, which might not be of any value.