Jp wrote:
so maybe a controlled EMP? Not according to Ocean's Eleven*, they could use a pinch. *Best movie, ever. Sequal was ok.** **Yes, all my thoughts are from TV land. | |
Duh, the obvious way is via sound. Work out the frequency of NUKE then just send the sound down via big speakers, thus making the NUKE-atoms vibrate, bashing together and detonating early. Not only do you detonate the bomb, you also trash your enemy's silos AND get one hell of a party out of it.
*break-dances* Remember, all you need to do is disrupt the atomic nuke particular molecule dust (atomium, H2Na) and viola! Job done. | |
Jp wrote:
A few important quotes: It does not matter whether they are degraded or not. If they are dangerous, they are dangerous. And pre-Gulf War doesn't matter either; Saddam was supposed to have gotten rid of them. It doesn't matter whether they were made today, last year or a decade ago. "The weapons are thought to be manufactured before 1991 so they would not be proof of an ongoing WMD program in the 1990s." The project doesn't need to have been ongoing. "Offering the official administration response to FOX News, a senior Defense Department official pointed out that the chemical weapons were not in useable conditions. And the senator said that the report claims the stockpile was still dangerous, possibly lethal even. The fact is that the WMD were found, and they were exactly what we were going after. Saddam was not supposed to have them, and we told him to get rid of them and prove he did so or we were coming in to do it. He did not, so we did. | |
Jp wrote:
And it probably won't be a nuke if they test-fire it - it'll be a dud. The idea is that they're testing the rocket, not the explosive. That was part of my point, that they were just testing a rocket. Of course, your missile-defence system is useless, anyway. It is not useless. The system has had both successful and failed tests. | |
Who says we have to hit it? We just have to disable or stop it. Maybe this missile protection will work. You guys are overlooking things.
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They're only dangerous because you're poking around with them - they couldn't be fired.
I'm fully aware that they should have been destroyed - the funny thing is, they essentially have been. I wouldn't consider old, unusable chemical weapons to be a threat. Certainly not something worth going to war for. Given that they're degraded, Saddam and co. may well have forgotten about them - presumably, they would have tried to maintain them, otherwise. The project doesn't need to have been ongoing. George Bush claimed that Saddam was making, and was intending to make weapons. This isn't proof of that. I note that you left out an important bit of the last quote: "This does not reflect a capacity that was built up after 1991," the official said, adding the munitions "are not the WMDs this country and the rest of the world believed Iraq had, and not the WMDs for which this country went to war."" Mr. Senior Defence Official thinks that these aren't the sort of weapons you went to war with Iraq over. Given that he's a senior defence official, I think he'd know. The fact is that the WMD were found, and they were exactly what we were going after. Saddam was not supposed to have them, and we told him to get rid of them and prove he did so or we were coming in to do it. He did not, so we did. These aren't WMD. These are old, degraded, unusable, ex-WMD. They have been gotten rid of. Even the defence official quoted in the link you provided doesn't think that this is what you were after. Furthermore, you invaded Iraq before it had a chance to prove that it had no weapons. In case you've forgotten, there were weapons inspectors having a thorough look-around before you invaded. They had to leave because you invaded. That was the correct way to do it - send in inspectors, if THEY find something, then you threaten to invade. | |
'disable/stop' = 'hit'. What, you think that there's a way to just make it turn off in midair?
A few problems with that: If you somehow deactivate its engine, what do you think happens to it? It falls and blows up something else. Maybe not you, but excuse me if I don't think that's a particularly ethical strategy. There's no way you can dis-arm it in the air. | |
CaptFalcon33035 wrote:
You guys are overlooking things. Like the fact that we are already using similar technology successfully against aircraft quite successfully. The speeds are even more pronounced than in jets, but the technology is still similar. Also, rockets don't try to dodge missiles, at least not that I'm aware of, and yet jets do and still get hit. It's a difficult task, but I don't think it's quite as difficult as some make it out to be. As for taking out a nuke with a nuke, that doesn't defeat the purpose at all. As long as it all happens far from people it's still much better than blowing up a city, even if it is still bad. | |
Like the fact that we are already using similar technology successfully against aircraft quite successfully. The speeds are even more pronounced than in jets, but the technology is still similar. Also, rockets don't try to dodge missiles, at least not that I'm aware of, and yet jets do and still get hit. Nuclear missiles travel at least an order of magnitude faster then any jet. T For one thing, you can be certain that any missile you fire will be faster then a jet. When you're talking about nukes, that goes out the window. And while nukes may not try to dodge missiles, there are a range of countermeasures that can be taken to prevent the guidance system picking it up - such as cooling it down with liquid nitrogen, using chaff, and using duds - duds which could even be heated, to confuse the issue even further. It just isn't happening. ICBMs take less then half an hour to go from launch to target. You have half an hour to hit something travelling at mach 10 or so, that may or may not employ countermeasures to prevent automatic guidance systems getting a hold on it. | |
Jp wrote:
I note that you left out an important bit of the last quote: I left it out because it was nonsense. WMD are WMD, and if they are dangerous they are dangerous. They don't have to be launchable to be dangerous. They can be spread by other means (IEDs are their favorite means) or moved into newer weapons. In fact, it makes more sense for him to do it that way, to leave them in older delivery systems so that people can say they are not usable, then just move them into newer ones when he wants to use them. That could explain why we found all those empty missiles back at the beginning of the war. Furthermore, you invaded Iraq before it had a chance to prove that it had no weapons. In case you've forgotten, there were weapons inspectors having a thorough look-around before you invaded. They had to leave because you invaded. That was the correct way to do it - send in inspectors, if THEY find something, then you threaten to invade. I say giving Iraq and the UN inspectors a decade is more than generous enough, and that giving them another decade would be a very bad decision. Remember, you can't look at it with your hindsight from this side of the fence; whether or not you agree with the results, the results plus the expected near-future results plus the results we had expected before on top of that all combined were definitely sufficient motive. Either way, my point was that they found some of the WMD they were looking for. | |
And my point is that the things are useless - even your government agrees. Why else would they keep it classified for so long, if it didn't really have any bearing on anything?
Regardless of whether or not they could be delivered through other means, they haven't been setup for that. They're old, they weren't obviously setup in such a way that they could be moved over (Or your administration would have been crowing over it when they found them). Properly destroying stuff like this is difficult - Saddam may well have just dumped them. The existance of 500 ancient, degraded chemical weapons is certainly not the threat that Bush claimed Iraq was before he invaded. I say giving Iraq and the UN inspectors a decade is more than generous enough, and that giving them another decade would be a very bad decision. They hadn't been given a decade. Popping in and out to check on some things every so often is one thing - an actual search, the type of thing that was precipitated by George Bush's accusations not long before the war, is another. They weren't doing that for a decade. Let weapons inspectors do their jobs, and they'll make sure countries don't have these sorts of weapons in an operational state. Remember, you can't look at it with your hindsight from this side of the fence; whether or not you agree with the results, the results plus the expected near-future results plus the results we had expected before on top of that all combined were definitely sufficient motive. I don't understand what you're trying to say there. Could you elaborate? | |
Jp wrote:
And while nukes may not try to dodge missiles, there are a range of countermeasures that can be taken to prevent the guidance system picking it up - such as cooling it down with liquid nitrogen, using chaff, and using duds - duds which could even be heated, to confuse the issue even further. It just isn't happening. Countermeasures which could also be used with jets, and yet we see jets being hit. The only thing these rockets have over them is their speed and height. ICBMs take less then half an hour to go from launch to target. You have half an hour to hit something travelling at mach 10 or so Norad knows whenever anything like that is launched almost instantly. And our defenses are closer to us than the enemy missile, so it isn't going to get here before we can react. Actually hitting it with another missile at its speed is the biggest issue. Still, they can calculate its trajectory easily enough and get something into the same general location without any problem. For an example as to how amazing tracking systems are, we have mobile radar vehicles that acompany tanks and can pinpoint where enemy artillary is from the incoming shots and then return accurate fire to take the enemies out before those enemy shells even land. Also, a missile itself doesn't have to hit another missile to take it out. There are systems that deploy multiple weapons or that shoot debillitating shrapnel which could be adapted to this system to inrease the odds. For example, we have missiles that can carry over a hundred grenades. Of course, I'm not saying it's easy, just that it's not impossible. Our technology has come a long way in the last few years and we have a lot of complex gadgets that go beyond straightforward missiles. And if we deploy enough of them, that increases the odds as well. If they suspect a nuke is incoming, I wouldn't be surprised if you see a dozen or more counter-missiles trying to take it out, all deploying multiple shots at the incoming enemy rocket. | |
Jp wrote:
I don't understand what you're trying to say there. Could you elaborate? I'm saying that even if you disagree about the results of the war, that has no bearing on the decision to go to it in the first place. Hindsight is 20/20. You have to judge decisions by the knowledge they were made in at the time they were made, not by the knowledge you have after the fact. | |
Countermeasures which could also be used with jets, and yet we see jets being hit. The only thing these rockets have over them is their speed and height. It's easier to do it with missiles. Pilots don't enjoy being at the same temperature as liquid nitrogen, last time I checked, chaff would just drop to the ground - unlike in the near-space region that ICBMs inhabit. Duds would need an engine, and it gets complicated deploying them. Norad knows whenever anything like that is launched almost instantly. And our defenses are closer to us than the enemy missile, so it isn't going to get here before we can react. Actually hitting it with another missile at its speed is the biggest issue. Still, they can calculate its trajectory easily enough and get something into the same general location without any problem. Half an hour means that you don't have much of a window to react - if a missile misses its target, it can't swing around and hit it again. Calculating the trajectory of something travelling at mach 10 isn't quite the same as working out the trajectory of an artillery shell - even small changes in direction will result in massive deviations in trajectory. And you still need to find the thing to hit it with some sort of shrapnel-spraying system - which is much, much harder then it sounds. Additionally, you have, by now, well and truely slipped into the world of 'it costs more to blow up these incoming missiles then it does to fire them'. In these hinterlands, whoever the agressor is can just keep firing, knowing full well that you can't stop every nuke, and even if you do, it's more expensive for you then it is for him - and you have to worry about nuclear fallout. MIRVs, in particular, make this strategy viable. It's not quite impossible, but it is impossible to do it with great regularity and predictability - Even getting as much as a 50% hit rate is unlikely, and even when you do hit the thing, you get fallout. It isn't worth the great expense. The money being funneled into this project could be better spent elsewhere - say, education? It's even harder to stop these missiles then it is to shoot a bullet with another bullet - these missiles travel faster then bullets. It's ridiculously difficult to hit them. | |
I see. Before the war, I disliked it, too. I was pretty sure you wouldn't find anything, and I thought you should have let the weapons inspectors do their job. I also thought it would lead to civil war, and massive civilian deaths.
It's not neccessarily hindsight - it's confirmation of what I thought was going to happen. | |
Mellifluous wrote:
[...] the propaganda over in North Korea is a little disturbing as they go along the lines that the West, if they were to capture or get ahold of a Korean they would be tortured and mistreated until death. I agree, that's slanderous; nobody in Guantanamo has died from the torture. The military is better at it than that. (I jest, I jest...) | |
Jon88 wrote:
Jp wrote: Russians never blew up a nuke above a battlefield, all it was is that they had a nuclear power plant and because the guys/gals in the control room making sure that the core stayed in good conditions and not overheat or go into meltdown. What happened was that apparently "according to what was said at the time" the people in the control room went out for a drink and something to eat, the core went into meltdown and because the nuclear factory was not built properly with the proper funding. Hence not enough ground concrete to accomodate the nuclear explosion in the ground to stop nuclear toxins getting into the soil. So, when it got into the soil, everyone in Chernobyl was killed by nuclear radiation, parts of the nuclear toxins eventually spread west and some hit the UK midlands where people had baby deaths before they had their births because of the radiation. This happened in 1986 if I recall it. If you want to read up about the Chernobyl Incident here's a link for you; http://www.u.arizona.edu/~jbegg/lab4/lab4.html --Lee | |
You have no idea what you're talking about.
1 - Chernobyl was a well maintained, well funded, working plant. It just so happened that some idiot turned off some of the safety systems, for ill-understood reasons. Result? Boom. 2 - The Russians did indeed conduct some nuclear tests. So has every other country that has ever developed nuclear weapons. | |
Jp wrote:
You have no idea what you're talking about. I might not know everything about it, but that matter is I know parts of it. So you can't just flaunt around saying "I have no idea what I'm talking about." 1 - Chernobyl was a well maintained, well funded, working plant. It just so happened that some idiot turned off some of the safety systems, for ill-understood reasons. Result? Boom. If that is so true, about the funding, why in hell did they not use the ammount of ground concrete that you are supposed to undergound to accomodate if there happens to be an explosion? As with what happened to Chernobyl. If they had used the proper ammount of concrete, there would not have been a widespread disaster. -- Or it might have not been as large an effect as it was. 2 - The Russians did indeed conduct some nuclear tests. So has every other country that has ever developed nuclear weapons. Yes, but the point is Russia made the mistake of not fully grounding the nuclear plant, that inturn made it easier for the radiation to spread accross Europe. --Lee | |
Know what the standard (In fact, pretty much the only) way of producing an EMP is?
Detonating a nuke.
Yeah, sort of misses the point there.
ICBMs fly right at the edge of space - no plane can get that high.
The laser would have to be very close to the launch site - laser light doesn't travel too far in air, due to scattering off molecules in the air. Additionally, it would have to swivel pretty fast to keep the missile in the beam. And then there's the whole tracking problem, again...