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Trump is a racist. He isn't even hiding it anymore.

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Re: Trump is a racist. He isn't even hiding it anymore.
Post by edgeworthy   » Sat Jul 20, 2019 8:07 pm

edgeworthy
Lieutenant (Senior Grade)

Posts: 83
Joined: Sat Apr 14, 2018 10:34 pm

Anyone else want to get this, because I'm not sure I can handle the Irony Impairment?
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Re: Trump is a racist. He isn't even hiding it anymore.
Post by TFLYTSNBN   » Sun Jul 21, 2019 10:27 am

TFLYTSNBN

gcomeau wrote:
TFLYTSNBN wrote:


Do you understand what a profound paradigm shift that is?


That America's traditional longstanding allies no longer view the United States as a DEPENDABLE partner that can be trusted to stand by them when it is needed?

Yes TFLY, we all get how profound a shift that is.



You mean that America's longstanding allies no longer view the United States as a DEPENDABLE partner that can be trusted to commit NUCLEAR SUICIDE to protect them when it is needed?
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Re: Trump is a racist. He isn't even hiding it anymore.
Post by TFLYTSNBN   » Sun Jul 21, 2019 10:49 am

TFLYTSNBN

edgeworthy wrote:Anyone else want to get this, because I'm not sure I can handle the Irony Impairment?



Well judging by the orange pigmentation of Oompa Loompas, Loompa Land must be somewhere in Northern Europe. Oompa Loompas could also immigrate legally under employment visas.
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Re: Trump is a racist. He isn't even hiding it anymore.
Post by edgeworthy   » Sun Jul 21, 2019 6:34 pm

edgeworthy
Lieutenant (Senior Grade)

Posts: 83
Joined: Sat Apr 14, 2018 10:34 pm

TFLYTSNBN wrote:
edgeworthy wrote:Anyone else want to get this, because I'm not sure I can handle the Irony Impairment?



Well judging by the orange pigmentation of Oompa Loompas, Loompa Land must be somewhere in Northern Europe. Oompa Loompas could also immigrate legally under employment visas.

Actually Loompa-Land is clearly subtropical, and according to its historical archivist somewhere in Africa.
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Re: Trump is a racist. He isn't even hiding it anymore.
Post by TFLYTSNBN   » Sun Jul 21, 2019 10:14 pm

TFLYTSNBN

[quote="edgeworthy"


Well judging by the orange pigmentation of Oompa Loompas, Loompa Land must be somewhere in Northern Europe. Oompa Loompas could also immigrate legally under employment visas.[/quote]
Actually Loompa-Land is clearly subtropical, and according to its historical archivist somewhere in Africa.[/quote]


I happen to know an Ewok from the Star Wars movies and he assures me that the only little people from Africa are black, not orange.
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Re: Trump is a racist. He isn't even hiding it anymore.
Post by Dilandu   » Mon Jul 22, 2019 6:13 am

Dilandu
Admiral

Posts: 2536
Joined: Sat May 07, 2011 1:44 pm
Location: Russia

TFLYTSNBN wrote:
You mean that America's longstanding allies no longer view the United States as a DEPENDABLE partner that can be trusted to commit NUCLEAR SUICIDE to protect them when it is needed?


Your lack of knowledge about nuclear strategy is appaling. MAD is not a common doctrine of nuclear war now.
------------------------------

Oh well, if shortening the front is what the Germans crave,
Let's shorten it to very end - the length of Fuhrer's grave.

(Red Army lyrics from 1945)
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Re: Trump is a racist. He isn't even hiding it anymore.
Post by TFLYTSNBN   » Mon Jul 22, 2019 9:12 am

TFLYTSNBN

Dilandu wrote:
TFLYTSNBN wrote:
You mean that America's longstanding allies no longer view the United States as a DEPENDABLE partner that can be trusted to commit NUCLEAR SUICIDE to protect them when it is needed?


Your lack of knowledge about nuclear strategy is appaling. MAD is not a common doctrine of nuclear war now.



Would you care to explain why a nuclear war would not likely result in severe carnage and destruction to both sides?

I understand probably far more than you do what the effects of nuclear weapons are. I have an excellent understanding of what the evolving counterforce capabilities can do to reduce the severity of retaliation. I also have an excellent understanding of how bomb shelters and missile defense systems can mitigate the carnage. While much of the common hyperbole is hyperbolic, the fact remains that both Russia and the US have the capability to inflict tens of millions of deaths on the other. Smaller nuclear power such as France, China, England, India, Pakistan and India can inflict millions of deaths even on Russia or the US and tens of millions of deaths against their regional peers. Even North Korea would have a significant probability of getting at least one warhead on target against the US or USSR.

So why should the US continue to provide a nuclear umbrella to protect allies that serve minimal purpose now that the Cold War is over?
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Re: Trump is a racist. He isn't even hiding it anymore.
Post by Dilandu   » Mon Jul 22, 2019 1:20 pm

Dilandu
Admiral

Posts: 2536
Joined: Sat May 07, 2011 1:44 pm
Location: Russia

TFLYTSNBN wrote:
Would you care to explain why a nuclear war would not likely result in severe carnage and destruction to both sides?


Because what the point of doing that?

Nobody went to war with the goal "to kill myself with the enemy". Such scenario is so useless, that the capitulation is actually more preferable than resorting to that.

All those MAD doctrines of "massive retaliations" and similar were the direct results of World War 2 and made under World War 2 assumptions that any future war would be a zero-sum game, in which one side would emerge victorious and the other would be completely destroyed. Basically, the MAD was a pure deterrence theory: "do not start the war, or we would kill you even if you would kill us too".

Problem was, that while those doctrines worked fine as deterrence, they actually were quite useless to actually FIGHT the war, if it somehow started. The enemy may just not believe that you would be eager to risk total destruction over some small-scale crisis. Just for example, read about "Madman theory" of Nixon in Vietnam. Basically, it was an attempt to use MAD to intimidate USSR to back off from Vietnam, by creating the impression that US ready to start total nuclear war. The idea failed miserably, because Soviet leadership simply did not believe that US government would actually be ready to start total war over Vietnam. So they called it the bluff and proceed their way.

So, the MAD was fine as instrument to make war less appealing for potential aggressor, but utterly useless as actual war-fighting instrument. That's why in 1960s both USA and USSR started to work on more realistic approaches, which would allow them to have some more practical solution between doing nothing and blowing up the planet.

The more modern doctrines discriminated the counter-value strikes (against cities, with the goal to destroy the enemy population), and counter-force strikes (against enemy military installations). The general idea was, that counter-value nuclear attacks should be avoided, while counter-force strikes could be used. Basically, the idea was based on the correct assumptions that both sides are worried about their population, and thus would be reluctant to strike against the enemy population, fearing the retaliation. There are quite a difference between, say, nuclear strike against a ICBM silo in Nevada wilderness, or destruction of New York. The first case is a counter-force attack against a perfectly legitimate military targets; while it MAY inflict civilian casualties, it was definitely NOT aimed to do that.

Furthermore, in 1970s both sides realized, that there are simply no reasons to target enemy population anyway. The nuclear exchange is fast. It is MUCH faster than any possible mobilization or military buildup or World War 2-style. The enemy population therefore could not attribute ANYTHING to the military action.

Basically, it was the most important discovery in nuclear war doctrine. The enemy population have no military value. The nuclear exchange and any post-nuclear fighting would be completed long before this population would be able to even start to mobilize. And so, why bother target enemy civilians at all? It is more practical to nuke the enemy military bases, command centers, radars, airfields, missile facilities - in other words, his military potential. If you were able to successfully reduce the enemy military potential, then you could then just use your conventional forces to make precision strikes against enemy infrastructure, and destroy his industry. So the enemy population, even when it would start to mobilize, would be left with nothing to fight.

So the late-1980s - and modern - nuclear war doctrine is a counter-force exchange with the main goals to be a destruction of enemy military forces & preservation of your own military. The enemy population is NOT considered a target (only as a reservation against enemy strikes against YOUR population - basically, you should hold a few warheads aimed on enemy cities in reserve, so the enemy would not have any big ideas about nuking your civilians). The final element of this doctrine by US side should be a SDI system. It was NOT designed to protect American population - it was simply impossible. What it was designed for, is to protect the American MILITARY - so any possible nuclear exchange would be beneficial for USA.

A simple rule: if you destroy 9 out of 10 warheads, aimed on your city, you would still lose a city. But if you destroy 9 out of 10 warheads, aimed against your 10 missile silos, then nine of your missiles would survive the attack. So the SDI - useless in protecting "soft" civilian targets, but extremely useful in protecting "hard", military targets.
------------------------------

Oh well, if shortening the front is what the Germans crave,
Let's shorten it to very end - the length of Fuhrer's grave.

(Red Army lyrics from 1945)
Top
Re: Trump is a racist. He isn't even hiding it anymore.
Post by TFLYTSNBN   » Mon Jul 22, 2019 6:13 pm

TFLYTSNBN

Dilandu wrote:
TFLYTSNBN wrote:
Would you care to explain why a nuclear war would not likely result in severe carnage and destruction to both sides?


Because what the point of doing that?

Nobody went to war with the goal "to kill myself with the enemy". Such scenario is so useless, that the capitulation is actually more preferable than resorting to that.

All those MAD doctrines of "massive retaliations" and similar were the direct results of World War 2 and made under World War 2 assumptions that any future war would be a zero-sum game, in which one side would emerge victorious and the other would be completely destroyed. Basically, the MAD was a pure deterrence theory: "do not start the war, or we would kill you even if you would kill us too".

Problem was, that while those doctrines worked fine as deterrence, they actually were quite useless to actually FIGHT the war, if it somehow started. The enemy may just not believe that you would be eager to risk total destruction over some small-scale crisis. Just for example, read about "Madman theory" of Nixon in Vietnam. Basically, it was an attempt to use MAD to intimidate USSR to back off from Vietnam, by creating the impression that US ready to start total nuclear war. The idea failed miserably, because Soviet leadership simply did not believe that US government would actually be ready to start total war over Vietnam. So they called it the bluff and proceed their way.

So, the MAD was fine as instrument to make war less appealing for potential aggressor, but utterly useless as actual war-fighting instrument. That's why in 1960s both USA and USSR started to work on more realistic approaches, which would allow them to have some more practical solution between doing nothing and blowing up the planet.

The more modern doctrines discriminated the counter-value strikes (against cities, with the goal to destroy the enemy population), and counter-force strikes (against enemy military installations). The general idea was, that counter-value nuclear attacks should be avoided, while counter-force strikes could be used. Basically, the idea was based on the correct assumptions that both sides are worried about their population, and thus would be reluctant to strike against the enemy population, fearing the retaliation. There are quite a difference between, say, nuclear strike against a ICBM silo in Nevada wilderness, or destruction of New York. The first case is a counter-force attack against a perfectly legitimate military targets; while it MAY inflict civilian casualties, it was definitely NOT aimed to do that.

Furthermore, in 1970s both sides realized, that there are simply no reasons to target enemy population anyway. The nuclear exchange is fast. It is MUCH faster than any possible mobilization or military buildup or World War 2-style. The enemy population therefore could not attribute ANYTHING to the military action.

Basically, it was the most important discovery in nuclear war doctrine. The enemy population have no military value. The nuclear exchange and any post-nuclear fighting would be completed long before this population would be able to even start to mobilize. And so, why bother target enemy civilians at all? It is more practical to nuke the enemy military bases, command centers, radars, airfields, missile facilities - in other words, his military potential. If you were able to successfully reduce the enemy military potential, then you could then just use your conventional forces to make precision strikes against enemy infrastructure, and destroy his industry. So the enemy population, even when it would start to mobilize, would be left with nothing to fight.

So the late-1980s - and modern - nuclear war doctrine is a counter-force exchange with the main goals to be a destruction of enemy military forces & preservation of your own military. The enemy population is NOT considered a target (only as a reservation against enemy strikes against YOUR population - basically, you should hold a few warheads aimed on enemy cities in reserve, so the enemy would not have any big ideas about nuking your civilians). The final element of this doctrine by US side should be a SDI system. It was NOT designed to protect American population - it was simply impossible. What it was designed for, is to protect the American MILITARY - so any possible nuclear exchange would be beneficial for USA.

A simple rule: if you destroy 9 out of 10 warheads, aimed on your city, you would still lose a city. But if you destroy 9 out of 10 warheads, aimed against your 10 missile silos, then nine of your missiles would survive the attack. So the SDI - useless in protecting "soft" civilian targets, but extremely useful in protecting "hard", military targets.



As I expected when I made that post, your reply demonstrated some sophistication regarding the realities of possible nuclear war fighting.

You might find this article interesting:

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source= ... 3827309622

You articulate some of the realities well. During the early Cold War, missiles and even bombers could not deliver nuclear weapons accuraately enough to destroy moderately hardened military targets unless very high yield weapons were used. As a result, it was not plausible to attack military targets without employing very high yield nuclear weapons. The American Titan 2 missile carried a 10 Megaton bomb and the B-52s carried 2 twenty Megaton bombs. Such an attack using high yield weapons will inevitably kill many millions of people. As a result, the destinction between Countervalue attacks against cities and Counterforce attacks against military targets was negligible. The few exceptions were nuclear attacks against ships or submarines at sea, bombers at distance from populated areas, and missile warheads or satelytes in space.

Improvements in guidance systems enabled effective attacks against military targets using much lower yield warheads, even against very hard military targets including hardened missile silos. The US Minuteman 3 missile with a CEP of about 150 meters had significant capability against the USSR's ICBM silos. The MIRVed versions of Soviet SS-18s along with SS-17 and SS-19 were less accurate but far more capable against the US ICBM silos because they had higher yield and far more warheads. The American Pershing 2 with its precision guided nuclear warhead was incrediably effective against any hardened target within its limited range.

Fallout from a counterforce attack using high yield weapons would have been horrific, but that could have been mitigated with a sentient civil defense posture based on shelters rather than evacuations. The US civil defense posture was insane because our imbecile strategist believed that protecting our own people rather than killing Russians was somehow ilmoral. The Soviet civil defense posture was far more sentient which In My Humble Opinion was extremely moral.

Given moderately hardened shelters for civilians comparable to subways or even sewers, or alternatively underground fuel storage tanks, the number of warheads needed to kill the population of a city inceases by an order of magnitude. The US would need about 4,000, one-third to one-half megaton warheads to kill the population of Russia's 100 largest cities. The Soviets or Russians would need about the same number of their somewhat higher yield warheads to kill the inhabitants of America's 100 largest cities. Of course the US has no shelters to protect civilians. I am uncertain of Russia's current civil defense posture.

Your simplistic math about the efficacy of a 90% effective SDI is inaccurate. Unless the attacker has the ability to rapidly retarget warheads in MAuvering Reentry Vehicles in flight, you do not hit all of the targets with the 10% of the warheads that are not intercepted by a 90% effective missile defense system. The proper equation is:

Psurviving (of target) = Pintercept ^ N warheads per target

Your scenario of attacking each target with ten warheads to overwhelm a 90% effective SDI results in about 35% of the targeted population surviving. A lot of the targets get nuked repeatedly.

Of course the STrategic Arms Reduction Treaty has resulted in neither the US or Russia having a massive overabundance of warheads with which to target the other's civilian population in a genocidal attack. However; both Russia and America have suffecient warheads to kill millions of the other's people plus inflict massive infrastructure damage even if both sides have reasonably effective missile defense systems. Mutual Assured Deterrance is achieved without having massive, Mutual Assurred Destruction.

START plus Bomb Shelters plus Miissile Defenses equals a significant chance of societal survival.

Three decades later the accuracy of ICBMs and even SLBMs has evolved so that even superhardened missile silos can be destroyed with very low yield nuclear warheads or even conventional warheads. Read the article that I linked to. An effective counterforce strike that results in minimal civilian casaulties is now very plausible. This is why Russia deploys mobile ICBMs. The US continues to keep Minuteman 3 missiles in silos that are hardened but still very vulnerable against precision guided nuclear warheads. I can not imagine any plausible or moral reason to retain the Minuteman force unless it is protected by at least a moderately effective ABM system.

Interestingly; the high priests of MAD have been castigating the Trump administration for wanting to produce and deploy much lower yield warheads on our Trident missiles. The increased accuracy of the newest Trident guidance system enables the destruction of hardened military targets with much lower yield warheads feasible. Reducing the number of Russians or anyone else that might be killed by a US counterforce strike would allegedly be "destabilizing."

Here is an example of the drivel:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/ ... y-doctrine

Of course the above discussion ignores the key fact that the best strategy to survive a nuclear war is to not have a nuclear war. To avoid having a nuclear war, both sides need to avoid engaging in confrontations that threaten the other's survival or vital interest.

1st commandment of surviving a nuclear war:
Thou Shalt Not Nuke Thy Neighbor.

2nd commandment of surviving a nuclear war:
Thou Shalt Not Enable an Insane, Third World Communist Despot or a Theological Dictatorship to Nuke Thy Neighbor.

3rd commandment of surviving a nuclear war:
Thou Shalt Not Incite a Coup in Thy Neighbor's Former Province That Will Bring a Xenophobic Despot to Power Who Will Emgage in Ethnic Cleansing.

4Th Commandment of Surviving a Nuclear War:
Though Shalt Not Provide Military Support for Islamic Jihadists to Enable Ethnic Cleansing of Slavic Peoples from Thy Neighbor's Former Warsaw Pact Allies.

5th Commandment of Surviving a Nuclear War:
Though Shalt Not Incite an "Arab Spring" Insurgency to Overthrow an Arab Dictator Who had Relinquished His WMD. This is especially true if the coup is intended to enable your allies to get valuable oil concessions and if said dictator is going to get sodomized with a bayonet.

6th Commandment of Surviving a Nuclear War:
Thou Shalt Not Enter into Entangling Alliances with Imbecilic Allies Who Would Feel Entitled to Violate the First Five Commandments of Surviving a Nuclear War Because They Expect You to Wage a Nuclear With Russia, China, North Korea, Pakistan or Iran to Protect Their Miserable Asses.
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Re: Trump is a racist. He isn't even hiding it anymore.
Post by TFLYTSNBN   » Wed Jul 31, 2019 6:14 pm

TFLYTSNBN

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