US arms control expert: Hwasong-14 could even reach East Coast, but US anti-missile defenses probably couldn't shoot it down. Pyongyang likely has warhead that fits, he adds.Does NK have a nuclear deterrent?
The Russian "doomsday machine" continues to safeguard the country's sovereignty and national interests, RIA Novosti contributor Alexander Khrolenko writes, shedding light on how Perimeter, an automatic nuclear-control system dubbed 'Dead Hand,' actually works.…
After the end of the Cold War, the Russian "doomsday machine" was removed from combat duty in 1995.
However, "the United States and its allies did not appreciate this gesture of goodwill of the leadership of the Russian Federation, and began to actively create the world of 'American exceptionalism', with NATO proceeding to move closer to Russian borders," Khrolenko pointed out.
Thus, in December 2011 the commander of the Russian Strategic Missile Forces, Sergei Karakaev, announced in an interview with Komsomolskaya Pravda that the Perimeter system was up and running again....Sputnik International
In fact, even Dan Coats himself has said this, in a 2008 op-ed he co-wrote. “An Islamic Republic of Iran with nuclear weapons capability would be strategically untenable,” Coats said, because it would possess a “deterrent” against U.S. attack. And to prevent Iran from acquiring the ability to deter us, he explained, we might have to attack them.WTF? This is "liberal" order? How authoritarian can you get?
Russian planners will almost surely see the advance in fuzing capability as empowering an increasingly feasible US preemptive nuclear strike capability—a capability that would require Russia to undertake countermeasures that would further increase the already dangerously high readiness of Russian nuclear forces. Tense nuclear postures based on worst-case planning assumptions already pose the possibility of a nuclear response to false warning of attack. The new kill capability created by super-fuzing increases the tension and the risk that US or Russian nuclear forces will be used in response to early warning of an attack—even when an attack has not occurred.
The increased capability of the US submarine force will likely be seen as even more threatening because Russia does not have a functioning space-based infrared early warning system but relies primarily on ground-based early warning radars to detect a US missile attack. Since these radars cannot see over the horizon, Russia has less than half as much early-warning time as the United States. (The United States has about 30 minutes, Russia 15 minutes or less.)
The inability of Russia to globally monitor missile launches from space means that Russian military and political leaders would have no “situational awareness” to help them assess whether an early-warning radar indication of a surprise attack is real or the result of a technical error.
The combination of this lack of Russian situational awareness, dangerously short warning times, high-readiness alert postures, and the increasing US strike capacity has created a deeply destabilizing and dangerous strategic nuclear situation.
When viewed in the alarming context of deteriorating political relations between Russia and the West, and the threats and counter-threats that are now becoming the norm for both sides in this evolving standoff, it may well be that the danger of an accident leading to nuclear war is as high now as it was in periods of peak crisis during the Cold War....
The U.S. government’s plan to conquer Russia is based upon a belief in, and the fundamental plan to establish, “Nuclear Primacy” against Russia — an American ability to win a nuclear war against, and so conquer, Russia.
This concept became respectable in U.S. academic and governmental policymaking circles when virtually simultaneously in 2006 a short-form and a long-form version of an article endorsing the concept, which the article’s two co-authors there named “nuclear primacy,” were published respectively in the world’s two most influential journals of international affairs, Foreign Affairs from the Council on Foreign Relations, and International Security from Harvard. (CFR got the more popular short version, titled “The Rise of U.S. Nuclear Primacy”, and Harvard got the more scholarly long version, which was titled “The End of MAD?”.)
This article claimed that the central geostrategic concept during the Cold War with the Soviet Union, Mutually Assured Destruction or “MAD” — in which there is no such thing as the U.S. or the U.S.S.R. conquering the other, because the first of the two to attack will itself also be destroyed by the surviving nuclear forces of the one responding to that attack — will soon be merely past history (like the Soviet Union itself already is); and, so, as the short form of the article said, “nuclear primacy remains a goal of the United States”; and, as the long form said, “the United States now stands on the cusp of nuclear primacy.” In other words: arms-control or no, the U.S. should, and soon will, be able to grab Russia (the largest land-mass of any country, and also the one richest in natural resources).…
A far less influential scholarly journal, China Policy, published later in 2006 a critical article arguing against nuclear supremacy, but that article has had no impact upon policymaking. Its title was “The Fallacy of Nuclear Primacy” and it argued that, “American nuclear supremacy removes the root source of stability from the nuclear equation: mutual vulnerability.” It presented a moral argument: “U.S. leaders might try to exploit its nuclear superiority … by actually launching a cold-blooded nuclear attack against its nuclear rival in the midst of an intense crisis. The professors discount significantly the power of the nuclear taboo to restrain U.S. leaders from crossing the fateful threshold. If crisis circumstances grow dire enough, the temptation to try to disarm their nuclear adversaries through a nuclear first-strike may be too strong to resist, they argue.”...
The co-authors of (both versions of) the article that had proposed and endorsed nuclear primacy, then published in 2007 (this one also in International Security), a response to that critical article. This reply’s title was “U.S. Nuclear Primacy and the Future of the Chinese Deterrent”. But it had no more impact than did the obscure article it was arguing against.
Thus, nuclear primacy has become U.S. policy, and MAD no longer is U.S. policy (though it remains Russian policy). The U.S. government is planning to take over Russia (basically, to install a puppet-regime there). That’s the reality....
Whether Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, will continue with that longstanding (ever since 24 February 1990) plan to conquer Russia, or instead finally end the Cold War on the U.S. side (as it already had ended in 1991 on the U.S.S.R.’s), isn’t yet clear.
This is what happens when what President Eisenhower called “the military-industrial complex” takes over the country, and everything (including the ‘news’ media) serves it, rather than the military-industrial complex’s serving the public.
It fits in with the massive data which indicates that the U.S. government is run by an aristocracy or “oligarchy”, instead of run by people who represent the public — a “democracy.” Obama as President fit right in.Of course, that's no secret to Russia — or China, which is next on the list. But it looks like the plan is to "do Iran" first.
What happens when retaliatory systems are locked, loaded and targeted 24/7. Over time there are bound to be "accidents." Fortunately, all of them have been detected and aborted before launch — so far.
Harsh political rhetoric, combined with the vulnerability of the nuclear command-and-control system, has made the risk of global catastrophe greater than ever.
Russia is deploying its new RS-28 Sarmat ICBM, a hundred-ton, twelve-warhead behemoth which makes America’s thirty-nine-ton Minuteman ICBM look like a rocket-propelled toothpick.…
Interestingly, Russian media reports that “Sarmat warheads will have an array of advanced antimissile countermeasures meant to penetrate the US ABM [antiballistic missile] shield.” Which suggests that the new missile may be aimed at penetrating American missile defenses, or at least signaling that Moscow has the capability to do so. But the fact is that the U.S. Ballistic Missile Defense System is only designed to stop a limited ICBM barrage from small nations like North Korea and Iran, not an all-out Russian strike.…The National Interest
Having unveiled the first images of its new nuclear missile capable of reaching US soil, Russian President Vladimir Putin is warning today that Washington’s actions are “pushing Russian into a nuclear arms race,” forcing Russia “to develop its nuclear attack systems.”This will be Obama's legacy. You know, the guy that got the Nobel Peace Prize at the time of his election.
Abstract
A nuclear war between Russia and the United States, even after the arsenal reductions planned under New START, could produce a nuclear winter. Hence, an attack by either side could be suicidal, resulting in self- assured destruction. Even a ÒsmallÓ nuclear war between India and Pakistan, with each country detonating 50 Hiroshima-size atom bombsÑonly about 0.03 percent of the global nuclear arsenalÕs explosive powerÑas air bursts in urban areas, could produce so much smoke that temperatures would fall below those of the Little Ice Age of the fourteenth to nineteenth centuries, shortening the growing season around the world and threaten- ing the global food supply. Furthermore, there would be massive ozone depletion, allowing more ultraviolet radiation to reach EarthÕs surface. Recent studies predict that agricultural production in parts of the United States and China would decline by about 20 percent for four years, and by 10 percent for a decade. The environmental threat posed by even a small number of nuclear weapons must be considered in nuclear policy deliberations. Military planners now treat the environmental effects as collateral damage, and treaties currently consider only the number of weapons needed to assure destruction of opposing forces. Instead, treaties must call for further reductions in weapons so that the collateral effects do not threaten the continued survival of the bulk of humanity. Proliferation cannot be treated as a regional problem. A regional conflict has the potential to cause mass starvation worldwide through environmental effects.Bulletin of Atomic Scientists
US antimissile shield in Europe directly threats Russia, a senior-ranking Chinese general said at an international security in Beijing. He added that US actions across the globe disrupt the balance of regional power and provoke regional instability.
“The US did not provide legally-binding guarantees that the missile defense system they are deploying in Europe would not be aimed against Russia. But at the same time it poses a real and direct threat to the Russian security,” Maj. Gen. Cai Jun, the vice head of the Central Military Commission Joint Staff Department's warfare bureau, said in a speech at the Xiangshan Forum.
The assessment is similar to that of the Russian military, which insists that the American antimissile shield in Europe compromises Russia’s security and needs to be countered with better ballistic missiles and capabilities to destroy antimissile sites, should the need arise.
“China and Russia have similar positions about strategic antiballistic missile systems and oppose attempts by any nation or group of nations to create such systems unilaterally at the expense of strategic international security,” the general said.China is increasingly getting involved. If the US objective was to create a Russian-Chinese military alliance, it's succeeding very well.
[Russian] Gen. Poznikhir said Russia and China are forced to respond to these threats and preserve the strategic balance of power.
According to the general, the US is developing a global missile shield system as a means to achieve global supremacyTASS
According to the Russian General Staff, US missile defense systems can be used as attack weaponsRussian general: US needs missile shield for military supremacy over Russia, China
Russia has been watching with mounting concern not only NATO’s encroachment on Russia’s traditional sphere of interest (after having promised not to do so), but its determination to place its missile-shield elements right on Russia’s borders, to provide the best chance of intercepting a retaliatory response. Such systems can only serve one purpose: to nullify Russia’s nuclear deterrent and thereby allow NATO a nuclear first strike.
In response to this looming threat, Russia has been focussing on nuclear missiles that can penetrate NATO’s missile shield, and therefore deter NATO, such as the Bulava SLBM and the Topol and Topol-M road-mobile ICBMS, and now the Yars as successor to the Topol-M.
These inter-continental ballistic missiles seek to launch very fast, thereby limiting the vulnerable launch phase, then fly on an unpredictable trajectory, to make interception difficult, then in the terminal phase, not only engage in evasive maneuvers, but release multiple re-entry vehicles (MIRVs), while doing all this at a blistering speed. Moreover, these missiles are not silo-based but mobile, the Bulava being anywhere in the vast oceans, and the Yars being anywhere within Russia’s vast hinterland, thereby making them more survivable in the event of a NATO first strike.Russia Insider
What was more disturbing than the actual launch, however, was the rhetoric behind it: instead of passing it off as another routine test, and letting US "adversaries" make up their own mind about what is going on, Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work, who witnessed the launch, said the U.S. tests, conducted at least 15 times since January 2011, send a message to strategic rivals like Russia, China and North Korea that Washington has an effective nuclear arsenal. "That’s exactly why we do this," Work told reporters before the launch.
Of course, the #1 unspoken rule when launching ICBMs is to never explicitly say why you are doing it. By breaking said rule, it marks a much greater escalation in international diplomacy than merely test firing the nuclear-capable ballistic missile.
That, however, was not an issue and Work piled on, with the following stunner
"We and the Russians and the Chinese routinely do test shots to prove that the operational missiles that we have are reliable. And that is a signal ... that we are prepared to use nuclear weapons in defense of our country if necessary."
Well that's good to know.…Zero Hedge
Washington continues to prepare a global strike, according to Deputy Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation Sergei Ryabkov to RIA Novosti . He noted that a continuation of negotiations on further nuclear reductions are impossible for this reason.Fort Russ
All the nuclear weapon-possessing states are working to develop new nuclear weapon systems and/or upgrade their existing ones, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) wrote in its Yearbook 2015, which is launched on Monday.
‘Despite renewed international interest in prioritizing nuclear disarmament, the modernization programs under way in the nuclear weapon-possessing states suggests that none of them will give up their nuclear arsenals in the foreseeable future’, says SIPRI Senior Researcher Shannon Kile.
At the start of 2015, nine states - the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, or North Korea) - possessed approximately 15 850 nuclear weapons, of which 4300 were deployed with operational forces. Roughly 1800 of these weapons were kept in a state of high operational alert....Once Pandora's box is opened, it's difficult to close it.
"The strategy emphasizes the U.S. ambition to begin forming a new global economic order. A special role in this order should be played by the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Transatlantic Trade Investment Partnership, which will help the U.S. get central positions in free trade zones encompassing two-thirds of the world's economy," the document says.
The armed forces are regarded as the foundation of U.S. national security and "military superiority is considered the main factor in U.S. world leadership," the Russian Security Council said.
The document retains the determination "to use military force unilaterally at any spot in the world and preserve military presence abroad," it said.Russia to take into account threats resulting from new U.S. security strategy
Russia’s Strategic Missile Forces are ready to react to any nuclear strike even if it is lightning fast, SMF Central Command chief said. A retaliatory strike would take place in all circumstances, “without hesitation,” he added.
“If there’s a challenge to repel a lightning-fast nuclear in any given conditions – it will be done in fixed time, that’s dead true,” the Strategic Missile Forces Central Command’s chief, Major-General Andrey Burbin, told Russian News Service on Saturday.
Russia’s strategic missile forces are positioned geographically in such a way that no global strike can knock them out completely, Burbin said.
In case an order is given to carry out a nuclear strike, Russian nuclear weapons operators will fulfill it, he added.
“There would be no hesitation, the task would be executed,” he said.
The unavoidability of a retaliatory nuclear strike from Russia is also guaranteed by the fully automatic and constantly modernized ‘Perimeter’ system, also known as “Dead hand.”
The system collects data from various sources, such as radioactivity and seismic sensors scattered throughout Russia, by scanning radio frequencies and communication activities.
If pooled data indicates that Russia has suffered a nuclear strike, the system launches special missiles that travel through national airspace, sending launch signals to all surviving strategic nuclear missile complexes. In this case a retaliatory missile strike is launched without human input.
Burbin also told RSN that rearmament of the Strategic Missile Forces is ongoing as planned and by 2020 up to 98 percent of Russia’s nuclear deterrent forces will be armed with brand new weapons.Trying the heat up a notch. This should drive the neocons and wars hawks like John McCain ballistic.
The United States is leading the chase for the new weapons, which Russia firmly believes poses a significant threat to its own nuclear missile forces.
"Russia considers this trend as a path to obtaining [non-nuclear] means of depriving Russia of its deterrent capability," Dr. Eugene Miasnikov, director of the Moscow-based Center for Arms Control, Energy and Environmental Studies told The Moscow Times.
Russia's sensitivity to threats to its nuclear deterrence could lead it to mistake a hypersonic missile launch as the opening moves of a larger attack, some analysts say, arguing that the weapons are so destabilizing that their mere development could spark a nuclear war between major powers.…
