nuclear weapons

[lew]

Sorry wholley, not biting on that one mate


lew

[Frank S.]

Mid-week only and I'm nursing a hangover... I'll try to appear coherent...



The Kyoto protocol is not only a problem for our economy here, it's also a problem for the way we conduct warfare. Total control of battlespace begins with satellites and communications. We have and are still developping the ability to affect weather patterns to our advantage (I posted elsewhere on the HAARP project), and since the 1950s we already had the ability to 'make it rain' by 'inseminating' clouds (flooding) or create drought by dispersing them.
Weather patterns being more 'complicated' over the North American continent than over the Soviet Union, it took a few years longer for the Soviets to be able to do to us what we could do to them. But they achieved results by the early sixties, late fifties if I remember right.

This scares a lot of people, but then, we did drop research of chemical and biological weapons thirty years ago, unlike much of our enemies. If that's not restraint, I don't know what is.

Wholley, as far as Clinton, I agree with you. I thought and still think he should have been booted out of office. Not many people see his cigar adventures as a threat to national security, but maybe they don't remember Marcus Wolff (sp?). I mean, the man was discussing troop deployments to Bosnia/Kosovo with a member of the Senate's armed forces commitee while playing 'hide the salami' for Chrissakes...

I particularly agree with your use of the term 'complicit' in qualifying his weakening of the US intelligence capabilities (not to mention the military). But....

It didn't start with him. I guess we could trace it back to the 1975 Church commitee, or even further, to the very rocky relationship between JFK and Allen Dulles. In between, president Carter didn't appear to understand fully what the CIA's role was and should be (maybe I'm being kind).

Quote:

"The nation must to a degree take it on faith that we too are honorable men, devoted to her service."

Richard Helms, then DCI
April, 1971

Well, the nation chose not to think that way. The alternative: gadgets. Signal and electronic intelligence increased exponentially as human intelligence evaporated. It takes about 5 years to train a field agent for the directorate of operations and maybe another year for him/her to develop assets in other countries. In the end, these folks are distrusted by the technocrats populating the halls of power. So where does this leave us? Well, sometimes, it's like trying to hit a target in the dark. If you can't see it, spray and pray you hit it.

This latest 'issue' of the true role of intelligence on both sides of the pond is very discouraging. But it shouldn't be surprising after years of politicizing every aspect of government. So-called conservatives claim that intelligence failures and leaks are due to the fact that there are too many democrats in intelligence ranks (democrats by self interest, favoring the democrats' tendency toward big government rather than the republican opposition to it), and so-called liberals claim that intel agencies are just crappy tools of crappy administrations.

Bottom line, in situations such as North Korea, we have not developped assets in the North Korean population in Japan for example, in part because we have no one to do it. So once again, this pretty much restricts us to employing the military options. At great cost if it comes to that.

I kind of foresee that our 'continuum of force' eventually will be exclusively comprised of nukes and technologies for delivery. No in-between.

[Wholley]

Frank,
For one so hung over,good post.
My only question is,why ignore Ronald Regans input.
He really supported CIA and FBI and our Troops.
Allan Dulles will always be a gray person.
Carter never understood a thing and still does'nt.
Your last sentence was really thought provoking.
Hope your not right.
Wholley.

[Wholley]

Lew,
I was kind of hoping you would'nt.
Cheers Buddy,
Wholley.

[Frank S.]

Main Entry: as·so·nance
Pronunciation: 'a-s&-n&n(t)s
Function: noun
Etymology: French, from Latin assonare to answer with the same sound, from ad- + sonare to sound, from sonus sound -- more at SOUND
Date: 1727
1 : resemblance of sound in words or syllables
2 a : relatively close juxtaposition of similar sounds especially of vowels b : repetition of vowels without repetition of consonants (as in stony and holy) used as an alternative to rhyme in verse
- as·so·nant /-n&nt/ adjective or noun
- as·so·nant·al /"a-s&-'nan-t&l/ adjective

I had no idea until I did a Google search...

[lew]

Thanks for that frank... At least we all know how to use it now...


lew

[Gonker]

"Did the UK and France devlope nuclear weapons on their own? or Did the USA give them nuclear capibility"

So far as I know, Mikkel, the story goes like this:

In 1941 the UK and US agreed that they should pool their resources. The UK was marginally ahead of the rest of the world in nuclear science in the 1930s but it was clearly going to be an expensive and difficult project to build a bomb, the UK was close to being on its chinstraps at the time, and the US had a great number of excellent scientists working on the same technology. It was agreed that the work should be continued by the US (no chance of being bombed or overrun by the Nazis) and the UK exported all its know-how to the US wholesale.

As soon as the US developed the atom bomb, congress passed a law forbidding the US government from helping ANY other power to develop nuclear weapons. As the UK had given all of its expertise to the US, London viewed this with all the enthusiasm they would a cup of cold sick.

When it became clear that the USSR was much closer to being a nuclear power than had been supposed (late 1940s) the UK govt. redoubled its own efforts - partly because of fear of the USSR but mostly because if the UK was a nuclear power it would be able to sit at the top table and restrain the US from pre-emptive war (which might have made sense for the US between 1948 and 1960, but would have been disaster for densely populated England or Europe). For that reason the UKs deterrent has always been just enough to take seriously without being anywhere near the size (or expense) of the US or Russia's (no point having a sustained war capability when we're all dead after the first strike).

As soon as the UK had made its own atom bombs the US govt. was able to wriggle around congress by saying "We aren't helping them DEVELOP nukes - they've already got them" and they gave significant help with delivery systems. US missile technology far outstripped the UKs, so while our V-bombers were coming online we got Thor missiles to tide us over in the early 1950s and, when we phased out our (homegrown) air-launched bombs and missiles in 1968 we got Polaris missiles for our boats (but with our own, Chevaline, MRV warheads which were apparently better than the US ones at the time). I don't think we had any help building the V-bombers (our jet technology was still ahead of yours in the 1950s) but I don't know about the Polaris boats. I think our boats have always been smaller and quieter than the US's so that suggests that they weren't simply copied from US designs; still by the late 60s I'd guess we would have had to ask for some help with such high technology.

In the 1980s we bought Trident, but I'm not sure about whether we buy the warheads or still make our own - certainly we have a subsidised nuclear power industry which happens to make top-class weapons-grade plutonium....

You might look out for a book called "The Secret State" (I forget the author) which is rather dry but which talks about UK nuclear war planning (such as it was) in the first half of the Cold War - it reveals a lot from the UK govt. archives regarding their thoughts on the nuclear programme.

I don't know anything about the French nukes, but I'm sure they only built them to f**k off Washington....

[Ex-URNU-Student]

We dont need nukes, we're hardly going to incinerate millions of civilians are we? Lets be honest they're just a status symbol to show off our "Great Power " status, never mind the fact that it doesnt exist anymore...

More to the point our nukes give us our seat on the UN Security Council. And its even more ironic that when wannabe superpowers such as India promptly develop them, we slag them off for it!

[Whitey]

Well as for nuke use, we did it in ww2 to the Japs, and after 9/11 every redneck in America was shouting nuke this or that. You best believe we would do it if we thought it was worth it. As for status, we buy expensive cars to show that.