Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Lord Shonus]

China has a few hundred thermonuclear warheads, so the possibility that the US would have to put up or shut up over Taiwan has existed for decades.

The notion that a firm declaration might prevent Xi from looking for a Short Victorious War is worth consideration, but I don't think the saber-rattling has reached that point, nor is the current situation with the economy drastic enough for such measures.

[Duuvian]

If I was to even choose to issue an opinion on circumstances, I don't know of a reasonable place to look for such statistics such as what purposed boats are being built and at what rate to know how calm and/or angry I should be. Are there such reputable websites that detail these things? I used to look at airplane and ship designs for video games, so maybe it would be a neat website as well as informative, since such detail is difficult to obtain through the medium of television.

EDIT: I did a search and I found this, I guess I'll read it, no clue what it says but it seems pretty close I guess.

https://irp.fas.org/agency/oni/plan-trends.pdf

[Starver]

Yup, that's why I used quotes.

Ah, now, I was rushed and had straight-off read the kquote)'first'(unquote) as another way of nouning the (quote)First(unquote), then basically forgotten that in the hurry to complete the reply I separately also used (quote)'first'(unquote) as a "let us call it a First, even though it isn't" meaning without even realising that's the way you might have intended it, or indeed that I was copying your choice of punctuation (for a same/different thing, regardless).

Reading it back (a habit, to see if I'd typoed/thinkoed, as I revisit a thread and scroll up a little to make sure I'm remembering what I/others just said anyway I spotted the possible ambiguous repetition of two differing uses by the same markup (plus regretting I hadn't had time to add other clarifications regarding territorial extent, and that the whole Tudor clan was Welsh in origin, anyway!), and so accept entirely your new clarification that you meant what I alluded to and I was just doing your own rambling postcript for you...


(Don't mind me, I was in Stirling the other day, and I had a bit of time (between the occasional rainfalls) to go round the town and back'o'the'wall pathways so I've got quite a lot of refreshed knowledge about the Stewarts (various Jameses and Mary in particular) freshly rerattling around in my head, dying to come out, plus the likes of Baird & Hardy.)


Anyway, Britain (and Ireland) of Victoria's reign was a bit different. Though I think 'bad folk memories' of Elizabeth I, Mary T and/or Mary QOS (according to personal interpretations at the time) probably had to be overcome for the Victorian ascension. While positive thoughts (locally to these isles) about Victoria almost certainly smoothed the acceptance of the current Elizabeth (II of England) even if the modern trend towards more constitutional monarchy was already headed firmly into the passively benign nature of monarchy rather than "burn the catholics/protestents/whoever" reputations of her various antecedants.

(Which wasn't entirely female-led, but most people would know enough more about Elizabeths and Mary, and of course Victoria, than most of their male kinsmen/etc, who were monarchs: the multitudes of James, Georges and any of the Henrys except perhaps the VIII^th. The same rarity value at the moment that still distinguishes POTUS 44 (and many British PMs), such that doesn't necessarilly apply to most of the other 42 before him except for actual "He did(/did not) do this..." facts or those with notable origins and/or fates in their own right. Bush Sr rather fades away, in my memory (even with GW1, he seems now just an interegnum figure between Reagan and Clinton), while remembering Carter is always amazingly good in the right themed-round in Pointless when names such as Polk don't satisfy the proper criteria for relative obscurity...

But don't mind me. Just found myself a nice spot to enjoy the sun (such as it is) and type a bit more nonsense for the benefit of no-one...

[Lord Shonus]

If I was to even choose to issue an opinion on circumstances, I don't know of a reasonable place to look for such statistics such as what purposed boats are being built and at what rate to know how calm and/or angry I should be. Are there such reputable websites that detail these things? I used to look at airplane and ship designs for video games, so maybe it would be a neat website as well as informative, since such detail is difficult to obtain through the medium of television.

EDIT: I did a search and I found this, I guess I'll read it, no clue what it says but it seems pretty close I guess.

https://irp.fas.org/agency/oni/plan-trends.pdf

China's undergoing a huge naval expansion, and they are focusing much more on potentially offensive power-projection units such as carriers and blue-water warships rather than primarily defensive units like brown-water missile boats and submarines. This is exactly the kind of force they would need to invade Taiwan, but it is also what they would need to carry out operations far from home in the way that the US, French, and British navies routinely do. Having this force would also make it much more difficult for the US navy to carry out operations in the waters that China has claimed belong to China (far beyond what anybody who isn't China acknowledges) and prevent pressure on nearby nations such as Vietnam, the Philippines, Japan, etc.

One of the big reasons that Biden's been insisting for years (as early as Obama's first term!) that it was time to withdraw from Afghanistan was the need to start trying to counter this in order to support allies in the region.

[Duuvian]

That summary is interesting but I can't use it for comparisons for two reasons. The first is that the USN comparison side is apparently classified or something. The second and even more important issue is that it's still not detailed enough; for example the corvettes aren't broken down by purpose but all are included as Major Surface Combatants statistic (or whatever the term was without doublechecking that is the main attention point of the summary.

That was basically a decent result on my one attempt at a search on this. Is there a legit website that does this, production amounts and specifications?

Sort of like:

https://www.sarna.net/wiki/Luftenburg

Except not fiction and useful to have a valid opinion on such things?

[martinuzz]

China's recent hypersonic tests got the US rattled.
Not only their missiles' high velocity is worrisome (8000km/h), also the fact that they are not ballistic missiles, but orbital missiles.
They gain high speed while circling the earth a few times before re-entry.

This is a concern, because most of the US' missile shield and interception technology is based on ballicstic missiles approaching from the northpole side of the earth.
Orbital missiles like the new Chinese hypersonic missile can come from anywhere, making them extremely hard to detect and intercept.

[Duuvian]

Well then, as much as I like the idea of a hefty stick to shake from our gravitational prison at potential extrasolar conquerors, I would much rather we use arms control treaties amongst ourselves at the very least. That seems much more achievable than mutually assured destruction, no?

[LordBaal]

The moment one can assure a way to be nuclear impervious, like say, orbital lasers to destroy every missile on the air that is not yours, MAD fails and the loser(s) get wiped out. I had this nightmare more than once.

[Lord Shonus]

The USN side isn't classified so much as it isn't fixed. At this time, the only solidly predictable element of the US Navy is that there will be 12 active carriers. How many ships of what other classes should be built is something analysts are still working on.


As for China's new FOBS missile, the biggest danger is that it is a first-strike weapon, not a second-strike* one like China has traditionally favored. This indicates a major change in their traditional strategic posture.



*This part probably requires some expansion. Strategic nuclear weapons are traditionally divided into first-strike and second strike categories. First strike weapons are highly-accurate and/or high yield weapons (high yields can compensate for lower accuracy by making sure the most destructive radius extends to the target) intended for the destruction of very hard targets like command bunkers, missile silos, hardened communications relays, sub pens, etc.

Second-strike missiles are less accurate and lower-yield weapons primarily targeted at cities.

The two provide very different capabilities.

First-strike weapons are for the "Nuclear war is going to happen, there is no stopping it now. If we launch first, we'll lose 50 million. If they launch first, we lose 200 million" scenario. And, by extension, they act as a "Hey, don't let this escalate any further - we don't want somebody to get too scared" threat.

Second-strike systems exist only as a "TAKE ME DOWN, AND I'M TAKING YOU WITH ME!" deterrent against nuclear attack or invasion. They are useless for the purpose of attacking first, because you can't stop a retaliatory strike from happening, and have nothing left to threaten anybody with.

First-strike systems are inherently more destabilizing.

[martinuzz]

The moment one can assure a way to be nuclear impervious, like say, orbital lasers to destroy every missile on the air that is not yours

This is the defensive-passive approach that will make MAD void.
The offensive-active approach nowadays is 'make nukes that are so fast/undetectable that the enemy's counter strike capabilities are reduced to ashes before they can react, except for a few lucky subs out in the oceans.

Orbital missiles complicate matters even further. It takes time to determine who fired them, if it can at all be determined (contrary to a ballistic trajectory, which only needs relatively basic math to show it's point of origin).
"Crap we got nuked. We don't know by who though. Who shall we nuke back? China? Russia? Or maybe it was France, still pissed about not getting the submarine deal?"

[Starver]

Belgium. The Flemish half only.

[Duuvian]

I did a quick search and look what I found:

https://natoassociation.ca/nuclear-non-proliferation-efforts-success-or-failure/

According to that, treaties might just work if everyone just believes in them :heartemojicon:

Though that does make sense sort of... I'm going to believe that it would be both cheaper and safer to sign some reasonable arms control treaties and go from there.

[LordBaal]

You know what we need? A God old fashioned alien invasion (a winable one of course). But even then I bet some fuckers would side with them if only to be eaten at last

[Madman198237]

8000 km/h isn't nearly orbital speed, luckily, and no orbit-capable vehicle would be able to sustain that speed in-atmosphere for the hours it takes to circle the world at that speed; it sounds much more like a ramjet-based missile than it does a spacecraft. Oh, look, I wonder if that's why everything is saying that it's definitely a hypersonic missile test and not a spacecraft?

Nobody is presently putting nukes into an actual orbit and the minute somebody does all hell is going to break loose, because it takes your "thirty minutes to wipe out the world" with ICBMs' parabolic trajectories and takes the reaction time right on out of it, leaving you with "eight minutes until you've won a world war"; the rough time it takes for something that is deorbiting to make it to the surface once it gets down far enough into the atmosphere.

An orbital weapon system isn't a "whoops they launched it and now we're dying" sort of problem, pretty well every military organization on the planet tracks every single satellite and missile launch as best as is humanly possible, and typically have the exact orbits of every satellite launched within hours. They know who launched what and when. If you, hypothetically, launched a missile into orbit and then forty minutes later it starts a deorbit burn and thirty minutes after that it's coming down on your enemy's head, the odds of it being somehow untrackable are zero, because we'd know it was a new object in orbit, and we'd be able to backtrack the trajectory to the launching nation without too much trouble...even assuming somebody can manage to set up and launch an orbital-class launch vehicle without  everybody on the planet knowing about it.

The problem is alays going to be as Lord Shonus said, the first-strike potential of nukes in space is terrifying.

[Frumple]

You know what we need? A God old fashioned alien invasion (a winable one of course). But even then I bet some fuckers would side with them if only to be eaten at last

Depends a lot on the invasion, yeah. If it's space capitalists looking to banana republic a planet, I'm not sure there'd really be much resistance to begin with

Plenty of other stuff, too. Maybe jesus comes back with that alien armada revelations probably promises, turns out he was buddy cop with muhammad, krishna, and buddha the whole time and bam, you'd have like maybe a third (allowing for sectarian disagreement and whatnot!) of the planet roll over without hesitation.