US moves from nuclear arms to conventional missiles with global reach

[Truth2Tell]

Source: The Independent

By David Usborne, US Editor

While President Barack Obama speaks overseas of his vision of a world without nuclear weapons, his military commanders at home are quietly accelerating a programme to develop and deploy a new class of conventional intercontinental ballistic missiles which will have the capacity to strike targets anywhere in the world within an hour.

While the effort to develop the new missile capability, called Prompt Global Strike, began in the late 1990s and through the Bush years, President Obama has expanded its budget with hopes that it can be added to US military's array of options by the middle of this decade. First prototype tests will be carried out by the Air Force next month.

American commanders envisage a missile that will travel at hypersonic speeds, in part outside of the Earth's atmosphere, with the ability to strike a target anywhere around the globe within one hour from launch with a conventional but still potentially devastating explosive payload.

Even as Moscow has agreed to the arms control treaty signed yesterday, it has become increasingly loud in warning of the dangers of the new global missiles under development by the Pentagon. "World states will hardly accept a situation in which nuclear weapons disappear, but weapons that are no less destabilising emerge in the hands of certain members of the international community," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said earlier this week.

Read more: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/us-moves-from-nuclear-arms-to-conventional-missiles-with-global-reach-1939876.html

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Prompt Global Strike. This season's top seller among the aggressive global empire set. Cuz you never know when you're gonna need to strike promptly.

[bananas]

1. flying twinkies

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=228x64979
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-37B

[krispos42]

2. Well, I suppose it is cheaper than trying to maintain...

a global network of Tomahawk platforms such as attack submarines and surface ships.


Of course, when you launch an ICBM, satellites immediately detect, locate, and tracks the missile. The heat bloom is a bit difficult to miss, yanno. Not particularly stealthy, but probably fast enough so that Russia or China couldn't warn the potential target before impact.

[One_Life_To_Give]

3. World almost ended when Norway launched a satellite and now this?????

We put up an ICBM without any warhead conv or nuke. Screens across the former Soviet Union are going to light up like Christmas. Fortunately Yeltsin was in the right place and had enough sense to not launch a full retaliatory strike when the old warning system went off before.

Rather than spending millions on each single use vehicle and billions on development. We could just use the B2 with oldfashioned bombs or B1's with cruise missiles.

[bemildred]

4. This is so stupid in so many ways one just doesn't know where to start. nt

[caraher]

5. What a horrible idea

Bottom line is, as long as we still *have* nukes any launch like this *will* be reacted to as if the warhead were nuclear - because how could a military leader afford not to? So the use threshold really has to be the same as for nuclear warheads, given the high risk of a nuclear response.

So we have yet another weapon system we dare not use. Who benefits? Only the manufacturers of these weapons...

[clear eye]

6. Are we headed back to Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), this time involving the whole world?

Pres. Obama is leaning toward the development of a type of missile called Prompt Global Strike. He has already included a provision for nuclear warhead givebacks in the recent START agreement with Russia specifically tied to its implementation. The PGS is over twice as fast as a Cruise but doesn't alert satellite defenses by leaving the atmosphere during its flight. It can be dropped from a B-52. It can be unarmed and act like a large bullet traveling 5x's the speed of sound, armed with a conventional warhead or armed with a nuclear warhead. Targeted countries will have no way of knowing which. It destabilizes the international military situation by causing all countries to feel that they have to build up such an arsenal that the U.S. wouldn't feel safe using it against them, since at the speed it travels, they can't warn against it or shoot it down.

If we arm ourselves with these, the next Rumsfeld will likely start WWIII with it. In the meantime all human needs the world over but military ones will be put on a back burner. The sorts of development, such as sources of water and energy needed to prevent wars for resources will be starved for funds. For your children's sake, call & write your Congressional representatives and the White House.

[Hawkowl]

7. Military intelligence, the original oxymoron

Fucking stupid stupid stupid!

"Hello Russia, China? Yeah were launching a twenty ICBM strike on Iran over your airspace. Oh, don't worry it's only conventional, no need to launch your retaliatory nuke strike before ours impact Iran".

What the fuck is the half a billion dollar B2 for? I so hate the fucking Pentagon.