This article
updates and expands one I wrote on this subject for LewRockwell.com posted on
March 8, 2018, and again on July 20, 2018. I presented it at the 36th Annual
Meeting of Doctors for Disaster Preparedness in Las Vegas last week. Some of
the slides I used for that talk are reproduced here.
When WW II
ended with two atom bombs dropped on Japan the United States emerged a
superpower. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, and with Russia
struggling, the U.S. became the world’s sole superpower, militarily supreme.
The United
States Military Machine Compared to Russia
In his State of
the Union speech three years ago, President Obama, citing the sanctions his
administration imposed on Russia said: “Russia is isolated, with its economy in
tatters.” Senator John McCain put it this way: “Look, Russia is a gas station
masquerading as a country.”
The U.S.
military has sustained its post-war global dominance with 800 military bases and
installations in 150 countries encircling the globe. Russia has only 14
military bases outside its current borders, with 11 of them in the former
Soviet Republics.
The U.S.
military has 1,300,000 servicemen and women on active duty. Some 200,000 are stationed
in bases in other countries (with 49,000 still in Japan, 39,000 in Germany, and
28,000 in South Korea). Russia has 1 million active duty personnel.
The
carrier-centric United States Navy currently has 11 aircraft carriers–10 Nimitz
class supercarriers that cost $6 Billion each and one Gerald Ford-class
supercarrier, which cost $13 Billion. (Two more Ford-class carriers are under
construction. Two are on order and 10 more planned.) Russia has one aircraft
carrier. The U.S. Navy has 71 submarines, about the same as Russia. Fourteen
are Ohio-class ballistic nuclear missile submarines.
Military
Budgets
The U.S.
Military budget for FY 2019 will be $716 Billion. Add $70 Billion for Homeland
Security, $70 Billion for the nation’s 16 intelligence agencies, $186 Billion
for veterans’ benefits, and the U.S. spends more than a trillion dollars a year
on “defense.” Two trillion dollars covers yearly mandatory expenses for social
security, Medicare, Medicaid, and interest on the federal debt, leaving less
than one trillion out of the country’s $4 Trillion budget left for everything
else.
Russia’s
military budget is $61 B a year, less than 10 percent of the U.S. military
budget and less than that of Saudi Arabia.
Given the above
facts, Russia would appear to be no match against the U.S. militarily.
The 2018
Nuclear Posture Review
Thinking this
way, the federal government released its 2018 Nuclear Posture Review: U.S.
nuclear deterrence policy, strategy, and force posture on Feb 2, updating the
one published in 2010. The Review states:
“Expanding
flexible U.S. nuclear options now, to include low-yield options, is important
for the preservation of credible deterrence against regional aggression.”
And added:
“DoD
[Department of Defense] and National Nuclear Security Administration will
develop for deployment a low-yield SLBM [submarine-launched ballistic missile] warhead
to ensure a prompt response option that is able to penetrate adversary
defenses.”
In the DoD’s
view, low-yield nukes should be in its “military toolbox,” along with
conventional weapons.
(Low-yield
tactical nuclear warheads are set at 5 to 6.5 kilotons and below, having
one-third the power of the “Little Boy” atom bomb America dropped on
Hiroshima.)
President
Putin’s State of the Nation Speech
A month later,
on March 1, 2018, President Vladimir Putin gave his annual State of the Nation
speech to the Russian Federal Assembly in Moscow. The last third of his 2-hour,
13,340-word speech dealt with nuclear treaties and nuclear weapons.
He unveiled six
new weapon systems and showed a short video of each one on screens flanking the
stage. Putin warned:
“Any use of
nuclear weapons against Russia or its allies, weapons of short, medium or any
range at all, will be considered as a nuclear attack on this country.
Retaliation will be immediate, with all the attendant consequences. There
should be no doubt about this whatsoever.”
The weapon
systems President Putin unveiled in his March 1 speech, if real, checkmate U.S.
military global supremacy.
The RS-28
Sarmat Intercontinental Ballistic Missile
Putin first
showed a video simulation of Russia’s new RS-28 Sarmat heavy Intercontinental
Ballistic Missile, from launch to release of the missile’s nuclear warheads
over the target area.
A mininuclear
reactor powers this 120-feet long, 220-ton ballistic missile. It can place a
10-ton payload in near earth orbit. Information on its miniaturized nuclear
reactor is classified.
The capsule
containing the nuclear warheads orbits around the south pole, thus being able
to release them on American targets from the south side of the country,
bypassing its missile defense system pointed north to intercept ICBMs coming
straight from Russia over the north pole.
The Sarmat’s
reentry vehicles/warheads, flying suborbital, maneuver and plunge suddenly
towards their target. The video of the Sarmat ICBM ends showing its nuclear
warheads released and pointed at Florida.
This new
generation of thermonuclear warheads are both multiple independently targetable
reentry vehicles (MIRV) and maneuverable reentry vehicles (MARV). The Sarmat
ICBM carries ten 750-kiloton nuclear warheads, 7.5 megatons, enough destructive
power precisely dispersed to wipe out the state of Florida.
Russia already
has placed several of these nuclear-powered ICBMs in silos and reportedly plans
to deploy 50 of them by 2020, according to the American think tank Center for
Strategic and International Studies.
It’s quite a
gas station that can make something like this.
Kinzhal
Hypersonic Missile
The next weapon
President Putin unveiled is the Kinzhal Hypersonic Missile. A high-altitude
aircraft like this MIG-31BM launches it at 60,000 feet.
This missile is
26 ft. long, can accelerate to a speed of Mach 10 (7,500 mph), and executes
evasive maneuvers along its flight trajectory.
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As Putin put
it, “This enables the missile to penetrate through all existing and projected
air defense systems and deliver a nuclear or conventional warhead over a
distance in excess of 2,000 kilometers”—1,200 miles.
This missile is
said to have passed its firing trials and been placed “on duty” in Russia’s
Southern Military District, covering the Black Sea and Crimea.
The Kinzhal
missile’s speed alone makes it immune to all current air defenses. As military
analyst, Andrei Martyanov, states: “This is a complete game changer
geopolitically, strategically, operationally, tactically, and psychologically.”
Martyanov’s book, Losing Military Supremacy: the Myopia of American Strategic
Planning, published two months ago, is well worth reading.
This “Dagger”
missile (Kinzhal is the Russian word for dagger) made its public debut at
Russia’s May 9, 2018 Victory Day Parade in Moscow.
Russia’s
Victory Day Parade
More than
13,000 servicemen and women participated in this year’s Russian Victory Day
Parade.
It included
tons of military hardware, including a new unmanned robot tank.
And a
contingent of women troops.
In World War
II, Russia and its Soviet Republics suffered 27 million military and civilian
deaths, in a population of less than 200 million. The United States bore
420,000 deaths. For each American who died in that war, 64 Russians perished.
Avangard
Hypersonic Glide Vehicle
Supersonic
speed is Mach 1.2 to 5; hypersonic speed, greater than Mach 5. There are two
basic types of hypersonic weapons: hypersonic cruise missiles that are capable
of sustained, powered, and maneuvering hypersonic flight and hypersonic glide
vehicles that can fly above 100,000 feet. Engine operations, pressure, and
temperature constraints limit flight altitudes of hypersonic cruise missiles to
70,000 to 100,000 feet.
Another new
weapon that President Putin unveiled in his speech is the Avangard Hypersonic
Glide Vehicle. The RS-28 Sarmat ICBM launches it. This glide vehicle flies, in
the atmosphere, at Mach 20—15,000 mph.
President Putin
described it this way: “It flies to its target like a meteorite, like a ball of
fire. The temperature on its surface reaches 1,600-2,000 degrees Celsius [3,600
degrees Fahrenheit] but the cruise bloc nevertheless stays reliably guided.”
The temperature on the surface of the sun is 10,800 degrees Fahrenheit, just
3-times hotter than on the glide vehicle.
At Mach 20 the Avangard
Glide Vehicle flies 8 times faster than a bullet fired from an AR-15 rifle, the
Avangard at 4 miles per second and the .223 bullet at half-a-mile per second.
The RS-28
Sarmat holds 16 hypersonic glide vehicles, each one containing a 500-kiloton nuclear
warhead.
Global-range
Nuclear-powered Cruise Missile
President Putin
also unveiled a nuclear-powered, precision-guided cruise missile that he claims
can fly indefinitely and deliver a nuclear or conventional warhead to any point
on the earth’s surface, including anywhere in the United States.
His animated
video of it showed a low-flying, terrain-hugging missile closely clearing
mountain peaks and then on around the world evading missile defenses.
Putin said:
“In late 2017,
Russia successfully launched its latest nuclear-powered missile at the Central
training ground. During its flight, the nuclear engine reached its design
capacity and provided the necessary propulsion.”
Asked about it,
Russian Deputy Defense Minister Yurg Borisov said:
“As you might
guess the missile is launched using conventional power boosters, and then the
reactor kicks in. This must happen very quickly. Several hours are needed to
get the reactor on a nuclear submarine to operational power, but in this case,
it happens in a matter of seconds.”
He stated that
this global-range, nuclear-powered cruise missile is “not a bluff but a new
reality.”
This
ground-launched missile remains in the testing phase.
Underwater
Nuclear Drone
President Putin
showed a computer-generated image of Russia’s new unmanned, fast-moving
underwater nuclear drone.
This weapon has
a 5,000-mile range, can travel at 56 to 80 knots (65 to 92 mph) and can descend
to a depth of 3,000 feet.
America’s
DefenseNews confirms that it is real.
And the U.S.
Nuclear Posture Review also confirms this drone’s existence, calling it a
Status 6 AUV, for autonomous underwater vehicle.
The
illustrative blueprint above shows the drone to be 79 feet long and 5 feet in
diameter. The mininuclear reactor that powers it is 100 times smaller than the
nuclear reactors that power submarines.
It carries a
thermonuclear warhead variously reported to be 2, 50, or 100 megatons,
containing cobalt-59 that releases high amounts of radioactive fallout when
converted to cobalt-60 in the blast. Detonated underwater next to the coasts of
North America, it will create a radioactive tsunami wave 300 to 1,500 feet tall
that will wash over and destroy coastal cities like New York and Los Angeles.
Combat Laser
The sixth
weapon President Putin unveiled is a combat laser. He said, “I do not want to
reveal more details. It is not the time yet. But experts will understand that
with such weaponry, Russia’s defence capacity has multiplied.”
Victor Murakhovsky,
editor in chief of the Russian magazine Arsenal of the Fatherland states,
“Probably, this complex solves the problem of anti-missile defense. The use of
a laser beam is far more economical than the use of standard antimissile
missiles. At the same time, its accuracy is far greater.”
View as a
bullet, laser beams fly at the speed of light.
The elusive
megawatt combat laser needs two things: good beam quality and
good SWAP—for size, weight, and
power. A miniaturized nuclear reactor, which Russian scientists and engineers
have designed and built for its Sarmat ICBM, new nuclear-powered cruise
missile, and underwater nuclear drone solves the SWAP part of the equation,
particularly for a megawatt combat laser. A mininuclear reactor is most
likely in the front part of the truck powering the laser.
Putin’s Six
Strategic Weapons
These are the
six weapons systems Vladimir Putin unveiled in his March 1, 2018 speech:
Sarmat nuclear
powered ICBM
Kinzhal
hypersonic missile, aircraft launched
Avangard
hypersonic glide vehicle, Sarmat launched
Nuclear powered
underwater drone – Poseidon
Nuclear powered
cruise missile –Burevestnik
Combat Laser
–Peresvet
Putin invited
Russians to submit names for the three yet unnamed weapons on a web portal set
up for that purpose. For the underwater drone, Russians chose “Poseidon,”
after the Greek god of the sea. For the nuclear-powered cruise missile,
they chose “Burevestnik,” the Russian name for the Storm Petrel seabird, whose
presence mariners believe foretells bad weather. And for the combat laser,
“Peresvet,” after the medieval warrior monk, Alexander Peresvet, who died
taking part in a 14th century battle against invading Mongols.
The U.S.
military has no such weapons—no hypersonic missiles or glide vehicles, no
nuclear-powered cruise missiles or underwater drones, and no megawatt combat
lasers.
U.S. Response
to Russia Possessing Hypersonic Weapons
On March 20
General John Hyten, Commander of the U.S. Strategic Command, reported to the
U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services: “We don’t have any defense that could
deny the employment of such weapons against us…” He is referring here to
hypersonic weapons.
Senator James
Inhofe, the senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee acknowledged:
“Right now we’re helpless.”
General Hyten
went on to say: “…so our response would be our deterrent force, which would be
the triad and the nuclear capabilities that we have to respond to such a
threat.”
(The nuclear
“triad” is sea-based submarine launched ballistic missiles, land-based ICBMs,
and air-borne nuclear-armed bombers.)
What if the
next time the U.S. military fires Tomahawk missiles at targets in Syria, or
Iran, Russia responds by not only shooting down the missiles but, as it has
threatened to do, also destroys their source of origin. A Kinzhal hypersonic
missile armed with a conventional weapon strikes and sinks the aircraft carrier
from which the missile-carrying planes took off. Would America really respond
to the sinking of one of its aircraft carriers by starting a first-strike
nuclear war?
Aircraft
carriers are sitting ducks. They are defenseless against hypersonic weapons.
Attacking and sinking a U.S. carrier with a hypersonic missile anywhere on the
planet gives Russia what analysts call escalation dominance, which the United
States cannot counter in kind. There aren’t any Russian targets with an actual
and symbolic value like a U.S. aircraft carrier with its 85 jet fighters and
3,000 crew members.
F-35 Joint
Strike Fighter
The United
States trails Russia in a variety of other weapon systems—among them 5th generation
jet fighters, littoral combat ships (“littoral” meaning close to shore),
ballistic missile submarines, mobile anti-aircraft systems, and helicopters.
The DoD awarded
Lockheed Martin a contract in 2001 to build a 5th generation jet fighter that
would fulfill the requirements not only for the Air Force, but also for the
Navy, flying them on and off carriers, and for the Marines with their being
able to provide close air battlefield support.
The Marine
Corps insisted that the new F-35 Joint Strike Fighter have Vertical Take-off
and Landing capability, VTOL, like a helicopter.
This
requirement to provide space for a VTOL lift fan, effectively spoilt the
airframe for the F-35.
The F-35a for
the Air Force 35a has a wingspan of 35 feet and a wing surface area of 460 sq.
ft., not enough wing area for it to be able to fly low and slow.
The F-35b for
the Navy has a larger 43-foot wingspan with a wing area of 620 sq. ft. making
it able fly slow enough to remain airborne and land safely on an aircraft
carrier—and not fall into the ocean on takeoff.
The F-35c for
the Marines has the same wing span as the Air Force version, which prevents it
from flying low and slow enough for close air battlefield support.
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The F-35 is
turning out to be second-rate combat aircraft, less able to perform its mission
than the legacy F-16 it is designed to replace. Although not widely reported in
the U.S. media (see here), in a staged dogfight the F-35 proved no match
against the 40-yo F-16.
Robert Dory, in
his book Air Power Abandoned writes, “The F-35 demonstrates repeatedly that it
can’t live up to promises made for it…It’s that bad.”
Examining
flight evaluation reports, Winslow Wheeler, defense spending analyst and
Director of the Straus Military Reform Project of the Project On Government
Oversight, concluded that the F-35 “is flawed beyond redemption.”
And Pierre
Sprey, defense analyst and co-designer of the F-16 calls the F-35 Joint Strike
Fighter “inherently a terrible airplane.”
Economic Impact
of F-35 Program
Lockheed Martin
in California runs the F-35 program along with 1,400 subcontractors distributed
throughout 46 states, shoring up congressional support for the project. The
economic impact of the F-35 program has, so far, topped $100 Million in 18
states, led by Texas ($6.2 Billion), California ($5.1 Billion), and Florida
($1.4 Billion). The only states with no economic sway in this program are
Alaska, Hawaii, Wyoming, and Nebraska.
The DoD
originally planned to buy 2,400 F-35s. The program is a decade behind schedule,
and so far, only about 300 of them have been sold.
Their cost
continues to rise, now, some say, topping $200 million dollars per plane
(depending on how many can be sold). The helmet alone for the pilot costs
$600,000.
Nevertheless,
the Pentagon, with congressional support, has declared the F-35 program “too
big to fail.” This is what one could call “collective corruption”.
Russian 5th
Generation SU-57 Jet Fighter
The “gas
station masquerading as a country” has built a highly acclaimed 5th Generation
jet fighter, the SU-57. In contrast to the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, it has a
broad, aesthetically appealing wingspan.
Fifth
Generation jet fighters possess 4 key attributes:
1-Stealth
2-Super cruise:
the ability to sustain supersonic flight without afterburners
3-Super
maneuverability with the use of canards, thrust vectoring, and engine nozzles
4-Sensor
Fusion, highly integrated computer systems capable of networking with other
elements to provide all-round situational awareness.
The F-35 Joint
Strike fight is not, as advertised, a 5th Generation jet fighter because it
cannot maintain supersonic flight without afterburners. It can only fly up to
Mach 1.2 for 150 miles without them.
The Russian
Corvette and U.S. Littoral Combat Ship
Multi-role
littoral combat ships is another area where Russia has achieved a technological
advantage.
The new Russian
Corvette Vasily Bykov has half the displacement of the U.S. littoral combat
ships but still can carry and fire Kalibr-NK land attack cruise missiles,
something the U.S. Navy needs destroyers and cruisers for
The Kalibr-NK
missile has a 1,500-mile range and proved its worth when Russia fired it from
ships in the Caspian Sea against terrorist targets in Syria 900 miles away. The
missile comes armed with either conventional or nuclear warheads.
This Russian
corvette has an arsenal ranging from surface to air interceptors to an
inflatable boat that a commando team can use to liberate civilian hostages in a
vessel held by pirates.
One respected
military correspondent writes that this corvette has “a pretty genius design”
with a small frame providing great strike power.
In contrast,
USS Freedom, one of the newest class of American Littoral Combat Ships, has had
trouble passing inspections.
According to a
Government Accounting Office (GAO) report, those ships have taken longer to
build, cost more, and delivered less than expected.
They go fast,
up to 40 knots, but the ships’ 30 and 57 mm guns “exhibit reliability problems
and may be dysfunctional at high speeds.”
Inspection
tests show problems with the fire-fighting and electrical systems, along with
generator meltdowns, computer systems failures, and burst pipes.
The GAO report
states: “The Navy attributed a series of engineering casualties on littoral
combat ships to shortfalls in crew training, sea-frame design, and construction
quality.”
Submarines
The United
States also lags Russia in nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines. The
U.S. fleet has 14 of them, all Ohio class. The first one, the USS Ohio, is now
37 years old and is still in active service. The youngest one, the USS
Louisiana, has been in service for 20 years.
The DoD plans
to replace them with 12 Columbia-class 4th generation electrically run, quiet
ballistic missile submarines. Production is scheduled to begin in 2021, with
the first one becoming operational in 2031. Russia has already launched 3 of
its Borei-class 4th generation ballistic missile submarines, and five more are
under construction. The first one is fully operational and joined Russia’s
Northern Fleet in 2014.
The U.S.
Columbia-class submarines are presently estimated to cost $10 B dollars each.
But its cost will certainly go up following the discovery earlier this month of
faulty welding in the missile tubes destined for this project.
The
same-generation, same-size Russian Borei-class ballistic missile submarines
cost $1 B dollars each.
Russian S-400
and U.S. Patriot Missiles
The Russian
S-400 Triumf multifunctional anti-aircraft system is designed to destroy
aircraft, cruise and ballistic missiles, and ground objectives up to 240 miles
away.
China was the
first country after Russia to purchase and obtain the S-400 Triumf, which comes
with a multifunction radar complex that can track aircraft employing stealth
technology, like with the F-35. Turkey, India, and Saudi Arabia also want to
purchase the S-400 instead of the American Patriot system.
Military
analysts say it is an open secret that the S-400 is much more capable than the
American Patriot air-defense system.
Helicopters
In the
17-year-old Afghan war, now called Operation Freedom’s Sentinel, American and
Afghan troops use the Russian Mi-17 helicopters, but Congress is no longer
going to allow them to buy Russian helicopters. They will have to use U.S.
Black Hawk helicopters instead
But in a recent
report to Congress, the Inspector General for Overseas Contingency Operations,
makes this assessment of the matter:
“Black Hawks do
not have the lift capacity of Mi-17s. They are unable to accommodate some of
the larger cargo items the Mi-17s can carry, and in general, it takes almost
two Black Hawks to carry the load of a single Mi-17. Furthermore, unlike
Mi-17s, Black Hawks cannot fly at high elevations and, as such, cannot operate
in remote regions of Afghanistan where Mi-17s operate.”
U.S. Civil
Nuclear Power
The U.S.A. was
a pioneer in nuclear power. Ted Rockwell, who played an important role in its
development, describes the dawn of the atomic age in a most engaging fashion in
his book Creating the New World: Stories & Images from the Dawn of the
Atomic Age.
After the
Manhattan Project produced the first uranium and plutonium atomic bombs, the
Army next tested a thermonuclear fusion weapon, the 10 megaton “Ivy Mike” on an
atoll in the Marshall Islands in 1952.
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In 1951, an
experimental breeder reactor in Arco, Idaho was the first reactor to generate
significant amounts of electrical power. Then Admiral Rickover and his team
built and launched the first nuclear-powered submarine, the USS Nautilus, in
1954.
The first
commercial electric-generating plant powered by nuclear energy came online in
Shippingport, Pennsylvania, in 1958. Of 96 civil nuclear power plants built in
the U.S., 35 have closed, and no new ones have been ordered since 1974.
The 61 plants
still operating in 30 states house 99 nuclear reactors that provide 20% of the
nation’s electricity.
The first new
nuclear reactor to be built in a long time was at a plant in Tennessee in 2016.
Two reactors under construction at a plant in South Carolina were recently
cancelled, half-way completed, when Westinghouse filed for bankruptcy. But two
other nuclear reactors remain under construction in Georgia at its Vogtle
plant, shown here. They are scheduled to come online in 2022 and 2023.
Myriad
regulations and environmental strictures wedded to the linear no threshold view
of radiation make building new nuclear power plants in the U.S. virtually
impossible—and threaten completion of the 2 new nuclear reactors under
construction in Georgia.
Russia now has
37 nuclear reactors with 5 more under construction and 20 more planned. And
Russia is also building 34 new nuclear reactors in 12 countries, China, Iran,
and India among them.
Russian Civil
Nuclear Power
In addition to
miniature nuclear reactors powering various weapon systems, Russian scientists
have become leaders in fast neutron technology for nuclear reactors. And Russia
is also building floating nuclear power plants. The first one is the
Academik Lomonosov. It has 2 nuclear reactors that produce 35 megawatts of
electricity and 150 megawatts of heat. It can also desalinate ocean salt
water and turn it into drinkable water.
Towed through
the Baltic Sea to Murmansk for fuel loading, it is going to provide power to
the arctic town of Pevek. Its reactors are modified Soviet KLT-40 naval
propulsion reactors made for their nuclear-powered icebreakers.
The American
antinuclear, environmental left has labelled this floating nuclear power plant
both the “Chernobyl on Ice,” and “Nuclear Titanic.”
Designed to be
mass produced, Russia plans to buy 7 of them, and so far, 15 other countries
are interested in acquiring one.
At the Doctors
for Disaster Preparedness meeting in 2005, the late Sol Penner, Professor of
Jet Propulsion at Caltech and then founding chair of the San Diego Center for
Energy Research at UCSD presented facts that support the prediction that humans
will use predominately nuclear energy in the future.
As one
insightful commentator observes:
“Russia’s
decision to invest in nuclear energy capabilities is a brilliant strategic move
befitting a nation of chess players.”
Art Robinson,
in the April issue of his Access to Energy newsletter, points out that in
future years Russia, China, and India will possess most of the world’s nuclear
power and will thereby also have most of the of the world’s heavy industry, for
whom energy is a major expense. With American energy costing three to six times
more than Asian energy the contest for heavy industry will be over. The U.S.
will be on the road to becoming a third world country.
China has also
designed a floating nuclear power plant and plans to build up to 20 of them.
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Future War
Air Force
General Robert Latiff, in his book Future War: Preparing for the New Global
Battlefield, published in 2017 writes:
“War and
technology have defined our history. Americans spend vast sums on weapons and
aggressively export our weapons to others. We assume our technological
superiority, an assumption that is increasingly challenged and that has
potentially dangerous consequences if we think it will allow us to impose our
will on others.… Make no mistake: the willful ignorance of the American public
and its leaders will have dangerous consequences.”
In addition to
lagging behind Russia in hypersonic weapons and nuclear technology, our
military is also saddled with problematic, inferior, and obsolete weapon
systems like the F-35, aircraft carriers, ballistic missile submarines, and
helicopters.
It makes little
sense for Washington to spend $200 Billion tax dollars on 14 new Ford-class
aircraft carriers when hypersonic weapons have rendered them obsolete and
turned aircraft carriers into floating death traps.
Vladimir
Putin’s speech on March 1, 2018 publicly ended U.S. military supremacy. The
United States is no longer the world’s technologically superior superpower.
Russia is.
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Adhering to the
principle of Mutually Assured Destruction, the United States and the Soviet
Union maintained a “long peace,” as Vladimir Putin notes and John Lewis Gaddis
writes about in his book The Long Peace: Inquiries into the History of the Cold
War. It was a 40-year-long peace. President Eisenhower, in 1957, questioned on
the use of tactical atomic weapons in any small war in which the United States
might be involved, said:
“Any such
operation today is just another way of committing suicide… There is no such
thing as a limited atomic war.”
Onset of Cold
War 2.0
As happened
with Sputnik in the Cold War Space Race, our country is now in a Cold War 2.0,
this time in a Hypersonic Weapons Race. Once again, the U.S. finds itself
behind Russia, and China, in this race. After Putin’s speech Congress awarded
Lockheed Martin $1 Billion to design and produce an American hypersonic
missile. Then three weeks ago, Congress gave this weapons manufacturer another
$500 Million, with a promise of more to come for hypersonic weapons.
This Cold War
carries a heightened risk for turning into a nuclear war, with Washington’s
neoconservatives and neoliberal interventionists demonizing Putin, pushing war,
and thinking the U.S. can get away with using tactical nuclear weapons in
regional conflicts.
This 21st
century Cold War has already triggered an economic war when the United States
started imposing sanctions against Russia in 2014.
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Invaded by
Sweden under King Charles in the 18th century, by France under Napoleon in the
19th, and invaded by the Nazis under Hitler in the 20th century, it is fair to
say the Russian people and their President want peace. But what if something
happens to Putin and a hardline military general, like a Dr. Strangelove,
becomes President of Russia and takes control of its nuclear arsenal? Or
terrorists get ahold of nukes?
And by not
objecting to the use of battlefield tactical nuclear weapons, America’s
neoconservatives and neoliberal interventionists seem to have shoved the adage,
“A nuclear war cannot be unleashed, because there will be no winners” down the
memory hole.
It behooves us
to once again heed Cresson Kearny and read his book Nuclear War Survival Skills
(1987 Revised Edition, with 2001 Addendum on Hormesis), and hone our nuclear
war survival skills. Disaster preparedness for nuclear war is now more
important than ever.
(On a personal
note: I come from a military family and have been studying U.S. military
matters for many years, beginning with the Civil War when I was a teenager. My
father and maternal grandfather were career Navy surgeons who fought in WWs II
and I respectively; and my great-great-grandfather, Louis Hicks, fought with
Stonewall Jackson up through Chancellorsville in the Civil War and led the 20th
North Carolina Regiment in the Battle of Gettysburg. I served on active duty as
a surgeon in the Navy Medical Corps like my father, as a Lt. Cmdr. during the
Vietnam War.)
The Best of
Donald W. Miller, Jr., MD
Donald Miller
[send him mail] is a retired cardiac surgeon, a Professor Emeritus of Surgery
and former Chief of the Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery at the University of
Washington School of Medicine in Seattle. He is a member of Doctors for
Disaster Preparedness and writes articles on a variety of subjects for
LewRockwell.com. His website is www.donaldmiller.com.