US to withdraw from Nuclear treaty with Russia

[Beau]

http://www.msnbc.com/news/671082.asp

President bush is going to give a statement on it soon!

 

[SuperTool]

I personally think it's Ronald Reagan's pipe dream, but it's good for CA, so I am for it. Send us your federal defense dollars
I just hope we don't get overconfident with our so called defense

 

[DonaldC]

Bush hasn't exactly been keeping this a secret.

 

[Shantanu]

I think we've kissed ass to everyone enough on this. Once again, Colin Powell's boot licking was beginning to embarrass the entire country. We were ready to make a lot of concessions to Russia about this, and we were pretty clear that we were going to move ahead with it weather or not Putin "approves" of it. The only reason we were even willing to make concessions is that Putin could save face back home. But, like Yasser Arafat, he wanted too much, and now he's lost it all. He pushed our generosity too far.

It's about damn time.

 

[Dually]

Okay both sides have violated that treaty more than anything.

First of all the U.S. allready has a SDI system defending Washington D.C.

Second of all so does Moscow.

Third of all the U.S. ever since Reagan ahs been developing a SDI system (Star Wars Program) so thsi isn't a surprise. In fact so has Russia.

The legal stickler is this. The treaty was between the U.S. and the USSR. The USSR doesn't exist anymore so in my and most peoples opinion neither do any treaties between the U.S. and the USSR ever.

Russia isn't worried, if it wanted it could still wipe out the U.S. We will never have a SDI system to prevent 30,000 nuclear warheads.

 

[no0b]

raise your hand if you think that the nuclear arms race was just a waste of time and resources.

 

[Shantanu]

<< if it wanted it could still wipe out the U.S. We will never have a SDI system to prevent 30,000 nuclear warheads. >>



Ummm... Why not? Once you have a system that can effectively take out one warhead, you just multiply that over to take out several warheads. The cost of expansion will be minimal anyways, since most of the cost is going into research and development.

Of course, Bush isn't going to come out and say that we're building a system that may one day be able to thwart any nuclear attempt because that's too large a promise to make, but you have to read between the lines on this one.

 

[SuperTool]

<<

<< if it wanted it could still wipe out the U.S. We will never have a SDI system to prevent 30,000 nuclear warheads. >>



Ummm... Why not? Once you have a system that can effectively take out one warhead, you just multiply that over to take out several warheads. The cost of expansion will be minimal anyways, since most of the cost is going into research and development.

Of course, Bush isn't going to come out and say that we're building a system that may one day be able to thwart any nuclear attempt because that's too large a promise to make, but you have to read between the lines on this one. >>



Cost will be minimal? What are you talking about. First of all, each warhead will need to be shot down with a rocket. And these rockets will cost tens of millions of dollars each, if not hundreds. Also, if you don't shoot down a rocket at launch deep in heart of Russia, which is hard to do, they can just put 5 or more warheads on each launch vehicle. So once they separate in space, you need 5 rockets to shoot down the warheads launched from one rocket. Russia has agreed not to MIRV warheads, but if ABM treaty goes, all bets are off. I would expect them to MIRV their warheads, in order to keep parity with any defensive measures taken by US.
So if you want to stop a Russian full strike, you will need to spend hundrends of billions of dollars, to build it, and hundreds more to maintain. Even then, you still won't be 100% sure that the system will work to stop all incoming nukes. And even if only 10 out of 2000 thermonuclear warheads reaches it's target, can you still call it a success? I think it might be useful against Korea, and maybe China, but let's not get too carried away.

 

[HombrePequeno]

<< The legal stickler is this. The treaty was between the U.S. and the USSR. The USSR doesn't exist anymore so in my and most peoples opinion neither do any treaties between the U.S. and the USSR ever. >>



Woohoo! Let's claim the Moon.

 

[UltraQuiet]

Just a couple of thoughts

1. SDI under Reagan was a hoax. It was part of his big plan to force Russia to spend themselves into oblivion. It worked.
2. We have or will remove ourselves only fromthe part of the treaty that forbids missile defense. We are still commited to decreasing our nuclear arsenal.
3. The missile defense system that we are currently working on is not going to be designed to fend off Russia/China or other nation states with big arsenals. We practice a thing called deterence to do that. Trident subs, land based missiles, etc. Remember MAD. This system, it is my understanding, will be to intercept that rogue missile fired by some terrorist a$shole. For instance if Bin Laden fired a missile from the White Mountains right now, what would we do? Would we fire a sortie from USS Underway Trident. Maybe/maybe not. But it sure would be nice to have a system that could intercept that one missile. Is it worth the cost? I don't know. I do think that some of you are overestimating the cost though. A Trident D5 missile doesn't cost the numbers you are throwing around.

 

[guyver01]

CNN finally has information up

 

[spaceman]

I dont know much about nuclear warheads,defense systems etc.
But i do know Bush doesnt take BS! go BUSH!!

 

[Lankin]

Actually Bush's proposed missle defense system has three parts. Land based(the one they have been testing since Clinton's first term), air based, and space based. The thing under Reagen wasnt a hoax, its been in development jointly by the USAF, Boeing, and several other areospace companies for the past two decades. Its being launch sometime in 2012, with tests taking place in 2013, and is supposed to be fully functional by 2020.. The air based missle defense uses the same technology the space based uses, it just uses commercial airplanes..

 

[UltraQuiet]

<< The thing under Reagen wasnt a hoax, its been in development jointly by the USAF, Boeing, and several other areospace companies for the past two decades. Its being launch sometime in 2012, with tests taking place in 2013, and is supposed to be fully functional by 2020.. >>



My statement wasn't clear and I apologize for that. What I should have said is that Reagan knew there was not going to be a deployable SDI system short-term but he acted like there was to force the Sovs to try to keep up, spend themselves into oblivion, etc. That's the way I understand it and that's why I used the word hoax(probably incorrectly). We started trying to develop an anti-missile system 10 minutes after the missile was invented.