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    First strike survivability .. Archived Message

    Posted by Shyaku on February 11, 2023, 5:13 pm, in reply to "Chomsky interviewed on the Duran channel ..."

    Chomsky talks about the placement of offensive weapons on the Russian border. I never understand this.

    Lets say missiles were on the Russian border in the Donbass.

    The distance from Kharkov to Moscow is 403 miles.
    (The Ukraine already holds Kharkov)

    Distance from Donetsk to Moscow: 636 miles.
    (now part of Russia)

    Distance from Vilnius to Moscow: 594 miles
    (Nato territory)

    Distance from Lublin (Poland) to Moscow): 753 miles.
    (Nato territory).

    So is the war about preventing a decapitation strike on Moscow? NATO is already as close as Donetsk is. Pushing Ukraine all the way back from Donetsk to Lvov will change the missile distance to Moscow from about 400 to ~750 miles *in that specific direction* only, not from the Baltic states.

    Lets say NATO can now send a package to Moscow at Mach 3 (supersonic): The flight time from Donetsk to Moscow is under 6 min.

    Lets say within three years the NATO pushes this to Mach 5: They can now go from Poland to Moscow in the same time, and all the effort of taking Ukraine is wasted.

    So this is not the reason. The reason is first strike survivability, the ability to knock out a retaliatory Russian strike during the boost phase. This really does need missiles close to the Russian border to hit Russian strategic weapons immediately after firing.

    In fact I barely even buy this argument, since much of the Russian nuclear triad is *submarine based*. So what is even the achievability of defanging the Russian deterrent?

    Secondly, I don’t entirely buy Chomsky’s nuclear winter argument: The US is developing highly accurate, low yield nukes to knock out Russian strategic nukes in their silos. These would have lower yield that Hiroshima but be just as deadly within a more accurate but smaller blast radius. A key aim of all this, as always, is to get Russia’s sh1t. The US doesn’t really want it all messed up.

    So the aim, as far as I can see, is the capability to defang Russian land-based silos with highly accurate low yield nukes (which the US very likely already has), then the ability to knock out any land-based strategic retaliatory strike.

    For any decapitation attack on Moscow, we may assume Russia cannot slow down the flight time because missiles are getting faster all the time, and longer range, so for this they presumably rely on superb air defense capabilities.

    Chomsky said “know your enemy”, well if the enemy is the US, are they irrational actors, or do they actually have a plan to provoke a nuclear exchange that they feel they can win based on classified information on an upgraded deterrent, or if not win, then at least demonstrate to make Russia surrender as the Japanese did? Its not a brilliant plan, but its at least a plan and a characteristically evil one.

    - Shyaku

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