NS Military Realism Consultation Thread Vol. 11.0

[Weimarer Reich]

I'd certainly file Hershey's taste as a WMD in terms of atrociousness.

[Gallia-]

I'd certainly file Hershey's taste as a WMD in terms of atrociousness.

It's just weaponized diabetes. Like how burger is weaponized heart disease. And WMD is weaponized sunshine.

All of America's weapons are either objects of peace or bringers of peace. The atomic bomb brings sunshine, which is warm and comforting. The Hershey's chocolate tastes sweet and kills your pancreas, causing necrosis of the limbs and gangrene. Trench foot in a foil wrapper? Possibly. And the burger offers you all your food groups: meat, grease, sugar, bread, and fat. Then it clogs your arteries and murders you. The only thing more American is giving people Snuggies that have a built-in tourniquet that cuddles your neck. Keeps you warm while cutting off oxygen to brain.

The American way of war has been co-opted by the PRC, which is the most American of all foreign countries.

[United Earthlings]

Should a thassalocracy disband its entire land army for a professional navy and marine corps?

That's a Catch-22 problem there, because with no designated Army service branch your, by the logic that nature abhors a vacuum, Marine Corps would become by default your de facto land army which is pretty much what the U.S. Marine Corps is today, a second land army with a small air force thrown in for good measure.

[Taihei Tengoku]

Should a thassalocracy disband its entire land army for a professional navy and marine corps?

That's a Catch-22 problem there, because with no designated Army service branch your, by the logic that nature abhors a vacuum, Marine Corps would become by default your de facto land army which is pretty much what the U.S. Marine Corps is today, a second land army with a small air force thrown in for good measure.

The army is the local gendarme and the fyrd.

[Dostanuot Loj]

That's a Catch-22 problem there, because with no designated Army service branch your, by the logic that nature abhors a vacuum, Marine Corps would become by default your de facto land army which is pretty much what the U.S. Marine Corps is today, a second land army with a small air force thrown in for good measure.

The army is the local gendarme and the fyrd.

I guess if you accept that the marines would become your defacto army, it could work fine. You could easily have the same situation the USMC has, and culture, but without the issue of those pesky POG guys in the army.

[Gallia-]

The biggest problem is the loss of a reservoir of mechanized combat experience, unless the marines are so big they need half a dozen Algols to get anywhere I guess.

[Dostanuot Loj]

The biggest problem is the loss of a reservoir of mechanized combat experience, unless the marines are so big they need half a dozen Algols to get anywhere I guess.

Easily countered by never doing work that involves mechanized combat.

It severely limits you, of course, but it is viable.

[Schwere Panzer Abteilung 502]

The allied bombing campaign of Germany did a number on that nation, but even the greatest industrial power of WWII couldn't produce enough bombers to pound into dust all of Germany's major cities and industrial centers,

They. Literally. Did.

And it doesn't matter since you can make all the steel in the world but if you have no way of moving it it's useless. Which is what actually happens in strategic bombing: vital transportation hubs are destroyed and spokes choke to death.

I meant that the bombing campaign did not have nearly the effect that it was thought to have, psychologically or physically, on Germany's war effort - it's well documented how little effect the Blitz really had on Britain's determination to fight to the end. But more to my point, was that nuclear weapons allow the same kind of destruction that thousand-bomber raids cause without the need to assemble, well, a thousand bombers to attack one target. Won't a single warhead detonated over a city produce far more devastation than massed bomber raids, thanks to the far greater heat and shock put out at the point of detonation over a far shorter amount of time?

not to mention the fact that the Germans got very good at dispersing their industry to ensure its surviveability.

It didn't help. An all out atomic attack wouldn't destroy all of America's industry either. It would be approximately in the same position as 1945 Germany or Japan in 30 minutes instead of 30 months. Perfectly survivable if you can shake off the psychological shock, conduct BDA, and

With a first strike

So what. The action needed is the same: assess the damage, distribute stored goods, and rebuild. The Soviet Army was spot on in believing it could survive an atomic first strike by the U.S. and continue to fight.

Whether it could beat the United States in the post-attack armed conflict is another question entirely.

Okay, so all of America's industrial capacity wouldn't be annihilated in a full-scale nuclear exchange. It would still have a massive wrench thrown into it. If we assume the nuclear war occurs during/at the start of a conventional war in Europe, then the US would have to support its own forces in Europe and the rest of NATO, which would presumably be a strain far greater than WWI and/or II, given the fact that the country was just smacked with several thousand warheads. I think it's just slightly optimistic to say that the US could continue just as Germany or Japan continued while being bombed. Not saying that we would all turn into super mutants and form brotherhoods of steel, just that nuclear war is probably among the more extreme events a state can face.

and the follow-up damage from the side-effects would dog a country for decades.

Actually it would probably be somewhat beneficial.

How so?

I'm interested to hear Gallia's explanation for why the KGB duped people into believing a nuclear war is not survivable,

Amazing. If you aren't aware the KGB literally funded nuclear peace campaigns for the purpose of restoring the USSR's conventional balance of power in Europe you need to educate yourself on the most basic facts of the Cold War TBH. This isn't some deep, dank secret pulled out of a hat. It's almost common knowledge. It's rather well documented since the majority of active measures funding went to nuclear peace groups. It didn't hurt the KGB because it was sort of expected for anti-war groups to be funded by the communists, and it had a huge potential payoff in that if the peace groups succeeded in killing Trident in UK or better yet, completely disarming the West, it would make a conventional invasion of Europe much easier for the Soviet Army.

It was most active during the 1940s and 1950s. As time went on it became clear to the Soviet leadership that funding peace movements was a false start to attacking Western democracies, but it gained traction as a means of swaying the fifth column to and fro. The other major "peace offensive" period was the 1980s when the United States deployed the Pershing II and GLCM to Europe.

Looks like we need to bring back GLCM too, perhaps in Aegis Ashore canisters or something. Instead of mobility the nuclear missile it defends itself with a magazine of RV interceptors and carries six dozen Nagasakis.

Anyway you really need to realize that the Soviet Union doesn't want "peace" because they're already at "war". It's a bit like saying Adolf Hitler wanted peace with the United States in November 1941 when he'd been fighting a war against FDR for the past two years or so. The same was true for the USSR 1917-1991. It was in a state of political-economic-moral warfare with the United States and Western civilization as a whole. If you forget this key historical context your entire ability to judge the "Cold War" is severely compromised.

I wasn't aware of a lot of that, but I'm here to learn, so thank you for all that.

because everything I've read points to it being on the level of a large natural disaster,

What have you been reading? "Some dude on the Internet" isn't a real source. Carl Sagan's marijuana fueled 1960s "models" of climatology? The same TTAPS that was heavily predicated on pushing a political viewpoint than doing real, true, proper scientific inquiry? The TTAPS study that predicted mass "nuclear winter-esque" conditions in the Persian Gulf War that subsequently led to...wait for it...a bit of haze and the clouds washing out over the Persian Gulf because the fuel densities imagined were radically high and the plumes never reached (nor perhaps, ever produced enough smoke in the first place to matter if they did) the stratosphere needed to spread across the region. It wasn't just wrong, it was so completely off the target that it's a bit like CNN's coverage of EBOV in America. Hysterical to a fault and absolutely silly. Which is entirely missing the point for an allegedly "scientific" anything.

Here's a real source, the United States Department of Homeland Security: http://hpschapters.org/sections/homelan ... _FINAL.pdf

Better than the Hitler Channel's and other popular science regurgitation of 50 years out-of-date climatology things like TTAPS which were pure propaganda from the start. Since firestorms are pretty unlikely in modern cities in the first place, the entire mechanism of "nuclear winter" (i.e. any and every city over 100,000 people turns into a firestorm in July, among dubious/questionable properties of smoke) falls apart. There won't be a major lofting of smoke into the stratosphere to lower winter temperatures to the point of major frost, choking off agriculture, and starving millions. It didn't happen in Europe in 1944 or 1945 either. The real reason people haven't swatted it down is because it appeals to public consciousness and it is difficult to remove something that is so heavily entrenched in the public mind. It's wrong, but so is "The Wehrmacht were really innocent angels duped by Hitler," and "Reagan won the Cold War," TBH.

It's just blatantly wrong and TBH I'm not sure how to explain it to you except to tell you that smoke is literally a cloud I guess?

What like a Yellowstone supervolcano eruption or a good-sized asteroid impact.

Literally no one has ever said this. Well except maybe Carl Sagan, who did actually say that a single 100 MT bomb is equivalent to a dinosaur killer (last I checked the USSR was not cloaked in eternal darkness by the Tsar Bomba lmao). But Carl Sagan is about as credible re: nuclear winter as Pierre Sprey is re: F-35 air force being worse than all A-10 and OV-10 air force. The man was an astronomer not a climatologist. And he was a better TV presenter than he was a climatologist. Alarmist publications are generally subjected to greater scrutiny, especially when they involve something actually dramatic like nuclear war, and TTAPS and "nuclear winter" is not really any different. It's nonsense based on a 1950s understanding of climate science.

So good job you don't bother researching your knowledge I guess?

Here's what happens:

1) Stuff in cities gets exploded by atomic bombs.
2) Ashes of dead orphans goes really high into sky.
3) Ashes of dead orphans rains out because of accumulated water vapor of said orphans.
4) Literally raining men because water vapor comes from atomized human beings.
5) A week later everything is mostly fine re: growing stuff and not at all covered in an inch of frost in August.

Basically it. Thanks Dr. Emanuel. The real danger is that the rainout occurs over farmland or fields which are downwind of atomic targets, but it cannot cover all the farmland, and the vast majority will probably rain out over worthless unsued fields or something. If it occurs over a growing field you need to evacuate the first few inches of topsoil (which is to say, the topsoil) because it's contaminated by radioactive particles and will make growing plants look funny/stunted and not produce much useful crop yield.

That's a very remote threat but it will probably happen in some places and some people will starve in winter. Starvation occurred in Europe too when their rail and road infrastructure was captured by Hitler or bombed by the Eighth Air Force.

The Strategic Rocket Troops or 2nd Artillery Corps would be able to cut off transportation for a large area of the United States, if not all of it, by destroying key rail hubs and transportation links. Since large cities tend to coalesce around transportation infrastructure and good hubs of movement (not the other way around!) then it would probably be pretty scummy for survivors since people would be living in shanties and "improvised housing" for a few years without running water or whatever. This is to be expected. And TBH it will probably happen without nuclear war.

A robust civil defense network would be able to counteract it, but planning by itself would be needed after the attack due to the relative randomness of attack distribution. But training to the population for what to do before, during, and immediately after an attack (mostly: don't panic, duck and cover, and stay put) and a civil defense force that can reinforce the probably dead or dying emergency services crews who are trapped under rubble or something is a must. Without that you're left dying but that has nothing to do with bombs and everything to do with an inability to plan for and properly react in a massive attack scenario.

So according to what you're saying, nuclear war is actually pretty survivable? Not if you're living in NYC or Pittsburgh, maybe, but in someplace like northern Pennsylvania or anywhere in Idaho you might do relatively well? Maybe I've watched The Day After one too many times.

e: As an aside, I should consider the source I used as unreliable? It seemed to me that the author had done his research, but I'm just an undergrad.

[Taihei Tengoku]

The biggest problem is the loss of a reservoir of mechanized combat experience, unless the marines are so big they need half a dozen Algols to get anywhere I guess.

[Tule]

So according to what you're saying, nuclear war is actually pretty survivable? Not if you're living in NYC or Pittsburgh, maybe, but in someplace like northern Pennsylvania or anywhere in Idaho you might do relatively well? Maybe I've watched The Day After one too many times.

The survivability and lethality of nuclear war is extremely variable.

In 1959, a nuclear war between the US and the USSR would have left the latter practically sterilized. SAC in 1959 was the most powerful military force ever fielded in human history. The enormous size of the US strategic arsenal as well as the celestial power of each weapon would have generated destruction on an unimaginable scale.

I'll give it a try. Imagine the Allied bomber offensive in the closing years of WW2 in Europe and Japan. Now imagine the same number of bombers dropping a multi-megaton hydrogen bomb each, several hundred of which yield 25 megatons. That's what the Soviet Union faced in the Cuban Missile Crisis.

For comparison, a nuclear war between India and Pakistan would be considerably less destructive relatively than the bomber offensive on Germany in WW2. The total number of deaths would probably not exceed 10 million.

Another scenario would be a British retaliatory strike against Russia. Such a retaliatory strike would be catastrophic... if you live in Moscow. The British nuclear deterrent is intended to destroy Moscow, and nothing else. In such an attack you would be fine if you lived in Smolensk or Murmansk or any Russian city other than Moscow.

A nuclear exchange between Russia and America today would be moderately destructive. Most people in those countries would survive the attack as nuclear arms treaties have reduced the arsenals of the two countries to the point where hardly any bombs are leftover once priority military targets have been destroyed, leaving the civilian infrastructure in the two countries mostly intact.

The day after is fairly realistic, considering the power of the Soviet strategic arsenal at the time. These days the bombs are smaller and much fewer.

[Gallia-]

I meant that the bombing campaign did not have nearly the effect that it was thought to have, psychologically or physically, on Germany's war effort

That's because Germany developed a robust civil defense infrastructure. So did Japan. Their emergency services ended up being dispersed across wide geographic areas so they could not be destroyed by atomic attack/bomber raids/firestorms and they became very proficient at attacking and reducing Allied firebombings and conducting what moderns would call "urban search & rescue". So too would have the UK and United States if it came down it.

it's well documented how little effect the Blitz really had on Britain's determination to fight to the end.

The Luftwaffe was so effete it was like pinching the UK. Bomber Command and the U.S. Army Air Force were the real deal. Germany and Japan still fought despite suffering damage comparable to an atomic assault.

But more to my point, was that nuclear weapons allow the same kind of destruction that thousand-bomber raids cause without the need to assemble, well, a thousand bombers to attack one target.

So what.

Won't a single warhead detonated over a city produce far more devastation than massed bomber raids, thanks to the far greater heat and shock put out at the point of detonation over a far shorter amount of time?

You realize that mass bomber raids literally produced nuclear levels of destruction, right?

It would still have a massive wrench thrown into it. If we assume the nuclear war occurs during/at the start of a conventional war in Europe,

"Conventional war in Europe" is fake news. An armed conflict in Europe starts with a massive nuclear assault and keeps on going. The Russian Army doesn't wear moral blinders. Its nuclear doctrine is literally an evolved Soviet one.

then the US would have to support its own forces in Europe and the rest of NATO, which would presumably be a strain far greater than WWI and/or II, given the fact that the country was just smacked with several thousand warheads.

It doesn't matter if the US had simply stockpiles enough ammunition and armaments, while building a robust anti-missile capability and hardening its population, but it never did that.

I think it's just slightly optimistic to say that the US could continue just as Germany or Japan continued while being bombed.

The US would need to be like the USSR and actually prepare to fight a nuclear war is what I'm saying. The idea that a nuclear war is unwinnable is extremely cynical TBH.

How so?

You would be able to make the roads wider, factories larger, and apartments more modern. Wiping the slate clean has the effect of letting you work without boundaries for a time.

Examining the reconstruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki would be prudent but they are too far away from us today to exist outside of archives and electronic databases, which would likely be destroyed, so America would need to rediscover how to make things from scratch. This is probably the biggest failing of the U.S. nuclear war policy. But Anglos cannot conceive of war as anything more than "drop bomb on terrorist" rather than a total institution involving all aspects of society. When you say "war" to an Anglo they think of bombers and tanks, not Astroturf political rallies and strategic acquisition of steel foundries.

So according to what you're saying, nuclear war is actually pretty survivable?

Only if you think it is. If you think it isn't survivable then you bury your head in the sand and die when the bombs fall. If you think it is survivable, you make preparations to harden yourself to it, and keep fighting after the attack. Without someone telling you what to do people will do stupid things of their own accord, like run into highly radioactive areas and increase workload for everyone else, because they will get sick and start bleeding from their gums or eyes or whatever. So the USA might survive by accident but it'll be in a worse position, per capita, than Russia in an atomic exchange. But the USA has almost triple the population of Russia so each American would need to be three times worse than a Russian and that seems unlikely even in the worst scenario.

Nuclear war isn't just survivable, it's entirely winnable. The Soviet Army was pretty confident it would ride out the Minuteman force, B-52s, and 41 for Freedom and still be able to face the U.S. Army in the field.

Not if you're living in NYC or Pittsburgh, maybe, but in someplace like northern Pennsylvania or anywhere in Idaho you might do relatively well?

Ideally you would do OK in all places you're being conscripted by the National Guard/gendarme to clear concrete or melt steel or put out fires or something.

The biggest problem is the loss of a reservoir of mechanized combat experience, unless the marines are so big they need half a dozen Algols to get anywhere I guess.

That's clearly a grunt.



Get swole with the strength of 1,500 horses.

once priority military targets have been destroyed, leaving the civilian infrastructure in the two countries mostly intact.

When your warhead count is low and CEP is large you switch to countervalue. SS-27 only has capability to attack cities and large infrastructures like railheads, ports, and airbases. It cannot hit hard targets. Counterforce targeting is a luxury afforded once you have the ability to destroy factories TBH. The Russians aren't targeting empty silos and bomber bases. They're targeting the largest metropolitan areas of the United States and Europe. What else would they target? Why would you target Whiteman AFB when by the time your rockets arrive the B-2s are a dozen miles away?

Only the United States believes in counterforce still because the Air Force is terrified of being attacked and the USN lost the targeting war. If the U.S. Navy had won the targeting war, America would be focusing on attacking silos during a surprise first attack and focusing on attacking factories and transportation hubs during a second strike/retaliation attack. The reality is probably that the USAF would still be dumping B83s at maximum yield over Beijing and Moscow from B-2's bomb bays, but only after serious arm twisting by the Fleet to strike things that aren't empty missile silos or deserted bomber bases, and only after the initial attack period.

Since the USN has over 2,000 nuclear warheads with CEPs in the 300 meter range (Mark 4 RV with the 100 KT W78) it probably has sufficient firepower to reduce the available Russian factory space, which has also shrunk since the Cold War, to a "moderate" level of destruction around the 50-70% percent marker of floor space destroyed. Probably by itself. This is what the thousand-missile Minuteman force would have done with the 1.2 MT warhead in SIOP.

The Minuteman force and Trident force are both targeted to open ocean, sadly, but I think they can be retargeted fairly quickly with the "new" computers.

[Tule]

From what I have read lately the Russians have been focusing on more high precision and lower yield warheads, going as far as deploying warheads in the hundred ton range on their SLBM's.

Then again, given the age of the bulk of the Strategic Rocket Forces a countervalue strategy does seem more logical.

[Gallia-]

From what I have read lately the Russians have been focusing on more high precision and lower yield warheads,

Presumably because it saves on strategic materials use and accuracy is easier to achieve than bigger yields when you're mass constrained as is the case on trying to fit something on an older missile. RS-24 is still shit compared to the Trident II/Mark 5 combination which is Peacekeeper/Midgetman levels of accurate.

going as far as deploying warheads in the hundred ton range on their SLBM's.

You mean "hundred kiloton" surely.

This is similar to the UK's use of small yield warheads on the Trident. It's a battlefield weapon not a strategic one. It's entirely pointless IMO since it would be better to put it on a cruise missile or something but the Russians lack new rockets and the UK only has Trident to begin with. Only the USA has cruise missiles and Aegis Ashore isn't going to be packing W-80s anytime soon, although it should TBH. The Cold War system would be either a Standard missile or a Tomahawk with a low yield warhead.

Then again, given the age of the bulk of the Strategic Rocket Forces a countervalue strategy does seem more logical.

Countervalue is just "kill area target". Killing hard targets like silos only makes sense for a first strike. Since SIOP was intended to be a rapid reaction strike plan that offered little time for the Soviet forces to react this is why the USAF focused so much on kill hard targets: they were going to attack in a "bolt from the blue" strike that would give Soviet intelligence services little warning of an imminent attack because SIOP could be initiated, executed, and hit its targets in less than an hour or something. Being able to hit missile launch sites in that time would give the Soviets too short a window to respond properly.

The only problem is that SIOP was too far advanced. To work properly it would have needed an intelligence/targeting infrastructure and weapon accuracy comparable to the 1990s United States, not the 1950s United States, and it would need the Soviets to not deploy anti-ballistic missile radars or anything of the sort. Technology overtook the idea so that is really why the USAF never launched its surprise first attack on the USSR.

Although had they decisive knowledge that Khrushchev was lying through his teeth about the missile gap, they would have done it no questions asked and no regrets. However the USAF was convinced the Soviets had a missile force of several hundred weapons in hidden launch sites, rather than "one or two" in a single launch site. Had the Army/Navy estimates been accepted by the USAF rather than rejected, had the USAF realized that the USSR wouldn't have a hard basing capability until the late 1960s (post-1965), and had the USAF had knowledge of the above-ground missile site locations they probably would have launched an immediate attack in 1965 with the Minuteman force with SIOP.

The USA could deal with the post-attack damage since the thermonuclear arsenal of the USSR was still in its infancy and completely annihilate, perhaps to a man, the Communist Bloc in one fell swoop.

[Tule]

You mean "hundred kiloton" surely.

This is similar to the UK's use of small yield warheads on the Trident. It's a battlefield weapon not a strategic one. It's entirely pointless IMO since it would be better to put it on a cruise missile or something but the Russians lack new rockets and the UK only has Trident to begin with. Only the USA has cruise missiles and Aegis Ashore isn't going to be packing W-80s anytime soon, although it should TBH. The Cold War system would be either a Standard missile or a Tomahawk with a low yield warhead.

https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedi ... e-escalate

50-200 ton range it says

I thought it was odd too.

[Gallia-]

Yay. ERW-kun alive in USSR rump state.

Based CIA-kun ty for these dank maymays.

[Kazarogkai]

It makes it so that the small no longer

North Korea's half dozen missiles might be able to damage like...one large American city. The U.S. Air Force alone could wipe the entire Korean peninsula free of human life, let alone North Korea. The entire U.S. nuclear arsenal could dismantle the majority economic-population centers of Russia, PRC, and North Korea with room left over. Granted it's no longer the gigaton hyper force of the Cold War, but the U.S. Navy alone has something like 300 megatons of firepower in the Ohios. The USAF packs another 100-ish megatons.

And more importantly, the USA could rebuild its nuclear arsenal in about as much time as it'll take North Korea to just acquire one. If the USA were committed to massive retaliation or even attempting to counter its enemies it would have double its current investments and placing missile interceptors in Hawaii or something to shoot down DPRK missiles, enlarging the missile force, and procuring more Peacekeepers with a dozen warheads a pop, along with re-arming the Trident with W88 and the Mark 5 RV.

What nukes actually do is restore North Korea's ability to hold the South hostage to its whims, which it hasn't had since the mid-1990s famine.

Emphasis on could

Amerioca could wipe north korea off the face of the map but.. it won't why? The cost are too high, something that could only be bought about because NK has nukes, especially for a Democracy that values every single individual life. Is the nuclear arsenal of NK only capable of destroying one american city at best? Yes. But that is enough. Why? Because america along with most nations like america aren't willing to stomach such costs and hence they won't steam roll NK thereby fulfilling the entire objective of the Former. Mission Accomplished. Nuclear weapons create such fear since they can create what many especially in the west would regard as unjustifiable losses that any nation armed with them is practically guaranteed to never be invaded by said nations regardless of how small they might be. The only ones they have to worry about are cold blooded Mother F*****s like China and Russia who don't give a damn but so be it.

Mind you this was not meant to be taken seriously. I was kinda delirious from not enough sleep made during the previous due to me staying up far past my bedtime. I'm not good in mornings.

[Gallia-]

Emphasis on could

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bo ... d_Nagasaki
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic ... _in_Europe
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_raids_on_Japan

It would annihilate North Korea if given a reason that satisfies it. "Nuking Camp Humphreys" is a pretty salient one, but it could be something as petty as "isn't democratic" if America ever elects someone as ballsy as Bush, Jr. again.

many especially in the west

The United States simply goes on moral crusades. That doesn't mean it is weak or effete or anything (it is weak for other reasons besides lack of moral fortitude) but it does mean it needs to be fairly determined to fight a war.

Perhaps one day America will get a president who really understands what the American people want.

"He could walk across the Earth unharmed, cloaked only in the protection of the words civis Romanus, I am a Roman citizen. So great was the retribution of Rome, universally understood as certain, should any harm befall even one of its citizens...where was the retribution for the families and where is the warning to the rest of the world that Americans shall walk this Earth unharmed, lest the clenched fist of the most mighty military force in the history of mankind comes crashing down on your house."

Truer words, etc.

America's mistake in Afghanistan was sticking around to "fix" the problem instead of making it a simple punitive campaign. Ideally US policymakers learned that America is bad at occupations and will stick to "bomb the other guys from 40,000 feet" while using ghazis or something. Since Trump seems to be some weird combination of the 1980s Democratic Party and Barack Obama it's probable that he will continue to do this, but at a less than adequate sortie rate or something, and also fail to invest the large sums of money the U.S. military needs to rebuild itself or sustain its operations TBH.

So business as usual rly.

[Gallia-]

What should I do for a nation with a huge populace, large industrial complex, and a willing-to-fight country, what vehicles should I use?

When you want to be so inclusive of all the branches you draw a Guardsman and a Regular Army missile man side-by-side in the same jeep behind a tank and infantry carrier.

Sadly they forgot about the artillery and the other half of the U.S. Cavalry. ):

words

I got a good ad for "THE CASE FOR GOLD" and something about America's looming financial apocalypse called "THE ROAD TO RUIN" from that "article", so I can safely file your "source" under "broken clock alarmism" I guess lmao.

[Tule]

In case anyone is curious, here is the 1959 SAC target list I mentioned yesterday. Technically it's a Wish list from 1956, but the USAF got pretty much what they wanted by the early 60's.

It's hilariously OP.

Moscow and Leningrad were priority one and two respectively. Moscow included 179 Designated Ground Zeros (DGZs) while Leningrad had 145

I used to think the RN's 48 warheads designated against Moscow was a lot.

They also planned to hit 1100 airfields with 1.7-9 megaton ground bursts. 12 of these Airfields were in Moscow.
The airfields were priority targets so SAC would eventually have dropped 167 A-bombs on an already sterilized moonscape by the time the first wave had passed.

[Gallia-]

SAC's targeting methodology was sound though...

Most of those "179 DGZs" would fail at some point during launch, flight, or simply miss their target. The point was to hit the factory with a bomb. When your weapons are inaccurate SM-65A, HGM-25, and LGM-30 with CEPs of 1-1.5 kilometers you really do need that many missiles. Because half your missiles will miss their target entirely (2n and 3n meters outside the CEP n), the other half will barely come close to hitting the target ("half a mile" isn't quite "near the factory" even with megatons) and a fair number will fail to fuse or become casualties on launch, or even be destroyed by enemy attack. This isn't even hard to determine since it's literally napkin math.

[Zhouran]

trash

>Heh I was almost forced to face the fact that my argument was bad but then I see this particular ad so tough luck pal

Yeah, China will definitely be numbah one, let's just kindly ignore their demographic issues and their current economic shape, or how their little miracle has ended, but hey China Stronk, am I right?

Also, can't get forget that diversity is strength for America because a less-diverse America is racist despite diversity actually weakening the US, but facts are racist and China will be supahpowa by 2020...

[Gallia-]

trash

>Heh I was almost forced to face the fact that my argument was bad but then I see this particular ad so tough luck pal

I'd hardly consider Alex Jones to be credible so why would I consider "buy gold like it's 2008" to be credible?

The article is "wishes and prayers for Western civilization" in a nutshell. Either China gets strong, the West gets weak, or they both collapse and everyone loses, which are the only two paths ATM. The only one that is certain is the Western decline.

Yeah, China will definitely be numbah one

Yep.

let's just kindly ignore their demographic issues and their current economic shape, or how their little miracle has ended

>THIS ONE WEIRD TRICK
>Financial Times

The only thing more globalist is The Economist, Davos, or CNN Money perhaps. Aren't you supposed to be against this sort of stuff?

Also, can't get forget that diversity is strength for America

It is with the way IQs are dropping.

Ideally America of 2050 will be 50% IQ 108 Japanese and 50% IQ 115 Ashkenazi instead of 50% IQ 95 Anglo-Saxon and <whatever> or something.

[Austrasien]

Yeah, China will definitely be numbah one

Eppur si muove



Once upon a time Europeans denied that America would ever surpass them (some delusional Frenchmen and Germans still do) for all sorts of reasons. Didn't help. Americans (and the ever sadder Euro gang) continue to deny China will surpass them. It doesn't help and even if the fabled China crash comes (which it will in some form, no economy develops in a straight line) there isn't good reason to believe it will change the long term trajectory anymore than the depression prevented America from surpassing Europe economically (and thus, politically, socially and militarily). Actually it makes it worse because the unshakeable faith that god is white and will surely strike the yellow man down for their hubris has become a substitute for actually doing anything.

[Gallia-]

Kyiv is correct.

At least I'll be really old by the time the ball picks up (like 50s or 60s) so I can look forward to freezing to death in the impoverished America.

Or dying in a Wyoming uranium mine because I'm not the Right Kind of Communist.

The only real question is whether we're in 1925 or 1865, TBH. JFC Fuller and Karl Marx, two of the Pantheon of NSMRC, both predicted the rise of America in those times, although JFC Fuller was a bit after the mark (America's rise occurred in 1900-1910 to assume economic hegemony of the world, and here we are 100 years later in the decline) while Karl Marx was a bit ahead of the curve (he was looking at the American Civil War and the massive industrial warfare that occurred there, and thumbed his nose at everyone's [read: Marx and Engels] favourite punching bag/That Guy/friend-but-the-one-that-you-actually-laugh-at-rather-than-with Ferdinand Lassalle who denied America being relevant) since the USA didn't really take off until 1895-1900.

I think we're in the 1860s. i.e. Early in the rise. China is slightly behind America, as America was slightly behind Europe in the 1860s, but it is rapidly growing powerful and will clobber a sick man, perhaps Russia, and devour it alive like the USA devoured the Spanish Empire who was the sick man of Europe. Cue the Great Red Fleet pushing battlewagons through the Panama Canal and a Chinese CVBG docking in Norfolk for Fleet Week or something in the 2040s. China won't totally surpass America to the extent that America has surpassed Europe today until the 2070s or 2080s. OTOH that's still a rise of about twice as fast as the United States managed when it conquered Europe, which took nearly 150-200 years. Here it takes China about 70-100.

OTOH their rapid breakout from fission to hydrogen bomb is probably the single greatest demonstration of their economic power, though, so perhaps that was the 1860s analogue of the early Chinese rise. Sadly we didn't have anyone as prescient as Karl Marx around to actually straight up tell people they're wrong, i.e. "China is a threat, and trading with China will hurt you," but they didn't listen to K.M. either. Thus they lost their independence, their colonies, their economic hegemony, and their ability to influence world affairs beyond their own Bonsai trees. So America should be getting smacked hard by China right about 10 years ago if go by the same rate of change. Which it seems to have been when the PRC stole F-35, F-22, C-17, NLOS-LS, FCS, Aegis Combat System, FGM-148, Apache, and all sorts of other advanced weapons from it.

Better start learning the 214 Radicals if I'm going to be actually employable in 20 years. ABH help me. I only know Radical 75.

(some delusional Frenchmen and Germans still do)

Is this real also?

Like in the 2010s?

As in 100 years after Europe was conquered by the United States? The same people who had become so weak and destitute they were incapable of defeating enemies half their size by themselves?

Anyway TBH it seems like the world is returning to some sort of strange Natural Order of things rly. China is the biggest, most powerful, and richest civilization. Europe is squabbling among itself about dumb nationalism instead of working together to prevent the Germans, French, British, Poles, and Russians from killing each other. The Slavs are poor. The United States is retreating to North America and going back to Splendid Isolation. The Russians are being conquered by Muslims. Did I miss anything?

I wish the industrial revolution had happened in Song Dynasty instead of the UK TBH. It would really have been the best place for it, even if Chinese ores are crummy.

[Tule]

So what should the West do?

Attempt to Foment separatism and disarray in China?

Support India as a Democratic rival to China?

Go all Eisenhower and build a stupidly large nuclear arsenal to compensate? The same way Russia has, to compensate for its weaknesses?

Accept Chinese global domination?