
Putin's Hypersonic Weapon Appears to Be a Modified Iskander Ballistic Missile - IntronExon
http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/18943/putins-air-launched-hypersonic-weapon-appears-to-be-a-modified-iskander-ballistic-missile
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bitL
I wish we could have continued with much better relations with Russia, instead
of seeing polarization escalating and going from the possibility of humanity
becoming extinct within 1 hour into the possibility of becoming extinct within
20 minutes. At some point some mad person is likely going to push the button,
all just because we are programmed to compete and win by all means with help
of misguided philosophies.

~~~
Theodores
This is the sentiment that our Russian friends have. When the USA decided to
quit the ABM treaty in 2002 the old doctrine of 'MAD' was no more and the arms
race was fully back on, with the USA doing most of the spending and all the
sabre-rattling.

I am amazed at how this story has not been covered by the mainstream media in
the UK (and presumably the USA). This Russian capability upgrade has rendered
the already useless UK nuclear deterrent into a very expensive joke, however,
the penny has not dropped and we are in denial about it.

My 'friends' in the doughnut (GCHQ) do know that Trident is useless, the
problem being undersea drones. From my casual chats I know this has been a
problem for a few years now and that some changes are having to be made,
Ascencion Island being the quiet little place where things happen. Such as
last year when a test firing resulted in a missile heading towards Florida
(which nobody really cared about).

Since there is only one UK nuclear armed submarine at sea at a given time it
is imaginable that this crusty white elephant can be stalked by a deeper
diving and faster nuclear tipped and nuclear armed drone across the oceans and
back to its base in Faslane at all times. Therefore the anonymity of the
oceans is no more, the 'deterrent' therefore is in Emperor's New Clothes
territory, but we can pretend and we can ignore what Moscow has to say.

Trident never made any sense to the UK, there is no money left for the
conventional fleet, operations such as the Falklands really are not possible
any more. Crazy politicians from Margaret Thatcher to Tony Blair and Theresa
May have been the decision makers, wasting money on war preparations that go
against the ethos of the UN and the rule of law. Meanwhile, in Russia they
have actually clued up politicians in Putin and his chums that play far better
chess than what our 'ruling elite' are capable of.

Neither the UK or the USA have been repeatedly invaded as has happened in
Russian history. Our weapon systems are primarily offensive, the Russians may
have plenty of hypersonic nuclear missiles pointed at the dreaded imperialists
(!) but there is no evidence that the goals in the Cold War era or even now
were to obliterate and invade the USA or Western Europe.

More money, human potential and precious materials wasted on war preparations
is not a good thing, however, by investing in their military-industrial-
complex the Russian government has restored a multi-lateral world. It was not
so fun in 2001-2003 when Bush and Blair were able to commit their war crimes
with it being a 'unilateral world', so progress has been made towards a safer
world by having these deadly new weapons pointed at us and able to destroy
life on earth so quickly.

------
woodandsteel
This whole thing is a scam on Putin's part. Putin claims that the US is
rapidly building a huge anti-ballistic missile defense system that could stop
every single present Russian warhead. And that it is doing this in preparation
for invading Russia and turning it into a brutally-oppressed colony, or at
least threatening Russia with nuclear destruction to get it to do all sorts of
important things that would be damaging to Russia.

This is all nonsense. The US is building only a modest number of ABM missiles,
and there are no plans beyond that. And the US has no interest whatsoever in
invading Russia. Not even over-the-top hawks like John Bolton or the
neoconservatives, even mention that idea. As far as nuclear threats to Russia,
the US is content to stick with the MAD balance of terror that has kept the
peace for over half a century.

So why is Putin saying these crazy things? I think it is a combination of two
things. One is that he is a Russian, and so as a consequence of Russian
history, he believes that the country is always under imminent threat of
invasion, no matter what the facts are. The other is that, as authoritarian
leaders so often do, he is trying to divert his public's attention from
domestic ills that he knows he will not solve.

Does anyone want to disagree with me? Does anyone want to lay out all that
would be involved in invading Russia (a review of Napoleon's attempt would be
helpful here) and also in occupying it, and argue that yes, the US leadership
sincerely thinks it would be a great idea, and the US leadership furthermore
has good reasons to think the invasion and occupation would be successes?

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danbruc
How would the US react if Russia build a missile defense site in Cuba? Cuba is
closer to the US border than the site in Poland to the Russian border, on the
other hand Washington is further away from Cuba than Moscow from the site in
Poland. Both capitals would be in range of the interceptors. I do not really
know enough to judge whether Putin's statement that one could easily replace
interceptors with offensive weapons is true or not but I do not really see why
you could not do that.

So would the US be okay with Russian interceptors in Cuba if they promised
that it is only for defensiv purposes and can not be repurposed? Putin
certainly is not the nice guy but I can to some extend unterstand that he
might be rather unhappy with the actions of the USA and NATO more generally
since the end of the Cold War.

EDIT: This comment was meant to be as a response to [1] asking about a new
Cold War.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16511248](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16511248)

~~~
s3nnyy
> "How would the US react if Russia build a missile defense site in Cuba?"

I think that was the trigger for the Cuba crises?

~~~
djrogers
No, you’re mixing up missile defense and missile silo/launch site.

~~~
danbruc
While this is absolutely true in this case, one should not ignore the fact
that an interceptor can be just as big a missile as an ICBM and they can even
have nuclear warheads to blow up incoming missiles. There are of course really
important differences, but those things are powerful weapons on their own and
one should not think of a missile defense site as a harmless thing firing
little rockets towards incoming reentry vehicles.

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s3nnyy
Is there seriously some new cold war going on?

I read in other media how some new American weapons can fight certain Russian
tanks etc, and now I read about Putin bragging about his new weapons.

My prediction for the post-Sovjet area was that the US and Russia would just
leave each other in peace.

~~~
primitur
I've always considered the idea that the Cold War was "over" to be nothing but
propaganda designed to prevent people from wondering why their nation is
spending $Trillion on their military.

Of _course_ the Cold War is still happening: America has been exporting war
wholesale for decades. Just because Russia hasn't been doing it at the same
scale as well, doesn't mean squat.

The US and Russia have had plenty of opportunities to leave each other in
peace over the last 30 years. The trouble is, they're not the only parties to
this farce. Incredibly powerful, massively entrenched super-power-like
military industrial multinational corporations are involved as well, and there
is no way in HELL they are going to let their number one revenue source dry up
just because we all want peace.

Its quite simple: stop assuming that its sovereign nation states doing all the
fire-lighting. We are way, way beyond that point now. If you want to get a
grip on war economy you have to stop allowing your politicians to push you -
the people - into more and more heinous debt, for more and more heinous
reasons (imperialist warfare against innocents), without repercussion.

This is going to be a tough sell. Pretty much everyone using computers to
establish themselves in the technology markets today is going to have to deal
with a multinational, war-mongering, mega-corporate military-industrial giant.
We're well and truly being dominated by those who are quite happy having us
all in the abyss, trembling in fear at what would happen if we stopped buying
from General Electric, Samsung and co.

~~~
woodandsteel
> The trouble is, they're not the only parties to this farce. Incredibly
> powerful, massively entrenched super-power-like military industrial
> multinational corporations are involved as well, and there is no way in HELL
> they are going to let their number one revenue source dry up just because we
> all want peace.

But Russia is the number two arms exporter, and it spends a higher percentage
of its gdp on defense.

But you're right, everything bad that happens between the two countries is
entirely the fault of the US </s>

~~~
primitur
>blame the USA

Which country regularly destroys, utterly, the infrastructure and society of
other foreign nations, through both covert and overt means, in its quest for
global military domination? (Hint: its not Russia.)

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j1vms
As long as the US continues winning the economic/political game it doesn't
matter what country builds X weapon that (perhaps) the US doesn't have (yet).
It doesn't really make sense for China/Russia to try and compete with the US
militarily - need only ask the Soviet Union how that turned out.

They need to compete on the economic/political level and they are still half a
century away from having the clout the US has, regardless of who might occupy
the Executive.

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twic
> All this begs the question is this missile actually an air-launched
> ballistic missile system?

Like Skybolt:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GAM-87_Skybolt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GAM-87_Skybolt)

The Iskander is a bit smaller (7.3 metres long, 3.8 tonnes) than the Skybolt
(11.7 metres long, 5 tonnes), but that fits with the idea that this is a
tactical/theatre weapon rather than a (not quite) strategic one.

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sAbakumoff
I wish someone competent commented on the Nuclear-Powered Cruise Missile that
Putin announced. There are a lot of posts in Russian social media that say
that it's total BS.

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coldcode
It doesn't matter what it is or does. As soon as anyone fires off a nuclear
missile/device civilization ends. Some tiny remnant of people will start over,
in a mostly destroyed planet. Some day their descendants will wonder what kind
of complete idiot(s) would start a nuclear war.

~~~
ben_w
Half of them would probably refuse to believe civilisation had ever been this
grand or the weapons so devestating.

------
woodandsteel
I have a number of comments for this article. I thought it would be helpful to
explain where I am coming from.

A good place to start is what happened after WWII ended. The world was divided
between two great powers, and what you would expect to have happened, given
the past history of the world, is for this to lead in a decade or two to a
massive war between them.

So why didn't that happen? Basically because of some extraordinary economic,
technological and governmental changes that had happened over the preceding
several centuries.

For thousands of years tribes and states had engaged in regular warfare. This
was because they were based largely on agriculture. Even in empires, most of
the people still were peasant farmers. This lead to warfare in two ways. One
is that populations would often grow too large for agricultural output, the
other was that the wealth was in the land and so the way to gain more wealth
was through conquest.

The industrial revolution, based on modern science and technology, and
operating under free market economics, lead to some radical changes. Radical
increases in agricultural productivity, and in addition health advances lead
to lower population growth. In addition, the main source of wealth was now
industry, rather than land. And one consequence was the rise of democracy.

Nonetheless, warfare persisted. But nuclear weapons radically changed the
logic of warfare, and made it suicidal, rather than an often-rational choice.
And so we have had a remarkable 70 years of peace.

The problem is that Russia has never really adopted to the new era.
Politically, it is authoritarian, rather than democratic. Economically it
practices crony capitalism, and one consequence is it is very poor at
technological advancement, and depends far too much on natural resources for
wealth. And with respect to international affairs it thinks we are still back
in the old era where great powers continually try to conquer each other, both
for wealth and to eliminate military threats. And so it is pursing a policy of
trying to gain back every part of the empire it lost when the Soviet Union
collapsed.

I feel sorry for the Russians. Putin is taking them down a path that will lead
to stagnation and maybe violent conflict. And, alas, Trump doesn't see this at
all. That's because he is himself very out of touch with the realities of the
modern, post-war era, and mistakenly thinks Putin is an excellent leader.

