So you want to fight a nuclear war

Quote: Nareed

Not a good idea at all.

Like I said the USA stopped making the nuclear torpedo in 1975.

Russian torpedo fired drones that can deliver nuclear warheads were in the news just last year.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a24216/pentagon-confirm-russia-submarine-nuke/

Connection to the A-Bomb

Ship just discovered

Quote:

Allen, who is leading a 13-person team on his 250-foot research ship, the R/V Petrel, said the wreckage was found at a depth of more than 18,000 feet.
The heavy cruiser, carrying 1,197 sailors and Marines, was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine while sailing back to the Philippines after delivering components for "Little Boy," the atomic bomb that helped end World War II. It took only 12 minutes to sink.

While 900 crewmen made it through the initial sinking, only 316 survived to be rescued when help arrived five days later on Aug. 2. Many had died of exposure or thirst, drowned or were attacked by sharks.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/paul-allen-finds-lost-wwii-ship-uss-indianapolis/ar-AAql9Fy?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=spartanntp

Quote: rxwine

Connection to the A-Bomb

More importantly connection, Indianapolis speech in the movie Jaws.

I came across this today:

http://archive.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2011/08/07/why_did_japan_surrender/

The central thesis is that it was the declaration of war by the USSR rather than the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that caused Japan's surrender. the corollary is germane to this thread: Nuclear weapons aren't effective weapons of war. If you look up-thread, you'll find I made the same claim.

Crucial to both claims, is that several Japanese cities had been destroyed already during the war (some German cities as well). This is 100% true. Even Tokyo at the time was largely made up of wood-and-paper buildings, which burned up easily when bombed with incendiaries. But this required massive bombardments by squadrons of bombers over several days. A nuke works instantly, and requires fewer planes to drop.

So how effective are nukes?

I keep coming back to saying they are good strategic weapons, but not very effective tactical ones. That is, they're good against big, fixed, high-value targets behind the front lines.

I think nukes have done a great job keeping order in the world. If all we had were conventional weapons, the 1960's would have been very different in Cuba.

What about the "Neutron Bomb"? Supposedly it kills all the organics and leaves the infrastructure relatively intact. I can see applications against North Korea's army.

Speculation on why the U.S. didn't shoot down the North Korean missle that travelled over Japan... Maybe they couldn't, despite the reported presence of a "missle shield" defense system deployment.

Quote: Ayecarumba

Speculation on why the U.S. didn't shoot down the North Korean missle that travelled over Japan

Good topic. My guess is that the probablity of shooting down the missile in a real-world situation is known to be low at this stage of development. A real wild guess ? 25% chance, probably less.

Undoubtedly this has led to a secret debate. Do we want North Korea to know what the odds are? Would it be good practice and we should try to shoot such down since they probably know probabilities are low? Such experimentation is more valuable, too valuable, to them? Is the humiliation of a miss actually what we are worried about more than anything?

Its not 'fighting' a nuclear war but winning a nuclear war that counts.

Missle defense systems are notoriously unreliable. Even you hit a missle it breaks into several pieces and its warhead still falls somewhere and now instead of one missle on radar you've got several radar targets that obscure whatever is behind them.

The best missle defense is 'obliterate the society that launched them at you'.

Quote: Ayecarumba

I think nukes have done a great job keeping order in the world. If all we had were conventional weapons, the 1960's would have been very different in Cuba.

I think without MAD we'd be at WWV by now.

Quote:

What about the "Neutron Bomb"? Supposedly it kills all the organics and leaves the infrastructure relatively intact. I can see applications against North Korea's army.

It's much misunderstood. You can't drop one, or ten, on a city and expect to kill almost everyone yet keep the city largely intact. See this link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_bomb#Effects

Quote:

Speculation on why the U.S. didn't shoot down the North Korean missle that travelled over Japan... Maybe they couldn't, despite the reported presence of a "missle shield" defense system deployment.

I'm sure they couldn't. Thus far the success rate on tests, when you know where, when and how fast the incoming missile is coming, are not that high.