Whats wrong with the plan is that the usa is not the most powerful country in the world. China and Russia can destroy the world just as easily as the usa can. If it was a world without nukes the usa could get away with just about anything. But its not that kind of world. Following a game plan that that allows preemptive attacks is opening the door to be attacked first. Makes me wonder what russia is up to. Are they going to strike the usa? Most likely not. But there could be an "accident." More than half the world would shut their mouths or not really give a dam if they did. After all thats what happens when you play with nukes, attack countries at will, and lay plans for world domination. Life would go on.
(01-30) 22:34 PST MOSCOW (AP) --
Russia's nuclear forces reportedly are preparing their largest maneuvers in two decades, an exercise involving the test-firing of missiles and flights by dozens of bombers in a massive simulation of an all-out nuclear war.
President Vladimir Putin is expected to personally oversee the maneuvers, which are apparently aimed at demonstrating the revival of the nation's military might and come ahead of Russian elections in March.
The business newspaper Kommersant said the exercise was set for mid-February and would closely resemble a 1982 Soviet exercise dubbed the "seven-hour nuclear war" that put the West on edge.
Official comments on the upcoming exercise have been sketchy. The chief of Russia's Strategic Missile Forces, Col.-Gen. Nikolai Solovtsov, was quoted by the Interfax-Military News Agency as saying the planned maneuvers would involve several launches of intercontinental ballistic missiles in various regions of Russia, but he wouldn't give further details.
A Defense Ministry spokesman refused to comment on the reports. The Russian military typically says little about upcoming exercises.
In Washington, the State Department said it has seen reports that Russia has plans to conduct the exercises in February. The department also said Russia is obliged to notify the United States 24 hours before a missile test and has done so in the past.
Kommersant said the maneuvers would involve Tu-160 strategic bombers test-firing cruise missiles over the northern Atlantic. Analysts describe such an exercise as an imitation of a nuclear attack on the United States.
Other groups of bombers will fly over Russia's Arctic regions and test-fire missiles at a southern range near the Caspian Sea, the newspaper said.
As part of the exercise, the military is planning to conduct several launches of intercontinental ballistic missiles, including one from a Russian nuclear submarine in the Barents Sea, the Kommersant report said.
The military also plans to launch military satellites from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and the Plesetsk launch pad in northern Russia -- a simulation of the replacement of satellites lost in action, Kommersant said.
Russia's system warning of an enemy missile attack and a missile defense system protecting Moscow will also be involved in the exercise, it added.
Pavel Felgenhauer, an independent military analyst, said the military has regularly held nuclear exercises that were timed to coincide with the annual test-firing of aging Soviet-built missiles.
"It has been a routine affair, but it can be expanded if they want a show," he said.
Ivan Safranchuk, head of the Moscow office of the Center for Defense Information, a Washington-based think-tank, said the maneuvers would further strengthen Putin's popularity ahead of the March 14 presidential election he is expected to win easily.
Putin has repeatedly pledged to rebuild Russia's military might and restore pride to the demoralized service. When he ran for his first term in 2000, he flew as a second pilot in a fighter jet and later donned naval officer's garb on a visit to a nuclear submarine -- images that played well with many voters who are nostalgic for Soviet global power and military prestige.
"This exercise will make a great show, with Putin receiving reports from military commanders," Safranchuk told The Associated Press.
Kommersant said Moscow had notified Washington about the exercise, describing it as part of efforts to fend off terror threats even though it imitates the Cold War scenario of an all-out war.
"The exercise follows the old scenario, and casting it as anti-terror is absurd," Safranchuk said.
Putin's support for the United States following the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks bolstered relations with Washington and helped broker a new U.S.-Russian nuclear arms reduction deal and a Russia-NATO partnership agreement in 2002.
But the U.S.-Russian honeymoon has soured lately over Moscow's criticism of the war in Iraq , U.S. concerns about authoritarian trends in the Kremlin's domestic policy, and Russia's perceived attempts to assert its authority over ex-Soviet neighbors.
?2004 Associated Press
Experts Warn of Accidental U.S., Russian Missile Launches
By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire
WASHINGTON ? The United States and Russia unnecessarily continue to maintain thousands of strategic nuclear missiles on high alert for mutual deterrence, heightening the possibility of a catastrophic, unintended launch, an expert said this week at a nuclear arms control conference here.
?All of the thousands of U.S. and Russian launch-ready weapons only represent an accident waiting to happen and a temptation to terrorists to gain control over them,? said Center for Defense Information President Bruce Blair, speaking Sunday at a conference sponsored by the Nuclear Policy Research Institute (see GSN, Jan. 26).
Blair said U.S. early warning and decision-making procedures and the weapons themselves have been kept on a ?hair trigger.?
When U.S. satellites detect a possible rocket launch, U.S. crews at the North American Aerospace Defense Command near Colorado Springs, Colo., have only three minutes to determine if the incident is an actual missile attack or a nonmilitary event, such as a space launch, wildfire or solar reflection off of oceans or clouds, he said. Such nonmilitary events occur daily, he said.
If a strike is suspected, then the president and his top advisers convene a telephone briefing during which an officer is given 30 seconds to brief the president on his retaliatory options and their consequences, he said.
The president then would have a few minutes to select his response to ensure that U.S. nuclear attacks could be effectively launched by underground and undersea crews minutes later, Blair said.
The majority of U.S. missiles ? deployed on land, in the air and at sea ? are intended for mutual deterrence against a Russian or U.S. attack, a situation Blair said has been unnecessary since the end of the Cold War.
?The dirty little secret of America?s current nuclear policy is that 99 percent of the nuclear weapons budget, planning, targeting, and operational activities still revolves around this one anachronistic scenario,? he said.
?The rationale is a throwback to the Cold War, but however absurd, it still is the axis of current nuclear operations,? he said.
?Scratch Russia from the list of enemies, as it should be, and all justification for maintaining a large U.S. nuclear arsenal evaporates,? Blair said.
Blair and other experts charged that the size of the current U.S. arsenal was kept unnecessarily large in part because of persisting Cold War suspicions within the U.S. military and also because of institutional inertia.
?A small fraction of the current U.S. arsenal of 10,650 bombs would amply cover all plausible nuclear threats to the American homeland, U.S. allies and interests overseas, if only the idea of fighting a large-scale nuclear war with Russia received the ridicule it deserves,? Blair said.
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Everything in this post happened 7 years ago. If you do not feel good get a hobby like r/c airplane flying.
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