Posadists stay winning...?
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Who doesn't love a sprinkle of nuclear brinkmanship...
we're about to solve global warming
the weather this year does make me wish for a nuclear winter.
Neoliberalism will solve climate change with this one weird trick
Checkmate, tankies
I still don’t really see how tactical nukes can be a usable thing on the battlefield. There are so many ways that systems or protocols could get tripped which basically then mainline into total nuclear destruction no matter what. I really don’t think there’s such a thing as a limited or small-scale nuclear war—the systems that support it almost guarantee all-out nuclear escalation.
I’d mostly say ok this is more nuclear Sabre-rattling like they’ve done over and over again. But a small part of me always wonders, if you have powerful, narcissistic old men in control, is there really a guarantee they wouldn’t just say fuck it and end the world? Particularly if they were near death and pissed off? Dunno. hope we never find out.
It's gonna be like in Factorio when you launch a nuke out of a rocket launcher a few meters away, and everything will be fine if you run really fast as soon as you fire it.
A very dangerous moment.
This opens up the possibility that, when the next ATACMS are used against Russia, a nuclear response occurs. This was not legally possible before this change.
Whether they do it or not is still uncertain but I wouldn't want to test it. This is as close to the brink as I've ever seen things.
This opens up the possibility that, when the next ATACMS are used against Russia, a nuclear response occurs.
I think its probably intended to address the use of a M.O.A.B. or other large scale conventional armament, like Trump deployed in Afghanistan at the start of his first term. Eliminates the theory that Americans can just firebomb Tokyo or Dresden and pretend its fine because the wreckage isn't radioactive.
Whether they do it or not is still uncertain but I wouldn't want to test it.
Everything I grew up with, learning about the background of the First World War, echoes this moment. Countries across Europe piling weapons atop each other as their leadership gets more and more eager to use them. Wilhelm doing parade marches with his toy soldier battalions. Tsar Nicholas adopting military dress as the imperial uniform. George V coming up through the royal navy and fascinating himself with British naval exploits.
This feels like a lot of the same. People drowning in their own military mythology, from DC to Paris to Moscow, all convinced another international conflict would leave them out in front of the pack. Everyone raising the stacks, because they think they've got a winning hand.
M.O.A.B.... like Trump deployed in Afghanistan
Was an actually good reason ever given for the use of that MOAB? My wild hunch is that Trump wanted to do something insane so the MIC distracted him with the biggest non-nuclear boom possible.
I remember someone in the military I knew trying to rationalize it by saying the ordinance was decades old and would have gone to waste if they hadn't dropped it on some guys in a cave, which would obviously be the bigger crime.
Oh, man. That's fantastic MIC logic. If we don't use it - it'll go stale.
Indeed, this is far beyond the Cuban missile crisis or Able Archer.
I disagree this is just simply underscoring the well known fact that any nuclear armed regime would not allow itself to be topped by an outside power in conventional warfare without using said nukes to defend itself.
Effectively this is nothing new to anyone making decisions at this scale. If any country thinks that they'd be able to conventionally topple a nuclear power without a nuclear response they have the worst military planners ever.
If we replayed Barbarossa with Stalin having nukes, he would have never let the blitz get to Stalingrad let alone cross the Dnipro or arguably the Dneister. Whether the nukes target the front or the enemy cities doesn't really matter in these scenarios because the reaction/overreaction would effectively be world ending anyway.
The reality is that at this point ATACMS aren't going to do much, even if Ukraine defies the US and uses them outside "Kursk" (which has been a lulzy explainer by DoD tbh since they shot at Bryansk) they still aren't going to do much to turn the tide except give the US realistic data on how rocket artillary works against Russian interceptors.
There's like 225 possible targets within range, and Ukraine has fewer than 50 ATACMS missiles.
https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/8b060c46ee6f49908f9fb415ad23051c
Also this is the response to the fact that Ukraine used ATACMS on Bryansk, which were shot down.
- https://www.npr.org/2024/11/19/nx-s1-5196228/ukraine-atacms-missiles-attacks-russia
- https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-1000-days-attack-06002c8c50bfb2fc622f446a8580bc0e
So this is just saber rattling/dunking on your enemy. Russia is basically saying, even if your wildest dreams of NAFO ATACMS FAFO SHIBE DOGE HIMARS GHOST OF KYIV were possible and you could march straight up to Moscow under the cover of all Western power projection capabilities, we'd still retaliate with nukes. They will not simply capitulate to moving the front to a less advantageous position for them, even if it was technically possible as it is in the magical thinking scenarios of Westerners.
I think you misunderstand the problem here. The real issue is that these types of long range missiles can carry a nuclear payload. If Russia detects that a bunch of nuclear capable missiles are flying to Russia then they have to make call on whether it is a genuine nuclear first strike or just a conventional weapons attack. Russia has to treat that as a nuclear strike because otherwise deterrence does not work. It would tell NATO they can just lob nuclear capable missiles into Russia without any response, and at some point they could lob nuclear missiles. That's what makes the whole situation so incredibly dangerous.
Dismissing this as sabre rattling is incredibly misguided.
The real issue is that these types of long range missiles can carry a nuclear payload. If Russia detects that a bunch of nuclear capable missiles are flying to Russia then they have to make call on whether it is a genuine nuclear first strike or just a conventional weapons attack.
There's no known nuclear version of ATACMS, and even if we go by this logic Ukraine could also claim that they don't know if Russian Kh-101s carried by Tu-160 bombers (part of Russia's strategic nuclear forces) are nuclear armed or not, so they don't know if they're under nuclear attack or not.
The real issue with ATACMS missiles being used to attack Russian territory, as explained by Lavrov today and Putin earlier, is that it relies on US and NATO satellites for guidance, and US/NATO specialists to input attacking information and flight paths. So in essence, you have US military specialists and assets directly taking part in conducting strikes on Russian territory and military facilities within Russia. Something that didn't even happen during the cold war. That's what makes it a huge escalation.
Ukraine can claim whatever it likes, they're just a proxy. However, if Russia started lobbing Iskanders into Texas from Mexico then we'd be instantly in WW3 scenario. But yeah, NATO directly attacking Russia is the real escalation here.
it relies on US and NATO satellites for guidance,
This is a silly point, because it's just GPS. That's like saying the US is involved in every war that uses GPS technology.
and US/NATO specialists to input attacking information and flight paths
This part is also arguable. From what I understand this could be true for the M39 Block I. But it's a weaker case for the M39A1 Block I, M48 QRU, and M57 Block IA Unitary because they have GPS capabilities.
There's also a real question of what's actually stopping the US from showing the Ukrainians how to program the internal navigation systems on ATACMS missiles. Are we really gonna argue that Ukranians who had/have one of the best technical service economies in Eastern Europe that provide IT services to US/EU companies cannot program internal navigation systems because understanding dead reckoning is too hard?
If these claims are 100% true then it would stand to reason that nobody who distrusts the US would buy ATACMS from the US because they'd be fully reliant on the US to even use the systems, which would not make sense for countries like UAE, Qatar, and Morocco, given they're not full US orbiters.
US military specialists and assets directly taking part in conducting strikes on Russian territory and military facilities within Russia
This is true regardless of those specialists being in Ukraine and is simply a technical change in how war works. The biggest thing the US provides Ukraine is its spying apparatus. Ukraine literally cannot get good field intelligence on troop movements without US satellites and intelligence.
While I do agree that the US has boots on the ground in Ukraine and it is a proxy war, and that escalation is a delicate dance and the Russians certainly have a lot of leeway here as the more powerful party, a lot of their complaints are often the same thing as RTS complaints about cheesing.
Russia at the end of the day thinks that Ukraine shouldn't be able to use ATACMS because Ukraine didn't launch it's own satellites and develop their own missiles, and blah blah blah. At what point is this simply complaining that Ukraine got free weapons from the West vs an actual argument about the balance of war from a country that in practice is shooting fish in a barrel? At what point can these complaints be levied against Soviet-era stock Tochka missiles that were expended at the beginning of the war? I think Russia just found a novel way to complain about this shit and is trying to make a case. If they believed the realpolitik of it they wouldn't be talking so much, they'd be escalating with their missile strikes to make it a desperate long shot losing proposition for the West to provide continued support. In essence I think this is a diplomacy tactic where Russia is trying to keep the rules of engagement on a level that they don't feel really pressed about. In short I don't think Russia even buys its own argument.
In practice HIMARS hasn't been as much of a boon to Ukraine as US/Russia is pretending it is. They have difficulty positioning them outside of Iskander range.
In practice the US doesn't give a shit about Ukraine, the only real point that has any value is that the US is expending US capital and Ukrainian blood to play geopolitical games with Russia. But let's not pretend that Russia gives a shit about the Ukrainian blood part, it simply gives a shit that the difficulty level on its game isn't on super easy.