Things are heating up in the Donbass

[spat]

Thats the sales pitch, the reality in real warfare is much lower. Iran did some serious damage to isreal including takeing out airfields and Hq's pulus damaging the port If those were nukes Israel would have been gone, even 95% would not be good enough.

5% of russian nukes would destroy the US , thats several hundred strikes , thats not a great option

We already analyzed that.

5% of Russian *deployable* nukes is less than a couple dozen. And that's assuming they almost all work.

And since Russia doesn't get to pick *which* missiles get through, they need to target the important stuff with dozens of warheads to ensure it gets destroyed. That would mean they can only pick a couple targets.

Imagine they launch an attack, and only destroy NY, LA, and DC, with most of the rest of the country unscathed.

Do you have any idea what sort of blood lust the American people would have after something like that ? The Russian language might die out it would be so severe.

 

[spat]

An Iranian ballistic missile slammed into a building complex in Beer Sheva in Southern Israel with Israeli media reporting that air defense systems malfunctioned. It comes as a senior intelligence official in Israel tells NBC News that Israel’s renowned Iron Dome missile defense system had been 90 percent effective, but that it has gone down to 65 percent in the last 24 hours. NBC’s Richard Engel reports for TODAY from Tel Aviv.


According to reports citing a senior Israeli intelligence official, the effectiveness of Israel's Iron Dome missile defense system has reportedly dropped to 65%. This marks a significant decrease from the previous reported rate of 90%. This decline in effectiveness has been attributed to a combination of factors, including:

• Increased sophistication of enemy missiles: Iran is reportedly utilizing more advanced missiles with enhanced speed, accuracy, and potentially multiple warheads, making them more challenging to intercept. These newer missiles have also reportedly reduced the available warning and reaction time for Israeli air defenses.
• Saturation attacks: Iran and its proxies may be employing tactics like saturation attacks, launching a large number of missiles simultaneously to potentially overwhelm the Iron Dome's capacity.
• Electronic Warfare and Countermeasures: The possibility of electronic warfare and countermeasures being used against Iron Dome's radar and targeting systems is also a concern.
• Depletion of Interceptor Stocks: Reports from sources like The Wall Street Journal and Newsweek have highlighted concerns about dwindling stockpiles of Arrow missile interceptors, which are part of Israel's broader air defense architecture alongside Iron Dome.

None of that applies to an ICBM attack.

Any attack with ICBMs is effectively instant. The defense will assume they're *all* getting launched at once, and will be built with more than enough interceptor to deal with them.

And unlike iron dome, that has to defend against large numbers of cheap disposable rockets, the golden dome will be designed to deal with ICBMs, which are orbital class rockets where the sheet cost and size limit their numbers.

Russophiles like to look at warhead counts, and ignore missile counts. But warheads sitting on shelves in a warehouse are useless. They may have thousands of warheads, but only about 300 ICBMs to launch them.

 

[fresch]

Saving face is all that is left.
Zlensky could wake up dead and negotiation would move forward.
"Nato" has worked with enemies before, we worked with Russia for the space station.
The encroaching of Islam world wide could be used as the link to make a deal palatable to we surfs.
Energy from Russia flows to Europe.

 

[tirwin1]

Imagine they launch an attack, and only destroy NY, LA, and DC, with most of the rest of the country unscathed.

Do you have any idea what sort of blood lust the American people would have after something like that ? The Russian language might die out it would be so severe.

Blood lust? I think a thank you card from Hallmark might be more likely. ;-)

 

[holdover]

Imagine they launch an attack, and only destroy NY, LA, and DC, with most of the rest of the country unscathed.

I cant imagine only 3 nukes getting through. Thats seriously unrealistic .

not much to say if you think a nuclear war is winnable , were on oppiste sides of the fence on this.

 

[spat]

I cant imagine only 3 nukes getting through. Thats seriously unrealistic .

not much to say if you think a nuclear war is winnable , were on oppiste sides of the fence on this.

If you think that means only 3 nukes get through, then you don't understand statistics or nuclear war.

And "winnable" is a very vague proposition.

I think the US as a nation would survive, and Russia would not. Is that "winning" ?

 

[holdover]

If you think that means only 3 nukes get through, then you don't understand statistics or nuclear war.

I guess not.

 

[spat]

I guess not.

If you don't actually do the math, probability can be very counter intuitive.

If you have a 5% chance of one missile getting through, and you want to be 95% sure you can nuke that city, you need to launch 60 missiles at it.

3 cities and that's 180 of your 300 missiles right there. And that's only for a 95% chance per city.

If you want a 95% chance for all three you'll need even more missiles.

If you can push your intercept rate a little bit higher, then the math for the attacker gets much worse.

Now, if you're just going to shot gun at 50 different cities with your 300 missiles, then most of those cities will be fine, and you don't know which ones you'll get.

And OfC, most nuclear doctrine isn't targeted at cities anyway. You're going to target your opponents military capacity as a priority. Because you don't want to take out a couple of cities and then have to deal with his full military.

That's why a national missile intercept capability is a game changer in a nuclear war.

We built a point defense system in the 70s, and then negotiated it away in an arms control treaty. It scared the ever living shit out of the Soviets, because suddenly they would have needed something like 60,000 warheads to get the MAD they wanted, and they knew that would break them trying.