How To: Risk World War III, and Blow Billions Doing It

The Pentagon’s plan
to fire ballistic missiles at terrorists isn’t just a nuclear
Armageddon risk
. It’s a ludicrously expensive way to accidentally
start World War III: each weapon could cost anywhere from a few hundred
million to $1 billion.

The Defense Department wants to spend about $240 million next year on the controversial “prompt global strike” project. Eventually, it could lead to weapons that could strike virtually anywhere in the planet
within an hour or two. (Here’s an
interview I did with Rachel Maddow on Friday about the plan
.) But
that quarter-billion would be the tiniest of down payments.

“There are no accurate cost estimates for the program, largely because the technology is unproven,” writes Joe Cirincione at ForeignPolicy.com. His back-of-the-envelope calculation: $10
billion for 10 conventionally-armed Intercontinental Ballistic ...
,
meant to strike at terrorists on the move. “Each missile with its tiny
payload could easily go over $1 billion each.”

Official price tags are a little lower. The Air Force figures a single demonstration of such a missile might eat up $500 million. Follow-on weapons missiles might only cost $300 million
apiece, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz guessed at a
recent House subcommittee hearing. But Schwartz isn’t at all sure such
how much use there’d be for a budget-buster like that.

“There is a place, I think, for that kind of capability. I don’t think that that’s the sort of thing you would use broadly, because you know, fundamentally what you don’t want to have is a 300 — let’s just
say, a $300 million weapon applied against a $30,000 target,” Schwartz
recently told a House subcommittee.

Critics like Cirincione (and me) are worried such conventional ICBMs would look to Russia and China like nuclear launches — risking an atomic response every time one of the weapons was sent into the sky.
Defenders of the prompt global strike effort note that the missiles
would be based far from America’s nuclear arsenal, and would follow
different flight paths. So the risk of one of these missiles touching
off an atomic showdown are very small. “Nuclear in one place.
Conventional in another. This isn’t a
Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup,
” notes the National Space Studies
Center’s blog.

Maybe the U.S. can put enough safeguards in place to persuade Moscow and Beijing that America’s conventional ICBMs aren’t nukes. (And maybe, as
commenter “Almanac” notes
, the Russian and Chinese radars are
functioning well enough to tell the difference.) Maybe. But what happens
other countries follow our lead, and start assembling their own
conventional ballistic missile stockpiles? Will Pakistan and India be
able to assure eachother that their intentions are pure? How and Israel
and Iran? Perhaps a unipolar planet can survive an American global
strike arsenal. A multipolar planet — that’s less likely.

Prompt global strike first came to prominence during Donald Rumsfeld’s tenure at the Pentagon. Back then, the Defense Department had a knack for spending outlandishly on far-fetched programs:
laser-equipped 747s, lightning guns, quarter-weight tanks that could
stop bombs with data. Under Bob Gates, the culture has shifted a bit.
Common sense, wartime relevancy, and fiscal restraint now figure more
prominently in weaponeering. And that’s what makes the embrace of prompt
global strike such a mystery. It’s a Rumsfeld throwback - risky,
willfully ignorant of how the world works, and ridiculously expensive.

[Photo: Wikimedia]


Source: http://www.wired.com/
By: Noah Shachtman, April 26, 2010

See Also: Obama Revives Rumsfeld’s Missile Scheme, Risks Nuke War


Views: 66

Comment

You need to be a member of 12160 Social Network to add comments!

Join 12160 Social Network

"Destroying the New World Order"

TOP CONTENT THIS WEEK

THANK YOU FOR SUPPORTING THE SITE!

mobile page

12160.info/m

12160 Administrators

 

Latest Activity

tjdavis posted a video

Alabama’s Biggest Secret - Operation Paperclip 🇺🇸

In the north of Alabama is the city of Huntsville. It's here where German scientists built NASA in secrecy after World War II. Operation Paperclip is still s...
1 hour ago
tjdavis posted a photo
2 hours ago
Doc Vega commented on Doc Vega's blog post Americans You’re Being Squeezed Out!
"Cheeki kea always nice to her you chime in and you're damn right! "
17 hours ago
Doc Vega commented on Doc Vega's blog post Americans You’re Being Squeezed Out!
"Les Prone thanks for your support Dude! "
17 hours ago
Doc Vega posted blog posts
17 hours ago
Doc Vega posted a photo

The inconvenient truth

Trump spells it out!
21 hours ago
Sandy posted a photo
yesterday
Less Prone favorited Doc Vega's blog post What Made the Founding Fathers of America so Brilliant?
yesterday
Less Prone commented on Doc Vega's blog post Why didn't the Archeological World Announce Proof that Jesus Lived?
"Motives of Joe, to shit in the well by showing totally irrelevant proof?"
yesterday
Doc Vega commented on Doc Vega's blog post Why didn't the Archeological World Announce Proof that Jesus Lived?
"Less, Motives of Wyatt or Joe? What archeologist wouldn't want proof of Jesus as part of his…"
yesterday
Doc Vega commented on Doc Vega's blog post Why didn't the Archeological World Announce Proof that Jesus Lived?
"Less Prone, Considering Joe Rogan to be the gatekeeper of anything is just short of ridiculous the…"
yesterday
MAC posted a video

Don't Go To Hong Kong Now (Even on Connecting Flights)

Secure your privacy with Surfshark! Enter coupon code laowhy86 for an extra 3 months free at https://Surfshark.deals/laowhy86Article 23 in Hong Kong is real,...
yesterday
cheeki kea commented on cheeki kea's video
Thumbnail

Terrorist Attack on Moscow - Ukraine Committing Suicide? | Larry C. Johnson

"...And I guess I'll just park this you tube here also for something to ponder from last year.…"
Tuesday
tjdavis posted photos
Tuesday
Less Prone posted a video

Climate: The Movie (The Cold Truth) NL

Deze nieuwe documentaire van de Britse filmmaker Martin Durkin toont aan dat klimaatalarm een verzonnen doembeeld is zonder enige wetenschappelijke basis. He...
Monday
Less Prone commented on Doc Vega's blog post Why didn't the Archeological World Announce Proof that Jesus Lived?
"It can be true, but why isn't he offering real evidence? What are his motives?"
Monday
Less Prone favorited Doc Vega's blog post Americans You’re Being Squeezed Out!
Monday
cheeki kea favorited Less Prone's blog post Going against the stream of lies and death
Monday
cheeki kea commented on Doc Vega's blog post Americans You’re Being Squeezed Out!
"You're spot on in regards to the the real estate component of this mass migrant mess Doc V and…"
Monday
cheeki kea commented on cheeki kea's video
Thumbnail

Terrorist Attack on Moscow - Ukraine Committing Suicide? | Larry C. Johnson

"This video out 2 days ago but the 4 terrorists already caught and 11 others involved identified…"
Monday

© 2024   Created by truth.   Powered by

Badges  |  Report an Issue  |  Terms of Service

content and site copyright 12160.info 2007-2019 - all rights reserved. unless otherwise noted