Originally posted by Zulu7
If hes going to do that you are dead anyway. First strike and its all over whether you have nukes or not.
So why worry?
take out his nukes with precision weapons. attack his electronic communications. etc etc before hand. Nukes are usualy a last resort weapon. Take out such things before you get there!
I dunno I ust think they are old redundant and what the hell use is a weapon that makes the bit of the planet they hit uninhabitable for years. Total madness.
Take a look at your first strike scenario.
Missles can be detected and confirmed before they impact and a nuclear response can be sent before launch sites are destroyed. This makes the idea of a first strike quite unlikely since the response is nearly guarnteed.
Now if your enemy has no nukes and only smart bombs, well then, you get the point.
Nclear weapons are dispersed, it woult take very long time to knock out all launch sites with smart bombs. Durinmg that time there are plenty of opportnities to launch the weapons.
The weapons are not outdated and they are not redundant.
Look, all this goes back to my basic point.
NUCLEAR WEAPONS WILL EXIST FROM TRINITY TO ETERNITY.
Just because the cold war standoff is over doers not mean perople will forget how to make nukes, it will be with us for all human civilization. We cant just imagine them not existing any more and we cant just forget them. If your potential enemy has the capability and knowlege to maske weapons whicgh wipe your cities and kill millions of citizens, yiou will damn well want that too as a counterbalance. And renember, this knowlege will never go away, it will be here for eternity. Think of it this way - we have just gotten through the first 60 years of this knowlege - and there is still centuries and centuries and centuries of time. Nukes are still very young and they and the knowlege and physics to make them are not going away, ever...