Thanks to Glenn for pointing to Hypersonic Cruise Missile: America’s New Global Strike Weapon, in which we read that “[i]n 2001, Defense Department planners began searching for something that could hit a foe almost instantly without risking a nuclear holocaust.”
6 thoughts on “Total Planetary Domination (A Continuing Series)”
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This is all good. We need to buy all this stuff, lots of it.
Who exactly we will throw this stuff at is another question.
But, I say, let everybody else worry about that.
Them: “Hey, uh, you aren’t going to use that stuff on us, um, are ya?”
US: “Uh. What? You? Uh. Dunno. Have you made me mad at you for some reason?”
Them: “Oh, no, I don’t think so.”
US: (grunted response) “Then shut the f**k up.”
That is my vision of how we should do international politics. A loaded gun on the table, a hostile stare, absolutely no mr. nice guy. Buy our stuff, sell us your stuff stuff, don’t make us mad at you, I’m not your friend. No ambiguity.
We still need to see some progress on the swarms of robot crabs, but one thing at at time.
Did someone say crab?
Actually, I think there may be some valid concerns about the Trident/hypersonic-CM idea. Our current threshold of provocation for using Tridents is extremely high and we never use them. But if improved technology makes us more likely to use them, it might start to make sense for our enemies to try to provoke strikes by us on decoy targets as a way to get us to use up our inventory of extremely expensive missiles. If each submarine carries just two non-nuclear Tridents, that means there are only about 100 non-nuclear warheads available for use at any one time. The enemy doesn’t need to get more than a very few few nuclear bombs through our defenses. And while kinetic-warhead SLBMs or fast cruise missiles will allow us to destroy any target without incurring the external costs of using nukes, we still need to find the right targets.
IOW, the new technology is promising but we should anticipate that its deployment will lead to changes in tactics by our enemies, particularly if they figure out inexpensive ways to get us to waste our expensive new weapons. Perhaps our plans should include reactivation of the Trident production line (which might be a good idea, though I am sure it wouldn’t be cheap). We might also consider converting a greater proportion of our submarine-based missiles to non-nuclear payloads. Or maybe hypersonic CMs would be cheap enough that we could produce enough of them to make these concerns moot.
Dude, ROBOT crabs. That crawl out of the surf and spy on the bad guys and detonate themselves to clear out mines, etc. Swarms of them.
I would be more impressed by hornets. (I can just hear the line, perhaps delivered by Bruce Willis in some future movie: “Swat this, m—–f—–!”)
Having said that, I think full implementation of Lex’s geopolitical strategy might require one or more annual parades of the sort that used to take place in Red Square.
Kinda like the Rose Parade or Macy*s Thanskgiving Day Parade, but with superweapons instead of floats and balloons. Really scary-looking ones. The superweapons, I mean.
Actually, upon further reflection, floats and balloons would still have their place. We could do floats with big maps of, eg, Iran or Saudi Arabia, and balloon-caricatures of Ahmadinejad et al, hint, hint.
The hornets are totally awesome, and in fact are reminiscent of a scene in the Diamond Age, where Col. Napier is in a sword fight with one of the Fists, and an aerial nanobug comes to the rescue, unchivalrously enough. I don’t think a Red Square style parade will work with this stuff, though. A small price to pay for total planetary dominance.