RANT: A MADMAN'S OLYMPICS!

 

IN HONOUR OF the Winter Olympics being held in Italy this week, I thought I would give my choices of medal winners for a conflict, country or action that is most likely to lead to a nuclear war in our not-so-distant future. Here goes:

 

BRONZE:

Third-place winner of the coveted trophy for civilizational extinction goes to the massive idiot currently president of our great neighbour to the south, Donald J. Trump, who so needs validation of any kind that he’ll scarf down like a box of chocolates the Nobel Peace Prize medallion gifted to him from Venezuela’s Maria Corina Machado.*

President Trump wins third-place on the podium for his “Golden Dome” missile defence project, which the Congressional Budget Office projects a cost ranging from $161-billion to a whopping $542-billion over 20 years, and if acted upon will become an enormous black hole, sucking up the dwindling treasure of the American empire, and for all that, is doomed to fail because the physics doesn’t add up.

 

“Intercepting even a single, nuclear-armed intercontinental-range ballistic missile or its warheads . . . is extremely challenging,” said physicist Frederick Lamb, chair of the APS study group. “The ability of any missile defense system to do this reliably has not been demonstrated.” (z.me.science.com)

 

THE REASON ICBMS ARE SO DIFFICULT to intercept, beside their speed, is because they can ‘change’ from launch time to ground zero. Ballistic missiles of this nature, carrying nuclear payloads, sufficiently large to have the moniker “city killers”, applied to them, operate in three phases. The first is the “boost phase”, when the missile lifts off from its silo, mobile launcher, submarine or warship, gathering speed for around five minutes until the booster rocket burns-out and disengages from the second-stage delivery module that holds the munitions. This second or “mid-course” phase, lasts roughly twenty minutes, and during which time the warhead is released from the delivery module. [Note: Each delivery module may contain several warheads. Ed.] The warhead arcs through space above the earth’s atmosphere where there is no air friction to slow it down. Speeds of up to 24,000 km/hr can be reached here. The third phase, the “terminal phase”, begins as the warhead reaches the apogee of its arc and begins to fall, rapidly, increasing in speed as gravity take hold, until the warhead detonates at “ground zero”. Speeds of up to 29,000 km/hr. can be achieved in this final phase which last mere minutes! Note that the missile and warheads travel ballistically, that is unpowered, since the booster rockets were jettisoned at the end of the launch phase. Hence the "B" in ICBM. Think of a softball lobbed in from left field to the catcher’s mitt. Same thing, except for the megatons.

 
BUT I SAID ICBMs change during their flight, making them harder to shoot down. In the second, mid-course phase, the warhead is still inside the missile’s “delivery module”. This second stage of the rocket contains one, perhaps several warheads, along with some surprises. Each warhead is equipped with jets on its sides to steer the munition to an individual target other than the main target at the terminal or nadir of the ICBM's journey. 

THE 'CHANGE' I MENTIONED occurs at this stage of an incoming ICBM when multiple warheads, along with dummy warheads, “chaff”, even balloons and debris are released, along with the “city killer” munitions, all traveling at the same speed--thousands of kilometers per hour, with the 'surprises' disguising the real munitions. Because there is no air to slow or destabilize their flight, the surprises continue gathering speed, along with their megaton buddies, until their downward arc brings them into contact with the atmosphere. Some burn up upon reentry, but all cause ground radar and satellite imagery no end of trouble as technicians try to distinguish warheads from chaff. If it were possible to intercept and destroy an ICBM in its launch phase and perhaps in the mid-course of its arc, it is well-nigh impossible to interdict a descending ICBM during its terminal phase, given the speeds it achieves in the minutes or seconds before it detonates over ground zero.

 

    Hoooweeee! Hot dang! I gotta get me some of those!

IT IS IMPORTANT to understand that Early Warning detection systems use ground-based radars and satellite imagery [See Ted Postol’s explainer, here] to track a missile's launch and trajectory. The launch, say, of a Russian ICBM would be captured by satellite cameras because of the tell-tale exhaust plumes it expels as it is ground-launched, the rocket appearing to the satellite's camera as brighter than the surrounding landscape, and with characteristics well-known to alert ground-based radar operators who track the ascending missile which will be at its slowest speed and is most vulnerable to anti-missile (ABM) attacks. However, it is in its boost phase for only a few minutes, and can possibly be shot down by an ABM missile if the defensive array is close enough to the launch site. More on this in a bit.

  

WE NOW HAVE A PICTURE of an incoming ICBM surrounded by decoys and chaff. For high-altitude ABMs to launch and literally crash into the falling angel of death ICBM missile or else explode near to it and damage the ICBM with shrapnel, they must first distinguish between real and fake warheads. They can’t shoot down everything in the sky. 👉A demonstration of how difficult this can be is to take a piece of construction paper and perforate it with dozens of small holes, say the size of your ballpoint pen nib. Then place the construction paper on an overhead projector and turn it on. You should see a dark background with dozens of tiny holes. That’s what radars see in the downward arc of a modern ICBM, coming in at ten-or-fifteen-thousand km/hr and only minutes to decide what 'dot' to target. And that’s just one incoming missile! Modern ICBMs are equipped with multiple warheads, each of which come with their own surprises to fool defence radars and satellite arrays.

 

THE BEST TIME to shoot down an ICBM would be during its launch phase when it is traveling slower, and doesn't have camouflaging chaff accompanying it. But if the ABM launcher is sited too far from the launching ICBM, it will never be able to intercept the missile in time.

SO, LONG STORY LONGER than I wanted (sorry about that), Trump's “Golden Dome” won’t work as advertised (like his casinos). There would be too much chaff or simply too many incoming warheads for the system to fulfill it’s stated purpose, namely the absurd notion of shielding the entire continental United States from a nuclear attack.¹

I’LL JUST BRIEFLY NOTE that the Americans already have “layered” ABM defence systems with specific missile batteries configured to launch anti-missile missiles during each stage of an attacking ballistic missile (boost, mid-course, terminal), but their effectiveness is sketchy. THAAD, the Terminal High Altitude Area Defence) with its anti-missile array, was used in the recent so-called Twelve-Day War, where an enormous amount of detection, data processing and communications coordination is needed to ‘mesh’ the layers together tightly enough to create a seamless defence barrier against potential, incoming nukes. Ronald Regan’s 1980s’ Strategic Defence Initiative (AKA “Star Wars”) had the same goal—to protect the United States from a nuclear attack. It was an idea whose time had not yet come forty years ago, and Trump’s “Golden Dome” is idea whose time has also not yet come. Not by a longshot. 

 

RECALL THAT PRESIDENT TRUMP CREATED in his first term in office the “Space Force” wing of the American military, which sounded lame and ‘Star Trekkie’ to me at the time. What would the newly enlisted starship troopers do? To that point, there’s scuttlebutt around that Trump wants to create an armada of satellites to not only monitor threats and coordinate data on potential missile launches, but also to establish space-based satellite platforms for “kinetic” attacks and "pulse weapons" that would be used as part of the Golden Dome's ABM defence network. And presumably the new Space Force will play a significant role. However, costs are prohibitive, with some analysts suggesting that ten-thousand satellites would be needed just to monitor the continental United States and it's any ones guess as to how many satellites equipped with ABMs would be needed to support the Golden Dome's ground-based, anti-ballistic missile batteries.  This could very easily lead to the weaponization of space, even with nukes!😱 Long-term, the effectiveness of the system to counter novel missile arrays and countermeasures from ICBM-possessing adversaries is questionable. This new emphasis on using space-based observation satellites and 'attack' satellites to create a impenetrable barrier to any and all ICBM (and cruise missiles, bombers, etc.) is dangerous, as we shall see. 

“Golden Dome would require massive con­stellations to locate and destroy missiles…Trump’s goal of reliably intercepting hundreds or even a thousand or more Russian and Chinese missiles would likely require tens of thousands of satellites.”  (zemescience.com)

 

THERE’S MORE MEAT TO THIS MATTER but for now I’ll summarize how much of cockup (and how dangerous!) Trump’s plan is to build an overly robust ABM system. First, we should all remember the old maxim, “The best laid schemes ‘o mice anʽ men gang aft aglay.” 

 

👉Another point to consider is a matter of history, the 2001 decision by the Bush administration to opt out of the ABM (Anti-Ballistic Missile) treaty with Russia, leaving the US free to develop ABMs to supposedly defend against potential ICBM attacks from “rogue” nations like North Korea and Iran. Russia saw this as a threat when the United States began preparations to site AGEIS missile arrays in Poland and Romania, ostensibly to counter incoming missiles from Iran. GMAFB! The Russian government expressed concerns that such sites, with such arrays, could easily be reconfigured to host offensive, nuclear-armed missiles aimed at Russia, only minutes away from Moscow. The Kremlin’s concerns went unheeded. 

 

SO, OVER the course of the next decade, Russia developed ‘work-a-rounds’ to counter missile threats so close to their homeland that could also penetrate with their speed and maneuverability ABM arrays sited in the continental USA by bringing online a new family of hyper-sonic missiles which could potentially take out nearby NATO installations and bypass any defensive systems available to the United States.

America made a bet that it could develop a system that was robust enough to blunt incoming ICBMs—to ward off a first strike by Russia, for example, or if America struck Russia first with nukes (not an impossibility as things stand today) it would then  rely on its Golden Dome to stave off a nuclear retaliation from Russia. As it stands, America is holding a losing hand. The solution is not some mythical 'shield' that will only act to destabilize the strategic balance of power which relied on a certain level of transparency, communication, and as little 'surprise' as possible. One pillar of this structure was the NewSTART treaty which capped the number of deployed warheads and launch vehicles, including strategic bombers. Transparency in the treaty was achieved with another treaty called "Open Skies" which allowed US and Russian aircraft to fly over designated air strips observing the other country's strategic bombers as they sat--in the open--so their number could be verified. Recall last year when the Zelensky regime targeted Russian strategic bombers as they sat exposed, as per NewSTART treaty regulations, and how much of a dumfuk episode that was. Now, there are no nuclear weapons treaties left, transparency is fading and trust is vanishing. Good job, everyone!

 

POINT IS, as Newton wrote centuries ago: “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” And now that there’s no strategic arms treaties at all between the United States and Russia, there is the dangerous possibility of a nuclear arms race.² It’s called going up the “escalation ladder” where one side does something and the other side reacts in kind. Back and forth they go as the first one escalates, then the other does likewise. Then it's onward and upward the two nuclear powers climb until...? 

 

INSTEAD of working to tamp down the atomic threat, these moves by the Trump administration to opt out of treaties and push against the boundaries of decades-old Great Power management regimes with respect to nuclear weapons, something that probably saved everyone's bacon in the decades following WWII. It's called deterrence. 

👉UP UNTIL THIS LAST DECADE or so, countries, principally the United States and Russia, made strategic decisions based on deterrence. Each assumed the other’s nuclear arsenal would be sufficient to kill them--no matter who launched first, the return fire would kill the primary aggressor. In other words, it would be mad to start a nuclear conflict with another nuclear power. [That's pretty obvious, sensi. Ed.😉] Both would be destroyed. Mutually Assured Destruction—the MAD principle was in force for decades, even at the end of the Cold War. The threat of nuclear war was sobering to those who grew up under the shadow of The Bomb. Now, not so much.

 

TRUMP’S PLOY to make the United States invulnerable to ICBM missiles (and the whole panoply of missiles, bombs and drones) not only destabilizes the deterrence principle that has kept nuclear powers from launching or threatening to launch against one another. And this pipe dream of Trumps, this bid to create an impenetrable shield  is dangerous because it spurs the development of novel nuclear warhead delivery systems like Russia's hyper-sonic Oreshniks and stealthy Poseidon torpedoes, as well as expanding their nuclear stockpiles to be better equipped to overwhelm such defences with more and more nukes. One step up the escalatory ladder begets another step up by a competitor, then another and another until….?

 

SO THE BRONZE MEDAL for bringing us closer to our civilization's destruction than we've ever been goes to Donald Trump who, though he doesn’t get the gold (again), is doing his darndest to bring down boundaries and guardrails that, however imperfect they may be, have nevertheless kept the atomic genie inside the bottle, lo these years. So it goes. 

 

CHEERS, JAKE.

 _____________________________________      

* Ms. Machado and other ‘bad picks’ for the Nobel Peace Prize aside, if the award gets any cheaper, they may have to install the medallions with GPS trackers, so they won’t get lost, or land-filled, or accidentally tossed out with old bowling trophies and public-speaking awards won by NPP laureates and their children. Just say’in.

P.S. Didn’t I read somewhere that Machado was seen in Washington wearing a T-shirt that says: “I went all the way to Oslo and all I got was a lousy million bucks!"?

 

1.  But what about brain-eating zombie hordes!? How will the dome protect us from those? Why is no one talking about this?

 

2. As for China: It is a recognized nuclear weapons state under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT); it has signed (but not ratified) the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT); it is, however, a signatory to the Nuclear Weapons-Free Zone (NWFZ) treaty; it has not signed the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TTNW); but has adopted a "no first use" of nuclear weapons doctrine (since 1964); at this time, China opposes joining any trilateral arms control negotiations with the U.S. and Russia, which is just as well, considering the United States just blew off extending NewSTART (Strategic Arms Treaty) with Russia which expired 5 February 2026. This treaty had been in place since the Cold War and was highly successul in reducing the nuclear weapons stockpiles of the United States and Russia.

[Worringly, China has announced, also recently, that it is adding additional ICBM missile silos for its nuclear arsenal and will begin a build-out of its nuclear warhead stocks. Buckle up! Ed.]  

 

[STAY TUNED FOR THE SILVER AND BRONZE MEDAL WINNERS COMING SOON TO  A GROUND ZERO NEAR YOU. Ed.]

 

 

RANT: NUKES AND NUTTS PART ONE

 

  

NEXT WEEK MARKS the eightieth anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9 respectively, the only time nuclear weapons were used in wartime. Today, our planet hosts nine nations who have nuclear weapons in their arsenals. Five of those nations (Britain, China, France, Russia, United States) are signatories to the 1970 NPT (Non-Proliferation Treaty), along with 191 non-nuclear weapon states (NNWS). The four nuclear weapon possessing states (NWS) that are NOT signatories to the Cold War treaty are: India, Pakistan, North Korea (it left the NPT in 2003 to develop nuclear weapons) and Israel (undeclared). South Sudan is a NNWS that has also NOT signed the treaty.

Under the NPT, only the above five NWS are allowed to possess nuclear weapons since their stockpiles accrued prior to 1970 when the terms of the NPT came into force; the rest must comply with treaty obligations and pledge they will only develop technologies and facilities dedicated to the peaceful use of nuclear energy, eschewing the acquisition of nuclear weapons.* Signatories also agree NOT to share nuclear weapons technology with other states, nor transfer nuclear weapons outside their territories. Signatories to the treaty that violate its terms are subject to sanctions and political pressure from the UNSC (United Nations Security Council). To tamp down the spread of nuclear weapons, the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) provides a clearing house for technical information and support for countries that develop civilian nuclear programs. The NPT also requires that treaty members open their nuclear facilities to inspection by the IAEA to ensure no nuclear material is diverted toward weapons production.

 

[On June 12, 1982, the largest protest in American history converged in New York, as an estimated one million protestors marched from Central Park to the United Nations to demand an end to nuclear weapons.]  

 

IN GENERAL, this system has kept in check the “horizontal” spread of nuclear weapons by offering assistance through commercial and financial organizations, and through the IAEA’s nuclear technology training programs. However, the  “vertical” spread of the ‘Big Five’ NWS in creating large stockpiles of warheads and bombs, leaves the NPT open to charges of hypocrisy and unfair treatment, where the ‘Big Five’ have capitalized on their early adoption of nuclear weapons to ‘corner the market’ on nuclear weapons technology, with the IAEA there to ensure certain technologies in nuclear energy production are withheld from signatory nations that might lead them to, for example, enrich uranium to weapons-grade purity. India objected to the closed nuclear ‘club’ and went ahead with its own program in the mid-1970s. Pakistan followed India, developing its nuclear weapons, also outside the NPT. It should be noted that nuclear weapons states are required to adopt policies that would decrease their stockpiles over time. During the 1960s, 70s and early 80s, the USSR and American caches of nuclear weapons were in the tens of thousands. The early SALT1 and SALT2 (Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty) treaties and the more comprehensive START and NewSTART (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) between the United States and the USSR (later Russia) brought nuclear armories of both countries down to roughly 5,200 warheads apiece, either deployed, in storage, or in the process of decommissioning.

 

FUN FACT: The NewSTART treaty was renewed during the Obama presidency in 2010, but is set to expire next year, unless Trump and his band of sad-sack clowns are foolish enough NOT to negotiate with the Russians for an extension to NewSTART. Without this treaty, there could very well begin a new arms race, and China—not a signatory to the treaty—may grow its own inventory of nuclear weapons to add to the mix. This is a very disturbing scenario, and one would think there would be growing public concern. But it is not on most people's radar. "Meep-meep!"

 

IN THE POST-WWII YEARS, the ‘Big Five’ nations¹ (Britain, China, France, Russia, United States) had economies large enough to establish both civilian and military nuclear programs.² They had emerged victorious from the war and called the shots from their position on the UN Security Council. Between themselves they established nuclear protocols and agreements. Imperfect treaties though all these were, nevertheless, they acted as a brake on a runaway arms race and promoted saner nuclear weapons arrangements. But times have changed, nine nations have nuclear weapons now and more may follow. We face the possibility that loose cannons in one or more governments may open the proverbial barn door, and we may not be able to close it, this time.

 

I SAW BY OPEN WINDOW

I saw by open window.

I saw a sky so blue.

I saw there in the distance

The line the bomber drew.

I heard the earth still breathing.

And then I heard it sigh.

I heard its heart stop beating,

Beneath an azure sky.

 

  

Cheers, Jake.  ____________________________________

 

* INTERESTINGLY, South Africa is the only country to have developed an indigenous nuclear weapons program and then given it up in 1990 to join the NPT. In the 1980s, apartheid SA developed several nuclear bombs (probably with help from Israel) to ward off the USSR which supported liberation movements inside South Africa like the ANC (African National Congress). Today, both countries are partners and founding members of the BRICS coalition. [How times change! Ed.]

 

1. The ‘Big five’ nations also happen to be the five permanent members of the powerful United Nations Security Council. Go figure.

 

2. Eighty years on from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the ‘secrets’ of building nuclear bombs and reactors is pretty much an open secret. There are some tricks-of-the-trade around enrichment processes and configuring nuclear warheads onto missiles that will fly, and so on. But many nations that have mature nuclear programs, like Canada for instance, could enrich U-235 to weapons-grade Pu but choose not to because of cost (it’s expensive to build nuclear weapons that have only one use (hopefully!) and that’s to sit in their silos. Whereas nuclear power stations can contribute to the economy by providing cheap³ electricity to run industries, etc. There are also treaty obligations as in the NPT, for instance, which come with penalties should the terms of the treaty be breached, not to mention complaints and diplomatic rows from concerned neighbours.

WHEN you enter the ‘club’, the rules of the game change, your international relationships change, and not necessarily for the better. For example, Israel has nuclear weapons—an open secret—but hasn’t formally declared itself a NWS. If it did NOT have nukes, it would have had to behave like a normal and relatively sane country, knitting together relations with its neighbours and coming to workable solutions internally on how to govern itself. I see nuclear weapons as a distorting factor in Israeli society and politics. Thus, Israel becomes a threat to its neighbours and moves like a wrecking ball through international law. It gets away with too many things it wouldn’t be able to, under normal circumstances. And that’s not good for anyone, including Israel.

 

FUN FACT: Following the June bombings of its nuclear facilities, Iran, suspicious that the IAEA leaked information to the Israelis about their nuclear program and the names of some of their scientists,  ordered the agency to leave. However, it remains a member of the NPT. Should it be attacked again, it will probably withdraw from the treaty and secretly work on a Bomb. It may then declare itself a Nuclear Weapons State or it may keep its status a secret, like Israel. MIT professor Ted Postol says for all intents and purposes Iran is ALREADY a NWS and should be treated as such, like all NWS are treated—with kid gloves. What a bizarro world we have!

 

3. I’m not so sure how ‘cheap’ nuclear power is when you factor in the humongous construction and maintenance costs, not to mention disposal of the highly radioactive waste, something NO ONE has yet found an answer. (Ship it to Mars, perhaps? Elon, what say ye?) There are approximately 440 reactors in 31 countries operating today.