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Comment by causality0 | Hacker News Reader

This reminds me of how little sense the US national defense budget makes. You would think that if something represents half the threat, addressing it should be half the budget. Yet nuclear missiles represent nearly all the threat to the United States, so why doesn't 75% of the defense budget go toward anti-missile systems development and deployment? At the moment, the US still has zero chance of defending against a single MIRV'd ICBM, let alone the hundreds that Russia would use. What fraction of the US defense budget is spent on anti-ICBMs? 9.2 billion dollars, or 1.3%.

https://breakingdefense.com/2022/02/no-us-missile-defense-sy...

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Until 1947, the US Department of Defense was called the Department of War. I think your confusion is rooted in the misconceptions this renaming was designed to foster. The United States has the ability to wage numerous simultaneous wars around the world. That's the capability all that money buys, the ability to stomp any conventional military force anywhere in the world, numerous times at once. Morality aside, it makes a lot of sense. It's only nonsensical when you take the 'Defense' name at face value.

That understanding is too simplistic. 1947 was two years after the end of WW2, the second time in half a century that the US got dragged into a massive European war. From a defense perspective, it's better to keep the fighting on someone else's territory. If Hitler or Stalin or Putin rolls over Europe, North America will be next. There's nothing nonsensical about putting a stop to that early.

Also, Europeans are our friends. It's right to help defend them.

Well if defense means fighting wars in other countries rather than in America itself, then there's no confusion. The US Military is very good at defending both American strategic interests abroad, and defending America's allies. It becomes nonsensical when you think of "defense" as repelling invasions of American soil.

> Also, Europeans are our friends. It's right to help defend them.

You've read too much into my comment. I support NATO and believe America is generally a force for good.

you wrote: "The United States has the ability to wage numerous simultaneous wars around the world"

An example of those wars is Afganistan. Yes, the US managed to destroy the country but could not win the war. Russia also destroyed Ukraine and probably will not win the war.

I did specify "any conventional military force"; 'winning' an occupation/insurgency is quite another matter, particularly when the 'win conditions' are political rather than military. And doubly true when those political win conditions are poorly defined in the first place.

But trust me, defense industry lobbyists are very eager for the US Government to spend even more money to address these shortcomings...

The ability for the U.S. to wage numerous simultaneous wars is about the cold war. It's effectively the basis for NATO's deterrent effect, reducing the number and scale of wars in Europe and Asia compared to the pre-NATO era.

> the US managed to destroy the country

That’s a downright lie.

Define "win"?

Most of Ukraine is not “destroyed”. In fact most of it has not even been attacked.

Well, then the same is true for Afganistan. By destroy, I did not mean they have attacked every village.

So, what do you mean?

I am in Ukraine and I do not feel like I am in a destroyed country.

The Department of War was essentially the department of the Army: the Department of Defense merged the Department of the Army with the Department of the Navy, and rolled in the newly separate Air Force.

In part that’s because large scale ballistic weapon defense has generally been viewed by experts as destabilizing and accelerating the arms race. It’s a little technical why that is so, but interesting to read — regardless of one’s ultimate views.

This. The mutually assured destruction doctrine works because both parties knows that the party which does the first strike will be obliterated by the other party's second strike, so neither party wants to be the one to strike first. However, if party A should get too good of an ICBM defence system, mutually assured destruction would stop functioning; party A could conceivably fire a first strike with the knowledge that party B wouldn't be able to retaliate with a second strike. This would make it in party B's interest to do a first strike before party A's anti-ballistic missile systems are functional (EDIT: or something like that; essentially, it breaks the entire MAD mechanism, I shouldn't make it sound like any particular outcome is likely.)

There was a whole anti-ballistic missile treaty which banned the US and the USSR (and then its successor states) from developing anti-ballistic missile systems. George W. Bush withdrew the US from the treaty in 2002.

Further reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Ballistic_Missile_Treaty

I can understand each logical step of MAD, but if you look at the whole picture it really does seem kind of silly. Like, why not both agree to allow the other to place a stationary gigantic nuke in each major metro area under the control of the other, and call it a day? Of course that seems absurd, but it's not more absurd than not developing anti-ICBM weapons. And think of the savings it could have produced? I haven't looked at actual numbers but there has to be a phenomenal amount of resources that have fueled MAD over the last ~60 years. Now that I think about it, an even more cost effective measure would be the ancient practice of exchanging hostages. Each top political or military official has a loved one live in the other country while they're in office. Also sounds absurd at first, but probably would have been just as effective at avoiding war which is all MAD is good for anyways.

May as well ask why make weapons at all. The absurdity of it has been well documented in the art of the Cold War in the twentieth century.

Yeah, it's obviously not great. But it seems to be a kind of stable local optimum, where any step any single party could independently take to get rid of MAD would be against that party's interest. Honestly, barring widespread global nuclear disarmament, it feels like the nuclear weapons hat is out of the bag -- and at that point, it's a choice between MAD and nuclear armageddon.

> Like, why not both agree to allow the other to place a stationary gigantic nuke in each major metro area under the control of the other, and call it a day?

Because then the solution would be to disable all of the other country's nukes simultaneously and then trigger your own.

MAD isn't a doctrine. US doctrine is simply Assured Destruction. Russian doctrine is escalate to deescalate. Neither doctrine actually contemplates that mutual destruction is a good thing.

The wikipedia article consistently refers to it as a doctrine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_assured_destruction

> Mutual assured destruction (MAD) is a doctrine of military strategy and national security policy ...

I'm unable to find anything about the "Assured Destruction" doctrine which isn't about MAD. If you have some links I should read to learn more, please do send them. But presumably, the US's official doctrine is that if Russia sends in a first strike, the US will retaliate with a second strike? And presumably Russia's official doctrine is the same? If that's the case, isn't that just the MAD doctrine, even if it's under a different name officially? Or has both countries officially said that a first strike won't be followed up by a second strike?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_doctrine - Military doctrine is the expression of how military forces contribute to campaigns, major operations, battles, and engagements.

MAD is a game theory construct. It may inform doctrine, but it doesn't actually dictate how we employ forces. US doctrine can be found in the nuclear posture review : https://media.defense.gov/2018/Feb/02/2001872877/-1/-1/1/EXE...

It amounts to : the primary point of the US arsenal is deterrence. As such, we will assure that we can destroy the enemy as necessary.

Russian doctrine had explicitly contemplated the first use of nuclear weapons "in response to large-scale aggression utilizing conventional weapons in situations critical to the national security of the Russian Federation." So if they get in a war and start losing.

The critical part of MAD is a so called balance of terror. But the US doesn't use nuclear weapons because it's afraid of getting nuked in return, and Russia believes that they can win a nuclear war. So it's both not doctrine (because it's not how either military plans to use forces) and not real (because the preconditions don't exist).

Missile defense is a dicey topic. In the 1980s the Soviet Union realized that they could not afford their own anti-missile systems, or make their ICBMs resistant to US anti-missile systems. This was partly responsible for increased tensions as the Soviet Union faced an existential threat of losing a nuclear war.

They responded by participating in arms reduction treaties which had the same effect as the US building an anti-missile system which could intercept 95% of Russian weapons. If the US built a full missile defense umbrella, adversaries would respond by building enough weapons to defeat the umbrella.

> If the US built a full missile defense umbrella, adversaries would respond by building enough weapons to defeat the umbrella.

Could the adversaries afford that ?

Israel’s iron dome can reasonably protect a decent portion of Israel. Destitute Gazans can still overwhelm it. If you don’t really care what you hit, missiles are very inexpensive.

It can do so because the number of missiles coming in at it are few.

In the end, dummy IBCMs are easy to build, and it will be hard for any system to shoot them all down if there are a thousand dummies for every live missile. Missile defense it ultimately impossible, IMO.

Some of us learned this in back in the 80s in the arcades playing Missle Command

This may be wildly incorrect, but a good offense may be the best defense. Seemingly all other military spending is the nuclear deterrent. An overly basic example: Nuking a country with 90% of money spent on defense means that country's retaliation will be pretty weak. Might be worth nuking them.

Nuking a country where 90% of money is spent on offensive capabilities means the retaliation will be extreme. Probably not worth nuking as you will get attacked back much harder.

Its incredibly bloated, but you have to consider the second-level effects of US Military spending, like our ability to project economic policy on the world, or prop up the domestic economy.

US Defense spending is the biggest welfare program in human history and both political parties fully support it.

> US Defense spending is the biggest welfare program in human history

But is it welfare for the right people?

Honestly, it seems like mostly welfare for everyone else. The rest of the western world is only now caring about having their own functioning militaries again after decades

Generally, yes we would want most of the people working on the production side of the military complex employed by our government in some way, and working on our toughest problems. Sadly that's not what their effort is going into now.

At best, US defense spending is the 3rd or 4th largest welfare program in human history, after Medicare, Medicaid, social security, etc.

In what way is it bloated? Spending as a percentage of GDP is at all time lows.

Nope. Before WWII, military spending during peacetime was much lower than current levels.

My own two cents: I think the United States has perceived Russia as a defeated military power with economic and internal political weaknesses. Therefore, effort should be spent there over a military one.

So one could look at where the CIA spends money to see if effort is put there over strictly military. Not that the Pentagon has been audited lately or anything...

Such a system can never be 100% effective.

Enemy launches warheads single file (one behind another at a specific distance) towards a target. Your defense system sends up a missile to destroy that warhead, effectively. Now you have a smoke screen and sensor blackout at altitude X.

Oh look, you’ve detected a new nuke exiting the smoke screen. Now you can blow that one up, but the smoke screen moves closer to the intended target. Repeat until a nuke hits you.

I believe this dynamic is exactly what MRVs were designed for. One missile with numerous war heads, arriving on target one after another in rapid succession (independent targeting came later.)

There are some videos of MIRV reentries on youtube that really something to see. Seeing those bright lights come down from the sky in a line, one after another, is simultaneously chilling and awe inspiring: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7X89a531CY

What kind of smoke screen is that? Are interceptors radar guided?

Yes, incoming warheads would be tracked by ground radar, with guidance beamed to the interceptor.

Three problems : while you're trying to stream missiles in slowly, the opposition is going to mass launch against your silos, cutting off your stream.

Nukes produce broadband noise. Improved radars let you get much better signal to noise and see through it anyway.

And the warheads you're streaming in need to actually detonate to give noise. Otherwise you just get a debris field.

A debris field of sufficient size is also noisy. MIRVs can have a couple decoy warheads whose job it is is to just release debris to create radar noise.

Theoretically, yes. But that is part of the point of improving the signal processing. And there's 4-5 different radars looking at stuff coming over the pole at Fylingdales, Thule, Clear, Cavalier, possibly at sea, depending.

What is the chance that our enemies already have nuclear weapons hidden in apartments of our U.S. major cities? And ours in theirs?

This is a thought that keeps me up at night.

Israeli Arrow system is partially funded by US, as I understand it it's pretty good but not sure it would work against large scale attack

Because second-strike capability is already established and, if other states are rational actors, just as good from a deterrence perspective.

and if they're not rational, what can you do?

Because the likelihood for nuclear warheads ending up being useful is close to zero.

Because its far easier to launch a missle than to catch a nuclear weapon mid air. It wouldn't even prevent damage or loss of life. nuclear weapons are big enough to affect airplanes even

ICBMs travel 30 times faster than a bullet and 7 times faster than a hypersonic scramjet cruise missile. If we're talking MIRVs that can randomly dodge before they hit their targets, that is a stupidly hard problem. Better to try to cure cancer and just not get into a nuclear war.

Missile defence is a fantasy that is impossible to build except against the simplest of rockets. Even Israel's Iron Dome and Arrow systems regularly fail against homemade rockets. The military industrial complex continues to perpetuate that fantasy to receive further R&D funding.

You didn't see the results of last year conflict? Iron Dome was overwhelmed but still managed to give pretty good defence and Iron Beam is much cheaper and quicker.

Money would be best spent targeting the problem. Russia and its people is not the problem, Putin, Kim Jong-Un or whoever the current crackpot dictator with nuclear weapons is. Assassinating a single person, while morally reprehensible, is preferable to destroying a civilization.

just based on what you've told me now, i'd conclude that military doesn't consider a nuclear attack to be plausible.

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