Remember that the united states and russia were routinely inspecting the nuclear arsenals of each other. They may have been hiding how bad things were, but we can be certain they do have functioning nuclear weapons at a scale large enough to matter.
The US believed Kiev would fall in weeks, tops. I’m not putting much faith in their assessment of Russia’s arsenal. If anything, it’s in the best interest of the US MIC to lie about it and spend to fill imaginary capabilities gaps as we so often have.
Wikipedia disagrees, though notes that there are weapons that can beat current defence technology
The Soviet Union could produce enough missiles to overwhelm any defence. Russia now couldn’t afford to maintain a large arsenal, though China can. China doesn’t seem as likely to launch a first strike as the USSR did.
Of course those systems aren’t protecting you unless you live somewhere important
The NMD program is limited in scope and designed to counter a relatively small ICBM attack from a less sophisticated adversary.
also ground-based interceptor is more expensive than ICBM, and you need one for each warhead and maybe also for decoys, and probably more than one to be reasonably sure. since everyone operates under MAD it doesn’t matter if you destroy most probable adversary’s nukes on the ground or in the air, so that’s one of reasons why ICBMs are a thing, and then SLBMs as a second line. cue arms race. ABM are considered destabilizing and are limited by treaties
Yeah but in 1984 we really worried that we might not make it through the week.
Weird Al released Christmas at ground zero in '86
Now we don’t really believe Russia’s missiles will even work
And back then there was no credible defence
those missiles will work. They have been modernizing.
There still is no credible defense to a full on attack by Russia. Trump’s golden dome is as real as Reagan’s star wars.
Actually modernizing? Or modernizing in the way that the T-14 and SU-57 technically exist?
Remember that the united states and russia were routinely inspecting the nuclear arsenals of each other. They may have been hiding how bad things were, but we can be certain they do have functioning nuclear weapons at a scale large enough to matter.
The US believed Kiev would fall in weeks, tops. I’m not putting much faith in their assessment of Russia’s arsenal. If anything, it’s in the best interest of the US MIC to lie about it and spend to fill imaginary capabilities gaps as we so often have.
there’s no practical defence against nukes
Yes there is, you just blow it up while it’s in space
you would need something silly like 50x more interceptors than ICBMs and SLBMs and these are more expensive and technically harder than either
Wikipedia disagrees, though notes that there are weapons that can beat current defence technology
The Soviet Union could produce enough missiles to overwhelm any defence. Russia now couldn’t afford to maintain a large arsenal, though China can. China doesn’t seem as likely to launch a first strike as the USSR did.
Of course those systems aren’t protecting you unless you live somewhere important
What? You can’t say wikipedia disagrees when it lists weapons that can beat current defenses.
also ground-based interceptor is more expensive than ICBM, and you need one for each warhead and maybe also for decoys, and probably more than one to be reasonably sure. since everyone operates under MAD it doesn’t matter if you destroy most probable adversary’s nukes on the ground or in the air, so that’s one of reasons why ICBMs are a thing, and then SLBMs as a second line. cue arms race. ABM are considered destabilizing and are limited by treaties
Crazy how many times the World Trade Center musta been attacked by Weird Al. I only heard about ’93 and, of course, ’911.