Wow. Excellent sleuthing! I tip my hat. Now, we have the unfortunate reality that this is not a put-on. One or two of the comments were dismissive, but some of the rest indicated a sincere public boil over this display, which I take to be a good sign.
I said you were pettifogging, and you still are. In military matters strategy and policy are the same thing: determinations at a top level as to how matters are going to go. It is a policy of assuring that once launched, our weapons CANNOT be turned back (excepting maybe bombers). It is also equivalent strategy. You can't separate the two.
There was never any question of technical feasibility since we had already developed the radio command guidance method and deployed it with the first generation of Atlas missiles. That would be effective only during boost phase when the missile was within line of sight. Destruction signals are used for training flights and are operational only during boost phase. Any other embodiment (beyond line of sight) would have incurred huge technical problems.
You invoke more wishful thinking by saying you can get an abort code from satellites. Satellites to whom our uplink may be disrupted by EMP events? Satellites whose ability to receive, decipher, and retransmit the signal may be likewise compromised, or them destroyed by acts of war? Similar problems in communicating with what?---the RV or the post-boost vehicle? If the PBV, you have a time window of a few minutes...and do you want it to have a beacon, and thereby advertise its nature and location? Same thing with the RV...how do you find it, to direct a signal? Or do you broadcast a signal and let the enemy know you are aborting an attack? No, for you, the policy is thrown out the window altogether and it doesn't matter if the system is secure from cyberattack.
And here is where you display your inability to read closely. I have, from the first, maintained that what you propose is impossible because of a strategic policy decision, not because it was innately impossible technically. (This does not preclude it from being technically impossible practically.)
You don't have a counter-argument. It is only wishful thinking. There is no reason to unravel a long-standing strategic policy, and certainly no evidence for it (like test shots, and announcement of any change to our strategic posture).
Before this conversation, you had no idea why the idea was a non-starter. And now you know. But you set aside knowledge for wishful thinking...not that you know anything otherwise, but that you insist that I don't know everything. Of course, if I did, I couldn't say anything about it could I? So, you really don't know what I know or don't know, because I do know how to keep a secret. Chew on that, but don't expect your scenario to happen.
This would fly in the face of having a public trial, where court reporters would be present. What are they going to do? Search the reporters for notes, or forbid recordings? (Odd, if the trial would be on camera.) Whether or not there may be "precedent," I think this stands out as suppression of the defense. Since when has evidence been made secret to the disadvantage of the defense? Since when has the identity of witnesses been secret?---inasmuch as the defendant has the right to challenge witnesses in trial.
I think they should refuse to do it on the basis of Constitutional protection of the rights of the accused and the right of free speech---and let them all be sent to prison to stop the trial. That would get public notice. "Your honor, we decline to follow this request. It violates our client's rights under the Constitution. What are you going to do? Throw us all in jail?"
Here you are pettifogging. The choice was made for strategic reasons. Strategy in military affairs is policy, having nothing to do with technical preference. In other words, we do not now employ radio guidance as a matter of high level (i.e., policy) choice. You can't get around that fact. It has nothing to do with technical feasibility (you have no idea what to do when the booster has burned out, so you have a time window of maybe 120-150 seconds).
We have come to an end, since you have decided to abandon intellectual honesty for narrow parsing of words (what makes "policy" different from "strategy"?). The impossibility arises from a decision NEVER to allow a path into the system once launched. Your idea that it is "possible" is a fantasy. In the case in question, it would have to be a proven fact, not a "possibility."
I worked with people who were on B-52, Minuteman, SRAM, and ALCM programs. You can take it from me and learn something, or turn your back on reality and stay in fantasy land. It seems you have done so.
The fact that it pops up on other social media doesn't mean much if it is a fake that has gone viral. No point of original publication? I've been unpleasantly surprised by such things in the past and have grown wary. It is entirely possible that this person was standing in front of a real location, holding a placard. The placard itself looks like an image crafted elsewhere (non-realisitic edges) and superimposed by Photoshop over the original placard. The person's left hand looks unnatural in "holding" the placard.
One wonders to what extent this may be involved in the present coup in Niger and the governments in Mali and Burkina Faso.
Is this even real? It appeared where? I'm tired of untraceable "photos" showing up for the sake of agitation. That placard looks suspiciously like a Photoshop construct; the perimeter is not a sharp demarcation like a real placard would have.
Fine. I looked at it. Kindly explain what this has to do with Trump's admiration for the New Jersey dunes. (It has nothing to do with the "Dune" movie.) At some point, you need to realize that communication in English is necessary, and superior to pointing at cryptic statements.
Remember the original discussion of radio guidance and the REASON it was discontinued in favor of inertial guidance? I can't help it if you are not paying attention.
No. Not "obvious that there were divers." Flotsam, maybe. There is too much of a tendency on this board to see specific predetermined images in a Rorschach blot.
Plus, as pointed out, this misidentification of the event puts the overall credibility of this guy into question.
Please explain. That means absolutely nothing to me.
When they decided to forego radio guidance for inertial guidance. There was never any thought of providing an abort feature for the operational systems. It was not a technical choice; radio guidance worked just fine. It was a decision based on the vulnerability of the system to interrupt. Does that spell it out for you?
This is mumbo-jumbo. They have undoubtedly discovered a way to modulate the propagation of sound waves, but that falls under the heading of known physics. "4D" is just an advertising gimmick.
"Metamaterials" can include materials that can be fabricated to have (e.g.) a negative refractive index. They do this by ordering the electromagnetic properties of the material at a dimensional scale equal to or smaller than the wavelengths of the light (or microwaves) they want to affect.
Dream on. There are all kinds of provisions to prevent a nuke going off if it isn't supposed to. But there is a clear path to it going off if it is meant to, and that is by design. Why do you suppose they run psych tests on the airmen in the ICBM control capsules, who would be the ones to initiate the launch signal? To screen out those who would go rogue? No. To detect those who would funk out and not perform their duty.
When would this abort take place? During boost, or during coast? What is your assurance that it would work? Or that it wouldn't be hacked? You would just be introducing unreliability and vulnerability into the system.
These are not limitations of design (though you would have to overcome physics to communicate from a sub to a missile). They are requirements of combat strategy, to which all design must be subordinated. I have pointed out this is a policy choice ("a nuclear deterrent policy") and you just don't want to accept it. I have informed you---insistence on your part after this point is nothing but childish retreat into the fantasy of "it's possible."
Lots of things are "possible." Like moving Mt. Everest to Australia, one teaspoon at a time. Possible, but not bloody likely, for reasons of motivation and practicality. Same thing here. Nobody wants it. It would just impair the reliability of the system to do the job it is supposed to do. Hopium is nice, but when you are overdosed it can convert to Dopium.
Nothing to do with the movie "Dune." Bedminster is about 20 miles from the New Jersey shore, which may have sand dunes. Sand dunes are landforms that will migrate according to the wind. He says nothing that makes sense as being a referent to the movie, when he is clearly referring to "the dunes here."
"Dune" is a fine novel and, so far as I can tell, the various movie treatments have been decent. It has nothing to do with contemporary politics.
Now that is false. I have elaborated at length, and provided specific reasons and information that ruined some of your fancies. You have no basis for refutation, so you just withdraw into Know-Nothing-ism and denounce me for having expertise. You stopped arguing when you had nothing to say to my last comments---that was you, not me.
If this comes down to the lack of a means to abort a nuclear shot, then there we are. You come from the school of thought that you can pull a trigger and shoot a bullet at someone---but you can change your mind in the slender time available and just "turn it off." The early developers of ICBMs saw that radio command guidance (which would only prevail near the launch site) was too "open" for mission continuation, so they told the bullet to do what it had to do and be blind and deaf to anything else after the match was lit. (Radio command guidance was ruled out for the SLBMs because submarines don't surface to conduct a launch and seawater shuts off radio signals of the kind that would be needed. We used to have intercontinental cruise missiles, but they had similar reliance on inertial guidance (which was partly their weakness, because the gyro drift over the flight time resulted in too much error).
These are facts. Facts that are known to those who have studied the subject, thus a manifestation of "expertise." It is fatal to your conceit. You don't like being informed of this and take the attitude of "Well, it can be otherwise," which is only wishful thinking. And so you lay it all down at my feet for being poison to reasoned debate, when all I am doing is educating you. When the teacher tells you that Madagasgar is east of Africa, are you going to denounce his/her expertise, or blink and learn something?
Possibly all that is necessary is to decertify in enough states that the remaining certified electoral votes are insufficient for Biden to have been declared the winner in the Electoral College. Which may then throw the decision to the House of Representatives...where the states vote as blocks, not according to individual Representatives.
Now, on that point, I have to wonder. I went to university in the late 60s and early 70s, at the tail end of the free speech / hippie movement. Saw plenty of the types on the street and elsewhere. Patchouli oil was the "smell of hippie." Their political outlook was primitive at best. But I also saw plenty of the radical revolutionary types---very vicious and deranged---who dressed alike but were really out to wreck and kill (no kidding). To be fair, I don't really think they had much overlap with the main line of hippie-dom. There were some political types that looked like they could have been hippies, but their behavior was more consistent with being on drugs: essentially impossible to have a rational conversation with them, they were so wound up and anxious. So, maybe there was an overlap in the dope-and-drug department. ("Hey, man. Let's off the State!" "Right on, dude!")
There is no mystery in the Masters of the Universe (so thinking of themselves) being jackboot-steppers. It is just an extension of their political agenda. I think (and hope) that most of the hippies moved on and decided to live peacefully in the shadows.
This is happening too often to be a coincidence: you don't address any point I made, and you conclude with a slur.
I tend to believe people are what they seem---and mistrust people who are not. At present, I see no point in holding my breath over any of these seeming turncoats. Better to set them aside and just forget them. If they are vindicated by later events or revelations, that would be wonderful and forgiveness would be at hand. But this endless mastication of "are they White Hats or Black Hats?" is a waste of time and attention.
Have it your way. I have only worked in strategic defense for decades and I am familiar with what is or is not done. Those missiles cannot be aborted, and that is a fact. They picked inertial navigation expressly to preclude that possibility. Why would anyone want to gamble with it? You simply do not know what that world is all about.
There was no missile intercept in Hawaii. That was a reference to the presumed rogue launch of a missile from Puget Sound, near Kitsap Peninsula. That would have been a possible boost-phase intercept by an F-15 flying combat air patrol over the submarine base at Keyport, I happen to be especially familiar with that technology. (If it had been, however, the sight and sound of the intercept would have been a matter of public note, and there was no record of such an event.)
So, no safety net. At least you are clearing your eyes.
But wishful thinking about a "cure" for the vaccine damage, which is latent at the genetic level. A vaccine for the vaccine? How are we to trust that?
Oh, "casualties" would not include hundreds of murders (killings by mass violence)? Sweep them under the rug, will you? There is no way to ensure that casualties will remain within an "acceptable range." I don't believe in an acceptable range (but evidently, you do). My whole point is that the premise of "control" is ill-conceived and points to events more serious than what we have experienced already. (Unless they have ready access to the equivalent of a fire extinguisher, such a speedy mobilization of the National Guard.)
The idea that people will have their "psyche destroyed beyond repair" is fatuous nonsense. People have survived the devastation of hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, airplane crashes, and volcanic eruptions (e.g., Mount St. Helens), and no one has worried about their "psyches destroyed beyond repair." People are tough and resilient. Nobody likes to go through an extremity of pain and suffering, but they go through it. (Ever had open-heart surgery? No fun during recovery.)
You have a thin skin. Giving needed advice is not a "personal attack." I have thought "outside the box" enough to have been granted 9 patents on new ideas (sadly, others were not elected for patent protection by my employer). Indeed, do not push it too far, because a person who is not an expert in an area often does not know where the box is.
Now, this I like. The smell of burnt gunpowder beats all the flashy gun-draw acrobatics.
Scenario 2 is impossible. We do not provide the ability to disarm after launch for exactly the reason you want to exploit: vulnerability to electronic warfare. (The earliest ICBMs had radio command guidance, but that was replaced in the next generation by inertial guidance.) The nuclear codes are to authorize launch, not abort missions. Once missiles are launched, they are for keeps. They have no radio receivers. You really need to grip more reality when you want to postulate scenarios. (It may be possible to abort a bombing mission, but that hinges on command-and-control protocols. I wouldn't count on it.)
And what, pray tell, is the safety net for Covid-19 vaccinations? A lot of people are going to die a slow, unpleasant, ill-recognized death with no evident possibility of cure or remission.
You can believe (or imagine) a perfect precipice with no casualties. I prefer to expect a real one, with real casualties.
I looked up the book on Amazon and read the reviews to get a sense of it (I think they were fair reviews). But having lived through that period, I think the author is failing to distinguish between a socio-cultural standpoint and a political-ideological standpoint. Most of the malignant manifestations and trends came from the cultural and political left, not from the generation as a uniform whole. The truth of this can be seen in the perpetuation of bad policies and trends through following generations. If they were only generational, they would pass like fads---but they have not. They have become worse with each subsequent generation. (As Exhibit A, I would present Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, fresh as a spring planting.)
Every bottle of a carbonated drink (soda or beer) exhales CO2. Who complains? The production of cement from limestone necessarily produces CO2. Who complains? The production of steel necessarily produces CO2. Who complains? The provision of dry ice (solid CO2) is an industry in itself (its whole utility is that it maintains coldness by sublimating into gaseous CO2).
Who is willing to give up any of these things? Why isn't he beer industry subject to environmental protests? Why aren't cement, steel, and dry ice banned? It's all for show and virtue signaling.