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Just finished Command and Control. Its a good read of a sobering topic. Especially interesting was how SIOP was this eldritch, lovecraftian doomsday text of targets, assigned weapons and megadeaths that every new administration would get their hands on, and on realizing the horror and madness inside would immediately start on revising it... just to come to see how it could not be changed because of administratorial inertia and the sheer lunacy that cold war deterrence policy had become, and either leaving it be or just adding more nukes to it.
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Jan 27, 2020 22:54
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To add: modern armies with air power probably deter a lot more insurgencies than they ever need to defeat.
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Jan 27, 2020 22:57
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Popular Science, August, 1987 Spiking the embassy’s concrete with diodes to create endless false positives on bug sweeps. Outstanding move. Platystemon fucked around with this message at 23:57 on Jan 27, 2020 |
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Jan 27, 2020 23:28
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Yeah, if you want to hide a needle you can put in a big pile of hay. But if you REALLY want to hide it you can it put it in a big pile of other needles.
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Jan 28, 2020 00:34
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Valtonen posted:Just finished Command and Control. Its a good read of a sobering topic. Especially interesting was how SIOP was this eldritch, lovecraftian doomsday text of targets, assigned weapons and megadeaths that every new administration would get their hands on, and on realizing the horror and madness inside would immediately start on revising it... just to come to see how it could not be changed because of administratorial inertia and the sheer lunacy that cold war deterrence policy had become, and either leaving it be or just adding more nukes to it. I'm not sure if that plan was ever made public, but I do remember Command and Control talking about some bridge in the middle of nowhere that was due for four separate rounds of atomic hellfire
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Jan 28, 2020 02:16
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hobbesmaster posted:Ok, I'm going to post a political horse race tweet but PLEASE IGNORE THAT PART. As others have pointed out he wisely specified open field, but we can still make fun of Frum for repeating this old myth right before he transitions into fantasizing about napalm and cluster munitions: “The members of the team around Sanders are experts in Democratic Party factional infighting. Few have dealt with people who do not play by the rules of the mainstream Democratic Party. They have always been the rule breakers, the people who got inside the other team’s decision cycle. They have been the Minutemen fighting the Redcoats, picking off the other side’s regulars from behind trees and fences.”
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Jan 28, 2020 07:33
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Nebakenezzer posted:I'm not sure if that plan was ever made public, but I do remember Command and Control talking about some bridge in the middle of nowhere that was due for four separate rounds of atomic hellfire Multiple ones. The issue was that as the stockpile grew and ”counterforce” target list got larger they started adding important avenues of attack and mobility corridors that needed to be taken out. Especially near arctic circle these included rural bridges and highway junctions which would be the only passages for hundreds of miles to go from Soviet russia to NATO-country Norway.
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Jan 28, 2020 09:06
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mlmp08 posted:Examples of insurgents/partisans getting crushed pretty hard in recent history through a variety of modern army, weaponry, or other state technical/numerical superiority: Also, Syria, right now, today.
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Jan 28, 2020 13:21
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Phanatic posted:Liquid metal coolant has a lot to recommend it from a safety perspective, especially on a submarine. Chiefly, that it's a liquid at high temperatures and ambient pressure so you don't have to pressurize your reactor to a level where the coolant will explode if there's a leak. If there is a leak, the coolant rapidly solidifies. In the case of lead, the coolant itself has a secondary function as gamma shielding. You can use electromagnetic pumps, which have no moving parts or shaft seals to leak, to move the coolant around. And you can't really overpressurize your reactor by letting it get too hot, because the boiling point of the coolant is so high. The US tried hard to make it work as well, but we were trying a liquid sodium alloy and Rickover was (for understandable reasons) vehemently opposed to having a coolant that ignites on contact with air and explodes on contact with water being used to cool the reactor on a submarine. The lead-bismuth alloy in the Alfa reactors doesn't have that problem. We put a sodium-cooled reactor on the Seawolf, but she had so many steam leaks in her superheaters that they were just bypassed, so the extra efficiency and power density of the reactor plant was more than made up for by the lack of superheaters, and the whole idea was scrapped at Rickover's insistence and Seawolf's reactor was cut out and replaced with a regular PWR. I'm just saying it sounds like a mad idea on the surface. And the fact that you have to have a heater for your coolant just reinforces the idea.
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Jan 28, 2020 13:30
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Shooting Blanks posted:Is this photo of anyone in particular? I don't recognize them. I mistook him for Uncle Giap, lol
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Jan 28, 2020 13:33
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JcDent posted:I'm just saying it sounds like a mad idea on the surface. And the fact that you have to have a heater for your coolant just reinforces the idea. There are scenarios where special measures must be taken to keep water from freezing. That doesn’t make water‐based coolant fundamentally unsound.
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Jan 28, 2020 13:36
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Platystemon posted:There are scenarios where special measures must be taken to keep water from freezing. Yeah; in my experience in heavy industry, a lot if not most high duty coolant systems have a heating system integrated - even if just to heat up the cooling circuit to normal operating temperature (greater than ambient) prior to circuit startup after maintenance downtime and is not used again until the next maintenance event eight weeks later.
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Jan 28, 2020 14:11
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JcDent posted:I mistook him for Uncle Giap, lol just a reminder that Giap was a stone hardcore ride or die for the revolution, advocating for farmers getting hosed by capitalist bauxite miners right up until his death.
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Jan 28, 2020 14:12
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JcDent posted:I'm just saying it sounds like a mad idea on the surface. And the fact that you have to have a heater for your coolant just reinforces the idea. A lot of ships historically have needed a *heater* for their *fuel.*
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Jan 28, 2020 15:10
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You need a heater in most Diesel truck engines don’t you? At least when it’s actually cold outside
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Jan 28, 2020 15:20
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You can always try to feed a marine engine with unheated bunker fuel. As long as you are willing to wait.
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Jan 28, 2020 15:41
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I'm pretty sure most modern trucks have a coolant heater system. At least some of the huge ones do. Just like a heat exchanger that goes over the engine and runs warmed coolant over everything so you don't have to wait as long for the engine to heat up. It takes a long time for warmed coolant to get through all the nooks and crannies of a 15 liter engine.
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Jan 28, 2020 15:44
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Mazz posted:You need a heater in most Diesel truck engines don’t you? At least when it’s actually cold outside That's a totally different thing. Block heaters are about keeping the cold cold cylinder wall from sinking the heat of compression faster than the fuel vapors can reach their flash point. poo poo like #6 Fuel oil or Bunker C has to be kept around 150°f or else it's too thick to flow through a pipe.
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Jan 28, 2020 15:46
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I just though it's mildly amusing that a thing that needs to keep stuff cooler needs heating when not in use. 
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Jan 28, 2020 15:50
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Also both gas and diesel engines benefit from block heaters in cold temps so the oil can flow better to lubricate at startup. In extreme cold the thickened oil can also affect the ability to turn over to start. That and combustion is more efficient hot. Otherwise you're dumping in extra fuel to warm up everything faster which increases fuel contamination of the oil and can burn out catalytic converters. It's why you're better off only warming a car for a short period. And with all of the exhaust side emissions equipment modern diesels are pretty bad to idle.
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Jan 28, 2020 15:57
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shame on an IGA posted:That's a totally different thing. Block heaters are about keeping the cold cold cylinder wall from sinking the heat of compression faster than the fuel vapors can reach their flash point. IIRC there's a OSHA or similar video somewhere breaking down an industrial accident at a refinery, involving hot sulfur-laden thick heavy crude oil eating through piping not designed for it and the workers not trained for that. Bad things happen. Obligatory cold war reference: the giant refinery firestorm that kicks off Red Storm Rising I guess
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Jan 28, 2020 18:24
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Valtonen posted:Multiple ones. The issue was that as the stockpile grew and ”counterforce” target list got larger they started adding important avenues of attack and mobility corridors that needed to be taken out. Especially near arctic circle these included rural bridges and highway junctions which would be the only passages for hundreds of miles to go from Soviet russia to NATO-country Norway. While we’re on the topic of nuclear weapon books, Fresh Air had an interview with Fred Kaplan yesterday about his new book The Bomb: Presidents, Generals, and the Secret History of Nuclear War. I don’t know how legit Kaplan is or anything about the book, but it sounded interesting. He did mention how under (I think) Bush senior some guy in the administration went through and drastically reduced the amount of nukes needed simply by getting rid of the absurd overkill built into the plans. Same overall objectives, just without the “hey let’s hit this airfield in Siberia that’s only usable 1/4 of the year with 17 nukes to be sure” stuff.
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Jan 28, 2020 18:28
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Now that my career path seems to be veering sharply towards arms control and nonproliferation, I'm stalking the hell out of this thread. I'd like to start by recommending The Bomb: Presidents, Generals, and the Secret History of Nuclear War by Fred Kaplan. I got my hands on an advance copy, and now that it's actually out, I can strongly recommend it for an overview of the origins, developments, and absurdities of US nuclear doctrine. If you've read Wizards of Armageddon, he covers some of the same ground for the early years of nuclear doctrine. This time around he's got more declassified nuclear documents to work off of, which is nice. EDIT: Whoops, someone just mentioned it. david_a posted:While we’re on the topic of nuclear weapon books, Fresh Air had an interview with Fred Kaplan yesterday about his new book The Bomb: Presidents, Generals, and the Secret History of Nuclear War. I don’t know how legit Kaplan is or anything about the book, but it sounded interesting. Kaplan's pretty legit. Wizards of Armageddon is essential reading.
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Jan 28, 2020 18:43
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Command and Control made reference to the SIOP being such ridiculous overkill that on certain targets incoming nuclear weapons would likely be vaporized by other nuclear weapons going off ahead of them.
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Jan 28, 2020 18:43
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The accidental dense pack nuclear defense strategy!
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Jan 28, 2020 18:47
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What's the etymology of "blue falcon"
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Jan 28, 2020 18:53
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zoux posted:What's the etymology of "blue falcon" Buddy fucker IE “ no sarge i don’t know where seamen Timmy is” When you could have said “I overheard him saying he was reporting to sick bay” Crab Dad fucked around with this message at 18:56 on Jan 28, 2020 |
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Jan 28, 2020 18:54
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I know what it means, I want to know why it means that https://twitter.com/halbritz/status/1222193764397088771 It's cause I've seen a bunch of people calling this guy that today
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Jan 28, 2020 18:57
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SIOP-62 also called for nuking China, whether it was involved in the war or not. Plus the total annihilation of Albania.
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Jan 28, 2020 19:01
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Karenina posted:SIOP-62 also called for nuking China, whether it was involved in the war or not. Plus the total annihilation of Albania. That's because the Albanians were evil communists OP. Leaving them would be bad and we're the good guys, haven't you heard
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Jan 28, 2020 19:12
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Karenina posted:SIOP-62 also called for nuking China, whether it was involved in the war or not. Plus the total annihilation of Albania. They should've snuck in some rival cities. "Wait, some soviet spy put in a nuke for Annapolis and one for Boston?" "Beat navy, gently caress the red sox"
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Jan 28, 2020 19:15
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ThisIsJohnWayne posted:That's because the Albanians were evil communists OP. Leaving them would be bad and we're the good guys, haven't you heard If the Albanians didn't want to be nuked into the Stone Age, they shouldn't have kept Soviet air-defense radar on their soil. Just dump it into the Adriatic, problem solved, you don't get nuked.  Or build more bunkers, I guess.
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Jan 28, 2020 19:18
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Karenina posted:If the Albanians didn't want to be nuked into the Stone Age, they shouldn't have kept Soviet air-defense radar on their soil. Just dump it into the Adriatic, problem solved, you don't get nuked. THEY’RE BUILDING BUNKERS AS FAST AS THEY CAN, OK?!? They were like the sonic the hedgehog of bunker builders
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Jan 28, 2020 19:22
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Also wanna rec another book called Eating Grass: The Making of the Pakistani Bomb by Feroz Hassan Khan. It's a fascinating look at the making of a shoestring-budget under-the-table nuclear program from a relative insider's perspective. There's lots of crazy poo poo in there, like an aging, overheated military barracks-turned-uranium enrichment site with "lots of snakes."
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Jan 28, 2020 19:31
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Mixing snakes with the uranium enrichment process is how you get teenage mutant ninja things.
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Jan 28, 2020 19:34
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zoux posted:I know what it means, I want to know why it means that because the letters are BF that's it, that's the reason the etymology is literally buddy fucker->bf->blue falcon
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Jan 28, 2020 19:36
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FruitNYogurtParfait posted:because the letters are BF Oh lol, I though it had something to do with "blue on blue" but yeah that makes sense
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Jan 28, 2020 19:37
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Although Soviet nuclear war plans leak very rarely, I think my favorite is apparently (probably not) Khrushchev circling Minneapolis on a map during a meeting with Hubert Humphrey and saying that he would spare it.
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Jan 28, 2020 19:37
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Top Hats Monthly posted:Although Soviet nuclear war plans leak very rarely, I think my favorite is apparently (probably not) Khrushchev circling Minneapolis on a map during a meeting with Hubert Humphrey and saying that he would spare it. The fallout from bombing all the silos in the dakotas probably would make everyone in Minneapolis wish for death though
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Jan 28, 2020 19:39
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FruitNYogurtParfait posted:because the letters are BF In that case, why "Blue Falcon" and not "Bravo Foxtrot" or something similar?
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Jan 28, 2020 19:42
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