Jeffrey LewisHilary and the LRSO

Leaked audio proves that Hilary Clinton revealed her secret plan to cancel the nuclear-armed cruise missile at a fundraiser in February.  Except it doesn’t. She has no idea what Andy Weber is talking about. Aaron and Jeffrey discuss.

Comments

  1. George William Herbert (History)

    I think that there’s a case to be made for the standoff nature; modern SAM systems can probably kill even a stealth bomber before it does an overflight, so the useful number of defended targets we could attack is 0 per bomber. Which is somewhat suboptimal in case of a real war.

    With standoff cruise missiles we need much more precise targeting than we’re likely to have in order to kill the SAM system or possibly even the primary target with a conventional cruise missile. Silos and hard bunkers are difficult targets from standoff.

    The question is, what range is needed to avoid a stealthy bomber being killed by defenses, and what’s LRSO range. Because at some point it stops being “penetrate the defenses” and starts being the bomber equivalent of MIRV where you’re really striking A LOT OF targets rather than effectively striking a few. That’s where we are now with ALCM and LRSO is going.

    I think that SRAM was arguably around the right answer here; not super range, so the bombers aren’t multiplying effectiveness so much, but long enough that you can sneak up and lob one in past defenses with some credibility it will work. So not so much a LRSO as a SRSO.

    The Air Force was OK going down to just ALCM when the SRAM engines timed out and had to be retired, as ALCM gave them more capability (a la MIRVing). But from a stability and arms control standpoint that’s probably wrong, and we should start making a stink about it.

  2. David Clark (History)

    Hey guys. Great content as always. I do have some feedback about the sound quality, though. You’re having two separate audio problems.

    One: Uneven volume. Aaron’s voice is very loud, and Jeffery’s is quiet, especially towards the ends of sentences. This makes listening on headphones kind of unpleasant, since I need to increase the volume to hear what Jeffery’s saying, but be ready to drop the volume just before Aaron’s next interjection. Running the audio file through Audacity’s Normalize function once, then through its Compression function once will level out the volume.

    Two: Echo. Aaron seems to be listening to Jeffery on speakers, and when Aaron starts to talk before Jeffery has finished, we get echos of feedback from Jeffery out Aaron’s speakers and back in through his mic. If both participants used headphones instead of speakers, you could eliminate that problem.

    Hope this feedback is helpful. Please keep up the great work.