Gregory Matteson's Most Recent Comments
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in: Geolocating IRGC and Strategic Military Sites in Iran
in: The Un-Scorecard for the Trump-Kim Encounter
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Much as I abhor President Trump. I see a glimmer of light in the summit. For the last 68 years and counting U.S. Korea policy has counted ROK as the sole legitimate regime, and counted on the imminent collapse of the DPRK regime. At least the summit result seems to recognize that the DPRK is not going away tomorrow.
in: The Belated Consequences of Killing the ABM Treaty
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I have a curious tome in my personal library; Weaponry in Space: The Dilemma of Security, VTI Press, Moscow, Copyright Mir Publishing, 1986. In it Soviet thinkers lay out very cogent arguments that, whether intended or not, the building of missile defenses in the face of MAD lays the basis for a pre-emptive (that is, First) strike, and hence is inherently destabilizing. As far as I can tell, they were genuinely convinced of this then, and the their Russian Federation successors remain genuinely convinced.
in: Nuclear Posturing
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As a cold-war survivor I think you seriously underestimate the risks. If Chelyabinsk had happened any time before the 90’s we wouldn’t be having this discussion. There were too many (well, one would have been too many) instances of a single level headed officer well below national command level deciding not to start WWIII. Also I find it telling that your example of deterrence failure uses the Soviet Union. Both the decision during the Cuban Missile crisis to force Soviet submarines, known to be nuclear-armed, to the surface, and Eisenhower’s conduct of aerial Reconnaissance-In-Force against the Soviet Union are examples of us acting contrary to deterrence. These were risks our Presidents thought worth taking. If events had turned out otherwise we might disagree. A contemporary example is the idea of giving Mr. Kim a “bloody nose”. IIRC from childhood, giving a bloody nose doesn’t necessarily mean the other kid doesn’t hit back.
in: Act I: The Iran Deal Begins to Unravel
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We thought we had escaped Orwell’s vision when 1984 passed, and then the Soviet Union fell. Then I read paragraph 10: “…a kinetic backup plan”, which causes me to pause and think, this means nothing other than ‘bomb the hell out of them’.
in: Nuclear Deterrence and the Revenge of Geography
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Considering the hysterical, manipulative response by the Japanese Government and media to the “overflight” of Hwassong 12 missiles, followed by US rhetoric, I wouldn’t put much trust in the customary space boundaries. What I mean by this is that by the time the Japanese authorities had detected which way the hwassong 12s were flying they knew perfectly well that the trajectories were 550 & 770 KM respectively and it was physically impossible for them to fall on Japan. None the less, the Japanese authorities sounded a “missile altert” to the civilian population, ratcheting up the crisis by induced public paranoia.
in: Pyrrhic Victories and Draws
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Trading threats on an equal level with the propaganda machinery of a country with one-four-hundredth our GDP. What are we, the world’s biggest schoolyard bully?
in: Modern Man is Obsolete
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My belated comment here is the result of a conversation with an old friend, who informed me that Nuclear Threats, by which I mean threats of nuclear annihilation against a specific nation state or people, “is what nuclear weapons are good for”. It is my view that this is comparable to private gun owners, and I am one, making gun threats, both as a practical and a moral matter. The US and Russia, these states in particular, have a long history of making explicit nuclear threats. The earliest explicit American nuclear threat against North Korea that I have found is from September of 1950, and was renewed many times. We are Shocked! Shocked, I tell you, that a poor, weak, corrupt little state on the far side of the world has managed after 66 years, to return the compliment.
in: Is Space the Final War-Fighting Frontier?
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Not all satellites are created equal. Navigation satellites are medium sized. Communication and spy satellites can be as big and heavy as a bus, and contain hundreds of kilograms of highly energetic hypergolic fuels. Plus there may be other types of vehicles, maybe fighting vehicles, that a civilian like me hasn’t thought of. As a long time reader of Sci-fi and speculative technical articles I can be paranoid enough to imagine, for example, an X 37b being used to deliver the Rod From God Weapon. That would be a heavy vehicle with a lot of energetic fuel, just a bit above LEO. According to Donald Kessler’s scenarios as popularized, if I understand correctly; deliberately blowing up one such vehicle could trigger a catastrophic debris cascade.
in: Is Space the Final War-Fighting Frontier?
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Consider one entirely possible near term bad outcome of militarizing space: Creating a debris field around the Earth that could deny humanity access to space for generations.
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A2AD = advanced anti-arcraft missile batteries. Jargon and acronym without explanation leaves us outsiders to puzzle out what you’re trying to say. Based on the icon you use, and the photo, I’m pretty sure you mean either Russian supplied mobile batteries or Iranian clones. Surely Iran has many more older anti-aircraft missile batteries, which I have to guess don’t count?