http://www.mosnews.com/commentary/20...armsshow.shtml

Vladimir Putin has sparked fears of a new arms race between Russia and the United States by deploying a nuclear ballistic strike force system that officials made clear could penetrate U.S. anti-missile defenses.

On Christmas Eve, the Russian army activated a new fleet of Topol-M missiles that can fit a nuclear warhead and travel 6,000 miles, changing trajectory to foil any enemy interception device.

The accompanying hawkish rhetoric of the Russian military commanders and the frenetic response of the U.S. navy have stoked concern that the former Cold War adversaries have quietly resumed the arms race.

General Nikolai Solovtsov, commander of the Russian missile forces, has mobilized a new battalion for the Topol-M missiles, which have a capacity for a one megaton impact — 75 times the power of the 1945 Hiroshima bomb.

General Solovtsov, a critic of U.S. anti-missile defense technology, said the Topol-M missile “is capable of piercing any missile defense system” and is immune to electromagnetic blasts used by current U.S. anti-missile systems.

While Russia disbanded two missile divisions last year, it has now formed more than 20 new units — in the fastest increase of nuclear spending since the run-up to the Cuban missile crisis.

Last month, the U.S. navy carried out its most ambitious and successful test of an anti-missile interceptor, which can be launched from an Aegis class cruiser in the Pacific Ocean. A warhead from an incoming rocket was destroyed 100 miles above sea level — the first time an anti-missile defense has succeeded, in tests, when launched from a ship.

Duncan Lamont, a British defense analyst and editor of Jane’s Strategic Weapons Systems, said the new Topol missiles could evade the “ballistic missile defenses currently being fielded in Alaska and California”.

The roll-out of the Topol-M and the hawkish accompanying language mark the fastest expansion of nuclear missiles since the SS-18 and Pershing II technologies were rolled out a generation ago.

Since the last U.S.-Russia arms control treaty was signed in 1993 in Moscow, Russia has struggled to fund technology to replace its ageing defense system. The budget dried up as the Russian economy suffered.

But now the economy is flush with new oil wealth, the nuclear missile program has been revived and was last month allocated a 1 billion pound budget increase from the Kremlin. This has boosted Putin’s popularity.

Japan, growing anxious about a nuclear missile strike from North Korea, signed up to the American missile defense program last week and allocated 14 million pounds for joint research.

The Ukrainian government, elected last year in a part-protest against Moscow’s influence, has asked to come back under the former Soviet military umbrella and be protected by the Topol-M stationed in the Volga river.

In September, Russia successfully tested a Bulava missile, a submarine-launched equivalent of the Topol-M. Launched from the White Sea, it hit its target 30 minutes later on Kamchatka, in the opposite, Far Eastern side of Russia.

The escalation in missile defense will pose difficult questions for Tony Blair, the prime minister, who must soon decide whether to renew Britain’s trident nuclear deterrent. The case for not doing so is largely based on the pacification of post-Soviet Russia.

Relations with Putin have been increasingly strained, as western leaders have criticized his heavy-handed style, his imprisonment of political opponents and slow pace towards democratizing the country.

The European Union has condemned Putin’s decision to sell anti-aircraft missiles to Iran, whose new president last month spoke of his desire to “wipe Israel off the map”. Iran says it wants to buy Russian nuclear energy next.

Russia takes over the year-long G8 presidency from Britain in January. Putin has made his theme security of energy supply — which marries concern over Iraq with the Kremlin’s concerns about its control of Caspian oil reserves.

What say you my learned colleagues and brash young members of the forum, are we on the threshold of a new higher stakes arms race? At this point from all that I have read in the past three months I would have to say that I think we have already started down the path and it is no longer a question but a statement of fact.

Wow, that's news to me. Why can't the Russians just freaking be peaceful for once in our lifetimes.

Christ, we don't even have hardly any competing interests anymore and they're trying to out-nuke us? How about you spend that money trying to improve your economy instead of trying to destroy the world.

With NATO closing in on Russia allowing new members to join the organization, Russia will rely more on their nuclear capabilities. We will probably see more of this in the coming years if Russia feel their security situation unacceptable.

I must have missed the poll. I think this is stupid and bad saber rattling but it isn't the start of a new arms race. The US missile shield was never meant to ward off a full scale nuclear attack from Russia. You don't have to use crazy-ass missile technology against our missile shield, just shoot 21 missiles at it. The shield is really only supposed to protect against 20 missiles max, the idea being that an idiot like Kim Jong Ill or the former Saddam can't just make a nuke or two and threaten us with it.

Secondly it's supposed to max out around China's ICBM yeild which is estimated at 20 (although disputed). The theory being that if we get all China's boomer subs and nuclear-armed aircraft the shield would just be able to stop almost any ICBMs launched from the motherland.

But the shield was NEVER intended to stop a Russian attack, they've just got too many nukes for that to ever be feasable.

So the end result isn't an arms buildup that America is going to say "Well we'll develop better anti-missile technology to beat you!" since Russia can already nuke us out of existance even with the missile shield operating at its theoretical best on paper.

this may fit the joke section but lets watch this funny animation on Iran's nukes

http://www.zoomin.tv/videoplayer/ind...e=3&sitestat=0

Originally Posted by phoenix80

this may fit the joke section but lets watch this funny animation on Iran's nukes

http://www.zoomin.tv/videoplayer/ind...e=3&sitestat=0

http://www.endofworld.net/

MADD is stil a fact of life. If Russia is stupid enough to start saber rattling again, then they are stupider than I thought.

MADD means that not only would we fall to an attack by Russia, it also means that the rest of the world would also fall.

I AM NOT GOING TO GO THROUGH THIS WHOLE SPIEL AGAIN - IT HAS BEEN DISCUSSED ADNAUSEUM IN OTHER THREADS AND THE FACTS HAVE NOT CHANGED. BETWEEN RUSSIA AND THE UNITED STATES THERE ARE ENOUGH NUCLEAR WEAPONS AND WARHEADS THAT THE EARTH WILL BE DESTROYED MANY TIMES OVER IF THERE WERE A NUCLEAR EXCHANGE.

PERIOD.

I just think it is another powergame by Putin. He wants and needs to be taken serious. Unfortunatly he has an army with rusted tank, malfunctioning choppers and demotivated personnel. These missiles are probably his only claim to actor on the international scene. But I don't think it is the start of another arms race..... He has more pressing things like getting payments from Gazprom or killing scores of children when freeing them from terrorists.

Well you say that he has to deal with keeping children safe and fighting terrorists but look at what he is doing! Do you really thing it's the chechnian terrorists that are going "oh crap, now they can defeat the US missile barrier and they've added all these new nuckes... we have to surrender!"

NO!

Russia could nuke Chechnia so many times it would make an entirely new sea. If you've already got thousands of nukes, adding more to your arsenal isn't to fight terrorism.

I know that nuking them would not help. But it's politics! If he flexes his muscles a bit, standing up to the US, reliving old times when people took the USSR serious. IF the outside world reckons he is "the man" he can do more things internally. People tend to bother less with you if you are the big kid on the block.