- cross-posted to:
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A very dangerous moment.
This opens up the possibility that, when the next ATACMS are used against Russia, a nuclear response occurs. This was not legally possible before this change.
Whether they do it or not is still uncertain but I wouldn’t want to test it. This is as close to the brink as I’ve ever seen things.
This opens up the possibility that, when the next ATACMS are used against Russia, a nuclear response occurs.
I think its probably intended to address the use of a M.O.A.B. or other large scale conventional armament, like Trump deployed in Afghanistan at the start of his first term. Eliminates the theory that Americans can just firebomb Tokyo or Dresden and pretend its fine because the wreckage isn’t radioactive.
Whether they do it or not is still uncertain but I wouldn’t want to test it.
Everything I grew up with, learning about the background of the First World War, echoes this moment. Countries across Europe piling weapons atop each other as their leadership gets more and more eager to use them. Wilhelm doing parade marches with his toy soldier battalions. Tsar Nicholas adopting military dress as the imperial uniform. George V coming up through the royal navy and fascinating himself with British naval exploits.
This feels like a lot of the same. People drowning in their own military mythology, from DC to Paris to Moscow, all convinced another international conflict would leave them out in front of the pack. Everyone raising the stacks, because they think they’ve got a winning hand.
M.O.A.B… like Trump deployed in Afghanistan
Was an actually good reason ever given for the use of that MOAB? My wild hunch is that Trump wanted to do something insane so the MIC distracted him with the biggest non-nuclear boom possible.
I remember someone in the military I knew trying to rationalize it by saying the ordinance was decades old and would have gone to waste if they hadn’t dropped it on some guys in a cave, which would obviously be the bigger crime.
Oh, man. That’s fantastic MIC logic. If we don’t use it - it’ll go stale.
Trump thought he could step into office and immediately win the war by being Mega Based Chad and doing the most Epic war thing imaginable shy of a mushroom cloud. Obviously it didn’t work, because there was nothing the Afghans had that could justify using the weapon. But it made headlines, which was important for the Trump news cycle.
Putin is looking at a second Trump term and a guy like Pete Hegseth at the Pentagon, and likely thinking he doesn’t want Trump to try the same trick twice. It may work, as Trump is typically savvy enough to know not to punch someone who can punch back.
Indeed, this is far beyond the Cuban missile crisis or Able Archer.
I disagree this is just simply underscoring the well known fact that any nuclear armed regime would not allow itself to be topped by an outside power in conventional warfare without using said nukes to defend itself.
Effectively this is nothing new to anyone making decisions at this scale. If any country thinks that they’d be able to conventionally topple a nuclear power without a nuclear response they have the worst military planners ever.
If we replayed Barbarossa with Stalin having nukes, he would have never let the blitz get to Stalingrad let alone cross the Dnipro or arguably the Dneister. Whether the nukes target the front or the enemy cities doesn’t really matter in these scenarios because the reaction/overreaction would effectively be world ending anyway.
The reality is that at this point ATACMS aren’t going to do much, even if Ukraine defies the US and uses them outside “Kursk” (which has been a lulzy explainer by DoD tbh since they shot at Bryansk) they still aren’t going to do much to turn the tide except give the US realistic data on how rocket artillary works against Russian interceptors.
There’s like 225 possible targets within range, and Ukraine has fewer than 50 ATACMS missiles.
https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/8b060c46ee6f49908f9fb415ad23051c
Also this is the response to the fact that Ukraine used ATACMS on Bryansk, which were shot down.
- https://www.npr.org/2024/11/19/nx-s1-5196228/ukraine-atacms-missiles-attacks-russia
- https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-1000-days-attack-06002c8c50bfb2fc622f446a8580bc0e
So this is just saber rattling/dunking on your enemy. Russia is basically saying, even if your wildest dreams of NAFO ATACMS FAFO SHIBE DOGE HIMARS GHOST OF KYIV were possible and you could march straight up to Moscow under the cover of all Western power projection capabilities, we’d still retaliate with nukes. They will not simply capitulate to moving the front to a less advantageous position for them, even if it was technically possible as it is in the magical thinking scenarios of Westerners.
I think you misunderstand the problem here. The real issue is that these types of long range missiles can carry a nuclear payload. If Russia detects that a bunch of nuclear capable missiles are flying to Russia then they have to make call on whether it is a genuine nuclear first strike or just a conventional weapons attack. Russia has to treat that as a nuclear strike because otherwise deterrence does not work. It would tell NATO they can just lob nuclear capable missiles into Russia without any response, and at some point they could lob nuclear missiles. That’s what makes the whole situation so incredibly dangerous.
Dismissing this as sabre rattling is incredibly misguided.
There is no known nuclear warhead that exists for the MGM-140 tactical ballistic missile, and the idea that the US would give one to Ukraine, or that Ukraine could develop one is completely insane.
The real issue is that these types of long range missiles can carry a nuclear payload. If Russia detects that a bunch of nuclear capable missiles are flying to Russia then they have to make call on whether it is a genuine nuclear first strike or just a conventional weapons attack.
Only if you’re pretending that doctrine is to respond to nuclear attacks with nuclear attacks immediately without any real information. For weapons that Ukraine fields the SOP would literally be the same. The MGM-140 can be shot down by multiple Russian SAM systems. Nuclear warheads don’t make nuclear detonations unless they are triggered correctly. This isn’t a video game red barrel.
Every missile above a certain size is “nuclear capable”. This phrase doesn’t mean anything. Any world where your explainer is correct hinges on multiple misunderstandings.
AFAIR NATO countries haven’t ever fielded TCMBs with nuclear warheads on mobile land platforms due to the risk. Mobile land-based launch platforms for nuclear TCBMs is typically only fielded by Russia/Post-Soviet countries. NATO typically uses Air/Sea for these types of deployments due to the risks of land based mobile deployment.
Your entire line of reasoning is something that the US can simply accuse Russia of for using the Iskander platform, which it does in Ukraine, because it actually has known nuclear warheads.
Literally FTA
“Aggression by a non-nuclear state with the participation of a nuclear state is considered as a joint attack,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Tuesday – a clear reference to Ukraine and its Western backers.
“It was necessary to bring our principles in line with the current situation,” Peskov added, calling the update a “very important” document that should be “studied” abroad.
Russia “has always viewed nuclear weapons as a means of deterrence,” he said, adding that they would only be deployed if Russia felt “forced” to respond.
Putin has issued a string of nuclear threats throughout the almost three-year campaign against Ukraine, triggering concern in the West over rhetoric it has slammed as reckless.
The new doctrine also allows Moscow to unleash a nuclear response in the event of a “massive” air attack, even if it only uses conventional weapons.
When the Kremlin first unveiled the proposed changes in September, Peskov called it a “warning” against anybody who was thinking about participating “in an attack on our country by various means, not necessarily nuclear”.
Furthermore see Erdogan’s response that was highlighted by Russian state media:
There are nuclear capable ATACMS variants, and there is no way to tell which one has been launched until it delivers the payload https://missilethreat.csis.org/missile/atacms/
Only if you’re pretending that doctrine is to respond to nuclear attacks with nuclear attacks immediately without any real information.
That’s literally how MAD works. Nobody’s going to wait to find out if the attack was a nuclear first strike or not. The missiles will be launched in response to a perceived nuclear strike before it hits.
This whole notion that Russia is going to keep tolerating this sort of escalation is frankly bat shit insane. I urge you to consider how the US would react in a similar situation, say if there were strikes with weapons that have nuclear variants into US from Mexico.
There are nuclear capable ATACMS variants, and there is no way to tell which one has been launched until it delivers the payload https://missilethreat.csis.org/missile/atacms/
There is no source for the nuclear version existing, Wikipedia has no source of a nuclear version existing. If a nuclear version of ATACMS exists it’s literally a US state secret and multiple levels of insanity would have to be limit broken for it to end up on a HIMARS truck in Ukraine.
The source that CSIS references does not mention nuclear warheads.
https://web.archive.org/web/20161122100449/http://www.military-today.com/missiles/atacms.htm
We might as well be arguing about how you could also strap suitcase nukes to drones so Ukraine shouldn’t use drones to attack Russia either. And we know those exist
That’s literally how MAD works. Nobody’s going to wait to find out if the attack was a nuclear first strike or not. The missiles will be launched in response to a perceived nuclear strike before it hits.
So the country of Iran still existing literally disproves this. SCUD missiles which Iran has fired against Israel multiple times have known nuclear warhead designs. Again you are ascribing a level of insanity to Russian statements that would have been used immediately to crush the enemies of the US. Putin has literally softened prior criticisms of missile shields which mentioned the “whole technically they could nuke us.” during the Ukraine war because he’s not an idiot.
The reality is that the old nuclear framework with MAD has been destroyed by both the US and Russia for different reasons, and as such the reality is that nobody can consider ballistic missile launches a nuclear threat. Especially since the US in 2001 unilaterally withdrew from the ABM treaty, and Russia followed suit. Lobbing cruise and ballistic missiles at your opponent has been a common occurrence in the last 20 years from both nuclear and non-nuclear states.
Like I said if this is a real line of reasoning every Iskander used in the Ukraine theater is a reason for the US to go apeshit and say they’re going to nuke the Ukranians, we should nuke them first.
Or how about how the Houthis used Tochka’s on the Saudi coalition and US personelle, or the Syrian army using them in Syria. Or wait for it, how literally Ukranians used up all their Tochka’s at the start of the Ukraine-Russia war bombing Russian air bases.. Some how they did this without triggering MAD.
I urge you to consider how the US would react in a similar situation, say if there were strikes with weapons that have nuclear variants into US from Mexico.
The United States would level Mexico in an instant if they ordered too much shit off of Ali Baba at this point. No one is arguing that the US is a rational actor. Russia has been extremely rational and pragmatic in this war, and to ascribe the level of irrationality you’re ascribing to them right now is to literally label them in the same way the Western propaganda has been labeling them but from a position of support. It literally undercuts your own argument. Is this a serious communique or not? Is Putin crazy or not?
There is no source for the nuclear version existing, Wikipedia has no source of a nuclear version existing. If a nuclear version of ATACMS exists it’s literally a US state secret and multiple levels of insanity would have to be limit broken for it to end up on a HIMARS truck in Ukraine.
Many levels of insanity have already been broken over the past two years if you haven’t noticed. Biden himself stated that sending tanks and f16s to Ukraine would carry an unacceptable risk of escalation at the start of the war. Every red line the west has drawn for itself has been crossed. At this point, it’s becoming clear that NATO is losing the war, and we’re seeing increasingly desperate actions being taken.
We might as well be arguing about how you could also strap suitcase nukes to drones so Ukraine shouldn’t use drones to attack Russia either. And we know those exist
We’re arguing about the US firing long rang missiles potentially capable of nuclear payloads into Russia from Ukrainian territory.
So the country of Iran still existing literally disproves this.
The problem with this argument is that Iran is not known to posses nuclear weapons.
The reality is that the old nuclear framework with MAD has been destroyed by both the US and Russia for different reasons, and as such the reality is that nobody can consider ballistic missile launches a nuclear threat. Especially since the US in 2001 unilaterally withdrew from the ABM treaty, and Russia followed suit. Lobbing cruise and ballistic missiles at your opponent has been a common occurrence in the last 20 years from both nuclear and non-nuclear states.
The destruction of treaties simply means that the risk of a nuclear exchange is much higher now. I strongly urge you to watch this interview with Theodore Postol explaining just how dangerous the current situation is. He’s an actual expert on the subject. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RH7LT1bIdpY
Like I said if this is a real line of reasoning every Iskander used in the Ukraine theater is a reason for the US to go apeshit and say they’re going to nuke the Ukranians, we should nuke them first.
If Russia launched Iskanders into US, then US absolutely would go ape shit.
The United States would level Mexico in an instant if they ordered too much shit off of Ali Baba at this point. No one is arguing that the US is a rational actor. Russia has been extremely rational and pragmatic in this war, and to ascribe the level of irrationality you’re ascribing to them right now is to literally label them in the same way the Western propaganda has been labeling them but from a position of support.
Russia has been incredibly rational and restrained, however there comes a point where being restrained starts to look like a weakness. If Russia states red lines and then allows the west to cross these lines without consequence then it encourages further escalation. At some point Russia will be forced to retaliate to make a point. Russia unequivocally stated that there would be severe retaliation the first time the idea of deep strikes into Russia was brought up.
It is entirely likely that Russia will choose to wait a couple of months until the administration changes to see what happens. However, it’s important to understand that we absolutely are on the brink of a nuclear holocaust here.
AFAIR NATO countries haven’t ever fielded TCMBs with nuclear warheads on mobile land platforms due to the risk
There was Pershing Ia and Pershing II which had nuclear warheads, but they are no longer in service. They were stationed in Europe, West Germany in particular had a lot of mobile sites, mounted on MAN M1001 vehicles. Pershing II was a particularly scary missile as it had a MaRV (Maneuverable Re-entry Vehicle) back in the 1980s. It’s basically the father of all modern tactical ballistic missiles. No air defence system from that time was intercepting that. Even the most sophisticated modern missile defence systems, such as Arrow 2 and Arrow 3 in Israel, still struggle to intercept MaRVs, as shown by Iran’s October 1st retaliatory strike.
The reason we haven’t seen this after 1991, and why the US and Russia have not focused much on short, medium and intermediate range ballistic missiles since then, is due to the INF treaty. However, the US withdrew from this treaty during 2018 and 2019.
The reason we haven’t seen this after 1991, and why the US and Russia have not focused much on short, medium and intermediate range ballistic missiles since then, is due to the INF treaty. However, the US withdrew from this treaty during 2018 and 2019.
The reason the INF was even signed is because these are the riskiest platforms to actually field and maintain, the INF still allowed sea and air launched short/intermediate ranged ballistic missiles.
The reason the US pulled out of the INF is because the idiot neocon policy under Trump lead to a statement like, “their test platform has wheels” when referring to Novator 9M729 development, and was used as an excuse for the US to exit the treaty with all allegations unproven.
The reason the INF was even signed is because these are the riskiest platforms to actually field and maintain, the INF still allowed sea and air launched short/intermediate ranged ballistic missiles.
Well yes, no one wants nuclear weapons stationed on their land border. It’s an extremely high risk scenario. So both sides at the time could agree to take these weapons out of service. Banning sea launched nuclear weapons would be an impossibility given the existence of submarines, no side would willingly give up their second strike capabilities. And air launched ballistic missiles were not operational as of 1991, the US had only conducted a few experiments and the air launched version of what became the ATACMS programme was scrapped. The Kinzhal only became operational as of 2022. Nuclear air launched cruise missiles were not going to be banned, as that was important for both sides strategic bombers.
Ultimately the treaty was not going to last with only the US and Russia being members, it’s gives a superpower like China a huge advantage in this field. Even a country like Iran has developed IRBMS/MRBMs which don’t have a direct NATO or Russian counterpart currently in service. There’s also the plans around the “NATO missile defense system” that basically killed the deal. If one side builds missile defences, the other side is going to look to construct weapons that can bypass them, to keep the playing field level. Any future treaty would have to ban the deployment or construction of certain advanced missile defence systems to be viable.
Your entire line of reasoning is something that the US can simply accuse Russia of for using the Iskander platform, which it does in Ukraine
Last time I checked, Ukraine wasn’t a US state or even a territory yet
The real issue is that these types of long range missiles can carry a nuclear payload. If Russia detects that a bunch of nuclear capable missiles are flying to Russia then they have to make call on whether it is a genuine nuclear first strike or just a conventional weapons attack.
There’s no known nuclear version of ATACMS, and even if we go by this logic Ukraine could also claim that they don’t know if Russian Kh-101s carried by Tu-160 bombers (part of Russia’s strategic nuclear forces) are nuclear armed or not, so they don’t know if they’re under nuclear attack or not.
The real issue with ATACMS missiles being used to attack Russian territory, as explained by Lavrov today and Putin earlier, is that it relies on US and NATO satellites for guidance, and US/NATO specialists to input attacking information and flight paths. So in essence, you have US military specialists and assets directly taking part in conducting strikes on Russian territory and military facilities within Russia. Something that didn’t even happen during the cold war. That’s what makes it a huge escalation.
Ukraine can claim whatever it likes, they’re just a proxy. However, if Russia started lobbing Iskanders into Texas from Mexico then we’d be instantly in WW3 scenario. But yeah, NATO directly attacking Russia is the real escalation here.
it relies on US and NATO satellites for guidance,
This is a silly point, because it’s just GPS. That’s like saying the US is involved in every war that uses GPS technology.
and US/NATO specialists to input attacking information and flight paths
This part is also arguable. From what I understand this could be true for the M39 Block I. But it’s a weaker case for the M39A1 Block I, M48 QRU, and M57 Block IA Unitary because they have GPS capabilities.
There’s also a real question of what’s actually stopping the US from showing the Ukrainians how to program the internal navigation systems on ATACMS missiles. Are we really gonna argue that Ukranians who had/have one of the best technical service economies in Eastern Europe that provide IT services to US/EU companies cannot program internal navigation systems because understanding dead reckoning is too hard?
If these claims are 100% true then it would stand to reason that nobody who distrusts the US would buy ATACMS from the US because they’d be fully reliant on the US to even use the systems, which would not make sense for countries like UAE, Qatar, and Morocco, given they’re not full US orbiters.
US military specialists and assets directly taking part in conducting strikes on Russian territory and military facilities within Russia
This is true regardless of those specialists being in Ukraine and is simply a technical change in how war works. The biggest thing the US provides Ukraine is its spying apparatus. Ukraine literally cannot get good field intelligence on troop movements without US satellites and intelligence.
While I do agree that the US has boots on the ground in Ukraine and it is a proxy war, and that escalation is a delicate dance and the Russians certainly have a lot of leeway here as the more powerful party, a lot of their complaints are often the same thing as RTS complaints about cheesing.
Russia at the end of the day thinks that Ukraine shouldn’t be able to use ATACMS because Ukraine didn’t launch it’s own satellites and develop their own missiles, and blah blah blah. At what point is this simply complaining that Ukraine got free weapons from the West vs an actual argument about the balance of war from a country that in practice is shooting fish in a barrel? At what point can these complaints be levied against Soviet-era stock Tochka missiles that were expended at the beginning of the war? I think Russia just found a novel way to complain about this shit and is trying to make a case. If they believed the realpolitik of it they wouldn’t be talking so much, they’d be escalating with their missile strikes to make it a desperate long shot losing proposition for the West to provide continued support. In essence I think this is a diplomacy tactic where Russia is trying to keep the rules of engagement on a level that they don’t feel really pressed about. In short I don’t think Russia even buys its own argument.
In practice HIMARS hasn’t been as much of a boon to Ukraine as US/Russia is pretending it is. They have difficulty positioning them outside of Iskander range.
In practice the US doesn’t give a shit about Ukraine, the only real point that has any value is that the US is expending US capital and Ukrainian blood to play geopolitical games with Russia. But let’s not pretend that Russia gives a shit about the Ukrainian blood part, it simply gives a shit that the difficulty level on its game isn’t on super easy.
This opens up the possibility that, when the next ATACMS are used against Russia, a nuclear response occurs. This was not legally possible before this change.
Yeah that’s the point. The most vicious of the Pro-Ukraine contingent have been clamoring for symmetry in the war: which means Ukraine’s ability to rain fire on Moscow the way Russia can do on Kyiv. Now these people are practically idiots because it’s not logistically possible with ATACMS, but in practice that is an escalation to the conditions of the war and Russia is defining how it would retaliate to that possibility.
That’s the reality of war with regional powers, symmetry is in practice escalation. It’s basic realpolitik.
Now these people are practically idiots because it’s not logistically possible with ATACMS
Correct, ATACMS do not have the range to hit Moscow.
Who doesn’t love a sprinkle of nuclear brinkmanship…
we’re about to solve global warming
the weather this year does make me wish for a nuclear winter.
Neoliberalism will solve climate change with this one weird trick
Checkmate, tankies
no more half measures walter
I still don’t really see how tactical nukes can be a usable thing on the battlefield. There are so many ways that systems or protocols could get tripped which basically then mainline into total nuclear destruction no matter what. I really don’t think there’s such a thing as a limited or small-scale nuclear war—the systems that support it almost guarantee all-out nuclear escalation.
I’d mostly say ok this is more nuclear Sabre-rattling like they’ve done over and over again. But a small part of me always wonders, if you have powerful, narcissistic old men in control, is there really a guarantee they wouldn’t just say fuck it and end the world? Particularly if they were near death and pissed off? Dunno. hope we never find out.
It’s gonna be like in Factorio when you launch a nuke out of a rocket launcher a few meters away, and everything will be fine if you run really fast as soon as you fire it.
I don’t think NATO would risk it all over a tactical nuke in a non-NATO country, half of the reason they’re risking all this is knowing deep down they wouldn’t be obliged to. The best way to bop them on the nose prior to that would be striking Ukrainian command posts where NATO staff are stationed, and striking US assets in the Middle East/West Asia.
Yeah I don’t think NATO would definitely nuke respond intentionally. I just worry that there are a lot of countries with nukes, and a lot of early warning systems of varying degrees of sophistication. If something gets misread, the timeframe in which nuclear decisions are made is tiny by design, you can imagine a scenario where with bad luck, things spiral out of control .
I realize the tactical nuclear weapons are much smaller, so maybe they’re not as risky as I’m thinking in terms of tripping early warning systems and such.
Posadists stay winning…?
Fuuuuck…
