USS Carl Vinson Heading To North Korea

What is the difference?

About 5-8 minutes from launch? A launch the North Koreans can't detect anyway.

Yeah, about that, you see, most of the stuff the US government (and probably other governments as well) considers to be "classified" is actually well-known outside the country. Over 30 years ago, the US was putting satellites into orbit which could pick up large metal objects in the oceans. How far behind do you think the Chinese and Russians are on such things?

Oh, yes, I'm sure that the US military is 100% logical and that nobody here who's ever served in the military would ever say that the military did anything which seemed stupid.

Decades.

From what I've read the Soviets (Russians) had more luck detecting American submarines due to the information from the Walker Spy Ring than with their own technology.

Christ, you're dense. If the North Koreans know that there's a boomer close by, then it's harder for them to argue that we won't nuke them. Sort of like the argument that if someone sees somebody with a gun in a place of business, they'll be less likely to shoot up the place. Or are you going to claim that open carry isn't a deterrent?

I've never considered open carry to be a deterrent.

"deterrence" as a concept is vastly overrated.

Hey, dipshit who can't figure out quote tags, 30 years is, in fact, decades. And Walker was busted in '85, so....

Well if that's the case, we may as well scrap one leg of the nuclear triad.

But it's not only stupid, it serves absolutely no purpose. There is no reason to attach a ballistic missile sub to a carrier group. It would be like putting battle tanks on aircraft carriers to defend them against infantry attacks.

Hey, whaddya know? Something we both agree on! Imagine that.

So, you're saying that MAD was a bad policy?

And for much of that 30 years the Russians were operating in severe economic distress and even had problems feeding their military personnel.

Not the environment that is condusive to breakthroughs in military technology.

Yes.

MAD as a policy had a lot more to do with military budgets than sound policy making.

Nah. Just because you know where a boomer is, doesn't mean you'll be able to target it. Think about it. Suppose that Putin decided he was going to launch a pre-emptive strike against the US. He knows that in order for such a strike to be successful, with minimal Russian casualties, he's got to take out as many of the boomers as he can. If he starts sending Russian military ships in their direction, he's going to tip off US intelligence forces that something's up. This means that we're going to do any number of things to be able to ensure that no matter how hard he hits us, we're going to be able to hit back as well. So that's a losing proposition.

And? Joseph Heller and Richard Hooker made a good living off of their complaints about the stupidity of the US military, to name but two.

So, by your logic, we can get rid of our nuclear weapons and stop spending so much on the military, while focusing more of the US budget on things like paying down the debt, fixing our infrastructure, and making sure that everyone in the US has adequate healthcare, education, and enough to eat. Good to know.

From what I've read the only "reliable" way of destroying a SSBN (boomer) is to trail it from whenever it leaves port to go on patrol. There is nuking the submarine base of course but that's another matter.

By the end of the 1980s, American attack submarines (SSNs) were able to trail Soviet "boomers" reportedly for as long as two months. Basically from when they left port to when they returned.

On the other hand, after the Cold War ended at a number of friendly gatherings among former rivals from the U.S. and Soviet Navies both sides "compared notes" as it were about their experiences dogging each other during the Cold War (this was back when both sides thought we were going to be buddies).

The Americans were surprised that the longest Soviet trail of an American SSBN was a mere 18 hours.

@Tuckerfan , how do you know so much about military operations since you don't read armchair general?

Serious question, but posed in a funny way.

I never said or even implied that. Obviously I bore you so you've taken to simple lying.

Those gatherings would have been 20+ years ago, I doubt if the Russians were just standing still in all that time, especially not since they were able to buy better computers on the open market than they could before the end of the Cold War.

You implied it.

Dayton seems to think history happens in a vacuum.

According to the wikipedia entry on "armchair generals," the following are two examples of such:

Examples

• Dwight D. Eisenhower, after enlisting in the United States Army in 1911, was assigned to the Army War College and graduated in 1928. He never served in combat, even during World War I, and held mostly administrative positions afterwards. During World War II, he was appointed Supreme Commander Allied Expeditionary Force, in spite of never having been in combat.
• George Marshall was described as the "organizer of victory" by Winston Churchill, for his outstanding logistical and administrative skills. Like Eisenhower, he rose to general's rank despite having never led troops in combat.

How?

Way back in the '90s I got this crazy idea that Clinton was going to use FEMA camps to incarcerate us all. So, I started pouring through things related to the military and tactics. Going for credible sources, either ex-military, or folks who shaped military thought. Lots of it stuck with me, for one reason or another. Also, being a machinist who actually made weapons of war, some years later, didn't hurt.

Armchair general, to me, would imply the same as armchair quarterback.ie. you're sitting at home deciding what is or should be, you're not actually privy to any information and not in the field. Presumably Eisenhower was. Even general McClellon was in the field and privy to information, he just wasn't as effective or brutal as Grant.

Why do you assume, without evidence, that the Russians have the ability to track our SSBNs, but then go on to assume that they don't have the ability to do anything about them?

So I point out how absolutely idiotic it would be for the military to do a thing, and you counter that it's possible since our military is absolutely idiotic enough to do it?

Well, if you're right, I desperately hope diplomacy saves the day because if not, North Korea will kick our criminally incompetent military's ass without breaking a sweat.

I assume the FEMA camp thing was a joke, but the rest makes sense.

By saying our military budget is more about the military industrial complex and not sound policy making, which has been the case since at least the Eisenhower administration.

That's a rather simplistic view of Ike's career. He and Patton were one of the few members of the US military to recognize the value of the automobile and the tank after WWI (though both he and Patton figured out that the automobile was valuable after dealing with Pancho Villa). Ike also toured the concentration camps after they were liberated, and it was he who ordered that Germans were to be shown the camps, because he didn't want them to claim that they somehow didn't know what was going on. You want me to give you the same kind of cred I give Ike (even though I've got a number of beefs with him), then take your ass to some place the US has fought a war in recent years. I don't mean either Iraq of Afghanistan, but Kosovo, which is safe compared to those other places. Or pay a visit to the battlefields in Europe. Until then, STFU.

Yeah, SSBNs aren't going to be escorting carrier battle groups.

Period.

To suggest otherwise is the stuff of Clancy-esque fantasy.

Just a quick guess, keep in mind I know nothing other than basic knowledge when it comes to the military, the ocean is huge, so I'm guessing they can pinpoint an aproxamite location, but their technology is more dated than ours?

Oh, they could attack them, but to do so, would tip their hand that something was up.

Nah, you forget that they're even more criminally incompetent than we are.

Nope. If you think paranoia on talk radio was a new thing, you're sadly mistaken.