Manic Moran wrote: » It does and it doesn't. The discussion was due to the fact that the delivery systems (i.e. fuzes, guidance systems etc) could not be repaired because nobody made vacuum tubes any more, and that there was no budget available to replace them with chips. As long as the currently installed vacuum tubes work, the US nukes will get to where they need to go and blow up. If they run out of tubes, the nukes are still viable, but there's much less control over where they go 'boom' NTM
magick wrote: » If the US wanted to, they could easily destroy the NK airforce within days, once they win command of the skys its only a matter of time when NK falls.
b12mearse wrote: » But what will kim jong do with those nuclear weapons before he goes down. He sounds like the type that would take alot of people with him.
magick wrote: » Only people that should fear NK is South Korea, although they have a huge army, they also lack modern weapons. China only props up NK so it doesnt have a huge refugee problem at its border. If the US wanted to, they could easily destroy the NK airforce within days, once they win command of the skys its only a matter of time when NK falls.
ozzirt wrote: » Vacuum tubes?... Where have you been for the last 30 years? These weapons are guided by GPS and inertial navigation technology which wasn't even thought of when vacuum tubes went out of use.
Gen. Chilton pulls out a prop to illustrate his point: a glass bulb about two inches high. "This is a component of a V-61" nuclear warhead, he says. It was in "one of our gravity weapons" -- a weapon from the 1950s and '60s that is still in the U.S. arsenal. He pauses to look around the Journal's conference table. "I remember what these things were for. I bet you don't. It's a vacuum tube. My father used to take these out of the television set in the 1950s and '60s down to the local supermarket to test them and replace them." And here comes the punch line: "This is the technology that we have . . . today." The technology in the weapons the U.S. relies on for its nuclear deterrent dates back to before many of the people in the room were born.
Manic Moran wrote: » Now, he is a little guilty of a bit of showmanship: He's arguing for a new warhead, whilst the vacuum tube is actually part of the fuzing system, a different component of the munition, but you still need the one to work the other. NTM
Gates says 'signs' NKorea preparing missile launch MANILA (AFP) — US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said Monday that North Korea could be preparing for a long-range missile test, but admitted that Pyongyang's intentions were not yet clear. "We have seen some signs that they may be doing something with another Taepodong missile," Gates told a joint press conference with his Philippine counterpart Gilberto Teodoro. "But at this point it's not clear what they're going to do," said the US defence secretary, who was making a flying visit to the Philippines on his way home from a regional security conference in Singapore. A South Korean defence ministry spokesman on Monday told AFP that officials in Seoul had "detected signs that North Korea is preparing to fire an ICBM," or intercontinental ballistic missile. The North has moved the missile to a base in Dongchang-ri along its northwestern coast and a launch could take place in one or two weeks, South Korea's Yonhap news agency quoted an unnamed intelligence official as saying. Tensions have been running high for the past week after Kim Jong-Il's regime tested a nuclear bomb for the second time and then launched a series of short-range missiles and threatened possible attacks on South Korea. Gates said he hoped a high-level US delegation led by Washington's special North Korea nuclear envoy Stephen Bosworth -- due to meet with officials in China, Japan, Russia and South Korea -- could help defuse those tensions. "I would rather not presume that we will not be successful in gaining a broad agreement on the way forward," Gates told reporters. "I think we ought to wait and see how those conversations go and how our partners in the six-party talks other than Pyongyang react to the developments of the last few weeks and see where we go from there diplomatically," he said. He said he would rather "not speculate on what we might do after that." The two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States make up a six-party forum that has been meeting for six years for negotiations aimed at ending Pyongyang's nuclear programmes. Gates said at the weekend in Singapore that Washington would not accept a nuclear=armed North Korea, and that Pyongyang's defiant acts could spark an arms race with serous consequences for Asia.
dlofnep wrote: » Iraq was never a threat. NK has always been.
