huckelberry wrote: ↑Wed Oct 05, 2022 1:05 am
I do not imagine that Hanford would be the priority target now that it once may have been. I only get rather limited comfort from that observation.
Personally, I'm not too concerned about the possibility of a nuclear exchange with Russia. Putin has indirectly threatened this before and nothing has come of it. Watching the news regarding Putin's annexation announcement and ceremony on TV, you saw stagecraft. The crowds, flags, chants, and nuke threats to NATO (America nuked Japan so we are justified in nuking America if necessary) were for internal consumption.
In reality, his order for mobilization and the follow-on loss of territory in Ukraine has saddled Putin with a growing credibility problem within his own country. Because of that order, far more young men have simply left Russia than are in the fight in Ukraine. In any case, Putin cannot make up for the critical Russian deficiency in military equipment, technology, troop morale, training, and modern warfighting experience with unwilling cannon fodder.
Look at what has transpired since Putin's annexation claims. They were as meaningless as the "mobilization". His forces, of which Putin is said to have taken personal command, appear to be collapsing. They have lost the important transportation hub of Lyman, and are retreating from village after village in the Kherson Oblast.
Putin is beaten on the ground, and he must know it. Winter is coming. What if his demoralized and poorly equipped forces are able to dig in and hold out until spring against accurate HIMARS fire, severed supply lines, and diminishing troop morale?
When the fighting starts again in earnest, the terrain will be crawling with new NATO equipment including HIMARS units. F-15 and F-16 jets, equipped with effective air-to-air missiles, HARM missiles, and air-launch cruise missiles piloted by Ukrainians, will be in the fight. If Putin commits his remaining combat aircraft to battle, he will lose them, leaving his other borders with weakened defenses and prolonging the war. Without air support, Russian ground troops cannot hold territory.
Recall that Putin promised for months that he would
not invade Ukraine as he positioned his forces along the border to do just that. Now he is threatening to use nukes without moving them into position to do so (as far as we know - and we know a lot).
During an ABC News interview on October 2nd, David Petraeus, retired US Army General and former director of the CIA described publicly (as a hypothetical) pretty much the same kind of response to tactical nuclear weapons use by the Russians in Ukraine as was described upthread on September 27.
David Petraeus wrote: 'Just to give you a hypothetical. We would respond by leading NATO, a collective effort that would take out every Russian conventional force that we can see and identify on the battlefield in Ukraine, and also in Crimea, and every ship in the Black Sea".
ABC News Oct. 2, 2022 wrote: There's also the fact that Putin cannot launch nuclear weapons on his own. Russia's safeguards around the use of its nuclear arsenal were designed with the possibility of a power-drunk leader sitting in the Kremlin. A system of safeguards that doesn't make provision for the most dangerous scenarios could only be devised by fools — and the Russians, despite the impression they sometimes give, are not fools.
To make credible threats, one must be seen to have the capability and the will to carry them out. Putin’s lies in the recent past on the international stage, as well as the Russian force's lack of capability on the battlefield, don’t leave Putin with much credibility.