"defense against icbms"
uh, no. no such thing exists. weve already seen just how well these "missile defense systems" work against hypersonic missiles (hint: they dont)
this post was submitted on 04 May 2025
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You mean Russia, China, and the USA all have missile interceptor programs they're pouring money into, and pretending they're having successful interceptions of ICBM targets? And at the same time, Russia and China are developing new MIRVs and other systems to evade US missile defenses which don't work?
YES.
They.Do.Not.Work.
Whenever these things go up against actual hypersonic missiles they fail; at least the few that have gotten any sort of real world testing. But engineers have also been warning for decades that they are likely a huge waste of money and will likely be completely ineffective, especially in the event of nuclear war.
Every country has to develop them and tell everyone they are developing them and pretend they work in a big psyche-out game with each other. They all know they don't work but they have to hedge bets with the "okay, but perhaps, maybe, possibly....."
All this because the US deindustrialized itself.
There was no other place for capital to go than abroad because we didn't strangle it in the crib.
Oh my god they are going to auto-starwars their economy like they did to the Soviets. All China has to do is nothing.
Thankfully a lot of US foreign policy seems to rely on the idea that the US's enemies will just sit there and do nothing while the US builds up. I don't think China is naive or incompetent enough to not prepare for this, and they have a far larger industrial base and ability to actually direct their industry towards war and defense. With China's most recent actions it does seem like they are fully aware that the US will attack them sooner or later, and there is nothing they can do to prevent this, all they can do is prepare, and they're a hell of a lot better at planning and preparation than the US is right now.
China is currently in their 10 year modernization of their military. That's why we just saw them unveil a bunch of new planes an equipment. It'll come in waves with the last being in 2035.
That makes it sound like they just began their 10 year modernization of their military... which is less reassuring.
No, they began the design stage years ago. This year marks the beginning of the rollouts of new equipment. For the next ten years they will be rolling out new equipment until basically everything is updated. The fighter jet they showed that our military has testified in Congress is better than the US's? That is just the one they released this year. By 2035 they will be updating that to an even better one, for instance.
And it's not even just updating equipment. They are using this opportunity to expand their airforce and navy. So it's a complete overhaul, though I suspect many mainstay munitions will remain the same.
I wish China would help out against Israel, even if just by halting trade with Israel and increasing with Ira. If would reduce the sphere of influence they have in that part of the world and Israel is looking more and more vulnerable lately. Of course the US's still has Japan and South Korea, but still, it would help.
Golden Dome may also provide good enough insurance against ICBMs for confronting China's relatively small stockpile of warheads.
good thing they are telegraphing this so far ahead of time. sounds like China needs to be cranking out warheads. they have 5 years.
True. so far, it looks like China is slightly increasing their stockpile, but increasing the sophistication of their delivery systems. I also think it could be possible that during the final year of escalation, Russia and China sign a mutual defense treaty.
I very much expect that lately with the support it's getting during this trade war. A defense pact could even include other Asian countries like North Korea.
If the US is insane enough to start a war with a large, powerful nuclear country like China, then others can definitely expect they will eventually be up against the wall. I wouldn't be surprised if a few others, like maybe Vietnam, join. Even if just to prevent the war because US-China war will mean billions in Asia could die and the effects would definitely go beyond Chinese borders.
billions in Asia could die
A nuclear exchange between any world powers will result in the end of the world. Not only will the radiation spill over into other countries (like you pointed out), it could destroy the atmosphere.
It won't ignite the atmosphere, like some scientists thought back in the '40s and '50s, but the atmosphere's elemental composition could be permanently altered. We're talking Oxygen Dioxide turns into Monoxide. Holes open in the sky, causing UV radiation from the sun to dramatically accelerate global warming. This could be set off by a small, 100 nukes each exchange between India and Pakistan. It would be guaranteed in an exchange between the US and China.
Every country on the planet would retaliate against the US to try and keep it contained to North America. A lot of them know that, which is why it wouldn't surprise me to see more alliances spring up in opposition to NATO while NATO itself starts to disband.
Every country on the planet would retaliate against the US to try and keep it contained to North America. A lot of them know that, which is why it wouldn't surprise me to see more alliances spring up in opposition to NATO while NATO itself starts to disband.
Sorry for sounding like a doomer, but every single time I expect countries to do the right thing - and every single time rational minds say the rational thing - the world seems to do the opposite. Is there any actual evidence that other counties would challenge US hegemony in any scenario?
We're already en route to destroying our planet and people aren't doing jack about that. I've gotten to the point where I'm pessimistic that if the US decides it wants the world to burn in a nuclear holocaust, other countries won't just let it happen. The way things are going, many might nod along and say it's a great idea.
Of course, if it went that far, I just meant even if they only focused on their region you could expect casualties in the billions. It wouldn't be something they could just ignore.
China already has a mutual defense treaty with North Korea
Russia signed a mutual defense pact with North Korea in 2024, so perhaps Russia could be brought in already with a WWI style web of alliances.
Going with the doomer thing I wonder if the US will create some top secret fairly effective missile shield capable of intercepting 400 warheads or so. Given US militarization of space I'm going to say that actually all those Starlink satellites have a secret payload of a brilliant pebbles type interceptor or the ability to turn the satellite itself into one somehow because it just makes no sense to spend all that money on satellite internet just for the potential of military and CIA in field use when previous attempts in the 90s (when brilliant pebbles was rejected initially) by Bill Gates and other ghouls failed so badly. I mean I get it's more economical now so I am being a little silly here with this and that the US is more desperate than ever to create internet/comms not subject to local regulations and censorship for manipulation and propaganda operations. But uh it would be a little odd for the US to not have some militarized payloads on those Starlink systems. Even say nuclear weapons that can provide a revenge system, they all start falling out of the sky towards China under power if they don't get a certain signal every 15 days or something. Heck they don't even have to be functioning nukes, they could be dirty bombs with conventional explosives set to explode a mile up above China to shower it in radiation. Mad villain shit.
I am so positive they see nuking China as a necessity and as part of that have multiple things in the works to neutralize their retaliatory capabilities. Among other things we've seen they've been tricking hobbyists into installing free radio equipment they offer through vague internet cut-outs which can not only gather signals but also jam and block in the event of war. All the US would need would be the ability to jam the airwaves completely for 30 minutes in order to get the drop on China and nuke them without them being able to order their forces to retaliate in time. China's advantage and disadvantage has always been using mobile launchers and moving their missiles around. If they can jam the air and also using hacking via previously compromised (possibly hardware backdoors) to shut down wired communication networks then China is in trouble. Even blocking half their forces from getting the retaliate order for 15 minutes would be enough for the US to win. The empire I seriously worry is just suicidally homicidal and desperate to cling onto power, white supremacist rage blinds it to even the possibility of compromise so even a chance their plans might work might be enough to get them to launch the nukes.
I mean fuck I wouldn't put it past the US putting in the effort to have smuggled in suitcase (or full size) nukes into China which are remote controlled via radio signals which they threaten to set off and kill tens/hundreds of millions of Chinese and call that a "nuclear deterrent". They're just so much more vile than even that.
Bloomer take is though the US may be able to win a war against China as part of blockading and encircling them and shield its mainland from retaliation that China by 2030 or so will have nearly 1000 warheads and mount many of them on hypersonic delivery mechanisms.
Other thoughts on "classified nuclear deterrent" are maybe they're doing the doomsday machine deadhand thing, either a system (please be Elon AI so it doesn't work) on the ground or something like Russia has lately been proposing which is nuclear powered nuclear tipped cruise missiles which can fly for years. You send them up where they can't be intercepted easily, have them fly around, program them to strike their targets on a signal or on sustained cessation of a signal to them.
I mean this is an empire that's used biological weapons. That the Russians credibly accuse of doing illegal biowarfare work in Ukraine. That sprayed agent orange. I guess our hope is that the US military contractors sucker the US and don't deliver on time and keep delaying and delaying and the US just kind of collapses.
China almost certainly has a dead hand system to avoid that. And second strike capability of course.
I think it's plausible the US would use it's regional proxies to full effect and support Islamists overthrowing Pakistan and directing them to launch their nukes at China.
Also a huge worry of mine. That or them getting some deranged person in India to seize some nukes and use them on China. Those two nations are the ones most likely other than the US IMO to use nuclear weapons.
Posted a link to the full PDF inside this post, of anyone's interested.
Biggest thing I noticed as a missile nerd is the shift away from hypersonic weapons and towards ballistic missiles, so the US wants ballistic missiles now. It's not necessarily about an asymmetric capability, but because in quite a few scenarios, modern day Maneuverable Re-entry Vehicle equipped ballistic missiles can outperform hypersonic glide vehicles. It's explained more in the post I linked above.
Giving up on competing with Russian hypersonic cruise missiles?
I wouldn't say so. I'd say it's more giving up on hypersonic glide vehicles like the AGM-183 ARRW, and giving up on barely hypersonic/high supersonic cruise missiles like HALO. I'd actually expect an increased push for hypersonic cruise missiles that can hit velocities well above Mach 5 from the USA, on projects like the Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile (HACM), which is a Mach 8 cruise missile set to be the NATO/western analogue to the Russian Zircon, and I'd expect this is where hypersonic weapons development will be put towards in future.
The reason HALO was cancelled was because it was barely hypersonic, if hypersonic at all, with even the manufacturer saying that it was only high supersonic (Mach 4.5) . This does not represent a big enough capability increase over the air launched SM-6 missile, which hits speeds of Mach 3.5+ and has a range of over 500km against ground targets. It does not justify an entire new weapons program and the money spent on it.
ARRW was cancelled as it's a air launched hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV), with a lot of the limitations HGVs have. Sure it offers advantages over an air launched or ground launched MaRV equipped ballistic missiles, but are they worth it, when those advantages have tradeoffs themselves?
China for instance uses air launched MaRV equipped ballistic missiles (and shorter range unibody missiles) and not air launched HGVs for a potential anti ship role. China's ground launched DF-ZF HGV can glide for 1400km for 11 minutes at an altitude of 60km, for an average velocity of around 6.15 Mach. A medium range ballistic missile would cover that distance in half the time or less, important for trying to hit time sensitive moving targets such as ships. The increased maneuverability of an HGV at lower altitudes comes at a huge cost to energy due to aerodynamic drag, which would make the HGV even slower, potentially dropping below hypersonic speeds.
I have a soft spot for those little kinetic AT missiles downstream of LOSAT 
The Golden Dome is a pipe dream
It will never be functional
Just like Reagan's Star Wars space laser satellites
$25 billion can buy 50 new Patriot batteries (200 Launchers with Radars, command centers, etc) which would be a substantial defense for coastal infrastructure and facilities like Intel's Arizona campus.
those are destroyed all the time in Ukraine by Russia's hypersonic missiles
I believe they've destroyed around 6 of around 40 launchers, and a couple radars. regardless, the Russia air force is still staying close to the border and lobbing glide bombs before immediately deploying countermeasures and afterburning back to friendly airspace.
The U.S is not gonna make it to 2030.
we're way behind schedule for WW3 here..
If it's any consolation, I don't think the US is going to be around in 2030
Be the change you want to see in the world
Gordon Chang, but he's a white guy named Gao Chandler, and he predicts America will collapse every year.
I found a YouTube link in your post. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy: