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We’ve seen multiple breaches into critical defense IT systems over the years. In a way, the out-dated computer infrastructure provides security through obscurity and obsolescence. I shudder at the idea of a digital nuclear launch system connected to any kind of modern network infrastructure, isolated or not.
To state the obvious, the most valuable function of the ICMB silo complex isn't it's 'sponge' effect or missile strike options ... it's that it is a global message board. If there is a nuclear detonation somewhere in the world, everyone can quickly look at those silos to see if the US (or any state with them) is going all-in on an attack or not. For the rest of the triad, the submarines have to remain hidden, and the airbase threat (or mobile launcher fleet) is a bit of a global shell game. So as an strong indicator of actual intent, they serve a more important function than deterrence, even.
@@Taskandpurpose : thanks, look up Stanislav Petrov’s story - when the Soviet dashboard lit up in 1983 of a U.S. nuclear attack underway, he reasoned it was a false alarm because the launch size was so small. Thankfully for everyone, it was a false alarm.
Any missile launched from any silo, plain or sub will be imediatly detected and a response will came hypersonicaly. That´s why one warns the other every time one is going to test any missile.
The floppy discs are there as a part of a system that cant be taken over. They will be there until quantum computers exist. They aren't there because they are old and need replacing. They are there because they serve a purpose and can't be hacked....
@@goclimbsomething bros expecting sympathy when literally everyone knows what crack does to you and yet people choose to risk it. Play stupid games, get stupid prizes, and youre entertainment for literally everyone else that knows better. Theres some cases where people are unexpectedly exposed to crack, like a laced joint, but those cases pale in comparison to willful crackheads.
Those of us who worked in manufacturing watched in astonishment as accountants and greedy owners shipped equipment and expertise to China. We predicted the weakness in our defense and the coming conflict with the PRC. We will reap a bitter harvest from the transfer of wealth from the engineers, craftsmen and middle class technicians that Wall Street influenced economists have cheered as "efficiency" for the last 40 years.
Yeah, I couldn't believe what was going on, as far back as 1988(ish)... I was living next to a large "empty" building that got filled up with all manner of machinery, over the period of a year, then, all the machines were loaded onto trains to Mexico and to the West Coast PORTS... That was in Cleveland, Ohio.
As long as u keep your democracy far away from the borders of other big nations, you have no reason to fear nothing. But we all know murica defends its borders everywhere on this planet.
@vladavuckic5262 keep making excuses for your bullshit post communist authoritarian dictatorships. Russia and China are the center of nearly ever major problems in international politics. Belligerent children playing with daddys gun
@@vladavuckic5262 The hell are you smoking bro? A nuke from russia can reach the US in 30 minutes. And china is negotiating with Cuba to station PLA soldiers there. Cuba is right of the coast of florida. You have one country that can nuke washington in 30 minutes or less. And another country that's putting their soldiers right next to florida. If the US was a pacifist country, China would still want bases in the Carribean. If the US was a pacifist country, Russia would still keep their nukes. We aren't stupid.
I find this incorrect. As long as there are aggressive parties, us included, then nukes will be used as a precautionary tool. Had the US not encroached into the neutral area after 1997 as promised in 92 to Gorbachev, we wouldn't have the Ukraine situation. Instead corruption prevails as does misinformation... Educate yourself.
It has to be done. Bottom line is that fuel degrades, and can only be replaced so many times in the missile. The ICBMs we have cannot be refueled again. They have to be replaced, or we won't have any.
Agree. The procurement process sucks as usual but they are a critical part of the so called 'nuclear triad' with air and sea launch systems being the other 2/3rds. I don't see how we could just abandon such a big part of our nuclear deterrent strategy. Also, these are a long term investment with these hopefully lasting another 40-50+ years like the minutemen missiles with periodic refurbishment as needed.
Why? The UK has 100% of its arsenal on missile subs. France uses missile subs and bombers but no ground missiles. The whole point of this video is whether or not to continue with a 75 year old strategy.
Freindly reminder to active DoD personnel from a dude from a miltary family: I'm sure your privy to all kinds of neat, classified equipment specs... keep em off War Thunder. Foreign military personnel, feel free to share with US! Jk.
lol bro sometimes the bait on the forums is too easy. that chinese kid raging at how trash the chinese tank was performing in game and then posting actual documents revealing the capabilities that even the US wasnt so sure about always cracks me up
The MX Missile system carried 12 Warheads, 6 dummy rounds, and 6 real warheads, it was to be based on Trains, stored in tunnels in mountains, and could be moved around. This seems better.
It doesn't matter at all if we have it since Russia has a nuclear submarine 5 miles off the coast of New Jersey. Try to stop that! Countries keep acting like children fighting with other children cheering them on. The arms race is insane and there are no winners. The USA is just as safe with no missiles as they are with missiles, MAD is the one that wins.
Someone I know helps manufacture PCB's for icbm's and shorter range missiles. That 81 billion $ over budget is true but nobody is really talking about how that budget is hyper inflated because of how bidding for military contracts work and how execs at these companies are personally responsible for delays in production and design and take a disproportionate chunk of the money to the military's and engineering detriment. I would really love a video exploring this subject in further detail.
so the program is cost plus . well that guarantees the cost will balloon 300% or more. the builders throw out numbers in the bidding process knowing full well they will get way more .
Dont get cappy caped by investigating widespread corruption at the DOD. Its no coincidence that retired generals and politicians end up on these companies board. The military needs to go back to producing their own weapons instead of all this over priced private industry hardware.
Pretty sure someone already painted that with a Dominos style logo on a Minuteman Launch Control Facility, or maybe it was Peacekeeper. . You could probably Google it and find it.
Those floppy disks weren't just old relics of past tech. They're purposely used in a lot of cases for security. Those big old floppies and tape drives are insanely outdated, but that means hardly anyone even has access to the tech needed to use them anymore. It's done in business and military applications. Think of it like writing a classified report in a dead language like Gaulish. Source: not military but I've worked in IT in a defense contractor context.
Right. That's also why core components of these systems are still hardwired together and weren't upgraded to wireless. It's much harder to unobtrusively hack a tamper-proof hardline than a wireless or net-based connection. Plus, many older electronic components are either EMP-proof or more resistant to EMP (electromagnetic pulse) than modern electronics. For many reasons, the simpler a system is, the more reliable it is. A system with a lot of bleeding edge components and bells and whistles adds complexities and possible points of failure. I hope the people in charge of the program are able to prevent the various defense contractors from piling on needless features to boost their profits.
@@waynelitchkowski2389 not just that, these systems are usually air gapped. Which means there is no approach to hack them remotely. Attacks on air gapped systems usually involve targeting personnel and getting them to upload your virus or other software payload for you, either knowingly or unknowingly.
@@BretekV Airgapped facilities have been comped quite simply and effectively. Humans are definitely one of the biggest security flaws in all of these systems. Forget USB sticks in parking lots for a second. There's other ways to comp an airgapped system. Something as wild as using the SATA cables inside of an airgapped computer as makeshift antennas to exfil data off of that bad boy. Sure you have to get a program onto the airgapped computer to run the hilariously named SATAn program, but there's tons of ways to do that.
How can we honestly say that those floppy discs are outdated when we have actual satellites on the edge of the heliosphere still sending date back to earth while operating on similar technology? lol there’s a reason they still work
some of us are still alive but none of us know the whole thing. I helped make what Ive always assumed to be less then 10% of the parts for that particular system. it's split out among contractors for security reasons. I HAVE done weapons systems tooling audit for the DoD. Everyone who made a Then-Currently-used system WAS dead except one guy and he was management and useless to figuring out how it was made.
My dad's best friend was in his final stage of training as AF fighter pilot during Vietnam. Then he contracted Encephalitis, aka "the sleeping sickness," from a fly. Basically it attacks the brain and spine, so he could no longer be a pilot. Needless to say he was devastated. Thus, in '71, the AF transferred him to the silos in South Dakota; he had to spend 12 hour days underground, it was pretty rough on him.
10:22 - "Proponents of the weapon argue that it's literally the top defense priority, and that cost doesn't matter; it's not a factor." Military Industrial Complex: _Rubs hands together excitedly._
“A wise king never seeks out war, but he must always be ready for it.” There's no cure for regret. The problem isn't the necessity of the upgrade, it's the profit motive. Honestly, national military and healthcare (with possibly education as third) are sectors where profit motive needs to be controlled, because if they fail, we all suffer.
@@wowswc If by that you mean controlled by the government that _would_ mean we all suffer, because nationalizing industries always leads to economic failure and societal breakdown. Those costs can be controlled by competition in a free market with the right policies in place, and that would ensure our freedoms much better than government price controls.
As a Canadian, I can say, keep it up America. Trust me when I say that Canadians feel much more at ease knowing you’re our neighbour. We are able to have that laid back Canadian mentality because you are who you are.
I live in the US and and am pro America, im not one of those an anti American leftists and the following is purely a devil's advocate argument. I agree with what you said but.......... an argument could be made that having the US as a neighbor is just as much a detriment as it is a benefit in this regard considering we'll be the ones being shot at if any nuclear exchange ever happens. Would be like having Al Capone living next door to you in the 1920s, you might be good with him and have his protection but your house might accidentally get hosed down with a Tommy gun if he gets in feud with the mob boss on the other side of town.
"Those 8" floppy disks are actually incredibly reliable." But they're not immortal. An 8 inch disk spinning 24/7 will last 10-15 years. The drive itself maybe 20. And they're no longer made nor are the parts. But you're right. Expiring rocket fuel is more of an issue than the floppy drives.
Exactly. They are the strength of the system. Simplicity and hardened resilience to attack. The ultimate firewall is to not be compatible with current technology in any way.
As a German who grew up in the American Section of Post-WW2 Western Germany (Bavaria and Hesse) i just feel like sharing that growing up with American Bases and seeing Hundreds of Soldiers on your Schoolbus to School and then also when visiting Family in Hesse, like near Hanau, Hesse there was the "Wolfgang US Base" in which we always watched US Pioneers stationed there doing training on the "Main River" in "Großauheim" It both had a positive Effect because we German Kids with our German WW2 Grandfather Veterans who always talked about the Danger of Soviet Russia attacking us, the US Soldiers everywhere made us feel much safer as Kids, which was great. On the other Hand there was also a Portion of the Public who because of WW2 was so extremely anti-war since the 1968er Movement, they were and tried to convince People and us Kids that the US Military being stationed here is the Reason why we were supposedly in Danger. As a Kid that of course confuses you and you can't tell who is right. Of course once you grow up, like me, when i joined the Bundeswehr (Gebirgsjägerbrigade 23 - 231st Bataillon with 2 Tours in Afghanistan and 1 in Kosovo via KFOR) you kinda realise that it was and still is a good Thing that the US Military has such a Presence here in Germany. In fact, when i visited Relatives in Hesse near the pretty much 100% American Town of "Wolfgang" we always went there out of Curiosity, trying out American Food Places. They had this Black Vietnam Veteran there who we called "Black Joe" (as he called his Fried Chicken Place that way) who decided to stay with his Wife in Wolfgang, Germany. The best Fried Chicken i ever ate. Sadly he passed away a few Years after the US Military moved out of the Wolfgang Barracks so now whenever i visit Relatives there, we are stuck with KFC. Anyway, just wanted to share! I bet a lot of Americans watching this Channel were stationed in Germany at one Time or another, especially during the Cold War and shortly after in the 1990s. Just know us German School Kids were always super excited to watch you Guys do Mannoveurs and Excercises! And my WW2 Veteran Grandfathers and Granduncles in fact became Friends with US WW2 Soldiers stationed in Germany after the War and invited them always over for BBQ in our Backyard! That's in fact how i started to learn a lot of English very early on, which wasn't normal for a German like me born in the 1980s. Point being: Very happy we still have US Forces stationed here in Germany and excercising with us and knowing they will risk their Life if we are attacked. Prost & Cheers from Berchtesgaden in the Bavarian Alps
Hey chartreux1532! I was in the US Army and stationed in Frankfurt and later West Berlin from 1986 to 1989. I loved it so much and it was probably the greatest period of my life as being a young American man in Western Europe during the 80's was an incredibly special time. I loved the West German people and food and I traveled extensively. I even spent a few days at the US Army recreation area in Berchtesgaden. Beautiful place! Sadly, the Kassernes, Drake/Edwards in Frankfurt and McNair in West Berlin, where I was stationed, are long gone, as well as that recreation area. It's good to hear we made an impression on some of the German people, I know they did on me, and I will carry that with me for the rest of my life. Prost!
@@LeadPaint1 So happy to hear you sharing that! I can tell you that besides my Father and Grandfathers having been in the Military, having met US Soldiers stationed here and especially having seen the Pioneers of the Wolfgang Base near Hanau on the Main River made me very excited to join the Military once i turned 18, and i'm happy i ended up doing that! I'm happy we are Allies and Friends now!
Comments like yours, that make us remember and learn that geopolitics is complex and how it's affect everyday common life, is that worth reading. Thanks!
I was USAF SF stationed at Malmstrom working in the missile field from 2007-2010. When I first learned that the world destroying weapons I was guarding were still being run on 8.5 inch floppy disks, I was in shock.... lol. Being that close to hundreds of weapons that each one could destroy the entire state has an interesting, eerie aura about it. 💯
1st: thanks for your service 2nd: I'm not sure I could go down in one of those bunkers, they look claustrophobic af. Do they just look like they're pretty small or are they small? Does it feel roomy once u got down there?? After awhile does it just become like any office job??
That is incredible. Thank you for what you did for all of us. I am sure you have concerns beyond the scope of this RUclips video. It was alarming to me to know the state of the control systems as well and I am just a civvie.
@@nolongerblocked6210 "Thanks for his service"? He was a freaking file clerk. I was in the Chair Force too, and all we did was fill out paperwork, cash our paychecks and get drunk on the weekends.
@@penultimateh766 You make it abundantly clear that you have absolutely zero clue, zero, what it's like for security forces working a missile field at a northern tier base.
You make it sound like all these silos and their contents are 50 to 70 years old. The hole might be that old, but the contents are not. Not by a long shot.
The clustering of silos and their spacing was a calculated decision. The silos are far enough apart so a near miss of one silo does not damage another silo. However, they are close enough together that the blast from a ground detonation can destroy, damage, or knock off course incoming warheads still in the air. The air leg is the most vulnerable to surprise first strike. The bombers, even in hardened hangers, are much more vulnerable than ICBMs in a haden silo. The silo-based leg has a huge advantage over the other two legs. It has the lowest maintenance and manpower cost of the two by a significant margin.
_"the blast from a ground detonation can destroy, damage, or knock off course incoming warheads still in the air."_ I don't think it works like that. Point 1: Sprint short-range anti-ballistic missile: "The Sprint was armed with an enhanced radiation nuclear warhead with a yield reportedly of a few kilotons, though the exact number has not been declassified. *The warhead was intended to destroy the incoming reentry vehicle primarily by neutron flux.* " Implying that simply flying through the remnants of a nuclear detonation, even a second or two after the detonation happened, would not destroy a warhead. Consider instances like the 1961 Goldsboro B-52 crash, where the bombs that hit the ground remained intact enough to examine their safety mechanisms: a nuclear mushroom cloud may look scary, but it's a lot less dense than the ground, and a warhead that passes through a mile-wide cloud at 5 miles per second (8 km/s) won't absorb too much energy. Point 2: Certain sites in the USSR were targeted by missiles based on a simple calculation: if the probability of destroying a hardened bunker, 50 meters or so underground, was 5% with a single warhead, then the US allocated 20 warheads for the site. They wouldn't have done this if the first detonation would have destroyed subsequent warheads as they approached the target. Oh, and Point 3: Project Orion, the design for a nuclear pulse spacecraft, where bombs explode beneath a pusher plate: "The optimal Orion drive bomblet yield (for the human crewed 4,000 ton reference design) was calculated to be in the region of 0.15 kt, with approx 800 bombs needed to orbit and a bomb rate of approx 1 per second." (Using nuclear explosions for propulsion was also featured in Netflix's Three Body Problem.)
The mid-west is not the great plains. Mid west is over a full set of states over. The "Breadbasket of America" with the actual grain for eating is even further than that by another state or two. If you are think of the grain production in Nebraska and Arkansas as food production for human consumption, you are dead wrong. They grow feed corn and feed soybeans for cows, pigs, and chickens there. The tonnage and calorie numbers are huge, but people don't eat that grain. Animals do. It's why meat is so cheap and abundant in the USA and we export so much of it. SO, you would not be nuking states that have high production to begin with, the fallout wouldn't be traveling to states that are producing calories needed for food production for the USA citizens to eat, and the actual food grain acreage is still a couple hundred miles out of the fallout zone. There is also the winter wheat produced in Washington State in the irrigated area. The tonnage of human consumed grain there is actually nearly as high as the "breadbasket" region and sometimes exceeds it since it is an irrigated area instead of dry-land farming. It just don't have as many acreage. It also isn't consumed in the US and typically sold off to Asian and African countries since it is so close to the Seattle port because the whole area has rail road spurs. The "breadbasket" region is set up to ship to the high population areas to feed them, so it is seen as the source of all the food in the US when we, in fact, have a massive surplus of it and could easily switch crops in the event of a disaster.
@@aaronbest747 Unfortunately, all of that incredible energy those rods have on impact, needs to be invested on the front end via fuel lifting them up into orbit in the first place. Still a very very expensive prospect, even when the rocket boosters are being reused. Maybe one day, but I don't think we're there yet. Honestly, something that would probably make them a hell of a lot more practical is space mining. If we could build them out of materials that are already up in space (instead of lifting them up there from Earth), things could get a lot more interesting.
Are we 100% sure there’s no such weapon platform hiding overhead right now? The DOD is pretty damn good at obfuscation and we’ve had a LOT of various payloads quietly delivered into orbit over the past decade or so.
Didn't you watch the video? The problem is that the floppy disks are on their last legs. They will be non operable soon, and no one is left who can make new ones
They will never not be connected to the Internet. And that's a good thing. It allows control from virtually anywhere. That's not the same thing as the World Wide Web, you know.
I got news for you bud. I worked on the Minuteman III as an MMTr from late 90s to the mid 2000s. A lot of the information that is public is misinformation for a reason.
The old launch components were EMP resistant. Modern solid state components are less resistant. Minuteman was originally protected to 50,000 V/meter,(if that) EMP pulses can exceed 100,000 V/meter
Just one question: If the enemy knows it can't hit ALL silos, isn't there a point when he decides to just make as much damage to the population as he possibly can and not aiming at the silos AT ALL? I mean- if I knew something just is impossible I usually aim for the next best thing.🤷
@@josiahwyncott7519 That's exactly what I meant. Thanks! At some point people like p**in and Winnie Pooh will go down with flying banners if they don't see another way. That's the problem with extremists, dictators and heads of personal cults, right? They don't think about their civilians anyway. If they don't see a future for THEMSELFES staying alive- everyone will be doomed.
They would probably send them in staggered in small amounts just to cause delay of a big counterattack and make it so it's impossible to just wait out any attack completely. Then they can keep this up til bombers arrive and they can circle and neutralize any launch. Of course we would be doing things in the meantime so it is unclear how this would all play out in the end but that is the obvious thing to do if they were serious about an all out war.
@@LTPottenger It's actually pretty clear how it would play out. Country A launches a small strike first (say, 10 nukes) at the US. US immediately launches a full retaliatory strike, completely wiping Country A off the map, while sustaining a few tens of millions of casualties. Launching a small first-strike (or even staggering them as smaller "flights") makes ZERO sense from any kind of logical or strategic standpoint. The whole concept of MAD is based around a total, irreversible 2nd strike against an aggressor country, no matter how many nukes they sent in the first-strike.
@@MrMontanaNights No, that's totally wrong. It takes time to respond and even detect and if they launch all at once then the missiles aimed at the bunkers could neutralize the whole launch and they can do that even after they launch. With the new mach 20 missiles they won't have much detection time at all especially since they also fligh low altitude. They would never launch a full scale assault on the bunkers that's just stupid. They will do something like what I said, or they will possibly ignore them completely. The attack would hit all the air bases and ports as the first strike for certain, and those are easy to take out quickly with no chance to get the planes off if they are not up already. Then they will hit all over bases and military factories, then the power stations and rail. While USA targets mainly cities this is stupid and pointless, and russia or china won't do this. The cities will just be prisons once the food and electric are gone. If a war like this happens USA is toast and there is questionable chance to even be able to respond.
Those were not the modern 5.25 inch floppy discs either, those were the slightly less modern 8 inchers, and there are rumours of a brand new 3.5 inch disc that may be coming out soon with a massive 32 kilobytes memory that will help us defeat the Soviet Unions attack from East Germany striking towards the Fulda Gap with all the forces of the Warsaw Pact.
Bit worrisome considering I can get a flash drive that holds 10's of gigabytes now. But in hindsight. Who carries those old floppy discs and equipment to use them nowadays. Only has to hold a small amount of encoded information. Very hard to duplicate now. Not like the systems have new usb ports for flash drives or access to internet for updates.
As funny as this is, those floppies are probably there for a very good reason: they were, and still are, incredibly reliable data storage devices that are _incredibly_ difficult to read OR write to in the modern age. It’s not just a case of “oh, you need a really old device just to read this,” it’s a case of “these devices are all but _extinct_ and nobody can make them anymore.” It’s quite literally lost tech that renders these silos extremely resistant to digital theft, sabotage, or hijacking.
My dad was a submariner on an ohio class submarine. The nuclear deterrence system is very intriguing to me especially considering my dad can't really talk about much besides what he was taught to say.
I grew up in ND and Id go to Minot AFB a lot and I remember thinking "imagine going to college, going through Air Force OCS, and getting sent to fucking Minot, North Dakota"
@@patrickkenyon2326 damn. From one service member to another, thank you for what you were doing there. I hope you found some way to entertain yourself.
@@patrickkenyon2326 Cheyenne, WY got alot of Air force recruits from TX and CA and they bitch alot about the weather and drive like shit too, your lucky at least ND peeps can drive. WY people drive good but those fuckin impants damn they think they need to go 60 on 35mph roads in town rushing like its Dallas lol
got shipped there in 1987 spent 3 years in various LCC's North and West of Minot in the 742nd SMS all the way to Bowbells near the Canadian border --fun times, charity blackjack, pull tabs in town and the strippers would rotate through Fargo Bismark Grand Forks and Finally Minot from their home clubs in Minneapolis. Tail end of the Cold War..
Worked on numerous nuclear delivery systems in my 40 years with Boeing - SRAM II, Hard Mobile Launcher, Small ICBM, MX, Minuteman upgrades, etc. Never hear anyone ever use the term “Sponge” to explain land based ICBMs….? Our goal was to get them out of the launch silos ASAP before we lose them.
Reducing or removing the land-based missile program would be similar to reducing or removing one of the military branches. Having one lag behind or degrade in capabilities means you no longer have as much flexibility to ensure any potential enemies are deterred from starting a fight. Imagine if we said the navy or airforce were obsolete and no longer relevant in the modern battlefield due to sonar, radar, missiles, and self guiding torpedoes. This is similar to what's being said about ground launched ICBMs. Ground launched missiles are the cheapest in the long term, and far more self sufficient since they don't need to be carried with a ship, aircraft, or submarine. Even if every other system failed, you could guarantee that the missiles would be operational and ready to fire at any time. The cost is absolutely necessary, and in my opinion it's absurd that we allowed the ICBM program to fall behind to such a degree that we're having to relearn how to make them. At least small scale production and research/development should've continued during the past 80 years, and the fools who failed to have a program for that deserve to be rebuked and used as an example of what we should never do again - Especially considering the advancements and rapid development speed of China in ICBM tech.
Just a note, when people speak of the "fireball" from a nuclear explosion, they're actually taking about the thermal pulse. The actual fireball of a nuclear explosion is much, much smaller than what people mistaking reference as the thermal pulse. The true fireball of a nuclear explosion is measured in yards or meters with the actual fireball being about a 100 yards (similar size in meters) for typical larger tactical nukes (the couple hundred kT range), yet the thermal pulse will a mile or two.
The stuff nightmares are made of. I really think many younger people have lost some amount of fear of an actual nuclear exchange. They should watch the BBC movie "Threads" and remember it'll actually be way worse than that.
I’d say it’s 50/50. Half of the younger generation doesn’t care at all and thinks it’s history. The other half is preparing for the end of the world as we speak, as global tensions heighten and China becomes a massive threat along with the us government becoming everyone (“female dog”)
Gen-X who grew up in Tucson and Wichita (Titan IIs), 18 of which surrounded each of these towns. Love hearing I was in the sponge zone. But, yeah, growing up in the shadow of nuclear apocalypse was an issue.
We’ve just gotten used to it. In some cases, a lot of us would prefer to go out in a blaze of nuclear fire as opposed to the apparent future that awaits us right now.
The point of making sure America’s nuclear triad stays just as strong is so that you don’t ever have to use them. Russia has to know it can’t get away with using a nuclear weapon under any circumstances.
I grew up around these missiles. Good luck finding them. You'd have to glass all of the Dakotas, Nebraska and Wyoming and Montana and Colorado. That's a shit load of land if you aren't familiar.
@@rsinclair689 Theres quite a few dummy sites as well, I live within an hour of the WY and NE sites and I drive by em all the time. Most are active but some are dummy sites.
@@rsinclair689 unless the theoretical enemy knows that, it doesn't matter that there's inactive silos. Actually, building fake silos as well, like China is doing sounds like a good strategy.
I have a BS degree in computer science and have worked in the industry for 15 years. Your computer analogy was a perfect analogy. That is a great way to understand relearning how to rebuild new rockets. There is a huge leap in understanding between theories and production procedures and processes. WELL, SAID CHRIS!!
As far as network security is concerned, the answer is don't put them on a network. It may seem primitive, but they should be stand alone like a mainframe. The Hover Dam was hacked- Why was it on a network it worked fine without a network when built in the 1930?
US became the world's ruler after the collapse of the soviet union, so every war has ties to the US. Today, it is the biggest and most powerful terrorist nation.
Lower fallout alternative missile sink 1/3: Densepak + local missile defense in the mountains: cluster hardened silos in one area with deep cheap missile defense. To destroy all the silos reliably the other side has to launch many weapons at once along a similar trajectory. Basic idea is that the proximity of silos would force many weapons to arrive in the same area at the same time with perfect timing thus you can make it easier to put mass in the sky in the way of incoming warheads or potentially take out many incoming warheads with one nuclear tipped interceptor. Fewer nukes go off on the ground spreading fallout, and in fewer areas.
What forces them to launch them all at once? Besides, if you have the time to launch a nuclear missile defense weapon you'll have launched your ICBMs already.
Theres still gonna be a massive amount of fallout cause theyre not only targeting the landbased systems. Theyre also hitting infrastructure that supports the other aspects of the triad. Air fields that can support the bombers, sub pens and etc. When it pops off its not gonna be about minimizing damage its gonna be, "how many of ya'll can I take with me." MAD
@@petergerdes1094 the whole point of hardening is to force the other side to use multiple warheads per one of your warheads even if you don't launch on warning. Same logic applies here. It is much easier to decide to launch missile defense than to launch a nuclear attack.
@@petergerdes1094 if they don't synchronize attack them the debris may take out their other incoming warheads, and strong confirmation of nuclear attack would invite retaliation with surviving missiles.
We do have better manufacturing technology nowadays compared to the 70s but... That's kinda the problem. We're too advanced and accurate. Back then, we weren't as stringent with hygiene and suiting up before handling equipment, we weren't as exact when creating parts, we weren't dealing with the digital age when programming these machines. Policies change, people change, technology changes, manufacturing changes, the human factor changes; a replacement is needed. The current arsenal is too old.
Or we think we are too advanced and accurate, but really actually just ignorant and dumb as all the actual knowledge expired with the people that actually knew how to do it.
Cappy, you kinda missed an obvious point and that is if you removed the ICBM force entirely, that's hundreds of enemy warheads that are now free to be targeted elsewhere, such as industrial targets in cities and further saturation of areas already targeted. Also, I have not seen any convincing info as to just how accurate current and next gen Russian/Chinese warheads are. In the past it was determined that to destroy one US silo, the Soviets/Russians would need at least 2 warheads to kill it. So, in terms of Russia, that's potentially 900 warheads out of their 1600 or so deployed strategic warheads. (Obviously, they're not going to totally use that many but you get my gist.) We diffidently need to keep the sponge by all means.
thought I touched on that when I said "by making the locations of these silos known, the U.S. ensures that any adversary would need to allocate a significant portion of their nuclear arsenal to targeting these sites. This, in turn, diverts attention away from American cities, military bases, and critical infrastructure. "
This video seems like this guys opinion, everyone is entitled to them but I don't think this video adds or does anything helpful. Just plays like his opinion on why we should get rid of nukes because wars bad mkay.
Reminds me of the iconic painting some missileers put on their blast door with the Domino’s Pizza logo and the words “Worldwide delivery in 30 minutes or less; or your next one is free”
It won't be ICBMs, it'll be the several tons of cheese stored in the caves. Post-apocalyptic life will revolve around maintaining control over the cheese supplies and the chips industry.
If they didn't have value the Chinese wouldn't be building their own. The idea of worrying about the radiation effects where only the radiation of the areas encompassing the silos is silly since it is almost assured that other areas would have been eradiated as well and all out nuclear war would mean an end to human civilization, perhaps for good. It's a shame once again a great nation and people, the Chinese, have autocratic leaders that choose confrontation and expansion over an agreed upon international order that allowed their rise.
China doesn't only operate ICBMs, they operate a very wide range of closer range ballistic missiles to sink ships. LThe reason they build them that deep is to avoid us navy weapons and this is even pointed out in the video. If you have submarines to launch ICBMs then there is very little use for stationary silos. They are kept as missile sponges, they were not designed as missile sponges, they are obsolete but they are better than nothing. Money shouldn't be spent on obsolete strategies.
Irradiation doesn't have long term effects. Ground level detonations would only be used against missile silos. Air detonations at high altitude, which do not produce fallout, would be used against other (soft) targets.
My info is over 20 years old, so grain of salt, but when my high school class took a field trip to Cheyenne, WY. The tour guide mentioned that Vandenberg was a site that housed 'Peace Keepers" which fit in the same size silo as the Minutemen but had to be shoved out of the tube before ignition because they were much bigger. Just based on the size of silo, you may be exactly correct.
If we are going to talk about modern weapons being better, than the Chinese nuclear weapons are better than the US nuclear weapons, since the former started building them much later.
@@dustinnyffeler8624 theres most definitely retaliatory silos that are in positions around both costs. mt rainier in Washington has two at its base with a NORAD bunker. i only know about it due to google maps screwing up at one point and instead of taking me to the freeway it took me to the literal gate. they are the MIRV missiles. the full sized ones at that. the coast lines usually will have silo based retaliatory larger missiles that arent allowed to even be turned on till a launch is confirmed as til that treaties remain intact.
15:15 this is a problem everywhere. I work in the semiconductor industry and it used to be that we as design and test engineers could just walk onto the manufacturing floor and see how things are going. Now design is all over the world, the factory is in Taiwan, assembly in China, all done by various subcontractors. Every piece of this is highly optimized but the overal system is very difficult to optimize because there are just too many geographies, subcontractors, piece parts.
Literally drove through the Minot field a few weeks ago for the first time. Thank you for explaining this. It was REALLY bothering me how advertised and close to the main highway these were....
Say, the one from MGS peace walker The Boss AI: ... Number of warheads detected by the DEW Line? Dr. Strangelove: Fifty-seven. The Boss AI: Number of MIRVs included? Dr. Strangelove: Minimum twenty-nine, maximum thirty-five. The Boss AI: Target region? Dr. Strangelove: United States. East Coast. The Boss AI: Estimated time of reentry? Dr. Strangelove: Two-oh-four-eight Zulu. The Boss AI: President's selected attack option? Dr. Strangelove: Unknown. The Boss AI: The President is dead? Dr. Strangelove: Unknown. Communication has been lost. The Boss AI: ... I select Offutt Air Force Base as my target. Dr. Strangelove: Offutt...? But that's a U.S. base! What on earth do you mean?! The Boss AI: Based on the projected number of incoming warheads, Washington D.C. is presumed destroyed. The President is most likely dead, the U.S. government's control lost. Dr. Strangelove: I realize that. So why not retaliate?! The Boss AI: With both sides destroyed, global anarchy would ensue. Recovery would be... difficult. The United States' nuclear strike capability must therefore be neutralized in order to preserve the Communist bloc, where government remains largely intact. Dr. Strangelove: You're siding with the enemy? You can't be serious! The Boss AI: Tell me, how do you define enemy? There are no borders in this world. Dr. Strangelove: The same conclusion, again and again... Where is the flaw?
FYI, the bigger mega-ton bombs, have orders less radiation fallout compared with earlier kiloton models. Why? Because in bigger bombs, nealy all of the radioactive material is being used as compared with earlier less efficient bombs.
The thing is that paradoxically, the more survivable you make a nuclear war, the more likely you make a nuclear war, arguably. This was the basis of the anti-ballistic missile pacts (I think), at least partly. Also it could become an almost infinite expense.
Arm 1/3rd of our silos with real missiles, the other 2/3rds with fakes. It will cost far less and have the same effect of deterrence. If necessary, make the fake missiles still launch like real missiles and only inform a couple people at each launch site that the missile isn't a real nuke, while the rest of the people stationed there think it's real. My point is surely we can achieve the same level of deterrence without arming all 450 silos. 450 is an absolutely insane number. How many do you really need for deterrence in 2024? (Personally i say get rid of them entirely, but I recognize how insane the defense industry is in this country and how that would simply never happen. This suggestion is already a compromise.)
Nuclear weapons give off radiation that can be sniffed such as by a sensor payload in a balloon floating over the fields. The Chinese silos are closer together- possibly- to interconnect subterraneanly to shuttle/swap live and dummy warheads. I just finished "Silo" on Apple TV; the large, steel door in the base of the silo is likely an interconnect to the others.
Montana, Colorado etc is not the Midwest. Why did we put these in valuable farm and ranch land we will need? We should have located them near large urban centers which would be targeted anyway.
Because no one will be left to work those farms, or eat anything they might have produced. Even if anything survived, the general grid collapse and infrastructure destruction means they're not turning the lights on anytime soon.
Literally, that's a weird one for someone to mess up on for sure lol. Like my boi knows what a lion is and how it's pronounced in English right... right?!
They should if we have the overwhelming odds of coming out of this ahead, which we absolutely do and will still do 30 years into the future, as China is 30 years behind the US in every way
There’s more than over 450 missile silos because there’s over 400 of them that have been converted into custom bunkers/homes it’s just there is only 450 that actually has missiles and is actually still United States property
@@antonszvezdovsthen why are we targeting silos and not cities? US first strike targets also include dams, cities, why would our enemy not do the same
@@Dumb-Comment It's about trying to take out all your enemies nukes so you can hit them without a fear of being hit back. Thus MAD: Mutual Assured Destruction. The idea that they will be able to hit you back no matter what. The USA uses the nuclear triad to assure this. Land based ICBMs, submarine based ICBMs and cruise missiles and air based long range stealth bombers like the B-2 and now B-21.
I am 80, born in London, UK during WWII, and came to US in 1949. During college in the 1960's I enrolled in US Air Force Officer training, and during Summer training I was offered to be a Missile Launch Officer, which I did not choose, and after Active duty left in 1974, and today I am a 100% Disabled American Veteran of the Vietnam Era. 😮
rah rah immigrants rah rah mah jobs rah rah communism. Thank you for serving your country, your love and appreciation for it is worth more than what our crappy government left your era of veterans....
The scariest part, is that the quality of the decision makers has deteriorated badly also. Representatives average age is about 58. Senators are around 7 years even older. Upgrading THEM, by voting for intelligent, informed individuals that put the country first, is as vital to our survival...
Hey, the American people let this happen by not paying attention and thus not voting out people doing it. Politicians are a force of nature, America at least had a means to tame it.
Here in Missouri surrounding Whiteman AFB there were many ICBM silos. Refer to movie: The Day After. When the ICBMs were removed and the B-2s moved in, all the property owners and farmers were allowed to harvest all the copper cables to all the silos. These cables were inches in diameter and represented an immense amount of copper 7-10 feet below the surface. Owners made thousands of dollars!!!
Thanks for watching Spare Parts Army! Play War Thunder now with my link, and get a massive, free bonus pack including vehicles, boosters and more: playwt.link/taskandpurpose24
And the sponge theory basically is... REMEMBER PLAY WAR THUNDER TODAY
🤭🤭🤭🤭🤫🤫 oo these are just the response ones....,, LGM-30 A/B..
@@EEerh-p3lsuper smooooth
☢️
GRE video
We’ve seen multiple breaches into critical defense IT systems over the years. In a way, the out-dated computer infrastructure provides security through obscurity and obsolescence. I shudder at the idea of a digital nuclear launch system connected to any kind of modern network infrastructure, isolated or not.
Exactly. My understanding is that most if not all nukes are using old tech and are offline because of the inherent risks of being online.
Yep, thats why the Air Force chose to keep the floppy disks for so long. You cant hack them.
just don't conect a silo to the internet
I used to work on the Minuteman III missiles. I'm with you.
I shudder at the thought of Trump having access to the launch codes.
To state the obvious, the most valuable function of the ICMB silo complex isn't it's 'sponge' effect or missile strike options ... it's that it is a global message board. If there is a nuclear detonation somewhere in the world, everyone can quickly look at those silos to see if the US (or any state with them) is going all-in on an attack or not. For the rest of the triad, the submarines have to remain hidden, and the airbase threat (or mobile launcher fleet) is a bit of a global shell game. So as an strong indicator of actual intent, they serve a more important function than deterrence, even.
very interesting perspective that i havent seen mentioned before.
that's a very interesting point that I hadn't considered , I'm going to need to dig into that deeper
Great point!!!!
@@Taskandpurpose : thanks, look up Stanislav Petrov’s story - when the Soviet dashboard lit up in 1983 of a U.S. nuclear attack underway, he reasoned it was a false alarm because the launch size was so small. Thankfully for everyone, it was a false alarm.
Any missile launched from any silo, plain or sub will be imediatly detected and a response will came hypersonicaly. That´s why one warns the other every time one is going to test any missile.
The floppy discs are there as a part of a system that cant be taken over. They will be there until quantum computers exist. They aren't there because they are old and need replacing. They are there because they serve a purpose and can't be hacked....
Brand new strategy: do not sell land to China next to nuclear missile bases!!!
*Mission Failed* Or maybe they let them this close to spy on them. We'll never know if it's incompetent or they have things planned for C
Good idea😂
Better new strategy: Don't sell land at all to China.
@@SCH292better better idea, don’t sell land to foreign nationals at all.
Cuba could become a territory if they become a threat or host them.
7,500 miles of copper wire? I can see the crackheads drooling already.
Sir, it's meth now. Get with the time 😂
Dwfl
@@grtwhtbnrActually grandpa, we're doing fentanyl now. Let's get you to bed 😂
People who have never dealt with a dope habit making fun of folks with dope habits. Keep up the good work experts.. 🙄
@@goclimbsomething bros expecting sympathy when literally everyone knows what crack does to you and yet people choose to risk it. Play stupid games, get stupid prizes, and youre entertainment for literally everyone else that knows better. Theres some cases where people are unexpectedly exposed to crack, like a laced joint, but those cases pale in comparison to willful crackheads.
Those of us who worked in manufacturing watched in astonishment as accountants and greedy owners shipped equipment and expertise to China. We predicted the weakness in our defense and the coming conflict with the PRC. We will reap a bitter harvest from the transfer of wealth from the engineers, craftsmen and middle class technicians that Wall Street influenced economists have cheered as "efficiency" for the last 40 years.
Well said.
There will be no shooting war between USA and China, forget about it.
Yeah, I couldn't believe what was going on, as far back as 1988(ish)... I was living next to a large "empty" building that got filled up with all manner of machinery, over the period of a year, then, all the machines were loaded onto trains to Mexico and to the West Coast PORTS... That was in Cleveland, Ohio.
Mankind is doomed because of greed. We have the ability to make choices that are not all going to be good ones.
China steals any restricted information they get, you are uninformed if you think we gave away anything.
Terminator 3 wasn't a blockbuster success but the scene with atomic exchange is used in every nuclear discussion video. They should be proud.
Only good scene in that movie
I think that was Terminator 2: Judgement Day
Underrated movie imo. Not a classic but some very good cinematography and action scenes.
@@jakeaurod it was most definitely T3. It was at the end after John and Kate realized they were in a nuclear bunker and John is giving his voive-over.
Perhaps Kamala, Biden and Obama are Skynet?
As long as Russia and China keep modernizing and increasing the number of nukes they have we still need to keep ground based missiles.
As long as u keep your democracy far away from the borders of other big nations, you have no reason to fear nothing. But we all know murica defends its borders everywhere on this planet.
@@vladavuckic5262 lmfao this man thinks that russia or china could ever beat the US. Keep dreaming, troglodyte!
@vladavuckic5262 keep making excuses for your bullshit post communist authoritarian dictatorships. Russia and China are the center of nearly ever major problems in international politics. Belligerent children playing with daddys gun
@@vladavuckic5262 The hell are you smoking bro? A nuke from russia can reach the US in 30 minutes.
And china is negotiating with Cuba to station PLA soldiers there. Cuba is right of the coast of florida.
You have one country that can nuke washington in 30 minutes or less. And another country that's putting their soldiers right next to florida.
If the US was a pacifist country, China would still want bases in the Carribean. If the US was a pacifist country, Russia would still keep their nukes.
We aren't stupid.
I find this incorrect. As long as there are aggressive parties, us included, then nukes will be used as a precautionary tool. Had the US not encroached into the neutral area after 1997 as promised in 92 to Gorbachev, we wouldn't have the Ukraine situation. Instead corruption prevails as does misinformation... Educate yourself.
M.A.D has worked for the last 80+ years. We got to keep the land based ICBM
0:37 I really like that you included this.
I hate how much this costs but it's not like it's remotely sane to let our land based ICBM systems rot.
It has to be done. Bottom line is that fuel degrades, and can only be replaced so many times in the missile. The ICBMs we have cannot be refueled again. They have to be replaced, or we won't have any.
if you take into account it's about 1/4 of the regular yearly budget, but spread out along several and several years everything will be carried out
'The Warheads will now Rust in Peace" Polaris by Megadeth
Agree. The procurement process sucks as usual but they are a critical part of the so called 'nuclear triad' with air and sea launch systems being the other 2/3rds. I don't see how we could just abandon such a big part of our nuclear deterrent strategy. Also, these are a long term investment with these hopefully lasting another 40-50+ years like the minutemen missiles with periodic refurbishment as needed.
Why? The UK has 100% of its arsenal on missile subs. France uses missile subs and bombers but no ground missiles.
The whole point of this video is whether or not to continue with a 75 year old strategy.
Are we not going to talk about the graffiti above the door way.... who ever wrote "SLAYER" at 4:47 Mark in the video, that was badass !!!!
Freindly reminder to active DoD personnel from a dude from a miltary family: I'm sure your privy to all kinds of neat, classified equipment specs... keep em off War Thunder. Foreign military personnel, feel free to share with US! Jk.
lol bro sometimes the bait on the forums is too easy. that chinese kid raging at how trash the chinese tank was performing in game and then posting actual documents revealing the capabilities that even the US wasnt so sure about always cracks me up
🤣
You ain’t wrong
😂😂
TRUMP TOLD EVERYONE OUR SECERTS !!
9:26 “we’re all fighting entropy”…this is what I love about this channel…
Anti entropy...
not George Carlin, He's a fan of entropy!
The MX Missile system carried 12 Warheads, 6 dummy rounds, and 6 real warheads, it was to be based on Trains, stored in tunnels in mountains, and could be moved around. This seems better.
Like the old saying goes I would rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it
Knuckle dragger spend trillions on weapons that can never be used….real smart
@@brianbevilacqua4984 Better than not having a weapon to use.
@@brianbevilacqua4984 What a bad take.
It doesn't matter at all if we have it since Russia has a nuclear submarine 5 miles off the coast of New Jersey.
Try to stop that!
Countries keep acting like children fighting with other children cheering them on.
The arms race is insane and there are no winners.
The USA is just as safe with no missiles as they are with missiles, MAD is the one that wins.
Knuckle dagger would rather be judged by twelve, than carried by six also, I'm an American.
Someone I know helps manufacture PCB's for icbm's and shorter range missiles. That 81 billion $ over budget is true but nobody is really talking about how that budget is hyper inflated because of how bidding for military contracts work and how execs at these companies are personally responsible for delays in production and design and take a disproportionate chunk of the money to the military's and engineering detriment. I would really love a video exploring this subject in further detail.
so the program is cost plus . well that guarantees the cost will balloon 300% or more. the builders throw out numbers in the bidding process knowing full well they will get way more .
Dont get cappy caped by investigating widespread corruption at the DOD. Its no coincidence that retired generals and politicians end up on these companies board.
The military needs to go back to producing their own weapons instead of all this over priced private industry hardware.
Hence, Military Industrial Complex. You don't get a name like that by being cost effective.
I would trust the equipment made 60 years ago more than the modern digital stuff that keeps breaking down today.
Bumper Sticker on the door leading to the underground silo: "A nuclear detonation anywhere in the world in 30 minutes or the next one is free."
Pretty sure someone already painted that with a Dominos style logo on a Minuteman Launch Control Facility, or maybe it was Peacekeeper. . You could probably Google it and find it.
😂❤
Those floppy disks weren't just old relics of past tech. They're purposely used in a lot of cases for security. Those big old floppies and tape drives are insanely outdated, but that means hardly anyone even has access to the tech needed to use them anymore. It's done in business and military applications. Think of it like writing a classified report in a dead language like Gaulish.
Source: not military but I've worked in IT in a defense contractor context.
China is the most beautiful country in the world, and it is run by the most intelligent people of all time. To say less is treason.
Right. That's also why core components of these systems are still hardwired together and weren't upgraded to wireless. It's much harder to unobtrusively hack a tamper-proof hardline than a wireless or net-based connection. Plus, many older electronic components are either EMP-proof or more resistant to EMP (electromagnetic pulse) than modern electronics. For many reasons, the simpler a system is, the more reliable it is. A system with a lot of bleeding edge components and bells and whistles adds complexities and possible points of failure. I hope the people in charge of the program are able to prevent the various defense contractors from piling on needless features to boost their profits.
I was thinking that. Would be hard to hack something that runs off floppy. You would have to know those systems.
@@waynelitchkowski2389 not just that, these systems are usually air gapped. Which means there is no approach to hack them remotely. Attacks on air gapped systems usually involve targeting personnel and getting them to upload your virus or other software payload for you, either knowingly or unknowingly.
@@BretekV Airgapped facilities have been comped quite simply and effectively. Humans are definitely one of the biggest security flaws in all of these systems.
Forget USB sticks in parking lots for a second.
There's other ways to comp an airgapped system. Something as wild as using the SATA cables inside of an airgapped computer as makeshift antennas to exfil data off of that bad boy. Sure you have to get a program onto the airgapped computer to run the hilariously named SATAn program, but there's tons of ways to do that.
How can we honestly say that those floppy discs are outdated when we have actual satellites on the edge of the heliosphere still sending date back to earth while operating on similar technology? lol there’s a reason they still work
"All the people who made the original Minute Man Missiles have passed away, and we don't know how to make more."
>we are already in the 40k timeline.
More people? 🤔
You see the paradox. We don't need to make more. Our ancestors gave us multiples more than we will ever use.
@@kiliank5040 no... Warhammer
@@markeasley6149 Dont need to mantain them either huh?
some of us are still alive but none of us know the whole thing. I helped make what Ive always assumed to be less then 10% of the parts for that particular system. it's split out among contractors for security reasons. I HAVE done weapons systems tooling audit for the DoD. Everyone who made a Then-Currently-used system WAS dead except one guy and he was management and useless to figuring out how it was made.
Thanks for this memory. I did missile security for the Air Force in Missouri and South Dakota in the 70's.
Bet that was no joke in the middle of February, my friend!
My dad's best friend was in his final stage of training as AF fighter pilot during Vietnam. Then he contracted Encephalitis, aka "the sleeping sickness," from a fly. Basically it attacks the brain and spine, so he could no longer be a pilot. Needless to say he was devastated. Thus, in '71, the AF transferred him to the silos in South Dakota; he had to spend 12 hour days underground, it was pretty rough on him.
I sleep a whole lot better at night knowing we've got 300+ Minuteman IIIs on alert.
10:22 - "Proponents of the weapon argue that it's literally the top defense priority, and that cost doesn't matter; it's not a factor."
Military Industrial Complex: _Rubs hands together excitedly._
Everybody will always argue that they are the top priority and to hand them more resources.
“A wise king never seeks out war, but he must always be ready for it.” There's no cure for regret. The problem isn't the necessity of the upgrade, it's the profit motive. Honestly, national military and healthcare (with possibly education as third) are sectors where profit motive needs to be controlled, because if they fail, we all suffer.
@@truthseeker9454 Sad but true. Defense costs money. But there will be loads of good paying, union jobs building those missiles.
@@wowswc If by that you mean controlled by the government that _would_ mean we all suffer, because nationalizing industries always leads to economic failure and societal breakdown. Those costs can be controlled by competition in a free market with the right policies in place, and that would ensure our freedoms much better than government price controls.
Anti semtic comment 🚨
As a Canadian, I can say, keep it up America. Trust me when I say that Canadians feel much more at ease knowing you’re our neighbour. We are able to have that laid back Canadian mentality because you are who you are.
I lived In Canada for 2 years in 1999 and 2000 and they told me the same thing. 😂
I live in the US and and am pro America, im not one of those an anti American leftists and the following is purely a devil's advocate argument. I agree with what you said but.......... an argument could be made that having the US as a neighbor is just as much a detriment as it is a benefit in this regard considering we'll be the ones being shot at if any nuclear exchange ever happens. Would be like having Al Capone living next door to you in the 1920s, you might be good with him and have his protection but your house might accidentally get hosed down with a Tommy gun if he gets in feud with the mob boss on the other side of town.
Those 8" floppy disks are actually incredibly reliable. They are not the weak point in the old system.
"Those 8" floppy disks are actually incredibly reliable."
But they're not immortal. An 8 inch disk spinning 24/7 will last 10-15 years. The drive itself maybe 20. And they're no longer made nor are the parts.
But you're right. Expiring rocket fuel is more of an issue than the floppy drives.
Exactly. They are the strength of the system. Simplicity and hardened resilience to attack. The ultimate firewall is to not be compatible with current technology in any way.
@@wisenberYou don't think 8" floppy disks are still made? They may not be sold to the public, but they are certainly still made.
@@slartybarfastb3648 Except they aren't, nor are the drives or replacement parts for the drives. They went out of production in the early 90s
@@wisenber They went out of consumer production.
As a German who grew up in the American Section of Post-WW2 Western Germany (Bavaria and Hesse) i just feel like sharing that growing up with American Bases and seeing Hundreds of Soldiers on your Schoolbus to School and then also when visiting Family in Hesse, like near Hanau, Hesse there was the "Wolfgang US Base" in which we always watched US Pioneers stationed there doing training on the "Main River" in "Großauheim" It both had a positive Effect because we German Kids with our German WW2 Grandfather Veterans who always talked about the Danger of Soviet Russia attacking us, the US Soldiers everywhere made us feel much safer as Kids, which was great.
On the other Hand there was also a Portion of the Public who because of WW2 was so extremely anti-war since the 1968er Movement, they were and tried to convince People and us Kids that the US Military being stationed here is the Reason why we were supposedly in Danger.
As a Kid that of course confuses you and you can't tell who is right. Of course once you grow up, like me, when i joined the Bundeswehr (Gebirgsjägerbrigade 23 - 231st Bataillon with 2 Tours in Afghanistan and 1 in Kosovo via KFOR) you kinda realise that it was and still is a good Thing that the US Military has such a Presence here in Germany.
In fact, when i visited Relatives in Hesse near the pretty much 100% American Town of "Wolfgang" we always went there out of Curiosity, trying out American Food Places.
They had this Black Vietnam Veteran there who we called "Black Joe" (as he called his Fried Chicken Place that way) who decided to stay with his Wife in Wolfgang, Germany. The best Fried Chicken i ever ate.
Sadly he passed away a few Years after the US Military moved out of the Wolfgang Barracks so now whenever i visit Relatives there, we are stuck with KFC.
Anyway, just wanted to share!
I bet a lot of Americans watching this Channel were stationed in Germany at one Time or another, especially during the Cold War and shortly after in the 1990s. Just know us German School Kids were always super excited to watch you Guys do Mannoveurs and Excercises!
And my WW2 Veteran Grandfathers and Granduncles in fact became Friends with US WW2 Soldiers stationed in Germany after the War and invited them always over for BBQ in our Backyard! That's in fact how i started to learn a lot of English very early on, which wasn't normal for a German like me born in the 1980s.
Point being: Very happy we still have US Forces stationed here in Germany and excercising with us and knowing they will risk their Life if we are attacked.
Prost & Cheers from Berchtesgaden in the Bavarian Alps
So you are proud to have been defeated by the US, having your country taken over and having since been ocuppied by them. You became a puppet state.
Hey chartreux1532! I was in the US Army and stationed in Frankfurt and later West Berlin from 1986 to 1989. I loved it so much and it was probably the greatest period of my life as being a young American man in Western Europe during the 80's was an incredibly special time. I loved the West German people and food and I traveled extensively. I even spent a few days at the US Army recreation area in Berchtesgaden. Beautiful place! Sadly, the Kassernes, Drake/Edwards in Frankfurt and McNair in West Berlin, where I was stationed, are long gone, as well as that recreation area. It's good to hear we made an impression on some of the German people, I know they did on me, and I will carry that with me for the rest of my life. Prost!
Thanks for sharing
@@LeadPaint1
So happy to hear you sharing that! I can tell you that besides my Father and Grandfathers having been in the Military, having met US Soldiers stationed here and especially having seen the Pioneers of the Wolfgang Base near Hanau on the Main River made me very excited to join the Military once i turned 18, and i'm happy i ended up doing that!
I'm happy we are Allies and Friends now!
Comments like yours, that make us remember and learn that geopolitics is complex and how it's affect everyday common life, is that worth reading. Thanks!
I was USAF SF stationed at Malmstrom working in the missile field from 2007-2010. When I first learned that the world destroying weapons I was guarding were still being run on 8.5 inch floppy disks, I was in shock.... lol. Being that close to hundreds of weapons that each one could destroy the entire state has an interesting, eerie aura about it. 💯
1st: thanks for your service
2nd: I'm not sure I could go down in one of those bunkers, they look claustrophobic af. Do they just look like they're pretty small or are they small? Does it feel roomy once u got down there?? After awhile does it just become like any office job??
That is incredible. Thank you for what you did for all of us.
I am sure you have concerns beyond the scope of this RUclips video. It was alarming to me to know the state of the control systems as well and I am just a civvie.
You can't hack a floppy disk.
@@nolongerblocked6210 "Thanks for his service"? He was a freaking file clerk. I was in the Chair Force too, and all we did was fill out paperwork, cash our paychecks and get drunk on the weekends.
@@penultimateh766 You make it abundantly clear that you have absolutely zero clue, zero, what it's like for security forces working a missile field at a northern tier base.
You make it sound like all these silos and their contents are 50 to 70 years old. The hole might be that old, but the contents are not. Not by a long shot.
The clustering of silos and their spacing was a calculated decision. The silos are far enough apart so a near miss of one silo does not damage another silo. However, they are close enough together that the blast from a ground detonation can destroy, damage, or knock off course incoming warheads still in the air.
The air leg is the most vulnerable to surprise first strike. The bombers, even in hardened hangers, are much more vulnerable than ICBMs in a haden silo.
The silo-based leg has a huge advantage over the other two legs. It has the lowest maintenance and manpower cost of the two by a significant margin.
Good comment.
_"the blast from a ground detonation can destroy, damage, or knock off course incoming warheads still in the air."_ I don't think it works like that. Point 1: Sprint short-range anti-ballistic missile: "The Sprint was armed with an enhanced radiation nuclear warhead with a yield reportedly of a few kilotons, though the exact number has not been declassified. *The warhead was intended to destroy the incoming reentry vehicle primarily by neutron flux.* " Implying that simply flying through the remnants of a nuclear detonation, even a second or two after the detonation happened, would not destroy a warhead. Consider instances like the 1961 Goldsboro B-52 crash, where the bombs that hit the ground remained intact enough to examine their safety mechanisms: a nuclear mushroom cloud may look scary, but it's a lot less dense than the ground, and a warhead that passes through a mile-wide cloud at 5 miles per second (8 km/s) won't absorb too much energy.
Point 2: Certain sites in the USSR were targeted by missiles based on a simple calculation: if the probability of destroying a hardened bunker, 50 meters or so underground, was 5% with a single warhead, then the US allocated 20 warheads for the site. They wouldn't have done this if the first detonation would have destroyed subsequent warheads as they approached the target.
Oh, and Point 3: Project Orion, the design for a nuclear pulse spacecraft, where bombs explode beneath a pusher plate: "The optimal Orion drive bomblet yield (for the human crewed 4,000 ton reference design) was calculated to be in the region of 0.15 kt, with approx 800 bombs needed to orbit and a bomb rate of approx 1 per second." (Using nuclear explosions for propulsion was also featured in Netflix's Three Body Problem.)
@@RiskyDramaUploads Times like these are when I appreciate living the the Blanconutrix galaxy.
@@waynehendrix4806 ???
@@learningisfun2108
Thanks. I practically minored in this in college. I found it so interesting.
Yes, nuclear war is horrifying, but is Cappy wearing pants?
We've never see his legs, so probably not. Either that, or he's wearing Cookie Monster Pajama pants.
Worse- Is he wearing camo silk jockeys?
@@mso82 this is the correct answer
@@mso82 I foresee a new line of merch
I mean, if you could get away with not wearing pants, why wouldn't you?
Those systems on 8" floppy disks are surprisingly pretty secure.
There as secure as any system not connected to an outside system secured by a blast proof door and armed guards.
Teddy said it best, “speak softly but carry a big stick”
The mid-west is not the great plains. Mid west is over a full set of states over. The "Breadbasket of America" with the actual grain for eating is even further than that by another state or two. If you are think of the grain production in Nebraska and Arkansas as food production for human consumption, you are dead wrong. They grow feed corn and feed soybeans for cows, pigs, and chickens there. The tonnage and calorie numbers are huge, but people don't eat that grain. Animals do. It's why meat is so cheap and abundant in the USA and we export so much of it.
SO, you would not be nuking states that have high production to begin with, the fallout wouldn't be traveling to states that are producing calories needed for food production for the USA citizens to eat, and the actual food grain acreage is still a couple hundred miles out of the fallout zone. There is also the winter wheat produced in Washington State in the irrigated area. The tonnage of human consumed grain there is actually nearly as high as the "breadbasket" region and sometimes exceeds it since it is an irrigated area instead of dry-land farming. It just don't have as many acreage. It also isn't consumed in the US and typically sold off to Asian and African countries since it is so close to the Seattle port because the whole area has rail road spurs.
The "breadbasket" region is set up to ship to the high population areas to feed them, so it is seen as the source of all the food in the US when we, in fact, have a massive surplus of it and could easily switch crops in the event of a disaster.
Your cyber security point highlights the fact that maybe the old school copper based systems aren't so bad
the "slayer" in the silo/base killed me 🤣
4:46 Slayer!
And D'Terr!
11:57 they want to build reusable rockets??? Ok, let's get the rods of God project going again. 👍👍👍
SpaceX has ALREADY built reusable rockets. Some of the falcon rocket boosters have been recovered and reused over a dozen times!
@@Frenotx exactly, more reason to get the rods of God project going again.
@@aaronbest747 Unfortunately, all of that incredible energy those rods have on impact, needs to be invested on the front end via fuel lifting them up into orbit in the first place. Still a very very expensive prospect, even when the rocket boosters are being reused. Maybe one day, but I don't think we're there yet.
Honestly, something that would probably make them a hell of a lot more practical is space mining. If we could build them out of materials that are already up in space (instead of lifting them up there from Earth), things could get a lot more interesting.
Are we 100% sure there’s no such weapon platform hiding overhead right now? The DOD is pretty damn good at obfuscation and we’ve had a LOT of various payloads quietly delivered into orbit over the past decade or so.
Whatever you build, for God's sake, DO NOT CONNECT IT TO THE INTERNET. Floppy disks are fine!
Say that again!
can we use the smaller floppydisks?
too late, they are all on my wifi. the password is n00k
Didn't you watch the video? The problem is that the floppy disks are on their last legs. They will be non operable soon, and no one is left who can make new ones
They will never not be connected to the Internet. And that's a good thing. It allows control from virtually anywhere. That's not the same thing as the World Wide Web, you know.
4:48 you know they are talking about America when you see these letters SLAYER we are safe and protected
Lol.
Saw that too
The GBSD (Sentinel) is happening. The US military has already built storage structures for them.
4:47 Comforted to see “SLAYER” written in the bands font above the door of the missile silo. \m/ 😂 \m/
I got news for you bud. I worked on the Minuteman III as an MMTr from late 90s to the mid 2000s. A lot of the information that is public is misinformation for a reason.
Makes sense 🎉
What if this is misinformation about it being misinformation?
@@MrTugginsWhat if your spreading misinformation about the misinformation being misinformation?
And the winner is, Miss Information, from the great state of DC
I later married her.
The old launch components were EMP resistant. Modern solid state components are less resistant. Minuteman was originally protected to 50,000 V/meter,(if that) EMP pulses can exceed 100,000 V/meter
Just one question: If the enemy knows it can't hit ALL silos, isn't there a point when he decides to just make as much damage to the population as he possibly can and not aiming at the silos AT ALL?
I mean- if I knew something just is impossible I usually aim for the next best thing.🤷
If an enemy is okay with dying in the retaliation then they are likely to go right for the civilian centers anyway.
@@josiahwyncott7519 That's exactly what I meant. Thanks! At some point people like p**in and Winnie Pooh will go down with flying banners if they don't see another way. That's the problem with extremists, dictators and heads of personal cults, right? They don't think about their civilians anyway. If they don't see a future for THEMSELFES staying alive- everyone will be doomed.
They would probably send them in staggered in small amounts just to cause delay of a big counterattack and make it so it's impossible to just wait out any attack completely. Then they can keep this up til bombers arrive and they can circle and neutralize any launch. Of course we would be doing things in the meantime so it is unclear how this would all play out in the end but that is the obvious thing to do if they were serious about an all out war.
@@LTPottenger It's actually pretty clear how it would play out. Country A launches a small strike first (say, 10 nukes) at the US. US immediately launches a full retaliatory strike, completely wiping Country A off the map, while sustaining a few tens of millions of casualties. Launching a small first-strike (or even staggering them as smaller "flights") makes ZERO sense from any kind of logical or strategic standpoint. The whole concept of MAD is based around a total, irreversible 2nd strike against an aggressor country, no matter how many nukes they sent in the first-strike.
@@MrMontanaNights No, that's totally wrong. It takes time to respond and even detect and if they launch all at once then the missiles aimed at the bunkers could neutralize the whole launch and they can do that even after they launch. With the new mach 20 missiles they won't have much detection time at all especially since they also fligh low altitude. They would never launch a full scale assault on the bunkers that's just stupid. They will do something like what I said, or they will possibly ignore them completely. The attack would hit all the air bases and ports as the first strike for certain, and those are easy to take out quickly with no chance to get the planes off if they are not up already. Then they will hit all over bases and military factories, then the power stations and rail. While USA targets mainly cities this is stupid and pointless, and russia or china won't do this. The cities will just be prisons once the food and electric are gone. If a war like this happens USA is toast and there is questionable chance to even be able to respond.
Those were not the modern 5.25 inch floppy discs either, those were the slightly less modern 8 inchers, and there are rumours of a brand new 3.5 inch disc that may be coming out soon with a massive 32 kilobytes memory that will help us defeat the Soviet Unions attack from East Germany striking towards the Fulda Gap with all the forces of the Warsaw Pact.
😂
Bit worrisome considering I can get a flash drive that holds 10's of gigabytes now. But in hindsight. Who carries those old floppy discs and equipment to use them nowadays. Only has to hold a small amount of encoded information. Very hard to duplicate now. Not like the systems have new usb ports for flash drives or access to internet for updates.
You can make a flash adapter in the likeness of cassette car radios
A few decades from now they may even use Zip drives 😂
As funny as this is, those floppies are probably there for a very good reason: they were, and still are, incredibly reliable data storage devices that are _incredibly_ difficult to read OR write to in the modern age. It’s not just a case of “oh, you need a really old device just to read this,” it’s a case of “these devices are all but _extinct_ and nobody can make them anymore.”
It’s quite literally lost tech that renders these silos extremely resistant to digital theft, sabotage, or hijacking.
My dad was a submariner on an ohio class submarine. The nuclear deterrence system is very intriguing to me especially considering my dad can't really talk about much besides what he was taught to say.
"O-Rings wear out"
So the ICBMs are becoming incontinent?
Incontinent Ballistic Missile
It's a good thing NASA isn't in charge of our nuclear missiles!
@@jmr2008jan MAG's on standby.
I grew up in ND and Id go to Minot AFB a lot and I remember thinking "imagine going to college, going through Air Force OCS, and getting sent to fucking Minot, North Dakota"
I was stationed at Minot in the late 1980s.
@@patrickkenyon2326 damn. From one service member to another, thank you for what you were doing there. I hope you found some way to entertain yourself.
@@alaricskjelver7014 I got to fly big airplanes.
It was warmer in Minot than my previous posting, Elmendorph AFB in Alaska.
@@patrickkenyon2326 Cheyenne, WY got alot of Air force recruits from TX and CA and they bitch alot about the weather and drive like shit too, your lucky at least ND peeps can drive.
WY people drive good but those fuckin impants damn they think they need to go 60 on 35mph roads in town rushing like its Dallas lol
got shipped there in 1987 spent 3 years in various LCC's North and West of Minot in the 742nd SMS all the way to Bowbells near the Canadian border --fun times, charity blackjack, pull tabs in town and the strippers would rotate through Fargo Bismark Grand Forks and Finally Minot from their home clubs in Minneapolis. Tail end of the Cold War..
7:40 America's food supply contaminated? Spot the difference.
Worked on numerous nuclear delivery systems in my 40 years with Boeing - SRAM II, Hard Mobile Launcher, Small ICBM, MX, Minuteman upgrades, etc. Never hear anyone ever use the term “Sponge” to explain land based ICBMs….? Our goal was to get them out of the launch silos ASAP before we lose them.
Would you like to sell some of your papers?
Reducing or removing the land-based missile program would be similar to reducing or removing one of the military branches. Having one lag behind or degrade in capabilities means you no longer have as much flexibility to ensure any potential enemies are deterred from starting a fight. Imagine if we said the navy or airforce were obsolete and no longer relevant in the modern battlefield due to sonar, radar, missiles, and self guiding torpedoes. This is similar to what's being said about ground launched ICBMs. Ground launched missiles are the cheapest in the long term, and far more self sufficient since they don't need to be carried with a ship, aircraft, or submarine. Even if every other system failed, you could guarantee that the missiles would be operational and ready to fire at any time.
The cost is absolutely necessary, and in my opinion it's absurd that we allowed the ICBM program to fall behind to such a degree that we're having to relearn how to make them. At least small scale production and research/development should've continued during the past 80 years, and the fools who failed to have a program for that deserve to be rebuked and used as an example of what we should never do again - Especially considering the advancements and rapid development speed of China in ICBM tech.
Just a note, when people speak of the "fireball" from a nuclear explosion, they're actually taking about the thermal pulse. The actual fireball of a nuclear explosion is much, much smaller than what people mistaking reference as the thermal pulse. The true fireball of a nuclear explosion is measured in yards or meters with the actual fireball being about a 100 yards (similar size in meters) for typical larger tactical nukes (the couple hundred kT range), yet the thermal pulse will a mile or two.
Exactly. It's not fire but high-energy photons. You get vaporized from a sunburn, essentially haha
A 1 megaton fireball is about a mile in diameter i think.
@@megaton179 You're thinking thermal pulse, the actual fireball is much, much smaller.
Mising oportunity: Sponge Theory but not spongebob thumbnail
The stuff nightmares are made of. I really think many younger people have lost some amount of fear of an actual nuclear exchange.
They should watch the BBC movie "Threads" and remember it'll actually be way worse than that.
Yup, Threads, The Day After, and Barefoot Gen
I’d say it’s 50/50. Half of the younger generation doesn’t care at all and thinks it’s history. The other half is preparing for the end of the world as we speak, as global tensions heighten and China becomes a massive threat along with the us government becoming everyone (“female dog”)
Gen-X who grew up in Tucson and Wichita (Titan IIs), 18 of which surrounded each of these towns. Love hearing I was in the sponge zone. But, yeah, growing up in the shadow of nuclear apocalypse was an issue.
We’ve just gotten used to it. In some cases, a lot of us would prefer to go out in a blaze of nuclear fire as opposed to the apparent future that awaits us right now.
The point of making sure America’s nuclear triad stays just as strong is so that you don’t ever have to use them. Russia has to know it can’t get away with using a nuclear weapon under any circumstances.
I grew up around these missiles. Good luck finding them. You'd have to glass all of the Dakotas, Nebraska and Wyoming and Montana and Colorado. That's a shit load of land if you aren't familiar.
Whos to say some are inactive
@@rsinclair689 Theres quite a few dummy sites as well, I live within an hour of the WY and NE sites and I drive by em all the time. Most are active but some are dummy sites.
@@rsinclair689 unless the theoretical enemy knows that, it doesn't matter that there's inactive silos. Actually, building fake silos as well, like China is doing sounds like a good strategy.
I feel like satellite imagery would probably help with this…
"Running Dos 2.0, please stand by."
How many people here were like DOS🤔🤔???
"Sector not found"
@@rsinclair689 LoL 😂
@@rsinclair689 brun bruh
DOS wasn't around when those controllers went online.
I have a BS degree in computer science and have worked in the industry for 15 years. Your computer analogy was a perfect analogy. That is a great way to understand relearning how to rebuild new rockets. There is a huge leap in understanding between theories and production procedures and processes. WELL, SAID CHRIS!!
As far as network security is concerned, the answer is don't put them on a network. It may seem primitive, but they should be stand alone like a mainframe. The Hover Dam was hacked- Why was it on a network it worked fine without a network when built in the 1930?
Only 141 billion? We spend more than that for other countries to fight wars we have nothing to do with. Build the damn thing.
That's RIGHT!!!
US became the world's ruler after the collapse of the soviet union, so every war has ties to the US. Today, it is the biggest and most powerful terrorist nation.
Lower fallout alternative missile sink 1/3:
Densepak + local missile defense in the mountains: cluster hardened silos in one area with deep cheap missile defense. To destroy all the silos reliably the other side has to launch many weapons at once along a similar trajectory. Basic idea is that the proximity of silos would force many weapons to arrive in the same area at the same time with perfect timing thus you can make it easier to put mass in the sky in the way of incoming warheads or potentially take out many incoming warheads with one nuclear tipped interceptor. Fewer nukes go off on the ground spreading fallout, and in fewer areas.
What forces them to launch them all at once?
Besides, if you have the time to launch a nuclear missile defense weapon you'll have launched your ICBMs already.
Theres still gonna be a massive amount of fallout cause theyre not only targeting the landbased systems. Theyre also hitting infrastructure that supports the other aspects of the triad. Air fields that can support the bombers, sub pens and etc.
When it pops off its not gonna be about minimizing damage its gonna be, "how many of ya'll can I take with me." MAD
@@petergerdes1094 the whole point of hardening is to force the other side to use multiple warheads per one of your warheads even if you don't launch on warning. Same logic applies here. It is much easier to decide to launch missile defense than to launch a nuclear attack.
@@petergerdes1094 if they don't synchronize attack them the debris may take out their other incoming warheads, and strong confirmation of nuclear attack would invite retaliation with surviving missiles.
Alaska is the obvious best choice, hate to say it but yeah
"speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far" - Theodore Roosevelt
Nice dialog on entropy
Video starts 9:45
Does a land based nuclear deterrent work? Have we had a nuclear war in the past 60 years? I'd have to say it works pretty well so far.
We do have better manufacturing technology nowadays compared to the 70s but... That's kinda the problem. We're too advanced and accurate. Back then, we weren't as stringent with hygiene and suiting up before handling equipment, we weren't as exact when creating parts, we weren't dealing with the digital age when programming these machines. Policies change, people change, technology changes, manufacturing changes, the human factor changes; a replacement is needed. The current arsenal is too old.
Or we think we are too advanced and accurate, but really actually just ignorant and dumb as all the actual knowledge expired with the people that actually knew how to do it.
We don't use the nukes we have. Building more is going backwards
Based on the quality of modern products we're better off with the stuff manufactured in the seventies.
Cappy, you kinda missed an obvious point and that is if you removed the ICBM force entirely, that's hundreds of enemy warheads that are now free to be targeted elsewhere, such as industrial targets in cities and further saturation of areas already targeted.
Also, I have not seen any convincing info as to just how accurate current and next gen Russian/Chinese warheads are. In the past it was determined that to destroy one US silo, the Soviets/Russians would need at least 2 warheads to kill it. So, in terms of Russia, that's potentially 900 warheads out of their 1600 or so deployed strategic warheads. (Obviously, they're not going to totally use that many but you get my gist.)
We diffidently need to keep the sponge by all means.
Yes! We diffidently do!
thought I touched on that when I said "by making the locations of these silos known, the U.S. ensures that any adversary would need to allocate a significant portion of their nuclear arsenal to targeting these sites. This, in turn, diverts attention away from American cities, military bases, and critical infrastructure. "
Highly Classified Penetration Aids? Not even Buck Henry and Mel Brooks together could come up with that one!
This video seems like this guys opinion, everyone is entitled to them but I don't think this video adds or does anything helpful. Just plays like his opinion on why we should get rid of nukes because wars bad mkay.
@@Taskandpurpose haha, my bad bro. Istand corrected👍
Seems like the question is answered early-on in this video: YES, we need these ground-based missiles.
4:45 I'm glad our nuclear officers have adorned the facility with Slayer symbols. It seems fitting with hits such as Raining Blood.
Reminds me of the iconic painting some missileers put on their blast door with the Domino’s Pizza logo and the words “Worldwide delivery in 30 minutes or less; or your next one is free”
My fav is the moral patches "Death Wears Bunny Slippers" showing a sitting Grim Reaper wearing a fluffy, pink version of the indicated footware.
It won't be ICBMs, it'll be the several tons of cheese stored in the caves. Post-apocalyptic life will revolve around maintaining control over the cheese supplies and the chips industry.
Capt. Bunny?
You want to live? Better pay the cheese tax!
Government cheese.
Note to self. Stock up on cheese and chips for shtf as legal tender and bartering
MAD is necessary, especially with the growing number of adversaries.
If they didn't have value the Chinese wouldn't be building their own. The idea of worrying about the radiation effects where only the radiation of the areas encompassing the silos is silly since it is almost assured that other areas would have been eradiated as well and all out nuclear war would mean an end to human civilization, perhaps for good. It's a shame once again a great nation and people, the Chinese, have autocratic leaders that choose confrontation and expansion over an agreed upon international order that allowed their rise.
Agreed 🙌 Russia is also creating them again
i somehow agree with it but its kind of ironic to post this under a video thats mainly about the usa...
China doesn't only operate ICBMs, they operate a very wide range of closer range ballistic missiles to sink ships.
LThe reason they build them that deep is to avoid us navy weapons and this is even pointed out in the video.
If you have submarines to launch ICBMs then there is very little use for stationary silos. They are kept as missile sponges, they were not designed as missile sponges, they are obsolete but they are better than nothing. Money shouldn't be spent on obsolete strategies.
Irradiation doesn't have long term effects. Ground level detonations would only be used against missile silos. Air detonations at high altitude, which do not produce fallout, would be used against other (soft) targets.
Yeah - it's not just countries with autocratic leaders choose aggression - remember the Iraq War or the invasion of Afghanistan?
You failed to mention Vandenberg Space Force Base, where there are over 40 Minuteman III's.. California.
My info is over 20 years old, so grain of salt, but when my high school class took a field trip to Cheyenne, WY. The tour guide mentioned that Vandenberg was a site that housed 'Peace Keepers" which fit in the same size silo as the Minutemen but had to be shoved out of the tube before ignition because they were much bigger. Just based on the size of silo, you may be exactly correct.
If we are going to talk about modern weapons being better, than the Chinese nuclear weapons are better than the US nuclear weapons, since the former started building them much later.
Wait what? Really? I'm fucked
@user yeah, but it's hard to launch a rocket filled with water
@@dustinnyffeler8624 theres most definitely retaliatory silos that are in positions around both costs. mt rainier in Washington has two at its base with a NORAD bunker. i only know about it due to google maps screwing up at one point and instead of taking me to the freeway it took me to the literal gate. they are the MIRV missiles. the full sized ones at that. the coast lines usually will have silo based retaliatory larger missiles that arent allowed to even be turned on till a launch is confirmed as til that treaties remain intact.
15:15 this is a problem everywhere. I work in the semiconductor industry and it used to be that we as design and test engineers could just walk onto the manufacturing floor and see how things are going. Now design is all over the world, the factory is in Taiwan, assembly in China, all done by various subcontractors. Every piece of this is highly optimized but the overal system is very difficult to optimize because there are just too many geographies, subcontractors, piece parts.
Literally drove through the Minot field a few weeks ago for the first time. Thank you for explaining this. It was REALLY bothering me how advertised and close to the main highway these were....
That is no Corn Silo.
Wow Chris. Your content has gotten REALLY good. Way to cultivate a thoughtful approach to a lot of topics.!
Activate metal gear
Really 😊
No, we need a weapon to surpass Metal Gear
@@svenrio8521That's something liquid snake would say
Snake? SNAAAKE!
Say, the one from MGS peace walker
The Boss AI: ... Number of warheads detected by the DEW Line?
Dr. Strangelove: Fifty-seven.
The Boss AI: Number of MIRVs included?
Dr. Strangelove: Minimum twenty-nine, maximum thirty-five.
The Boss AI: Target region?
Dr. Strangelove: United States. East Coast.
The Boss AI: Estimated time of reentry?
Dr. Strangelove: Two-oh-four-eight Zulu.
The Boss AI: President's selected attack option?
Dr. Strangelove: Unknown.
The Boss AI: The President is dead?
Dr. Strangelove: Unknown. Communication has been lost.
The Boss AI: ... I select Offutt Air Force Base as my target.
Dr. Strangelove: Offutt...? But that's a U.S. base! What on earth do you mean?!
The Boss AI: Based on the projected number of incoming warheads, Washington D.C. is presumed destroyed. The President is most likely dead, the U.S. government's control lost.
Dr. Strangelove: I realize that. So why not retaliate?!
The Boss AI: With both sides destroyed, global anarchy would ensue. Recovery would be... difficult. The United States' nuclear strike capability must therefore be neutralized in order to preserve the Communist bloc, where government remains largely intact.
Dr. Strangelove: You're siding with the enemy? You can't be serious!
The Boss AI: Tell me, how do you define enemy? There are no borders in this world.
Dr. Strangelove: The same conclusion, again and again... Where is the flaw?
Can't we just order some cheap ones on Amazon until we figure out what to do?
FYI, the bigger mega-ton bombs, have orders less radiation fallout compared with earlier kiloton models. Why? Because in bigger bombs, nealy all of the radioactive material is being used as compared with earlier less efficient bombs.
The thing is that paradoxically, the more survivable you make a nuclear war, the more likely you make a nuclear war, arguably. This was the basis of the anti-ballistic missile pacts (I think), at least partly. Also it could become an almost infinite expense.
Arm 1/3rd of our silos with real missiles, the other 2/3rds with fakes. It will cost far less and have the same effect of deterrence. If necessary, make the fake missiles still launch like real missiles and only inform a couple people at each launch site that the missile isn't a real nuke, while the rest of the people stationed there think it's real. My point is surely we can achieve the same level of deterrence without arming all 450 silos. 450 is an absolutely insane number. How many do you really need for deterrence in 2024? (Personally i say get rid of them entirely, but I recognize how insane the defense industry is in this country and how that would simply never happen. This suggestion is already a compromise.)
Nuclear weapons give off radiation that can be sniffed such as by a sensor payload in a balloon floating over the fields. The Chinese silos are closer together- possibly- to interconnect subterraneanly to shuttle/swap live and dummy warheads. I just finished "Silo" on Apple TV; the large, steel door in the base of the silo is likely an interconnect to the others.
@@MikeShannahan giving off radiation is incredibly easy to do with a dummy warhead.
"...but first I'd like to make an awkward segway..."
Don’t mind me talking about something completely off topic. Totally not a sponsor segue.
That "W" stands for Westinghouse BTW, the same people that make toasters and wash machines that don't work after a year and a half...
There’s some sort of disconnect here. My Westinghouse Washing Machine is fantastic year after year after year…
Montana, Colorado etc is not the Midwest. Why did we put these in valuable farm and ranch land we will need? We should have located them near large urban centers which would be targeted anyway.
Because no one will be left to work those farms, or eat anything they might have produced. Even if anything survived, the general grid collapse and infrastructure destruction means they're not turning the lights on anytime soon.
Genius
I missed the part where you mentioned America's New Doomsday Weapon.
2:32 tf is a "lie-ons"
Literally, that's a weird one for someone to mess up on for sure lol. Like my boi knows what a lion is and how it's pronounced in English right... right?!
The weapons that should never be used
The weapons built in hope they will never be used... And no amount of studying history has given me certainty whether that's an improvement or not...
Agreed.
They are being used now. It’s called “maintaining the peace”
That such a dumb move, lets focus on a no one wins mentality rather then delegations, what a promising future.
They should if we have the overwhelming odds of coming out of this ahead, which we absolutely do and will still do 30 years into the future, as China is 30 years behind the US in every way
There’s more than over 450 missile silos because there’s over 400 of them that have been converted into custom bunkers/homes it’s just there is only 450 that actually has missiles and is actually still United States property
8:49 Covid flashbacks 😂
The largest stack of nuclear weapons are in North Dakota. I live in Winnipeg, Manitoba, 100 km from there. I hope it is not targeted.
It will essentially be targeted the silos are some of the first targets
Unfortunately you are cooked
Those places are in the hot map. So are Texas refineries, Oklahoma pipelines and so on. But at least if they are used it all won’t matter.
@@antonszvezdovsthen why are we targeting silos and not cities? US first strike targets also include dams, cities, why would our enemy not do the same
@@Dumb-Comment It's about trying to take out all your enemies nukes so you can hit them without a fear of being hit back. Thus MAD: Mutual Assured Destruction. The idea that they will be able to hit you back no matter what. The USA uses the nuclear triad to assure this. Land based ICBMs, submarine based ICBMs and cruise missiles and air based long range stealth bombers like the B-2 and now B-21.
*'The Day After'* from 1983
WATCH IT! Most of the story takes around these silos, it is an amazing watch
I am 80, born in London, UK during WWII, and came to US in 1949.
During college in the 1960's I enrolled
in US Air Force Officer training, and
during Summer training I was offered
to be a Missile Launch Officer, which
I did not choose, and after Active duty
left in 1974, and today I am a 100%
Disabled American Veteran of the
Vietnam Era. 😮
rah rah immigrants rah rah mah jobs rah rah communism. Thank you for serving your country, your love and appreciation for it is worth more than what our crappy government left your era of veterans....
@@dogsbecute Thanks 😊 so much.
You have lived a lot of years, and seen many interesting things.
May you live many more.
And not see anything TOO interesting.
Agent orange?
@danthomas9688 Thanks 😊 No I was
not exposed to Agent Orange, to the best
of my knowledge.
The scariest part, is that the quality of the decision makers has deteriorated badly also. Representatives average age is about 58. Senators are around 7 years even older. Upgrading THEM, by voting for intelligent, informed individuals that put the country first, is as vital to our survival...
9:40 "we all fight entropy, even nuclear missiles" 💀. The significance of the passage of time.
The cost of the new nukes is astronomical because of the 90k bag of bushings. Corruption is some sick shit.
Hey, the American people let this happen by not paying attention and thus not voting out people doing it. Politicians are a force of nature, America at least had a means to tame it.
@@rh906 You don't vote OUT people, just in
“We must not allow… a doomsday gap!” Gen. Buck Turgidson c.1964
I thought we were past that and on to not allowing a mineshaft gap.
Here in Missouri surrounding Whiteman AFB there were many ICBM silos. Refer to movie: The Day After. When the ICBMs were removed and the B-2s moved in, all the property owners and farmers were allowed to harvest all the copper cables to all the silos. These cables were inches in diameter and represented an immense amount of copper 7-10 feet below the surface. Owners made thousands of dollars!!!
"But first, I'd like to make an awkward segue"