Sizzler Missile Story Hits a Nerve
The Sizzler missile story posted first on Bloomberg.com hit a nerve and sparked a wave of comments around the blogasphere.
Most of the comments were from Americans, as one might expect since the story was about the possibility of American aircraft carriers being vulnerable to Sizzler missile attacks. Most comments were quite aggressive in tone. A quick summary of the comments is “if we are attacked we would nuke them back into the stone age”.
Many say that any nation that has the poor judgment to attack one of our aircraft carrier battle groups would pay a heavy price. That would be certainly true. The US would strike back hard. However, even a limited scale nuclear response against the offending nation would likely be a disaster for all.
For one thing clouds of radioactive debris from any attack would circle the earth and likely endanger human life in scores of friendly and non offending nations including America. The long term “collateral” damage from large amounts of radioactive fallout would be difficult for military planners to predict.
For another, if China attacked Taiwan, and then attacked with Sizzler missiles an American aircraft carrier battle group defending Taiwan, an American response using nuclear weapons against China would trigger a certain and terrible response.
China is a huge nation. No matter how massive our initial strike would be the Chinese would be able to launch a strike against the US from remote hardened locations that would be devastating. Both nations would suffer greatly for many generations. Going nuclear is not an option that would present anyone with a favorable outcome.
The issue of the US becoming involved in defending Taiwan against a Chinese attack is a sticky one for any US administration. While the US has pledged on many occasions to defend Taiwan against any attack by China in fact our options to honor that pledge may be limited. With our armed forces tied down in Iraq and Afghanistan this might be one pledge that we could not honor.
Some idea of the magnitude of the disaster that any use of nuclear weapons would present can be gleaned from the Soviet Chernobyl accident of 1986. The explosion of the reactor in Chernobyl, the greatest industrial disaster in the history of humankind, released one hundred times more radiation than the atom bombs dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
More than 20 years after the accident vast areas surrounding Chernobyl are still classified as being contaminated. And this catastrophe was caused by less than a full scale nuclear explosion.
The use of nuclear weapons is something everyone on the face of this planet should want to avoid. Modern nuclear weapons are far more powerful than those used against the Japanese at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. According to new computer modeling forecast even a small scale exchange of these most terrible of all weapons would likely trigger a nuclear winter lasting several years.
Millions of people would die and the earth as we know it would be transformed into a hostile environment. A nuclear exchange of any size is not a preferred way to solve our global warming challenge.
What is disturbing to me is over the past few years I have seen many aggressive “nuke them” comments coming from Americans who comment about international relations, politics, and current events. Hopefully this mentally never seeps into the thinking of those who may someday be required to make judgments as to what type of response is appropriate in case the US is ever again attacked in a serious way.
However, the fact that many Americans seem to think that the use of nuclear weapons is an acceptable option in a crisis situation is frightening. At the very least such thinking shows an ignorance as to how life for all life forms on earth would be impacted by even a small scale use of nuclear weapons.
Sizzler missile or not let’s hope that the theory of a nuclear winter, and the effects that clouds of radioactive dust falling onto wide spread regions of the earth would have, is never put to the test.
These weapons are truly evil.
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Americans are very quick to say – we’ll omb em to the stone age, or we’ll nuke em. We are figthing Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Iran, Syria, Gaza and very soon we can add Venesuale and Russia.
How many countries well we be figthing within the next 5 years? I don’t mind figthing these countries….everybody likes a good war, but is there any plan? Or is there any benefit to be gained? I think it’s time we be compensated for our war efforts….can we plunder….please?
I have been paying attention, as much as I can with limited access to info, to the “Sizzler Missile” issue. My hopes are that the Chinese and any other nations that may posses the Sizzler have not the expirience to utilize it to an efficient result, that we have a viable solution that is not being advertised and if an enemy ever deploys the thing and it is able to do that for which it is designed that we strike a devestating blow to that sactioning nation with such ferosity that the world will fear us again.
However, I agree that the use of nuclear weapons, though immediately demonstrating outrage, strength and tenacity would certainly impart far reaching global effects that may not be acceptable in retrospect.
I believe Iran will be the major offender in the arena of these topics. All that having been said, it would be great, if our nation could develop more men that are willing to fight for our freedom, more leaders with less personal agenda and a national pride that would strengthen our resolve and weaken our enemies. San Tsu “The Art of War” should be required reading so that men can understand war and/or their station relative to it.
Hello TechyRob,
Thank you for your thoughful comments.
It may be that the US Navy has by now deployed an effective anti “sizzer” missile type of defense that as you say is not advertised. Let’s hope so. The Navy has had a few years to be working on it.
Even one successful strike at an American aircraft carrier by a sizzler missile would cause terrible consequences. The prospects of going nuclear, in my opinion, would be high. Better that we are able to destroy the things as they fly rather than risk an immediate escalation into the nuclear unknown.
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