Russia launches arms race with new intercontinental ballistic missile

Russia is developing a replacement for the world’s most devastating intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) in a move that risks reviving a global nuclear arms race.

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Back in the early 80′s when the arms race was heating up debate raged around the possible deployment of the US’s MX or Peacekeeper missile. The Peacekeeper was going to be “a new mega-missile loaded with 10 multiple independently targeted re-entry vehicles or MIRVs.”

This, to paraphrase the MSM at the time, was an extremely dangerous development in the arms race driven by “crazy” Reagan who was bound and determined to get us into a nuclear war with the USSR.

Being in high school at the time and not really wanting to die in a nuclear holocaust I began to research the arsenals of both the US and the USSR. Our library was limited forcing me to bike to the public library (where by roaming the aisles I began my love affair with literature and knowledge but that is another story) because it was something I obsessed over, I was really scared there would be a war.

After a few Saturday afternoons studying the fairly arcane, for a high school student anyway, language of the arms race I was becoming very knowledgeable with regard to ICBMs, SLBMs, SSBNs, B-1s and Backfire bombers, etc. in addition to nuclear warhead numbers, missile throw weights and warhead yields. What was developing in my mind was a very disturbing picture, the MSM was not telling the while story. In fact you could say they were being downright deceptive in the way they were reporting.

But to tie the above with today’s story. In my early research I came across information about a Soviet missile system called the SS-18 or Satan missile as NATO called it. I was horrified. This missile was truly a monster and not only did it dwarf any US missile deployed at the time it even dwarfed the “new US super missile, the MX”. The SS-18 could carry 10 warheads of 500 to 750 kiloton yeild compared to the US’s Minuteman III missile that carried 3 warheads of 330 kilotons. There really was no comparison. The Soviet’s had 308 of these monster missiles that I soon learned could probably wipeout the US’s Minuteman missile force in a surprise first strike. But that is not all the Soviets also had SS-17s and SS-19s (also larger than Minuteman) and were developing their own slightly larger version of MX, the SS-24. It was the SS-18, however, that became the “bogeyman” of the West.

When the Cold War ended systems like the SS-18 were “obsoleted” by events and their numbers reduced accordingly (the US also got rid of its’ MX missiles of which only 50 were ever deployed mainly because the Democrats in Congress constantly withheld funding for more and wanted future deployments “studied”)

So fast forward to today and ask yourself, “In today’s “Obama reset button New Start” era of peace and love”, why would the Russians be wasting precious defense resources developing a replacement for what many believed to be the most powerful and destabalizing weapon of the Cold War?

Why indeed? Here’s the rest of the story:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/8260460/Russia-launches-arms-race-with-new-intercontinental-ballistic-missile.html

Postscript to this, I have not yet come across this being reported in the US. It’s like I am back in the 80′s with the media once again hiding critical information that would “go against” the popular meme that New Start was a huge success for Obama and is ushering in a new age of peace with the Russians.