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Politics Government News

Last Peacekeeper Deactivated 64

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the no-more-big-stick-just-speak-softly dept.
Inthewire writes "The United States Air Force deactivated the last of 50 Peacekeeper missiles yesterday. The Peacekeeper was an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile capable of accurately placing a 300 Kt W-87 warhead on ten individual targets."
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Last Peacekeeper Deactivated More

Last Peacekeeper Deactivated

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  • Hmm, what to do with 50 deactivated missles... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 21, 2005 @04:22AM (#13611922)
    Ebay dutch auction?

  • In other news... (Score:3, Funny)

    by MarkusQ ( 450076 ) on Wednesday September 21, 2005 @04:29AM (#13611945) Journal

    In other news, officals proudly announced a new line of "war causer" missles, capable of spreading fear, hate and missinformation to everyone on the planet in seconds.

    They claimed that the new system, though quantitatively more expensive than the peacekeepers, was scrumulously cheaper. And that price didn't matter, since it could be paid for with an agressive series of tax cuts. And if it did turn out to be expensive, the blaim lay with state and local officials for not asking for the system sooner.

    When asked how the news system differed from the existing network of communications satilites, a spokesperson wailed "Won't somebody think of the children?" while the reporter was dragged from the room by Homeland Security.

    There were no further questions.

    --MarkusQ

    • Although sort of funny, it does make me wonder what new weapons the military has. Obviously these missiles served some purpose, according ot the article, they "won" the Cold War, so I have no doubt that there's something worse waiting in the wings.

      • Re:In other news... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by MindStalker ( 22827 ) <mindstalker AT gmail DOT com> on Wednesday September 21, 2005 @08:25AM (#13612860) Journal
        MAD (Mutually assured destruction) doesn't win wars against terrorist groups. Our new weapons are percise GPS guided small tactical missles. You can be sure we are keeping some warheads in waiting incase a new superpower emerges. But for now these weapons are pointless.
        • One sided destruction could win wars against terrorist groups- you have very few terrorists left if you kill everybody they ever knew.

          I morn the loss of our ability to destroy a city on the other side of the planet without sending troops- because in the end, that will be the only thing that stops terrorism.

        • Re:In other news... (Score:3, Interesting)

          by maraist ( 68387 ) *
          Our new weapons are percise GPS guided small tactical missles.

          The problem is two fold:

          1) A weapon used is a useless weapon. If you have to use a weapon, it obvously is not a strong enough deterrent to a war.

          2) Targeted weapon systems rely on continuous communication back to home base. Yes there are backup systems (such as geographical pattern matching), but this is only on a subset of arsonal, and these systems are less reliable and easier to fool.

          While a terrorist group isn't a major strategic threat ou
          • 1) A weapon used is a useless weapon. If you have to use a weapon, it obvously is not a strong enough deterrent to a war.

            If your enemy is eliminated by the weapon, the enemy is no longer a threat -- a weapon that accomplishes that in the small or the large is certainly not "useless".

            While a terrorist group isn't a major strategic threat outside of their home environment, there are still rogue nations, most of which are within grasp of the power to knock out our GPS satellites one way or another.

            Once y

    • When asked how the news system differed from the existing network of communications satilites, a spokesperson wailed "Won't somebody think of the children?" while the reporter was dragged from the room by Homeland Security.

      You forgot to include: "if you feel the need to ask that question then the terrorists have already won".

  • without comment (Score:4, Insightful)

    by asjk ( 569258 ) * on Wednesday September 21, 2005 @04:32AM (#13611953)
    Date of Berlin Wall falling [wikipedia.org] November 9, 1989

    Date and cost of final deployment (from TFA second source)

    Despite years of work, by July 1987 Northrop Electronics Division had succeeded in delivering only a small number of usable INS units. Up to one-third of the silo-emplaced force had no guidance system.
    In January 1988 20 missiles were finally operations, and by December 1988 all 50 MX missiles (with guidance systems) had been deployed.

    The cost of procuring a Peacekeeper missile (the "flyaway" cost) was only about $20 million (FY 82). The total cost of the program was approximately $20 billion however, at a pro-rated cost of $400 million per operational missile, or $40 million per deployed warhead. A total of 114 Peacekeepr missiles were produced (due to the need for test missiles and spares).

    • Re:without comment (Score:3, Informative)

      by TomSawyer ( 100674 )
      Date of Berlin Wall falling November 9, 1989

      Date and cost of final deployment

      What's your point? The CCCP trying to keep up with those kinds of numbers was a contributing factor to the fall of the wall.

      • What's your point? The CCCP trying to keep up with those kinds of numbers was a contributing factor to the fall of the wall.

        I think that's it. Some analysts feel they essentially went bankrupt. Between the MX, the Space Shuttle, the B2, etc. etc. etc. the capitalist society could just out-produce and the Kremlin felt a need to keep parity. Reagan certainly egged them on and Gorbechev may have allowed it to happen.

      • Re:without comment (Score:5, Insightful)

        by coaxial ( 28297 ) on Wednesday September 21, 2005 @01:12PM (#13615446) Homepage
        First off, the point is, the MX couldn't have contributed to the collapse, since the numbers they had to "keep up with" was 5, when the Soviet Union already had hundreds of missles stockpiled. There was no threat to counter.

        The Soviet Union collapsed under its own weight. Ronald Reagan had nothing to do with it. The belief that he won the Cold War basically hinges on Reagan saying, "Mr. Gorbechev, tear down this wall!", and then Gorby saying, "Holy shit! Better do what the Gipper says, or he'll sick Bonzo [imdb.com] on us!"

        The real cause of the collapse has more to do with the intrinsic inefficiencies in command economies. Especially command economies where the commands are enforced under penalty of death. The Kremlin tells you to make 50 widgets for 10 rubles each, you'll make 50 widgets and say they cost 10 rubles each. The may have cost 12, but you're sure as hell aren't going to say that, since you'll be sent off the gulag for failure. So produce them for a loss. Repeat across pretty much all sectors of the economy, and repeat for 70 years, and of course the economy is going to fail. Why do you think China is now effectively a capitalist economy?

        Did Reagan's SDI (aka "Star Wars") plan have anything to do with Soviet collapse? Not according to the Gorbechev and the KGB. When SDI was announced, Gorby asked if it was a threat, and the KGB said no. They (rightfully) said that any antiballistic missle system has intrinsic engineering challenges that the US couldn't overcome with the technology currently available, or even available in the near term. And effective countermeasures to the proposed systems were already available. But most damning of all, the cheapest countermeasure would be to simply overwhelm the defenses by launching more missles in the first wave.

        I remember the fall of the Iron Curtain. Yeltsin on the tank out side the Russian White House. The tanks rolling in. The crowds surrounding the tanks, and talking to the tank crews. Then watching the tanks turn around and defend Yeltsin. I remember the second wave of tanks, also being stopped by the crowds, and the previous tank crews. It was remarkable that no one died in '91, ala Tiananmen in '89.

        It was confusing. It was scary. No one. No one knew what was going on in Russia. The Baltics broke away in less than a week. Then Ukraine, and then everyone else. The press didn't know what was happening. The public didn't know. The US government sure as hell didn't know.

        A couple of years ago I was friends with the guy from Moscow who was my age, and I asked him about the collapse. I asked him what happened. I told him I watched it on live television, and no one knew what was actually happening. We knew the events, but no the larger picture. I told him that to this day, I am still mystified to why it collapsed when it did, and how it did. What did he tell me? "I have no idea either."

        If you absolutely have to say who one the Cold War for the West, there's really only one choice. Mikhail Gorbachev. His Glastnost and Perestroika effected the internal dynamic of the Soviet Union, more than nukes in Wyoming ever did. In all honesty, the west should have realized how perilous the situation in the Soviet Union was when it was revealed that Gorbachev's wife, Raisa, had an American Express card.
        • I completely agree w/ the economic synopsis you give. I'll just add my small bit of extra info.

          My wife is Armenian, and her countrymen claim [at least partial] responsibility for the fall of the CCCP. Basically the satelite states were in financial distress, and receiving less and less prioritized resources from the Kremlin. Armenia and a few other Soviet blocks were land-locked. The CCCP made use of distributated manufacturing. When building a widget, each member state was responsible for making some

        • Re:without comment (Score:4, Insightful)

          by gilroy ( 155262 ) on Thursday September 22, 2005 @06:19AM (#13620231) Homepage Journal
          Blockquoth the poster:

          The real cause of the collapse has more to do with the intrinsic inefficiencies in command economies.

          Exactly. That's why the collapse of the Soviet Union was followed in short order by the collapse of Cuba, North Korea, and China, all of whom also transformed themselves into fledgling if flawed democracies.

          Oh, wait...

          Reagan didn't cause the collapse. But to say that the economic and military policies had no effect is just nonsense.
          • Exactly. That's why the collapse of the Soviet Union was followed in short order by the collapse of Cuba, North Korea, and China, all of whom also transformed themselves into fledgling if flawed democracies.

            Oh, wait...

            The notion that all we had to do was sell people Big Macs and then they'd become democracies is, and always was, a lie. It was a fraud perpetrated by those who wanted to take advantage of cheap labor and lax labor and enviornmental laws. There was never any evidence that wanting material goo
            • Blockquoth the poster:

              Truly a beacon for communism the world over.

              Wow, did you miss the point. The grandparent post indicated that the Soviet Union fell apart solely under the weight of central planning and that the Reagan policies played no role. I was making the point -- through sarcasm, which apparently you missed -- that if central planning alone were enough to propel a nation into a law-based democracy, we'd have seen the same happen to North Korea, Cuba, and China. And of course none of those three

              • I am the grandparent.

                I'm saying that internal economics was the primary cause for the collapse of the Soviet Union, and communist regimes throughout eastern Europe. I don't think that's really under dispute here.

                It sounds like you're sayint that Reagan's poilicies was the little extra that was needed to shove them to emergening democracies. If this is the what you are saying, then I disagree. Reagan's policy towards the USSR was primarily an unprecedented peacetime millitary build up. That really isn't
        • Did Reagan's SDI (aka "Star Wars") plan have anything to do with Soviet collapse? Not according to the Gorbechev and the KGB. When SDI was announced, Gorby asked if it was a threat, and the KGB said no. They (rightfully) said that any antiballistic missle system has intrinsic engineering challenges that the US couldn't overcome with the technology currently available, or even available in the near term. And effective countermeasures to the proposed systems were already available. But most damning of all, th
          • The USSR spent about 40% of it's budget on the military.

            You're right. But it has more to do with the priorities of a communist (especially Stalinist and Maoist) states, rather than any 1980s American military policy.
        • I think I can try to answer WHY it collapsed, having lived through it.

          The fact of the matter is, most people in the Soviet Union didn't really like Communism. Even people in government. It was a self-perpetuating political party. The status quo. You had to obey, because you knew you'd be punished. And the people who did the punishing had to do their job because that's just how it worked. It was their job.

          When the perestroika and glastnost came about in the early 80s, there were significant advancements in f

  • Nice timing... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by kliklik ( 322798 ) on Wednesday September 21, 2005 @04:34AM (#13611956) Homepage
    since today is The International Day of Peace [worldpeace.org].

  • Gotta love that Ministry of Truth (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "Peacekeeper". Right. War is peace indeed.

    • Re:Gotta love that Ministry of Truth (Score:5, Insightful)

      by aelbric ( 145391 ) on Wednesday September 21, 2005 @05:35AM (#13612110)
      Unfortunately, nations today only practice what has been known since Roman times:

      Si vis pacem para bellum

      "If you desire peace, prepare for war"

      Don't blame it on dogma, blame it on human nature.


      • Si vis pacem para bellum

        My father flew planes for the Strategic Air Command (the branch of the US Air Force that deploys bombers and missles). I grew up reading the SAC motto posted at the entrance to most of their bases: "Peace Is Our Profession".

        Probably would have sounded even better in Latin.


      • Wasn't it Einstein who said "You cannot prepare for peace and war simutaneously"?
      • Don't blame it on dogma, blame it on human nature.

        I hate the phrase "Human nature". It's nature period. Dogs and even roaches have the same tactics that we commonly deamonize in our war-mongering leaders.

        If anything the only distinctly human elements are those that require at least 2 orders of abstraction. Namely the concepts of civil disobediance and "turning the other cheeck". This constitutes a direct passive aggressive response to an aggressive act. It's very hard to do, and the motiviations requir
    • It takes greater force to prevent a war than it does to win one. The fact that the US had the capability to annhialate a large city anywhere in the world at a moments notice was a huge deterant to hostile nations that may have considered military action against the US.

  • Obligatory... (Score:2, Funny)

    by mrhale ( 872484 )
    In Soviet Russia, nuclear missile deactivates YOU!
  • does this mean more more cool hidy holes to plan world domination ?
    http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20010815& mode=classic [userfriendly.org]
    http://itotd.com/index.alt?ArticleID=282 [itotd.com]
  • The MX was obsolete before it entered service due to the accuracy, survivability and range of the Trident (submarine launched ICBM). I look forward to the day when nuclear weapons are no longer required to hold the relative peace.
    • Agreed the MX was mostly a dangerous invitation for the Soviets to strike first. But it still formed an important leg of the tripod if the oceans suddenly went transparant.

      The whole idea of stability is not perfect members, but enough of them so that if one fails, the others can carry the balance. The very heavy reliance the US has/d on nukes.

    • Why not,as long as they are never fired?

      I think the Cold War could have ended a lot worse than it did. But because of nuclear deterrents, a balance was established and then the country who went bankrupt first, lost the stand-off.

      Also, if nuclear weapons haven't been available, there would've been other weapons to replace it. For example, there would've been a very wide proliferatoin of biological and chemical weapons, as well as conventional millitary. There would have been a need to have a much larger

    • I wouldn't quibble too much about a few meters of accuracy on a 300kT warhead. If you can hit a football field, it doesn't matter much which endzone you're in (of course, the other half of the vehicles fall outside the CEP, but that's by definition). The real idea was not to have the best technology everywhere. It was redundancy. Notice that with the PK deactivated, our sole land-based "strategic deterrent" is the even older Minuteman III. The SERV program is now working on retrofitting the W-87s from
  • wow 71 foot tall, 8 diametere and 10 warheads.

    The only problem I have with the article is it didn't win the Cold War, it did help us in it. But the only way we "won" the cold war was not by our hand. When the USSR was falling apart and the end was nigh, it was by the grace of god that the leaders of the falling communist state, didn't just say "fuck it" and launch their missles.

    It was by their work, not our work that the end was peaceful as it was, at that point it wasn't a deterent because look at them no
    • But the only way we "won" the cold war was not by our hand.

      Apparently, you don't listen to talk radio. Don't you know that Ronald Reagan was the reason we won the cold war?
    • You're buying into the propaganda that communists are all automatically evil horrible people. The fact that the leaders of Russia didn't say "fuck it" and launch all their missiles has less to do with the grace of god and more to do with the fact that they were reasonable and intelligent people. Not to say that Russia didn't have some crazy rulers (Stalin was a complete nutcase), but living in communist russia did not automatically make you an insane lunatic.

      If that were the case, we never would've made it

  • Farscape??? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Zemrec ( 158984 ) on Wednesday September 21, 2005 @09:13AM (#13613352)
    Am I the only one who first thought of Farscape instead of Cold War era nukes?

    Come on people!
  • When I was in fifth grade I lived near Vandenberg Air Force Base, where they would regularly test rockets and missiles. One of the groundskeepers pointed out a Peacekeeper (informing us of the name in the process). Even then, I wondered to myself: How are missiles designed to keep the peace?

  • Ballot Box Bunny (Score:3, Funny)

    by meta-monkey ( 321000 ) on Wednesday September 21, 2005 @01:37PM (#13615659) Journal
    First thing I thought of when I saw the dept. this story came from.

    Bugs Bunny: I speak softly, but I carry a big stick!
    Yosemite Sam: Oh yeah? Well I speak loouuud, and I carry a biiigger stick! And I use it too!
    • But how could you not think of this?

      Dr. S - The whole point of the doomsday machine is lost . . . if you keep it a secret! Why didn't you tell the world, ay?!
  • Before the MX "peace keeper," if the Soviets saw a blip on their radar it could have been nothing, or maybe 10 nukes coming their way. If it was 10 nukes, that would be bad, but hardly affect their ability to respond with hundreds of misiles.

    With the introduction of the "Peace Keeper" with 10 warheads in Multiple Independent Re-entry Vehicles (MIRVs, thus 10 MIRVs = MX) that blip could mean nothing, or ten missiles with enough warhead to lay waste to every major city and military target in the USSR, Thus
    • First of all, we wouldn't launch just one missile at a time and it's ignorance to think so. The Peacekeeper name was picked because it was to keep the peace through deterence. Nobody would dare to attack the US with these missiles in place, thus keeping the peace. As for terrorism, it's been used for hundreds of years, primarily by fundamental extermist. Today, it is used overwhemingly by Muslim extremist. We just stirred up the Iraqi hornets nest and now it's a mess that has to be dealt with.
      • You completely missed the point of everything, and for bonus points you didn't even read what I wrote and then called ME ignorant.

        Where did I say we would fire 1?

        How did having 10 warheads on 50 missiles make a difference in DETERENCE when we already had 2000+ missiles? Is there some tipping point in MAD that I don't know about?

        As for you comments about terrorism, terrorism was barely used before Reagan capitulated to terrorists and at least half of suicide bombers are secular, not muslim extremists.

        Talkin
  • "Last Peacekeeper Deactivated"

    I know that Bolton isn't too fond of the UN, but who would have thought he'd be so quickly effective at shutting down so many major UN operations?
  • Now we'll never meet the Vulcans!

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