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OT: World Politics

MindzEye said:
I mean, it appears that they've invented a style of missile the US has been using since like the 60's (ICBM that delivers multiple warheads)....so yeah.
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Yeah, the most sophisticated version of this is called a MIRV’d ICBM. “Multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicle”.

One missile with several warheads that can all be directed towards different targets. The US and Soviets have both had them in their arsenals since the 60’s. China, France, the UK, India, Israel & Pakistan have them as well.

With a MIRV’d ICBM, a single ballistic missile could deliver accurately targeted warheads to several different targets anywhere in Ukraine.

Though it doesn’t even look like that’s what Russia fired here. From the video, it looked like the MIRV’d ICBM’s lil bro, an MRV ballistic missile. It’s an ICBM that carries multiple warheads as well, but they aren’t individually targetable. So it’s more like a fancy, extra-expensive cluster bomb.
 
lecoqsportif said:
They don’t want to give in, they want to align with him.
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They're pushing the world towards an era of nuclear proliferation. Poland, Ukraine, South Korea, Japan are the easy and obvious ones who could have a working warhead within months if they decided to. If that genie gets out of the bottle I'd be surprised if Brazil, Mexico, Canada, Finland, Sweden, and a few others didn't follow.
 
Wayward DP said:
so mostly more smoke and mirrors. good to know
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Yep. It’s quite a long ways from being a demonstration of some terrifying new technology.

Though the main thing that sucks for Ukraine, even for an MRV missile, is that with humanity’s current technical abilities, there is no way to defend against them and shoot them down. Even the newest, most advanced missile defense systems in the world designed specifically for that purpose are fucking useless, pretty much.

You have a window of a few minutes at most where the missile might be visible to tracking in its hot/ascent stage, and you have a 0.0001% chance of shooting it down in you happen to have assets in range.

But once the missile goes ballistic and the warheads release, that’s basically it as far as any ability to even track them goes.

So hopefully Russia doesn’t have too many of these in their arsenal.
 
LeafGm said:
Yep. It’s quite a long ways from being a demonstration of some terrifying new technology.

Though the main thing that sucks for Ukraine, even for an MRV missile, is that with humanity’s current technical abilities, there is no way to defend against them and shoot them down. Even the newest, most advanced missile defense systems in the world designed specifically for that purpose are fucking useless, pretty much.

You have a window of a few minutes at most where the missile might be visible to tracking in its hot/ascent stage, and you have a 0.0001% chance of shooting it down in you happen to have assets in range.

But once the missile goes ballistic and the warheads release, that’s basically it as far as any ability to even track them goes.

So hopefully Russia doesn’t have too many of these in their arsenal.
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Their utility is mostly psychological. I mean, they fucking explode when they run into things so there's obvious functional/strategic benefit in letting them off the chain but ICBM warheads are smaller in payload than conventional warheads on weapons like JDAMs or glidebombs (by a fucking lot...like 4-8x smaller). The point of firing off an expensive ass ICBM is to make a big boom with a nuclear warhead. Using them to scatter 3 250km conventional warheads is pretty fucking stupid. Russian and US costs obviously aren't 1 to 1, but similar weapons in the US inventory cost 100-150 million a piece. The much smaller Kinzhal apparently costs Russia 10 million per unit, so a reasonable estimate is probably 50-100 million per unit.

For a country teetering on the brink of insolvency, that's a lot of money to spend to hit Dnipro with a few 250kg conventional warheads. Seems more like a "throw the fucking sink at them" move meant to project strength and create fear than anything else.
 
If those charts are accurate, then yeah, they have a problem. Corporate balance sheets are a mess and the market has (rather suddenly) priced in a gigantic premium on debt refinancing, which apparently will be quite a lot in the early part of 2025.

Options aren’t palatable. Bankruptcies. Inflation/deficits if they bail them out (depends on how they bail them out.) Maybe something else? Nationalize? That’s a bail out in another name.

It’s a mess.
 
lecoqsportif said:
If those charts are accurate, then yeah, they have a problem. Corporate balance sheets are a mess and the market has (rather suddenly) priced in a gigantic premium on debt refinancing, which apparently will be quite a lot in the early part of 2025.

Options aren’t palatable. Bankruptcies. Inflation/deficits if they bail them out (depends on how they bail them out.) Maybe something else? Nationalize? That’s a bail out in another name.

It’s a mess.
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Yeah, good luck refinancing significant corporate debt in an environment where the central bank struggles to unload bonds at 21% variable
 
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