81–90 of 145 posts
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Really? I thought that Kennedy's secret agreement to trade the Jupiter missiles in Turkey for the Soviet missiles in Cuba was the standard ending to the story.
I don't recall ever hearing that.
Under result: "Withdrawal of American nuclear missiles from Turkey and Italy"
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Aren't most/all airplanes, missiles, etc... operated by the Turkish military from the U.S.? Doesn't the U.S. have the capability to disable them remotely?
No, the US doesn't export its armaments with any sort of remote disabling functionality, who would buy arms like that?
http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/11152/can-exocet...
While still concerning, they really buried a key detail: "About two thousand U.S. military personnel remain stationed there."
Turkey has the largest standing army in the region. 600K or so. Those 2000 troops wouldn't last long enough to get the weapons out.
I don't believe there's any realistic scenario where the Turkish military would attempt to seize the bombs, but if they did do something so insane the garrison would force them into fighting and killing hundreds of NATO personnel and capturing the rest. That sets in motion an inevitable response, and one that ensures any rouge military authority in Turkey would not last long.
There's similar logic to why the US maintains a force in South Korea. They aren't expected to solely defeat a full scale attack from the North, but can directly respond to smaller aggressions. If the north did overrun them, killing US troops, there would be no domestic political debate concerning whether to respond in the US.
To put it so bluntly as to be distasteful: they're there to die.
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I think you're vastly underestimating 1st world intelligence capabilities. By the time anyone is brainstorming how exactly they want to take the base the big players in NATO already have guys sitting in jets idling on the taxiway, an aircraft carrier is taking a hard turn into the wind and an aide is popping popcorn and cracking a beer so Mr. Putin can enjoy the spectacle. When nukes are involved things get taken ver…
You mean the same intel which said Iraq / Iran / Libya / Syria has weapons of mass destruction? There is also a chance Israel or Russia would bomb the site, before those bombs get in wrong hands.
PS. Moreover, large quantities of mustard agent were found in Syria in 2013.
Quote "...it does not have any American or Turkish aircraft equipped to deliver them. " What kind of aircraft would be that?
>it does not have any American or Turkish aircraft equipped to deliver them. This is a lie. B-61's mount on to any NATO MIL-STD-8591 hard point. Any F-15, F-18 can mount and fire B61's without any modification.
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I think you're vastly underestimating 1st world intelligence capabilities. By the time anyone is brainstorming how exactly they want to take the base the big players in NATO already have guys sitting in jets idling on the taxiway, an aircraft carrier is taking a hard turn into the wind and an aide is popping popcorn and cracking a beer so Mr. Putin can enjoy the spectacle. When nukes are involved things get taken ver…
Then how come they are still there? If what you write is true they should have had clear warning about that coup attempt. It might have succeeded.
Because they correctly perceive there's very little risk in remaining there.
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Why would the weapons need to get out? Why wouldn't the weapons be equipped with a self-destruct, or self-disablement mechanism? Why wouldn't the US destroy the facility if there was a risk of the weapons being used?
> Why would the weapons need to get out? Non-proliferation, for one. If Turkey goes hardline Islamic and it would get its hands on those weapons that would make it yet another hard to predict factor in Middle-East politics. > Why wouldn't the weapons be equipped with a self-destruct, or self-disablement mechanism? Anything that can be added can be removed and likely such mechanisms would not work (for obvious reasons…
Surely the 2000 troops would be able to initiate a self-destruct sequence before being overtaken. I'm sure there are already protocols in place. The mechanism would likely not be remote control, but hard-wired into the facility.
>Because they were too busy saving their asses? Because raining bombs on Turkey would probably not be a better solution than getting those weapons out while it was still possible?
You posited a situation where the US troops were already overtaken. In such a situation, the US probably would have already launched a strike that would destroy the facility <30 minutes from authorization.
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I was under the impression that many nuclear bombs had arming mechanisms that required special electronics in the plane. Is that not true for the b61?
The B61 is designed to be delivered from any aircraft that can carry Mark 80-series iron bombs. Combined with the two-man rule (which means at least partial arming on the ground for a weapon launched from a single-seat aircraft), this means most of the setup needs to be done on the ground. It may be that the weapon is completely armed at that point, save for a failsafe tied to the rack that keeps the bomb from going…
"Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Arthur Hughes also tells Congress that the nuclear wiring has been removed from the planes"
Similarly when the UK withdrew its WE177 weapons the nuclear circuits were removed from the RAF's Tornados, and the Typhoon lacks them too.
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You mean the same intel which said Iraq / Iran / Libya / Syria has weapons of mass destruction? There is also a chance Israel or Russia would bomb the site, before those bombs get in wrong hands.
It is very sad that chemical weapon used by Iraq against Kurds is still not found. Moreover, it was used again year ago in Iraq against Kurds. PS. Moreover, large quantities of mustard agent were found in Syria in 2013.
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It wouldn't have to have a port. The US has had radio programmed artillery shells for a long time so using the same tech to set and arm bombs isn't a stretch.
>The US has had radio programmed artillery shells These are just proximity fuses. I can find no reference to actual communication with in-flight artillery shells. Furthermore Nuclear Artillery shells were armed when loaded. They were one of the few systems outside of the two-man rule. As a single inferior officer would arm the shell when loading it.