The Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed

More weapons more quickly. This is what I want.

I'm sure they will be used for good.

/s

I'm sure there are good reasons for this, and the approach doesn't seem totally unreasonable, to be fair. I'm just personally woefully unequipped to understand how to deploy weapons humanely and morally, and naively think less weapons is better. Thankfully there are adults in the room making these decisions for me...

>deploy weapons humanely and morally

A bit of an oxymoron there wouldn't you say?

>naively think less weapons is better

This I agree with. We should really only have a few dozen nuclear weapons, and nothing more. The whole point is to have a clear line of "DO NOT FUCKING CROSS AT ALL", and that's it. You cross us? We nuke you. We don't bother you, you don't bother us unless you want to face nuclear annihilation. Seems to work for North Korea.

> You cross us? We nuke you. We don't bother you, you don't bother us unless you want to face nuclear annihilation. Seems to work for North Korea.

I think this is interesting on a few levels.

One issue with North Korea is that they have an enormous number of uneducated, malnourished citizens that no country can reasonably absorb. I feel that the potential chaos from the fall of NK was part of the brinkmanship that led to them getting nuclear capabilities.

Second, if you only have nuclear weapons then you lose a lot of tactical possibilities (bunker busting bombs for example) and you lose the ability to dial up/down aggression as we've seen with Russia.

In all, I think have a continuum of force options is rational. What is scary is that this continuum may no longer involve soldiers - and if there's no risk of soldiers' dying, force projection becomes a lot 'cheaper' in a political sense.

> You cross us? We nuke you.

It's a nice theory, but it works only if every act of war is clearly an act of total war and there's a responsible party to nuke. Who were we supposed to nuke after 9/11? Who do we nuke if the next big North Korean hack takes out Microsoft instead of Sony? Or if it disrupts the US power grid for a week? Who do we nuke if Russia props up the regime in Iran and Iran props up a terror group that attacks our close ally?

That's the thing: nuclear wars appear to have a good track record of preventing conventional war in the mold of "we show up at your border with tanks". But it doesn't prevent the kinds of conflicts in which nuking another country might not be a defensible reaction.

The threat only works in an existential crisis. As in, if you legitimately attempt to destroy our government then we will nuke you. Using nuclear weapons successfully in a war that doesn't result in a full exchange between all super powers demonstrates the feasibility of limited nuclear war which is just nuclear armageddon in slow motion. Nations (and the earth) want to avoid that just as much as a full nuclear exchange.