An interesting and quite detailed look at Russia’s failing economy. Could lead to more problems in Europe as Putin may attack somewhere elsewhere to divert attention
I’m always reminded of the words of Gerald Celente:
When all else fails, they take you to War
It might suit a few Western leaders given the state of some economies!
IMO, that would be foolish of him. Ukraine is sucking all of his resources already. Opening another front elsewhere will just hasten his failure.
His only hope is to get the West to stop supporting Ukraine. Or going nuclear (which is an entirely different can of worms). He threatens the latter, but I don’t think even he is stupid enough to think that will improve his situation. So he’s trying to encourage the former.
Also, he has almost no neighbors that aren’t in NATO at this point. Attacking any one of them would seal his doom. Even without the US, NATO could crush him at this point.
More likely, Ukraine will force him to give up. They can’t achieve military victory. But they can make it so that it’s not worth it to Putin to remain. Then Putin just has to spin it to claim he achieved some fictional goals, and get his people to buy it.
It would be very foolish but people do foolish things all the time, especially politicians! As for nuclear strikes, again unlikely, but a few days ago I came across this strange headline from Norway’s defence minister:
Russia is amassing nuclear weapons and attack submarines in the Arctic Circle as it prepares for war with Nato, Norway’s defence minister has warned.
Putin’s been bluffing The West for some time. It’s not working too well any more so he may just try to do something radical, something along the lines of ‘if I’m going down you are coming with me’.
I once read Sun Tzu’s book “The Art of War” where he wrote:
“Build your opponents a golden bridge to retreat across.”
Might be worth thinking about!
The Brics want the US to fight wars right now. POSSIBLY. If we get into wars with Iran and VZ among others we use up our weapons based on RRE. China can stop delivery of RRE and its products also often made in China for our military. We’d still be using up our weapons.
BRICs would roll us over.
I happened on this one today. Anybody know how this might work?
Nuclear tipped? I get. Nuclear powered? How would that work? Seems like a heavy lift.
“Oceania was at war with Eastasia: Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.”
It replaced chemical propellant with a smaller mass of fissionable material.
Wouldn’t that limit range because of the need for liquid hydrogen? And wouldn’t the exhaust also be slightly radioactive?
JimA
I’m not a rocket engineer. However, applying some physics, I would say “not necessarily” to the first, and “probably” to the second.
It ejects the propellant at a much higher velocity. So you can use it to get more thrust (to lift more or just go faster), or you can use less to lift less or go a bit slower, but increase your range. It’s all about mv of the propellant and m(r)v(r) of the rocket.
Not sure I understand. Some of the articles I was reading were mentioning this has unlimited range and could loiter for days. It would seem to me if the missile is using liquid hydrogen for propellant, this would be a limiting factor for range or time aloft.
JimA
As I understand it, it’s a matter of how much fuel you burn per unit time. The nuclear material superheats the propellant, ejecting it out the back at extreme velocity. So you need to use less of it to attain a given velocity for the missile compared to ordinary chemical rocketry.
I don’t know about days, but if you have it cruising very slowly, it wouldn’t use that much propellant, and could circle around for a while. I guess it’s a matter of how much propellant you store on-board, and how big/heavy the missile is.