It is bad enough to have Donald Trump wallowing in military grandiosity, talking about his ‘big button’ and military parades, now Russian president Vladimir Putin is making grandiose claims about having an ‘invincible nuclear weapon’.
Mr Putin made the claims as he laid out his key policies for a fourth presidential term, ahead of an election he is expected to win in 17 days’ time.
The weapons he boasted of included a cruise missile that he said could “reach anywhere in the world”.
He said of the West: “They need to take account of a new reality and understand … [this]… is not a bluff.”
Giving his annual state of the nation speech, Mr Putin used video presentations to showcase the development of two new nuclear delivery systems that he said could evade detection. One video graphic appeared to show missiles raining down on the US state of Florida.
One system Mr Putin described included a “low-flying, difficult-to-spot cruise missile… with a practically unlimited range and an unpredictable flight path, which can bypass lines of interception and is invincible in the face of all existing and future systems of both missile defence and air defence”.
Another was a submarine-launched, long-range missile capable of delivering a nuclear warhead.
…Standing in front of a giant video screen, President Putin showcased Russia’s very latest strategic weapons. Like a magician pulling one rabbit after another out of his hat, he wowed his audience with images of cruise missiles, intercontinental ballistic missiles, underwater drones and supersonic jets.
This kind of ‘missile gap’ talk is what is used to justify massive military spending at the expense of worthwhile programs and given Trump’s childishness, you can expect him to demand that he too have an ‘invincible weapon’. We are going to have Star Wars talk all over again.
Thanks for nothing, Vladmir!
The Dragon’s Tales says it sounds like Project Pluto from the early 1960s.
I bet Putin isn’t precisely wrong, he’s just leaving out a few steps there. I gather intercepting missiles is hard and very error-prone. So he has a missile that’s immune to being stopped. Which doesn’t really distinguish it from any other missile. It can reach anywhere on the globe. That also sounds pretty reasonable. If it has a range of a couple thousand miles it can reach just about anywhere from a naval vessel or since their country is huge and spans two continents, they move it within their borders to reach a pretty wide area.
Doesn’t this just sounds like a cruise missile? Like the stuff our military was showing off in the first Gulf war ~25 years ago?
Vladimir should read the MAD manual again, carefully this time.
I also expect him to come up with a nuclear defence system that is impenetratable by all existing and future missile systems.
According to Rachel Maddow, the animation of the missile strike on Florida is several years old (I wanna say 6, but am not sure of that). I feel this is all likely bluster on Putin’s part. He so much wants Russia to be the superpower it was in the Soviet days. But this is very dangerous, particularly with Trump in the equation. This is priming the pump for a new Cold War.
@4 deepak shetty
Trump will have the best missile defense system. The very best. [/sarcasm]
Vlad would love for the US to believe him and throw much more money into the military. Enough that it would drain the country of any ability to do anything else. Finally bankrupting the US and leaving the citizenry as third-world peasants. And 45 is stupid enough to fall for it.