On Sunday, Russian state television offered an absurd argument as to how Russia would destroy the U.S. in a nuclear war.
Hosted by Dmitry Kiselyov, a hybrid of Putin sycophancy and conspiratorial anti-Americanism, state television mapped out various U.S. targets for Russian nuclear weapons. On the list were obvious locations such as the Pentagon and Camp David. But perhaps served by researchers who lack access to the Internet, Kiselyov also included nonpriority targets such as Fairchild Air Force Base and the now-defunct Fort Ritchie in his presentation. This failure of military intelligence is the first weakness in Kiselyov’s little presentation.
But the best bit came when Kiselyov started ranting about how Russian fleet ballistic missile submarines would provide the core platform for the attack. Before I explain why this element of Kiselyov’s rant is so stupid, have a quick watch. If you click the center of the video below, it will take you to the relevant time link. Watch for about 10-15 seconds.
First things first: Russian ballistic missile submarines are almost constantly trailed by U.S. attack submarines so that they can be killed before they launch an attack. But if they engage their active sonar rather than running on passive, U.S. submarines and other anti-submarine forces will be onto them in a flash. And that beeping noise in Kiselyov’s video is a representation of active sonar. Why a Russian ballistic missile submarine would want to run on active sonar in the build-up to a pre-emptive nuclear strike is not clear. But seeing as it would almost certainly guarantee (approximately 99 percent probability), the submarine’s demise, it suggests Kiselyov may be insane.
As the Navy notes, “Acoustic counter detection of active sonars can be accomplished at ranges much greater than that of the active sonar. Therefore, it is safe to assume that an adversary cannot be surprised when active systems are used unless transmission, for purposes of final precision target location, occurs immediately prior to weapon firing.”
The simple point here is that Kiselyov has made a fool out of himself while trying to be a tough guy. And in that, he has scored a perfect own-goal for Russian ultranationalism. More than that, Kiselyov has made himself a perfect partner to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent exaggerations on Russian nuclear force potential.
If Russia’s military ever launched an operation on his plan, they would suffer an even greater defeat than is otherwise inevitable.
