Nukes are good for PR stunts by doom sayers and fear mongerers.
You can't sell ''hypersonic'' to the droolers that actually believe those idiots.
Sure, I hate nukes. They're a wild card. Democratic goverments and autocrats fear using them but there's enough nutjobs to have an orgasm just thinking about owning a nuke and using it and for one of those there's 10 greedy bastards willing to sell out a city full of people to the nutjobs.

That's why we should focus on rogue organisations and not on the Russians. Under Putin Russian nukes are the safest as they ever been in the entire history. Face it, if the world hadn't seen an incident under Yeltsin, it sure as hell won't under Emperor Vlad.

^ That.

And, quoting Oberon:
This is why i think there is no need to provoke Russia all the time, and behave like aggressive morons. Putin is as much a democrat as Russia is a democracy, but he also is the product of how the West behaved in the 1990ies.

Listening to Hungary, Poland and the baltic states with their fear of a russian invasion is one thing, but really following their leaders' ideas and planting miltary hardware everywhere to please them, is an entirely different thing.

Agreed but I sometimes wonder what the 'nutjobs' who prop up Putin might be thinking.

Putin is a control junkie.
His nutjobs are firmly under his yoke and if anyone goes out of line the FSB has a certain tea brand to serve.

Actually, I'm surprised that Putin is still in power. I guess the military reforms and upgrades have done enough to please his masters that he hasn't been shipped off into retirement. The Syrian mission is probably part of this too.

In regards to antagonising the Russians, it's all a part of the Great Game really, the US maintains its role as the top power, but the EU, Russia and China all vey to try and either undermine the US or position themselves so that they benefit from what the US does. The Middle East is fracturing into three blocs right now, so pretty soon we're going to be looking at a form of proxy conflict there with the Saudis, Iran and the radical Islamic bloc looking to establish dominance, and smaller blocs, Kurds and the like, looking to exploit the situation and carve out their own bit of sand.

Besides, to be honest Catfish, given how well the EU has organised its response to the refugee crisis, can we really trust Europe to organise its own defence? :/\\!!

I see your point. And are you a part of Europe, or not? And why only about Europe?

How about the five eyes taking some of the refugees, and show a bit of responsibility then?
Have only heard of Canada, about it's military offering to house 10,000 refugees. There are around 45,000 coming daily. How would Cameron handle the situation? Move to Scotland and rebuild the Hadrian wall? :hmmm:

Europe is not a nation, so it is not that easy to reach decisions. And then look at Hungary. Weapons anytime, refugees not.

One thing I think too which sets NATO apart from Russia is NATO doesnt force anyone to join, membership is strictly voluntary.

I'll let you know whenever we have this bloody referendum. :nope:

I'm not totally convinced of that Anze....Putin is replaceable and probably would be if the men in the background at the Kremlin think it is in their best interests to do so.

Not even in China is any individual bigger than the party collective.

I know what you and Oberon are getting at.
I was refering to outside friendly dictators and sattelites. Like Assad.

The godfathers of Russia, those that can oust Putin, also known as the oligarchy are also too smart to play with nukes. They already made significant investments in Russia and abroad and nukes have a problem of destroying said investments. This is not a James Bond movie. Real villians won't destroy what brings them money.

Another thing to bear in mind, that although the US has indeed increased its presense in Europe and is looking to increase it a bit further (rumour has it that Lakenheath is looking to get some F-22s which will be nice to see) it's still nowhere near the size of the forces that were deployed in West Germany during the Cold War.

It's the Beer and Lederhosen we must protect!
:D

Putin is not replaceable. Even if we disregard the fact that he holds the top end political power (and not some shady "oligarhs", you may remember what happened to Khodorkovsky when he tried to get power in his hands), he is still the lynchpin of the political balance here.

Regarding hypersonics. There are 4 main kinds, both that already exist and that would enter service during our lifetimes.
- MaRVs on various BMs. Considered, developed and even tested by more or less anyone (R36M2 was meant to go with mixed load of regular 1mt RVs and the 150kt MaRVs, with 80m CEP or so).
- Hypersonic gliders launched by BMs. Considered, developed and tested by most large ICBM users (ie US, USSR/Russia, PRC). Those gliders would probably go into service on future Russian ICBMs as a follow up to the MaRV technology.
- Hypersonic gliders on non strategic weapons. Considered, developed and tested by the nations mentioned above. However those weapons are still bulky/heavy due to the problems with propultion (we use Kh22 derived booster to launch those from the Backfires in test for example).
- Grown up supersonic cruise missiles (ie Brahmos-2 and Circon), the issue there is again size/mass, and thus those weapons would be still quite difficult to carry on a tactical aircraft.

The problem is that modern Armed Forces are smaller than their cold war equivalents and even if our rearmament goes per plan we still are at a disatvantage in terms of conventional arms balance.

Thus even "small" changes can lead to significant changes in the balance.