Trump 2.0 - Foreign Policy

ZRod said:
Remember that missile defense system Trump's wants to blow trillions on? Israel arguably has the most advanced one in the world covering a territory less than the size of New Jersey, and it wasn't even 100% effective against only 100 missles. There is no possible way that could be implemented across the entire North American continent, work, and not completely bankrupt the country.
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Probably depends on the targets they hit. If they were to say hit the pentagon, Whitehouse, nuclear reactor, & or important base regarding air assets or supply that may be a different story. It is generally true that no air defense is 100% effective. Not even ours. And no matter the system they can be overwhelmed. 
 

I believe the system cost which was floated was around 175b. Pretty hefty. Probably not enough to bankrupt us. That is not assuming maintenance. 

 
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Guy Chamberlin said:
The general understanding in the intelligence community is that Israel doesn't attack Iran without at least the tacit approval of the U.S. Iran will declare it a U.S. attack regardless. It's a risky gambit, but not all that risky if you look at Iran's history of angry threats followed by doing nothing. Still, these times are a bit more fraught.  

The problem is that Iran has a large population of young, educated professionals who have generally been pro-Western in recent years, but have not been able to overthrow the mullahs who rule as a repressive theocracy with a huge Persian chip on their shoulder. You do not want to "level the place" because that's the quickest way to get potential allies to be your sworn enemy for generations. 

It's kinda funny how our rightwing xenophobes are always rooting for the overthrow of Islamic rulers and don't notice that they are siding with the college educated, science-friendly, culturally liberal, global-minded, and demonstration-happy folks they despise when they're Americans. 
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Iran seemed like quite a cool place pre an Islamist extremist government. 

 
Decked said:
Probably depends on the targets they hit. If they were to say hit the pentagon, Whitehouse, nuclear reactor, & or important base regarding air assets or supply that may be a different story. It is generally true that no air defense is 100% effective. Not even ours. And no matter the system they can be overwhelmed. 
 

I believe the system cost which was floated was around 175b. Pretty hefty. Probably not enough to bankrupt us. That is not assuming maintenance. 
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Seeing as how we are $35 trillion in debt, thinking that $175 billion would bankrupt us is quite crazy imo.  I’m not for or against the idea btw.  

 
Listening to Fox News today (as much as I’d love to avoid it entirely, where I work a lot of old folks use it to hasten the dementia) I was getting shades of Fox coverage during W’s reign. Lots of rah-rah bulls#!t.

Yuck.

 
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So wait...the bros that are against any funding for Ukraine when they are in the fight of their lives against an expansionist regime all the while degrading and exposing the military capabilities of our most serious adversary are now like "meh, Trump's fantasy of an iron done and it's $175 billion price is a drop in the bucket".  Brilliant.   

 
Decked said:
Probably depends on the targets they hit. If they were to say hit the pentagon, Whitehouse, nuclear reactor, & or important base regarding air assets or supply that may be a different story. It is generally true that no air defense is 100% effective. Not even ours. And no matter the system they can be overwhelmed. 
 

I believe the system cost which was floated was around 175b. Pretty hefty. Probably not enough to bankrupt us. That is not assuming maintenance. 
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$175b is an absolute bulls#!t number. That would probably get you something like the iron dome which is medium range protection. Israel's Arrow missles are long range for ICBMs, but they don't have to see ICBMs coming from the other side of the globe. To do that you need satellites which are going to be close to a billion a pop. Then you probably need to have missles in space, which adds more expense and almost certainly kicks off an arms race destroying the Space Treaty. 

On land a patriot missles battery costs a billion a pop. Israel has 15 dome batteries to defend something smaller than New Jersey. That s#!t is going to add up real quick when you have short, medium, and long range batteries...

Then there's the fact that all this is pretty easily defeated by not too intricate counter measures, or the tried and true Russian tactic of sacrificial waves. Never mind nukes detonating in orbit is less than ideal as well. This whole thing is more idiocy.

 
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ZRod said:
$175b is an absolute bulls#!t number. That would probably get you something like the iron dome which is medium range protection. Israel's Arrow missles are long range for ICBMs, but they don't have to see ICBMs coming from the other side of the globe. To do that you need satellites which are going to be close to a billion a pop. Then you probably need to have missles in space, which adds more expense and almost certainly kicks off an arms race destroying the Space Treaty. 

On land a patriot missles battery costs a billion a pop. Israel has 15 dome batteries to defend something smaller than New Jersey. That s#!t is going to add up real quick when you have short, medium, and long range batteries...

Then there's the fact that all this is pretty easily defeated by not too intricate counter measures, or the tried and true Russian tactic of sacrificial waves. Never mind nukes detonating in orbit is less than ideal as well. This whole thing is more idiocy.
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Trump will think it’s an awesome idea to use Elons satellites for this. 
 

That would be a horrible idea. 

 
ZRod said:
$175b is an absolute bulls#!t number. That would probably get you something like the iron dome which is medium range protection. Israel's Arrow missles are long range for ICBMs, but they don't have to see ICBMs coming from the other side of the globe. To do that you need satellites which are going to be close to a billion a pop. Then you probably need to have missles in space, which adds more expense and almost certainly kicks off an arms race destroying the Space Treaty. 

On land a patriot missles battery costs a billion a pop. Israel has 15 dome batteries to defend something smaller than New Jersey. That s#!t is going to add up real quick when you have short, medium, and long range batteries...

Then there's the fact that all this is pretty easily defeated by not too intricate counter measures, or the tried and true Russian tactic of sacrificial waves. Never mind nukes detonating in orbit is less than ideal as well. This whole thing is more idiocy.
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I think the final number over a 20 year span from what I saw was around 500 billion. Everything included. The 175 floated by Trump himself from what I understand is the up front cost

after looking more. 

 
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