Russia announces new nuclear weapons tests days after Trump-Putin summit

[kpete]

Russia is reportedly testing a range of new nuclear weapons and other military hardware including a high-powered laser, just days after Russian President Vladimir Putin met with President Trump for a one-on-one summit in Finland.

The Associated Press reported on Thursday that Russia had tested weapons that range from the laser weapon system to a nuclear-powered cruise missile. The cruise missile is reported to have "unlimited" range.


On Thursday, the country's Defense Ministry reportedly said that it had tested the Burevestnik cruise missile and is now preparing it for a flight test.

"The program of the system’s pop-up tests has been completed with the positive results, which makes it possible to switch to preparations for the flight trials of the Sarmat missile complex," the Defense Ministry said, according to Tass, a Russian news agency.


MORE:
http://thehill.com/policy/international/397895-russia-announces-new-nuclear-weapons-tests-after-trump-putin-summit

[oberliner]

1. Is anyone still talking about "loose nukes" ?

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

2. Trump is the loose nuke.

[oberliner]

4. Seriously, though, that was a big concern of Obama's

Among other people.

All these poorly guarded nuclear weapons from the former Soviet Union that no one really knows about.

[Harker]

3. I talk about

loose cannons.

[Freethinker65]

5. Get ready for Bolshoi Rocketman tweets from our dear leader

Fear. Fear. Fear.

Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit.

[brush]

6. This must be one of the things trump agreed to in the one-on-one meeting.

Just the fact that trump wanted and participated in such a meeting should've initiated immediate impeachment hearings.

Neither the intel community, the military, the rest on his admin., nor the Congress knows WTF he coughed up or agreed to with Putin.

[octoberlib]

7. This is to scare the Balkans.

CHOBIELIN, Poland — What keeps you awake at night if you are the foreign minister of one of America’s vulnerable allies, as I was? That Russian President Vladimir Putin will do to you what he has already done to Georgia and Ukraine: start a hybrid war.

A war denied by the head of state and spurred by cyberattacks and subversion, in which planes and tanks without markings, operated by soldiers without insignia, march into our territory. A war that stays below the threshold of a full-scale invasion.We would call for help but the situation might be too ambiguous to justify international intervention. We would need our allies, especially the United States, not to send us fact-finding missions or diplomatic demarches but planes, tanks and soldiers.


That scenario is not the worst we can imagine. In fact, for the past few years Russia has been practicing something even more sinister. The Russian military’s Zapad (“West”) exercises envisage a hybrid war against the Baltic states, followed by the detonation of a nuclear weapon.

It’s part of a doctrine that analysts call “escalating to de-escalate” but it’s anything but peaceful. It is designed to stun leaders so much that we give up right away. Given that planning for a nuclear war has become unthinkable in our post-modern world, Russia calculates that our leaders would hesitate if confronted with the real thing and would refuse to strike back.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/theworldpost/wp/2018/07/17/putin/?utm_term=.411480473caf