Submarinos nucleares: sao realmente necessarios?

Uma opinião cética de um observador político no New York Times de hoje (abaixo)
Não me surpreende que militares em geral, marinheiros em particular, defendam a idéia. Para militares, deter toda a panóplia possível de armas ofensivas e de dissuasão está na lógica do seu trabalho: se é para atacar, ou para se defender, melhor dispor de TODA E QUALQUER ARMA IMAGINÁVEL.
O que me surpreende é que líderes civis entreguem a esses profissionais tudo o que eles desejam, mesmo brinquedos de 8 bilhões de dólares.
É um pouco como pais irresponsáveis dando todos os presentes que uma criança visivelmente e declaradamente deseja ao entrar num palácio de brinquedos, essas superlojas de jogos e brinquedos que são a alegria dos petizes (como se dizia antigamente) e o terror dos pais.
Militares são como crianças, precisam ser controlados.
Acredito que pais responsáveis tenham melhor utilização para o seu dinheiro do que comprar todos os brinquedos na shopping list dos filhos.
Governantes responsáveis compram apenas os brinquedos "necessários" et encore...
Um país não deve se armar para todas as hipóteses possíveis, pois o cenário é infinito. Um país só deve se armar para assegurar um mínimo de defesa, tendo em conta que sua diplomacia está ali para construir um ambiente de paz.
Megalomaníacos, e pais idiotas, se deixam arrastar pelos desejos de crianças abusadas, mesmo aquelas crianças de farda e galardões.
Ainda vou escrever sobre isso...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Run Silent. Run Deep. Run Obsolete.
By Timothy Egan
The New York Times, July 14, 2010

QUILCENE, Wash. — We’re digging clams and picking oysters on one of the longest days of the year. It’s a huge bounty, this frutti di mare, bringing to mind what the natives always said about Puget Sound: when the tide is out, the table is set.

And then the waters roil and there appears off the horizon a vessel that could destroy much of the world in an eyeblink.

It’s one thing to see an orca breach, a nine-ton black-and-white flash of Indian art come to life, or a great blue heron swoop for prey, its thin legs unfolding like the collapsible frame of an umbrella. All seems right in the world.

But when a 560-foot-long Trident submarine breaks the surface, carrying a nuclear payload that could wipe out any number of cities, you have to check the time and place. Is this 2010, or 1964?

Just as the Russian spies, with their Facebook poses and quaint plans to get Secret Informations about the Google, made us realize the cold war maintains a peculiar grip, catching a glimpse of a nuclear submarine prompts a similar reaction. The doomsday architecture of Mutual Assured Destruction is still very much in place. The sub was bound for Naval Base Kitsap, home to what the Seattle Times in 2006 called the largest nuclear weapons storehouse in the United States.

These vessels have helped to keep the peace for decades; the service of the men and women who run silent and deep and nearly undetectable is laudable. But what about the policy behind MAD? Is it as outdated as those spies?

As the sea leg of the triad of nuclear deterrence, the Trident submarines provide “the nation’s most survivable and enduring nuclear strike capability,” as stated by the Navy. Their mission is to launch a massive and final lethal blow in the event that the worst has happened: “nuclear combat toe-to-toe with the Ruskies,” in the memorable drawl of Major T. J. “King” Kong, the Slim Pickens character in “Dr. Strangelove.”

MAD makes sense in a rational world: the Russians or Chinese would never try to wipe us out, because we would then wipe them out. They want to live well and prosper, as do we.

But MAD makes less sense at a time when the enemies of civilization are cave-dwelling religious fanatics who target cartoonists and kill innocent children at soccer telecasts and think, if they die in nuclear Armageddon, a sexual reward awaits them in heaven.

American policy, as stated in the Nuclear Posture Review updated by the Obama administration in April, rightfully targets nuclear proliferation by rogue nations — North Korea and Iran — and nuclear terror by free-agent zealots as the top priority. But then it also continues the cold war triad of nuclear deterrence — MAD.

Yes, the report notes that the United States and Russia have reduced strategic nuclear weapons by about 75 percent since the end of the cold war. And the new Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty backed by Obama and facing a round of hearings in Congress would scale those weapons back even more.

“It is in the United States’ interest and that of nearly all other nations that the nearly 65-year-record of nuclear non-use be extended forever.” Such is the goal, as stated in the review.
And despite Mitt Romney’s uninformed posturing against the treaty, Republicans with the most knowledge of American defense strategy, led by Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, say the new pact would continue the works of Presidents Reagan and Bush the elder to deescalate cold war tensions while upgrading overall deterrent strategy.

But why not kill the cold war altogether? Deconstruct MAD, or take a couple hundred cities off the hit list? Even if this treaty goes into effect, the United States will retain 240 ballistic missiles just on the submarines alone, according to information presented to Congress.

Why not a much larger reset? The deterrence would still be there, even with a pair of submarines, let alone the dozen-plus out there now, not to mention the new class of extraordinarily costly submarines under construction.

These new submarines may cost about $8.2 billion each to build, the Congressional Budget Office reported a few months ago. The first one, always the most pricey, may run up to $13 billion, which would make it the most expensive Navy vessel ever built. In May, Defense Secretary Robert Gates questioned whether the cost of all these new ships was worth it in the big view of getting the most safety for the most buck.

His legitimate query was greeted by a collective ho-hum. MAD and all its budget-busting infrastructure is just so much a part of the scenery now.

What we will get for those billions are sleek new nuclear-armed behemoths to replace the sleek old nuclear-armed behemoths, all in service to a dinosaur policy. Once the subs are in use, they will likely perform the same tired mission, ready to fire the last shot in a world going down. Meanwhile, above the surface of the ocean, crazed religious leaders in tents and Flintstone huts plot murder against innocents using Radio Shack rejects.

The purpose of these subs, like MAD itself, is rarely questioned. As so they glide in and out of Puget Sound, as the seasons roll by and the decades pass, powered by the inertia of a policy dating to black-and-white television, spies in ill-fitting suits, and a fear of Doomsday just a few ticks of the clock away.

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Addendum:
Uma leitora, Lara Wasser, ao ler meus comentários iniciais, escreveu-me o que segue:

Acredito que o que menos importa no projeto do submarino nuclear é a questão estratégica operacional militar. O que mais importa é que o Brasil construirá um reator nuclear e terá todo o domínio do ciclo do combustível nuclear.

Os desafios para se produzir um reator pequeno, para ser alocado em um submarino são significativos. O submarino será o pano de fundo de um grande salto tecnológico.

A usina que transformará o yellow-cake (urânio enriquecido) no gás hexafluoreto de urânio, em seguida em dióxido de urânio (pastilhas) já está operando em testes em Rezende. Para realizar esse processo o Brasil precisava contratar o serviço ao Canadá e a França em duas etapas, agora será feito aqui com tecnologia nacional.

O Brasil construirá 5 usinas nucleares a médio prazo. Se o projeto do submarino prosperar, como esperado, as usinas poderão usar reatores nacionais. O custo do Kwh nuclear cairá significativamente.

Era preciso ir a Lua? Quanto a sociedade americana se beneficia dos desenvolvimentos tecnológicos que foram necessários para o feito? Incalculável, eu diria.

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Novo Addendum, por Mário Machado, sobre a postagem "Submarinos nucleares: sao realmente necessarios?":

Me pergunto se para ter o domínio de todo esse ciclo-nuclear que a leitora descreveu é preciso o submarino, não seria mais proveitoso e barato fazer logo o programa para gerar energia e combustível nuclear aqui sem o desvio de energia e foco de construir um submarino que é muito mais que um reator, necessita do casco, das instalações onde construir esse submarino, bases de operação, centenas, se não milhares de marinheiros ligados a manutenção, operação e vigilância dos portos onde este submarino se encontra.