Try, try, Trident again

The New York Times reports that the Pentagon is pushing a plan to replace the nuclear weapons in submarine-launched Trident 2 long range missiles with conventional payloads.

The problem with this, of course, is that that whole "MAD" thing that kept us safe for 50+ years would immediately break down. Why? Consider this scenario: We somehow find Bin Laden over in Afghanistan, and we launch a modified Trident 2 from a sub towards him. From Russia's prospective, they see a "nuke" being launched towards them. They can either trust that its our non-nuclear replacement, or they can do what they've trained 50 years to do, which is launch a full-scale, nuclear response.

Not a pretty picture.

Keep in mind that Russia and China would certainly like to have this capability too (for whatever targets they are interested in). The article talks about how the US and Russia have stalled in talks to somehow share early detection information or something to prevent misunderstandings...

So how about this as a solution: Give China, Russia, and the US this long-range, conventional missle technology. Then, if one of us wants to hit a remote target, we ask the other nation to launch their missile on our behalf.

That way, they don't have to trust our early detection stuff, and they will know exactly what is in the weapon, since they're the ones launching it.