Are we heading back to Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), this time involving the entire world?

Pres. Obama is leaning toward going ahead with the development of a type of missile called Prompt Global Strike. He has already included a negotiated provision for nuclear warhead reductions in the recent START agreement with Russia specifically tied to PGS implementation. The PGS is over twice as fast as a Cruise missile but doesn't alert satellite defenses by leaving the atmosphere during its flight. It can be launched from a B-52. It can be unarmed and act like a large bullet traveling 5x's the speed of sound, or armed with a conventional warhead, or armed with a nuclear warhead. Targeted countries will have no way of knowing which. It destabilizes the international military situation by causing countries to feel that they have to build up such an arsenal that the U.S. wouldn't feel safe using it against them, since at the speed it travels, they can't warn against it or shoot it down.

If we arm ourselves with these, the next Rumsfeld will likely start WWIII with it. In the meantime the tendency the world over wil be to put all human needs but military ones on a back burner. The sorts of development, such as sources of water and energy needed to prevent wars for resources will be starved for funds. For your children's sake, call & write your Congressional representatives and the White House.

I don't believe this is meant as a nuclear platform.

Wishful thinking won't make it go away.

Edited to add: ICBMs announce their presence to satellite warning systems and are nuclear only, triggering an immediate nuclear response not only by the target country, but by surrounding countries that can't be sure it isn't meant for them. The PGS flies "under the radar" until it is diving onto the target, making it more usable and thus more dangerous and destabilizing. It creates a similar but more serious danger than the nuclear "bunker busters" which are delivered by aircraft in that it makes nukes more easily used.

Even so, what is more terrifying about a nuclear weapon that reduces your warning time by at most ten minutes?

It much more likely to carry a conventional payload, and that is terrifying enough.

Even a lunatic a la Rumsfeld doesn't launch things w/ a guarantee that the countries that think they are threatened (they may feel they have to respond even if they are wrong about being the target) will launch their nukes in return before they are hit. OTH, if such a nutjob thought we could destroy a country's nukes with something that isn't seen until it is too late to act, the danger of setting off a conflagration becomes quite real. After all, countries have allies and hostilities once initiated have a way of spiraling out of control as in WW I.

This is a major step in the wrong direction. Less threatening but still serious is the likelihood that we will be asked to pay for its development (as well as for the endless wars and profit-driven health insurance) by reducing Social Security benefits.

I don't think this is complicated. The gov't is contemplating launching a very expensive catastrophic weapons system designed to be more usable than ICBMs because the target will not have time to retaliate. It would create a very dangerous situation. It should be stopped.