Why Is No One Clamoring for more ABMs to be built?

[Dayton3]

But you are missing that is why I along with Dayton think we need to look into AEGIS Ashore for use in the US. Likely nothing as vast as the old NIKE program, but at least our 10 major cities is very doable. And the technology is sound.

I would start with the areas originally proposed for defending with the Spartan/Sprint ABM system with the exception of the protection of ICBM sites which I always felt was pointless.

 

[Mushroom]

You're all over the place. You don't need missile defense batteries all up and down the coasts to defend against ICBM's. They can be intercepted on the rise, in the mid phase or on the reentry phase.

Rise? Almost impossible, for a great many reasons.

Mid-phase, only for long range like an ICBM. They are useless against say a SLBM, as they are not in the air long enough, nor hit a very high altitude.

Plus, GBI is relatively fixed in the direction it can operate. We only have 44 missiles in place, in Alaska and California. That gives no protection for areas south of California really, and once the 44 missiles are expended that is it.

Most systems work on the reentry phase. THAAD, PATRIOT, SM-2, SM-3, etc, this is the part that they all target as the preferred time for intercept. They are locked by gravity, and not much can be done to change the path of the missile.

 

[Mushroom]

What the hell do you think happens when one nation starts lobbing ICBM's?

Depends on the nation, the target, the number of missiles, and a great many other things.

You seem to not really know how all this works. The US and world would react very differently if say North Korea launched 3 missiles at Hawaii, as opposed to Russia or China launching 40+ of them at the mainland US.

 

[Big Bend Texas]

Depends on the nation, the target, the number of missiles, and a great many other things.

You seem to not really know how all this works. The US and world would react very differently if say North Korea launched 3 missiles at Hawaii, as opposed to Russia or China launching 40+ of them at the mainland US.

I understand exactly how it works, I was part of it for a long time.

We'd have to treat Korea differently so as to avoid our nukes triggering a response from China or Russia in reply.

One of the reasons we've advanced our ABM capability so quickly is specifically to counter Korea and Iran.

 

[Mushroom]

Just for the SM-6 Missile, that would make them the most expensive military system even over the B-2, F-35, B-29.

But here is the interesting thing about missiles like the SM-2, 3, and 6.

Most of that cost is actually covering the R&D to design them. After that, the price quite rapidly drops for the cost of each missile. The more you build, they cheaper they are as soon the cost of the R&D is recovered and you are only paying for the cost of the missiles alone.

Cast in point, the cost of the SM-3 was around $25 million in 2011. By 2018, that dropped to $18 million. Today, they are around $11 million. And increasing the number built will only decrease the cost even more.

This is well known to anybody that studies military equipment. The first prototypes are horribly expensive, the first production models less so. And the more that are built, the cheaper each successive iteration costs. This is why the Pentagon hates when a program is cut early, as it makes the fewer models produced far more expensive than they should be if the program was seen to fruition.

 

[Mushroom]

I would start with the areas originally proposed for defending with the Spartan/Sprint ABM system with the exception of the protection of ICBM sites which I always felt was pointless.

SPARTAN was never a really good system to be honest. Little more than an upgraded NIKE Hercules, and lobbed 5 MT nuclear warheads at inbound missiles. Sure it looked cool, but other than for use in games like Fallout 4, it is best left as a strange relic of history that it is.

No, best to leave SPARTAN right where it is, and never consider it again to be honest.

 

[Big Bend Texas]

SPARTAN was never a really good system to be honest. Little more than an upgraded NIKE Hercules, and lobbed 5 MT nuclear warheads at inbound missiles. Sure it looked cool, but other than for use in games like Fallout 4, it is best left as a strange relic of history that it is.

No, best to leave SPARTAN right where it is, and never consider it again to be honest.

Using nukes to intercept nukes anywhere but outside of the atmosphere would be a really bad plan.

At the time, our options were much more limited than they are today so you're right, leave that one on the shelf where it belongs.

 

[Mushroom]

Both energy weapons and railgun tech are being pursued ardently.

And neither one is really realistic other than for select purposes.

LASERS, forget about it. Nobody has yet come up with a reliable solution for thermal blooming. All somebody needs to do is wait until the main target areas are under adverse weather conditions, and the entire LASER based system is worthless.

Railgun is another largely pointless system. It might be great for say a CIWS type system, but too many issues mean it will likely never be good for anything other than that.

Do not forget how long we have been working on these proposals, it literally is decades. And neither one of them is anywhere even close to a real working system. More fantasy pipe dream, and I am mostly concerned with reality.

 

[Big Bend Texas]

You know all Russia mobile ICBMs are kept on a base at a well known location unless they have an alert don't you?

Actually they aren't. They always have a few mobile launchers out and about to avoid losing them all in a first strike.

 

[Mushroom]

You wouldnt need "hundreds of thousands" of Sm-6s just to take down 2,000 or so incoming nuclear missiles. Most likely 4-5,000 would do the trick.

Even less than that.

To be honest, much of this would be like triage in a major disaster. You simply can't save everybody, so trying to shoot down every inbound missile would be stupid. You simply select the locations which are most important, and concentrate on those.

Say if you were building a system to protect California. LA, Sacramento, SF, and San Diego, of course. Oroville? Bakersfield? Chico? Stockton? Sucks big time there, was nice to know you while you lasted.

Even when we have NIKE all over the country, the actual protected areas were rather small, and primarily places of major military importance and key government infrastructure. LA? San Francisco? Washington DC? Of course they were protected by NIKE. And it was only certain parts of LA, mostly around key aerospace facilities. Not the entire city.

But if you were at Camp Lejeune or Fort Ord? Well, that sucks. No NIKE for you. Hell, not even Fort Bliss or White Sands were protected by Nike. And that is where it was designed, tested, and all those were trained to operate the system went to school.

 

[Mushroom]

Using nukes to intercept nukes anywhere but outside of the atmosphere would be a really bad plan.

Actually, at higher altitudes it is fairly safe. However, that was the limit of the technology of the time. The computers and RADAR needed to actually physically intercept a missile simply did not exist yet.

But an upper altitude air burst is actually not all that dangerous. And in theory, safer than an exto-atmosphere burst.

 

[Big Bend Texas]

Actually, at higher altitudes it is fairly safe. However, that was the limit of the technology of the time. The computers and RADAR needed to actually physically intercept a missile simply did not exist yet.

But an upper altitude air burst is actually not all that dangerous. And in theory, safer than an exto-atmosphere burst.

One isn't, hundreds or thousands adds up to a whole lot of nuclear contamination when it falls back to earth.

 

[Mushroom]

One isn't, hundreds or thousands adds up to a whole lot of nuclear contamination when it falls back to earth.

Contamination of what? There is nothing up there to get contaminated.

The entire risk of "fallout" is the contamination of dirt, rocks, trees, and other matter that is irradiated inside of the explosion then spreads out after it is sucked up into the mushroom cloud.

In the upper atmosphere, there is nothing to get contaminated. Just the initial blast and radiation release, which is primarily X and Gamma rays. Those only last an instant. Literally blink and you missed it, and being inside of a building would protect almost everybody.

The really dangerous parts of a nuclear blast are the Alpha and Beta particles, and those only exist in fallout. And there is no fallout in an atmospheric blast.

 

[Big Bend Texas]

Contamination of what? There is nothing up there to get contaminated.

The entire risk of "fallout" is the contamination of dirt, rocks, trees, and other matter that is irradiated inside of the explosion then spreads out after it is sucked up into the mushroom cloud.

In the upper atmosphere, there is nothing to get contaminated. Just the initial blast and radiation release, which is primarily X and Gamma rays. Those only last an instant. Literally blink and you missed it, and being inside of a building would protect almost everybody.

The really dangerous parts of a nuclear blast are the Alpha and Beta particles, and those only exist in fallout. And there is no fallout in an atmospheric blast.

You don't seem to understand how a nuke works, the nuclear material is not all consumed in the explosion, only a fraction of it is.

That material is much heavier than air and falls back to earth even with a burst in the high atmosphere.

 

[Mushroom]

You don't seem to understand how a nuke works, the nuclear material is not all consumed in the explosion, only a fraction of it is.

Actually, I do. And the amount of remaining material in the launching vehicle and payload is almost nothing.

The total weight of an ICBM is around 15k kg. Compared to the tens of millions of tons of debris in a near ground burst, that is barely even worth mentioning. The spread pattern of what little was to remain after a high air burst is barely even worth talking about.

To put it into perspective, a Space Shuttle weighed in at around 2 million kg. But how much of that do you think was a hazard around Texas when one was destroyed? Skylab was around 76,000 kg. How much of that was scattered around Australia? Quite literally, somebodies risk of having a piece of Skylab or Columbia was much higher than the risk of contamination from a high altitude airburst.

 

[Big Bend Texas]

Actually, I do. And the amount of remaining material in the launching vehicle and payload is almost nothing.

The total weight of an ICBM is around 15k kg. Compared to the tens of millions of tons of debris in a near ground burst, that is barely even worth mentioning. The spread pattern of what little was to remain after a high air burst is barely even worth talking about.

To put it into perspective, a Space Shuttle weighed in at around 2 million kg. But how much of that do you think was a hazard around Texas when one was destroyed? Skylab was around 76,000 kg. How much of that was scattered around Australia? Quite literally, somebodies risk of having a piece of Skylab or Columbia was much higher than the risk of contamination from a high altitude airburst.

Obviously not since all of our atmospheric testing showed otherwise.

https://remm.hhs.gov/fallout_mushroomcloud.htm

Neither the shuttle nor skylab were radioactive and there was one of each, not hundreds or thousands of them falling out of the sky in a short period of time.

 

[Dayton3]

SPARTAN was never a really good system to be honest. Little more than an upgraded NIKE Hercules, and lobbed 5 MT nuclear warheads at inbound missiles. Sure it looked cool, but other than for use in games like Fallout 4, it is best left as a strange relic of history that it is.

No, best to leave SPARTAN right where it is, and never consider it again to be honest.

You're probably right but I was referring mainly to the locations of the proposed sites.

 

[Mushroom]

Obviously not since all of our atmospheric testing showed otherwise.

https://remm.hhs.gov/fallout_mushroomcloud.htm

Neither the shuttle nor skylab were radioactive and there was one of each, not hundreds or thousands of them falling out of the sky in a short period of time.

Did you read your own reference?

Source: Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute's Medical Effects of Ionizing Radiation Course on CD-ROM (1999) Delayed ionizing radiation dose (fallout) Produced by fission products and neutron-induced radionuclides in the area around the explosion, especially downwind Dispersed downwind with the fireball/debris cloud. As the cloud travels downwind, the cooling and falling radioactive material settles on the ground creating a large swath of deposited material (fallout). Fallout creates large areas of contamination and the ionizing radiation coming off the fallout which can damage tissues and penetrate through thin walls and glass. Fallout can also contaminate the soil, food and water supply Prohibitions against eating food and drinking water from affected areas will be issued

Once again, that is fallout. Which is contaminated soil and material from the ground that is ionized by the explosion.

There is no ground in the upper atmosphere. Stop trying to scare people, and deal in facts.

Oh, and here is a much better reference, that actually deals with such an explosion.

304. Types of Bursts.​

The relative effects of blast, heat, and nuclear radiation will largely be determined by the altitude at which the weapon is detonated. Nuclear explosions are generally classified as air bursts, surface bursts, subsurface bursts, or high altitude bursts.

a. Air Bursts. An air burst is an explosion in which a weapon is detonated in air at an altitude below 30 km but at sufficient height that the fireball does not contact the surface of the earth. After such a burst, blast may cause considerable damage and injury. The altitude of an air burst can be varied to obtain maximum blast effects, maximum thermal effects, desired radiation effects, or a balanced combination of these effects. Burns to exposed skin may be produced over many square kilometers and eye injuries over a still larger area. Initial nuclear radiation will be a significant hazard with smaller weapons, but the fallout hazard can be ignored as there is essentially no local fallout from an air burst. The fission products are generally dispersed over a large area of the globe unless there is local rainfall resulting in localized fallout. In the vicinity of ground zero, there may be a small area of neutron-induced activity which could be hazardous to troops required to pass through the area. Tactically, air bursts are the most likely to be used against ground forces.

b. Surface Burst. A surface burst is an explosion in which a weapon is detonated on or slightly above the surface of the earth so that the fireball actually touches the land or water surface. Under these conditions, the area affected by blast, thermal radiation, and initial nuclear radiation will be less extensive than for an air burst of similar yield, except in the region of ground zero where destruction is concentrated. In contrast with air bursts, local fallout can be a hazard over a much larger downwind area than that which is affected by blast and thermal radiation.

c. Subsurface Burst. A subsurface burst is an explosion in which the point of the detonation is beneath the surface of land or water. Cratering will generally result from an underground burst, just as for a surface burst. If the burst does not penetrate the surface, the only other hazard will be from ground or water shock. If the burst is shallow enough to penetrate the surface, blast, thermal, and initial nuclear radiation effects will be present, but will be less than for a surface burst of comparable yield. Local fallout will be very heavy if penetration occurs.

d. High Altitude Burst. A high altitude burst is one in which the weapon is exploded at such an altitude (above 30 km) that initial soft x-rays generated by the detonation dissipate energy as heat in a much larger volume of air molecules. There the fireball is much larger and expands much more rapidly. The ionizing radiation from the high altitude burst can travel for hundreds of miles before being absorbed. Significant ionization of the upper atmosphere (ionosphere) can occur. Severe disruption in communications can occur following high altitude bursts. They also lead to generation of an intense electromagnetic pulse (EMP) which can significantly degrade performance of or destroy sophisticated electronic equipment. There are no known biological effects of EMP; however, indirect effects may result from failure of critical medical equipment.

FM 8-9 Part I/Chptr 3 Effects of Nuclear Explosions

nuke.fas.org

Now, do you actually have any kind of reference relating to a high altitude airburst that contradicts this?

 

[Mushroom]

You're probably right but I was referring mainly to the locations of the proposed sites.

SPARTAN was to work alongside NIKE. It was never to be a replacement for it. It was basically "NIKE on steroids" for protecting silo sites.

However, it was to use the missile which was intended to replace NIKE, which at one time during development was known as "NIKE X". If not for the ABM treaty, that likely would have ultimately replaced many NIKE Hercules systems that were deployed at that time.

 

[Big Bend Texas]

Did you read your own reference?



Once again, that is fallout. Which is contaminated soil and material from the ground that is ionized by the explosion.

There is no ground in the upper atmosphere. Stop trying to scare people, and deal in facts.

Oh, and here is a much better reference, that actually deals with such an explosion.

FM 8-9 Part I/Chptr 3 Effects of Nuclear Explosions

nuke.fas.org

Now, do you actually have any kind of reference relating to a high altitude airburst that contradicts this?

Fallout is any radioactive material falling back to earth resulting from a nuclear incident.

I'm not trying to scare anyone, anyone getting scared by this discussion is a frightened little girl.