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

[DarthTrader]

Nothing ever was 100% at anything.

Caution: False logic at play.

By that logic, seat belts are not effective 100%. Therefore we should never use seatbelts.

When a seat belt fails the world doesn't end.

There's not a lot of reason to "destabilize" the nuclear order by trying to defend against it, at great cost, for something that cannot work.

Just a dozen well placed warheads would turn the US into a radioactive tomb for 140+ years.

Missile defense became irrelevant with the invention of the thermonuclear warhead, the "hydrogen bomb". What's important about it and different from other types is that it has extra neutrons.

In Atomics such as those used over Japan the Uranium itself absorbs all the neutrons. There's actually a NEUTRON DEFICIT in the atomic bomb and accordingly an incomplete detonation.

But in hydrogen bombs there is a NEUTRON SURPLUS. This is a problem.....because anything that can receive a neutron will get a neutron, and the uranium/plutonium/tritium consumed in the fission-fusion-fission cycle is not enough material to absorb ALL the neutrons flung out into the wide-world-yonder.

This was quickly recognized by both sides and so hardened facilities became "Cobalt-clad" to turn them from fortresses into doomsday weapons. Anything being nuked that is armored by cobalt will spew Cobalt-60 into the atmosphere which has as a halflife of some 112 years if I recall off the top of my head.

One-billionth (1/1,000,000,000th) of a gram will kill you. Making it 550 MILLION TIMES MORE TOXIC THAN cyanide.

Let that sink in a minute.

There is a reason that in the early 1990s, North Korea stopped exporting its biggest mineral export, cobalt, and began using it to armor every installation it had.

But - the bigger problem - is that cobalt is used in everything. So these hydrogen bombs will "dope" the cobalt with neutrons effectively making the world pretty sterile for a long time. It's arguable that the cobalt-60 won't migrate much....but when it's that poisonous...are you going to take the risk?

Therefore ABM is rather moot. One cobalt-clad nuclear warhead detonating high in the atmosphere will create huge dead zones, size of mid-west probably.

 

[Dayton3]

@Darth Trader is wrong on almost every count.

He (and others) love to claim that "ABMs don't work" despite the facts that U.S. ABMs have been successfully tested against ICBM analogues many times. No they don't work remotely EVERY time so against any type of incoming ICBM warheads the U.S. would have to launch several ABMs, but those warheads could be stopped.

People who claim ABMs don't work are engaging in absurd want to ism.

 

[DarthTrader]

@Darth Trader is wrong on almost every count.

He (and others) love to claim that "ABMs don't work" despite the facts that U.S. ABMs have been successfully tested against ICBM analogues many times. No they don't work remotely EVERY time so against any type of incoming ICBM warheads the U.S. would have to launch several ABMs, but those warheads could be stopped.

People who claim ABMs don't work are engaging in absurd want to ism.

I'm not wrong on anything I said. You saying that I'm wrong doesn't mean I'm wrong. You're welcome to address the specific points I made.

1. Launch
   1. Early
      1. Can't happen except for a successful first strike.
   2. Later
      1. Unlikely because of theater exposure to conventional strikes. You can't go nuclear on a conventional attack, unless you want to get nuked.
2. Midflight
   1. Decoys
   2. ICBM wobble
   3. Tiny Radar Cross-section
3. Terminal
   1. Very short time interval to be able to act.
   2. Incredibly fast speeds.
   3. More decoys
   4. 6.6-second atmospheric response time.
      1. I don't want to bother with the varieties, it's safe to say the fastest rockets won't be going more than ~2,000mph in 6 seconds.
         1. This brings up the issue of loiter times. For instance maybe the ABM system needs to be in Nebraska to effectively defend the California coast.
         2. You may need ABMs in New York to defend Whyoming's ICBM silos. In order for these missiles to exit enough of the atmosphere and be on target at high enough speeds in time to detonate at the right altitude to try and actually destroy an incoming warhead at the right second.

 

[Vrenn]

@Darth Trader is wrong on almost every count.

He (and others) love to claim that "ABMs don't work" despite the facts that U.S. ABMs have been successfully tested against ICBM analogues many times. No they don't work remotely EVERY time so against any type of incoming ICBM warheads the U.S. would have to launch several ABMs, but those warheads could be stopped.

People who claim ABMs don't work are engaging in absurd want to ism.

What the ABMs do is make the cost of making the ICBM that much more. It's a race where one side makes a move, the other side counters it. The there is a move and then a counter. The last thing we want is for either the ICBM or the ABM to win that race. That would be a sure way of moving to the next phase of "Use 'em or Lose 'em"

 

[Dayton3]

I'm not wrong on anything I said. You saying that I'm wrong doesn't mean I'm wrong. You're welcome to address the specific points I made.

1. Launch
   1. Early
      1. Can't happen except for a successful first strike.
   2. Later
      1. Unlikely because of theater exposure to conventional strikes. You can't go nuclear on a conventional attack, unless you want to get nuked.
2. Midflight
   1. Decoys
   2. ICBM wobble
   3. Tiny Radar Cross-section
3. Terminal
   1. Very short time interval to be able to act.
   2. Incredibly fast speeds.
   3. More decoys
   4. 6.6-second atmospheric response time.
      1. I don't want to bother with the varieties, it's safe to say the fastest rockets won't be going more than ~2,000mph in 6 seconds.
         1. This brings up the issue of loiter times. For instance maybe the ABM system needs to be in Nebraska to effectively defend the California coast.
         2. You may need ABMs in New York to defend Whyoming's ICBM silos. In order for these missiles to exit enough of the atmosphere and be on target at high enough speeds in time to detonate at the right altitude to try and actually destroy an incoming warhead at the right second.

Why would you bother defending ICBM silos with ABMs anyway?


By the way, when the Safeguard/Sprint ABMs were built to defend a single U.S. Minuteman field, they were deployed very close to the ICBM silos themselves.

 

[DarthTrader]

Why would you bother defending ICBM silos with ABMs anyway?


By the way, when the Safeguard/Sprint ABMs were built to defend a single U.S. Minuteman field, they were deployed very close to the ICBM silos themselves.

Because the main goal of nuclear war is to prevent the enemy from waging nuclear war and keep enough nuclear weapons survived to continue waging nuclear war.

Why have hardened silos in the first place?

All Nuclear war is "artillery duel 101" with higher stakes. That's why....start researching how artillery duels are conducted and it'll make a lot more sense.

The placement of Safeguard was "political" - you're thinking of Sentinel specifically.

The ideal placement was to protect the ICBM silos the Nike system was put into cities and people protested, thinking it'd attract attack. They were targets anyway but it's all politics.

99% of ABM is politics.

1% is actually military pragmatism which is what is needed for successfully deploying ABM.

 

[Dayton3]

Because the main goal of nuclear war is to prevent the enemy from waging nuclear war and keep enough nuclear weapons survived to continue waging nuclear war.

Why have hardened silos in the first place?

All Nuclear war is "artillery duel 101" with higher stakes. That's why....start researching how artillery duels are conducted and it'll make a lot more sense.

The placement of Safeguard was "political" - you're thinking of Sentinel specifically.

The ideal placement was to protect the ICBM silos the Nike system was put into cities and people protested, thinking it'd attract attack. They were targets anyway but it's all politics.

99% of ABM is politics.

1% is actually military pragmatism which is what is needed for successfully deploying ABM.

Remember the saying that "war is politics by other means".

That said, sorry about the "Sentinel" error. Doesn't mean I'm wrong on the rest though.

Missile silos and other likely targets are hardened against nuclear attack because at intercontinenal distances there have been limits on just how accurate a ballistic missile warhead could be. It wasn't until the 1990s (decades AFTER most ICBM silos were built) that ICBMs became accurate enough to be considered capable of one hit destruction of a hardened, buried target. Now of course SLBMs (U.S. ones anyway) are accurate enough to do so.

 

[DarthTrader]

Remember the saying that "war is politics by other means".

That said, sorry about the "Sentinel" error. Doesn't mean I'm wrong on the rest though.

Missile silos and other likely targets are hardened against nuclear attack because at intercontinenal distances there have been limits on just how accurate a ballistic missile warhead could be. It wasn't until the 1990s (decades AFTER most ICBM silos were built) that ICBMs became accurate enough to be considered capable of one hit destruction of a hardened, buried target. Now of course SLBMs (U.S. ones anyway) are accurate enough to do so.

I wouldn't say my intent was to demonstrate "an error" and invalidate your statement, just expanding specifics.

The hardening is precisely that though, survivability. But don't over-estimate a nuclear bomb's strength. It still takes some 3,000PSI to break a hardened bunker. Usually that's one 350kt to remove overburden and another 350kt or thereabouts. We aren't talking small nukes to deal with ICBMs.

If they miss, it's very unlikely they will destroy the ICBM silo.

I don't know how accurate that nukemap is - but it triese to calculate the PSI overp-pressure, it'll give you a better sense of just how accurate the missile actually needs to be.

The problem isn't the trajectory either, the problem is reentry....it's with the warheads.

For instance did you know a Soyuz capsule can fly? Literally fly, not just kinda aim....it has built into it lift and drag, like the space shuttle. It is not as proficient as the space shuttle but then the shuttle was always engineering over-kill and wasteful. The Soyuz can change its downrange landing site once in the atmosphere by rotating so that different aerodynamically designed surfaces on what to the eye appears to be the same shape, will give it direction and lift or drag if needed. So it can pitch, yaw, roll, etc. It can actually hit a target pretty much anywhere in a 300+mile radius.

The same issue exists with any re-entry vehicle and therefore is a problem when you want to actually hit an exact target without losing any speed.

 

[Mushroom]

I was giving them the benefit. And you left out the nuke subs which will almost impossible to intercept in time.

Depends on what you are targeting them with.

Mid-course, not a chance. Terminal phase intercept, that is very possible.

Enter the Block 4 F-35. But I don't see the F-35 having enough power to track an ICBM all the way through it's 3 phases. When they used the F-15 to bag that Sat, it was a ship that tracked and guided the missile in for the kill. But unlike a Warhead, they knew exactly where to look and stationed the ship accordingly before hand.

Why do you keep throwing in the F-35, which is a multirole fighter when discussing ABM? Sorry, I still don't get this as one has nothing to do with the other.

The F-35 is not a ABM system, there are no air launched air to air ABM weapons. So I see absolutely no reason to even bring it up.

I don't remember where I read it but it was estimated that there had to be 10 things that had to be right to hit that carrier with the DF-21D. Break the chain in any one of the ten and you the worlds fastest paperweight.

Oh. there are many. Primarily, how to locate with precision a carrier from over the horizon, when it is surrounded by multiple other ships.

How to get the air defenses (and ABM systems) on the escorts.

How to guide an ballistic missile onto a carrier with enough degree to actually hit it.

How to hit a carrier when the CEP (roughly accuracy) of the missile in discussion is larger than the flight deck of said carrier.

How you are going to hit a moving target.

How you are going to even find it, when as soon as it launches all ships are going to make radical changes in direction and likely go to their maximum speed in a completely different direction.

Oh, there are a great many problems with the DF-21D. And although China claims they have tested it, it has always been done of fixed targets where they knew exactly where it was before they even launched. About as technically challenging as shooting a convicted murderer in a firing squad.

 

[Mushroom]

ABMs don't work.

You can't hit the ICBMs on launch so there's no "kill" in the first phase.

You definitely can't hit them in mid-range.

So that leaves the 2nd phase as it ascends into partial orbit, or last phase as it reenters.

We talked about the last phase....

The 2nd phase has been super difficult to achieve, but is what we claim to have in place against North Korea, it could work, but any meaningful Nuclear threat actor will have thousands of intermediate ranged ballistic missiles for this purpose. Just shoot those at the "defenders" and either the defenders waste their ammo on the attack or die....either way you get a clear shot.

OK, first of all there are three phases.

The Boost Phase, where it lifts off and climbs to it's maximum altitude.

Then there is the Mid-Phase, where it is essentially in free-fall. Traveling on it's inertia, until it starts reentry.

Then finally, the terminal phase. Where it is diving to it's target, with the velocity imparted to it when it lifted off plus the acceleration from the descent.

The mid-phase is what GBI is for, and it works. The biggest problem is that these are fixed silo systems, that are basically ICBMs in and of themselves. Not many of them, and impossible to reload during an engagement.

As for terminal phase, we have many systems for that. But either they are on ships, or mobile and not suited to hitting an ICBM (like THAAD). The THAAD system can theoretically hit an ICBM, but we only have a few of them, and not in the places that would do any good.

But to start with, no "actor" has "thousands of intermediate ranged ballistic missiles". And even if they did, what threat is that to the US? An IRBM is of no threat to the US, unless it is in say Cuba or Venezuela. China can have 10 million IRBMs, that would not matter worth a damn to the US as it is well outside the range of those weapons.

And shoot at the defenders? Sorry, that makes absolutely no sense. Take a real world scenario from the Cold War. Missiles just north of the Golden Gate Bridge as Fort Cronkhite, and bases like Mare Island, Terminal Island, Alameda, etc, etc, etc. So you take out the NIKE sites at SF-88, what have you accomplished? All of the other bases are still fully operational, you achieved little to anything of importance. Especially as in that situation if it was today, they only have to move a few AEGIS class ships and have the same kind of capability.

 

[Mushroom]

You're completely wrong about Russia's missile inventory and I don't know where you got that from.

Once they are in mid-phase they have already released their decoys which as I mentioned elsewhere are essentially massive metallic balloons. You won't be able to target that.

https://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/pdf/87913main_H-1095.pdf

Wait a minute, your "proof" is a document over 40 years old?

First of all, "decoys" are still questionable at best. It requires almost the same mass to lift one as it does a real warhead. So why in the hell would you waste lifting capability on a decoy, when you can simply add another warhead?

That simply makes no sense. Now granted, Russia is believed to be using them in battlefield ballistic missiles. But those are all conventional weapons, and not nuclear ones. Do not confuse the two, they are not the same.

 

[Mushroom]

Regarding lasers, any heat shield able to absorb the energy of re-entering the atmosphere can easily absorb the tickle of a little laser.

LASER weapons are a fantasy, and will likely never be possible inside the atmosphere other than as a point-blank defensive system.

 

[DarthTrader]

LASER weapons are a fantasy, and will likely never be possible inside the atmosphere other than as a point-blank defensive system.

Pretty much agree. At least until Fusion power.

 

[DarthTrader]

Wait a minute, your "proof" is a document over 40 years old?

First of all, "decoys" are still questionable at best. It requires almost the same mass to lift one as it does a real warhead. So why in the hell would you waste lifting capability on a decoy, when you can simply add another warhead?

That simply makes no sense. Now granted, Russia is believed to be using them in battlefield ballistic missiles. But those are all conventional weapons, and not nuclear ones. Do not confuse the two, they are not the same.

My proof of what? Nuclear posture review released a status of Russian nuclear forces March 7. That's my proof of missile counts.

I don't know why you think decoys always massive. They aren't. Lol.

 

[Mushroom]

Missile silos and other likely targets are hardened against nuclear attack because at intercontinenal distances there have been limits on just how accurate a ballistic missile warhead could be. It wasn't until the 1990s (decades AFTER most ICBM silos were built) that ICBMs became accurate enough to be considered capable of one hit destruction of a hardened, buried target. Now of course SLBMs (U.S. ones anyway) are accurate enough to do so.

Which is why over the decades, the US and Russia have actually reduced the power of their warheads.

I grew up in the era of the threat of multi-megaton weapons targeting our cities and key areas. Today, most actually are in the range of a hundred kilotons or so. This is because of increased accuracy. You no longer need a warhead to destroy half a city, if you only want to level a few blocks of territory.

The Minuteman originally deployed with a 1.2 MT warhead. Now, that is down to between 170-450 kt. Primarily because of the increase of accuracy of more modern systems.

 

[Mushroom]

Nuclear posture review released a status of Russian nuclear forces March 7. That's my proof of missile counts.

Your reference is dated "October 1979".

If that is your claimed reference for counts, throw it away. That is decades old, before several key treaties, and at a time that the country being discussed was a threat, but has not existed not for 30 years.

I need read no farther than the first page with that date, to know that is useless as a reference. Other than a historical one that is talking about how things were over 40 years ago.

 

[Dayton3]

Which is why over the decades, the US and Russia have actually reduced the power of their warheads.

I grew up in the era of the threat of multi-megaton weapons targeting our cities and key areas. Today, most actually are in the range of a hundred kilotons or so. This is because of increased accuracy. You no longer need a warhead to destroy half a city, if you only want to level a few blocks of territory.

The Minuteman originally deployed with a 1.2 MT warhead. Now, that is down to between 170-450 kt. Primarily because of the increase of accuracy of more modern systems.

Well the Minutemen currently in service are armed with the warheads from the 500 originally deployed on the 50 M-X Peacekeeper ICBMs.

 

[Mushroom]

Well the Minutemen currently in service are armed with the warheads from the 500 originally deployed on the 50 M-X Peacekeeper ICBMs.

Once again, accuracy has increased significantly since it first became operational.

The original missile had a CEP of just over 2 km. By the time the Minuteman II was deployed, that had been reduced to a CEP of under .5 km.

The last confirmed statement of the Minuteman III was that it has a CEP of around 200 meters, but many actually place it in the 20 meter range thanks to advances in GPS and inertial navigation. So they do not have to be as powerful as when half of them might land up to a mile from their target (or more).

 

[para bellum]

Boost phase: the ABL was theoretically meant to do that. Obvious limitations need not be beaten to death.
Midcourse: GBI, THAAD (limited), SM-3
Terminal phase: PAC-3, THAAD, SM-6

Missile defense is mostly theater defense.

GBI and SM-3 are available in very limited numbers and only intended to protect against threats like NorK or Iran.

They wouldn't be a factor in an exchange between "great powers". If one flies, they all fly. It's assumed the early warning network is destroyed in the first wave.