Iran now has ICBM capability.

[Ryan Thunder]

Nice for the Iranians to be able to launch their own satellites... but as for the military aspect, I'm less worried about ICBM strikes than I am about all the other ways of getting nukes into other countries. It'd make a lot more sense for Iran to use suitcase nukes sent to Hezbollah, Hamas or similar than to launch missiles, given that everyone would see where the things came from.

Also easier for someone else to give said suitcase nukes to Hezbollah to make us think that Iran did it, as well.

[The Grim Squeaker]

Nice for the Iranians to be able to launch their own satellites... but as for the military aspect, I'm less worried about ICBM strikes than I am about all the other ways of getting nukes into other countries. It'd make a lot more sense for Iran to use suitcase nukes sent to Hezbollah, Hamas or similar than to launch missiles, given that everyone would see where the things came from.

Also easier for someone else to give said suitcase nukes to Hezbollah to make us think that Iran did it, as well.

That takes the cake for fruitbat conspiracy theories this month I think.

[Scottish Ninja]

Nice for the Iranians to be able to launch their own satellites... but as for the military aspect, I'm less worried about ICBM strikes than I am about all the other ways of getting nukes into other countries. It'd make a lot more sense for Iran to use suitcase nukes sent to Hezbollah, Hamas or similar than to launch missiles, given that everyone would see where the things came from.

Also easier for someone else to give said suitcase nukes to Hezbollah to make us think that Iran did it, as well.

That takes the cake for fruitbat conspiracy theories this month I think.

Wasn't that, effectively, the plot of The Sum of All Fears?

[Axis Kast]

Iran has already built missile silos of sufficient size to accommodate an ICBM near Tabriz, along with a number of bunkers to house mobile launchers.

Why am I not surprised? And here Redleader34 sits, propounding on themes of Iranian commitment to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Really, even the individual who is confident of the mullahs' rationality, accepts that Iran's decades-long quest for a bomb is predicated on an acute feeling of vulnerability, and believes that the weapons would not be used except as a last resort must still grapple with a host of other issues.

The first problem is of crisis stability and the simple difficulty of attribution. Does Iran expect a preemptive strike any day now? Are the mullahs scratching their heads in wonderment over what they perceive as great luck, or have they realized that their program has passed the threshold before which there is high confidence of total elimination in a single clutch of air strikes? If they do expect an attack from any quarter, and believe that time, not intention, is the only missing variable, what then?

Communication between nuclear powers is difficult in the best of times. Do the Iranians understand our red-lines? Our culture? Our leaders? A series of American presidents and politicians has now insisted that "Iran will not be allowed to possess Weapons of Mass Destruction." What is the Iranian perception of our local military capabilities? As Albert Wohlstetter pointed out, during the early phases of the Cold War, the United States deployed certain missiles to Turkey that couldn't survive a first-strike. What was Moscow to do? Here, the United States had a weapons system that was demonstrably useless for anything but a surprise knockout blow.

For all of these reasons, it may be dangerous to condone nuclear proliferation in Iran. For reasons they consider very legitimate, something might get out-of-hand.

Then you have problems of command-and-control. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps is the steward of the nuclear arsenal in Iran, not the civilian government. Military institutions function according to a different set of operating procedures and fundamental assumptions about the world than do civilian bureaucracies. Scott Sagan reminds us that they tend to favor quick, decisive seizure of the initiative. A first-strike is always preferable to dealing the second blow. Their sense of danger will also be substantially different from that of the mullahs; some things are bound to matter less to generals; other things, more. What assurances do we have that when we sit down with, say, a negotiator empowered to "speak for Tehran" that the nuclear arsenal will be managed in the manner promised and agreed upon?

The Iranians screen candidates to the Revolutionary Guard Corps for ideological suitability. They do not, to my knowledge, have a specific program in place that will weed out persons whose psychological condition would compromise the safekeeping of their nuclear arms. The United States regularly transfers five to ten percent of the personnel assigned to those roles after every review, citing concerns.

The problem of simple physical security is equally important. Do we have the same confidence in Iranian procedures for insuring ownership of the bomb at all stages of its life cycle that we have in Israel's assurance methods? In those of the United Kingdom or France? We worry frequently that Inter-Services Intelligence in Pakistan is full of men and women who sympathize with terrorists and insurgents over their own government. It follows that the Revolutionary Guard, with its specific emphasis on radicalism and known links to international terrorism, is going to be the same way.

In other words, to cut a long story short... it's a game of Russian Roulette. We may not be able to prevent it, but nobody in their right mind should be excited by the prospect.

[Stargate Nerd]

The Iranians screen candidates to the Revolutionary Guard Corps for ideological suitability. They do not, to my knowledge, have a specific program in place that will weed out persons whose psychological condition would compromise the safekeeping of their nuclear arms. The United States regularly transfers five to ten percent of the personnel assigned to those roles after every review, citing concerns.

Did the USSR do this as well?

[Zixinus]

It'd make a lot more sense for Iran to use suitcase nukes sent to Hezbollah, Hamas or similar than to launch missiles, given that everyone would see where the things came from.

I'd like to hear about these "suitcase" nukes you are talking about. Last I checked, critical mass for enriched uranium was above 30 kilograms. A nuke is going to be way heavier than that, as you will need a bunch more stuff (like, you know, a trigger and implosion device and steel to contain the bomb).

I'm no nuclear scientist, but I just don't see how to prevent the situation where said suitcase can only be lifted by bodybuilders and how to prevent them from glowing. And melting.

Because last I checked, radioactivity causes not only radiation sickness but heat. Heat that, among other things ,will cause something to glow due to the fact that the material is burning.

So, I'd like to know the utility of a bomb that can be detected by simply turning off the lights and looking for anybody suffering from radiation sickness.

[Kanastrous]

An 10Kg sphere of Pu239 is about 10cm in diameter, and is about the minimum amount of material required to serve as the pit of a bomb.

A pit-sized chunk of refined Pu239 radiates heat due to alpha decay, but is merely 'warm to the touch;' it won't melt or burn its way through much of anything just from normal alpha emission. And it's not sufficiently radioactive to cause sickness just from proximity (although it's fantastically toxic if ingested).

[Sea Skimmer]

I'd like to hear about these "suitcase" nukes you are talking about. Last I checked, critical mass for enriched uranium was above 30 kilograms. A nuke is going to be way heavier than that, as you will need a bunch more stuff (like, you know, a trigger and implosion device and steel to contain the bomb).

Last you checked was just utterly dead wrong. It is possible to place a complete nuclear device inside of a 105mm artillery shell weighing just 40 pounds total Strip off the shell body and it would weigh even less. The US actually mass produced the W54 warhead which weighed only 51lb and fit inside a 270 x 400mm cylinder. It was used for Davy Crocket and as the Special Atomic Demolition Munitions abet with weight increased to add various safety mechanisms and ruggidization for field service. Russia produced similar devices. The US actually tested a thermonuclear bomb that went inside a 127mm rocket body, but the first test failed, and then people realized we just didn’t need high thermonuclear yields out of such compact devices.

However small nukes are very hard to engineer, and are very expensive and inefficient. A nation like Iran isn’t going to be building them for a very long time if ever, but they certainly could rapidly advance to relatively compact devices weighing several hundred pounds which would be nearly as easy to smuggle around, particularly if the bomb is moved in pieces and assembled inside of the country to be attacked. A bomb of that size can also actually yield hundreds of kilotons, while a suitcase nuke is most likely to be subkiloton.

I'm no nuclear scientist, but I just don't see how to prevent the situation where said suitcase can only be lifted by bodybuilders and how to prevent them from glowing. And melting.

Because last I checked, radioactivity causes not only radiation sickness but heat. Heat that, among other things ,will cause something to glow due to the fact that the material is burning.

How the hell do you think they build nuclear warheads if the things are glowing hot, start fires and kill people out of hand? Hint, that’s utter nonsense. U-235 and Pu-239 emit only alpha radiation which is stopped by human skin, also by air and sheets of paper. The decay heat is noticeable, but insignificant. Some radioactive elements do have the properties you describe; they are exactly the kind of stuff that gets removed when you make natural uranium into nuclear weapons material.

[K. A. Pital]

Did the USSR do this as well?

Yeah, we did some rotation, and very extensive screening was required to serve on nuclear-armed anything, from a mobile launcher to a silo to a submarine. If Axis Kast is correct and Iran does not do it's screening and rotation procedures on a stringent and regular basis, with a clearly defined psychological framework, they are compromising the security of their possible WMD arsenal.

But then, their WMD arsenal would be very small; they could pick the best-suited operators from the Rev. Guards after extensive screening and keep them at their places for long - the situation of the US and USSR was that they controlled hundreds of nuclear armed installations and vehicles; nothing of that sort is present, or will be present in the future in Iran.

So the point is correct, but I do feel it's not relevant for Iran the arsenal of which is near-neglible.

[Ryan Thunder]

Nice for the Iranians to be able to launch their own satellites... but as for the military aspect, I'm less worried about ICBM strikes than I am about all the other ways of getting nukes into other countries. It'd make a lot more sense for Iran to use suitcase nukes sent to Hezbollah, Hamas or similar than to launch missiles, given that everyone would see where the things came from.

Also easier for someone else to give said suitcase nukes to Hezbollah to make us think that Iran did it, as well.

That takes the cake for fruitbat conspiracy theories this month I think.

Bah. Not like I actually believe that it's likely to happen, just putting it forward as a possibility...

[K. A. Pital]

Suitcase nukes? People, wake up. Miniaturized nuclear devices are very hard to manufacture, hard to get and they are mostly a rumor and not much more.

[Stark]

I dimly recall a book that contained statistics regarding different levels of 'incident' with American personel involved in their nuclear weapon arm, and even with their screening and monitoring there was a surprising amount of 'incidents' (whatever they defined those as, given the extremely fine standards you'd expect). Without bothering with that sort of thing you'd expect it to be much, much higher.

[Ryan Thunder]

Suitcase nukes? People, wake up. Miniaturized nuclear devices are very hard to manufacture, hard to get and they are mostly a rumor and not much more.

Hey, they did it with a 22 pound artillery shell, according to Skimmer there. I think you could fit that in a suitcase.

Not like it'd be terribly useful or anything, though...

[Stargate Nerd]

Did the USSR do this as well?

Yeah, we did some rotation, and very extensive screening was required to serve on nuclear-armed anything, from a mobile launcher to a silo to a submarine. If Axis Kast is correct and Iran does not do it's screening and rotation procedures on a stringent and regular basis, with a clearly defined psychological framework, they are compromising the security of their possible WMD arsenal.

But then, their WMD arsenal would be very small; they could pick the best-suited operators from the Rev. Guards after extensive screening and keep them at their places for long - the situation of the US and USSR was that they controlled hundreds of nuclear armed installations and vehicles; nothing of that sort is present, or will be present in the future in Iran.

So the point is correct, but I do feel it's not relevant for Iran the arsenal of which is near-neglible.

Ahh thanks for the clarification.

[K. A. Pital]

Not like it'd be terribly useful or anything, though...

Indeed. Greater casualties could be achieved through easier methods.

[Sea Skimmer]

So your presumption is that the smaller systems will not face any large missiles and jamming warheads? Why?

Because its illogical, and a system like Patriot can’t reliably engage an ICBM in the first place that’s why. So who gives a damn if you can jam it when it would have never opened fire? Not that I believe jamming from any RV is going to work in the first place, and its not like this weight penalty is a trivial matter. That’s not even counting the technology problems with making a jamming warhead that still has space for an actual warhead and works against the most sophisticated radars on the planet.

Its not like jamming pods, or even whole squadrons of US jamming aircraft went and made Russians SAMs worthless after all, and that’s with the US having the advantage in technology.

Yeah, but it's stil a weaker radar than something like, say, the gigantic Moscow FC radar, the power output of which is well on the order of power output of EW radars like Daryal. If you can't jam a trailer-based radar, you certainly cannot jam the stationary one.

So? I’m the one arguing for jamming not working, of course you’re not going to jam an enormous radar to any worthwhile degree, especially when most jamming fundamentally will not work because the interceptor has its own terminal guidance system. That’s the key factor with US ABM. You cannot just make the position of the RV uncertain to within a few hundred meters or even a few kilometers using jamming, because the interceptor will see it anyway with IR at a very long distance. You have to be so successful at jamming that the entire system is utterly foiled, and that’s not going to happen without some truly brilliant deception jamming function over the entire missile flight path. If more then one radar tracks the inbound, then you’ve got to deception jam two or more radars at once which are linked together. Good luck ever making that work.

The existing Russian ABM system uses nuclear warheads meanwhile, so jamming is even more irrelevant. The US meanwhile is already working on putting nine kill vehicles on a single GBI interceptor missile, which would allow for bigger target locating errors in the radar tracking, as well as simply engaging every target that can be found if effective decoys are ever developed.

Also, a high-powered radar is a good target for SEAD, and if protection would be lacking, it can be taken out. The large surface-based radars with tracking ranges up to 5000 km like the Moscow one are deep inside the territory and will take more to take them out, compared to smaller mobile radars placed close to the borders of nations.

Once more, so what? Why are you acting like I’m arguing that Russian ABM radars will be blown away while America is victoriously immune? Are we having some confusion on positions here?

I don't know if the attacks with nuclear missiles never envisioned massive use of counter-radar strikes. That sounds dubious - you know that taking out radars is critical for the attack's success but you don't plan doing anything? Hell, a EW radar could detect launches on the other side of the earth if they occured, so the time for warning would be there, it's not like by just launching ICBMs bypassing intermediate attacks at radar sites.

It sure does in the absence of an ABM system, because then all the radars can do is trigger a counter strike, so all both sides can do is just fire off as many nukes as possible as quickly as possible. If you destroy the radar ahead of time… well then that’s giving the enemy his early warning, you don’t attack strategic systems unless you mean nuclear war. The radars will still be nuked because they are strategic assets no one could easily replace after a nuclear war, but they are not time critical targets in the absence of ABM.

If however you introduce ABM to the equation, then the radars are time critical. You now have introduced a whole stage of attack that must come before the ICBM launch phase. That means it’s harder to pull off, harder to achieve any degree of surprise (that does matter in terms of wiping out bombers and SSBNs in port) and thus the less likely anyone is to try it.

Depends on the level of funding for the research, and whether it stays on top of priorities.

None of the laser programs, especially not the solid state ones are very monetary intensive on the scale of things, they just need a lot of time because well, even with unlimited funding you can’t speed up fundamental research work beyond a certain point. It’s really not a question that work will go on and be funded; lasers are way too revolutionary in the capabilities, offensive and defensive in any war scenario to be ignored.

ABM against nuclear missiles is one example of a high intensity war use. On the other hand look at Palestinians firing rockets from crowded areas in Gaza, imagine if the IDF could have a laser on a blimp that could kill the shooters individually from five kilometers away. That’d be a heck of an advance on just letting them shoot, because right now the only option would be to fire a missile, killing the shooters but also dozens of gawking ‘civilians’. They’ve even got civilian applications, back in 2007 Britain was testing a high power laser system which was used to clean leaves off of railroad track so trains could run with fewer speed restrictions.

So no, work on lasers will not cease or even slow down. Indeed just about any way one could plan the future of the US military, be it to fight nuclear wars, or big conventional wars, or just little brushfires in Africa, lasers have a huge potential. The US is hardly alone on the matter, and a lot of our work is bound to be sold, copied or stolen anyway.

Not taking out European military assets in a nuclear war is ridiculous, isn't it?

Sure is, but like I said, Russia doing it is advantages to the US thanks to the current set of treaties because it will soak up a limited poll of strategic nuclear assets. Your short range missiles simply cannot reach most of Europe thanks to INF. In fact even reaching the planned radar site in the Czech Republic would already be outside the range of the missile, abet if you blow away the interceptor base in Poland this doesn’t matter in terms of defending Europe.

[Teleros]

However small nukes are very hard to engineer, and are very expensive and inefficient. A nation like Iran isn’t going to be building them for a very long time if ever, but they certainly could rapidly advance to relatively compact devices weighing several hundred pounds which would be nearly as easy to smuggle around, particularly if the bomb is moved in pieces and assembled inside of the country to be attacked. A bomb of that size can also actually yield hundreds of kilotons, while a suitcase nuke is most likely to be subkiloton.

On the other hand, even an inefficient suitcase nuke can be enough for terrorism and blackmail, which is what they're best used for. Imagine the panic that'd ensue if it became known that even a sub-kiloton nuke had gone off in a US city, even if there were relatively few casualties or little damage.

[Zixinus]

Last you checked was just utterly dead wrong.

Note that I specified uranium, not other materials of much higher density. You'd need to create higher density materials, like plutonium or Americium for less critical mass.

I don't think that the Iranians have that.

So, yeah, I'm wrong, but not dead wrong.

U-235 and Pu-239 emit only alpha radiation which is stopped by human skin, also by air and sheets of paper.

True, but alpha radiation can also cause gamma rays. They also create intense heat.

[Starglider]

Note that I specified uranium, not other materials of much higher density.

Technically, Uranium 233 has a critical mass of 17kg (unreflected sphere; it's just 7kg reflected). You probably meant U235 though since U233 is an artificial isotope.

I don't think that the Iranians have that.

The UN thinks they do.

So, yeah, I'm wrong, but not dead wrong.

How about 'massively radiation poisoned and mere hours from death wrong'.

[Axis Kast]

But then, their WMD arsenal would be very small; they could pick the best-suited operators from the Rev. Guards after extensive screening and keep them at their places for long - the situation of the US and USSR was that they controlled hundreds of nuclear armed installations and vehicles; nothing of that sort is present, or will be present in the future in Iran.

So the point is correct, but I do feel it's not relevant for Iran the arsenal of which is near-neglible.

Iran could, but very well might not. The Revolutionary Guards already select based on ideological commitment, and the responsible generals could as easily appoint personnel for reasons of loyalty rather than competency.

I'm also concerned about Iranian usage strategy. Years later, we discovered that South Africa's nuclear strategy was a functional muddle; different documents and different sources had different understandings of what was supposed to happen once certain red lines were crossed. Development of a coherent program was the work of concerned scientists within ARMSCOR, not a discrete order from the military or the national executive. It was hampered by an absence of Soviet specialists, despite the fact that Moscow was the primary boogeyman who would supposedly orchestrate any of South Africa's really serious woes.