ICBM's as kinetic strikes

[Sea Skimmer]

The quote tags (who is being quoted) in the above are fucked up, my screwup.

[Grand Admiral Thrawn]

Such has been corrected.

[Admiral Valdemar]

There are other ways of looking at the laser defence idea. One I particularly like is having a well protected ground based system powered by a nuke powerplant or what have you and situated within your territory. You have that fire up to a constellation of cheap and basic mirror sats that are able to relay the beam anywhere around the world. There are of course drawbacks. Firstly, you'll have twice the atmosphere to go through, you'll need mirror sats that are very well insulated against the heat of the beam and you can't use X-rays or other wavelengths that aren't reflected easily. The same principle could be used for charged particle beams however.

But again, ASAT missiles and lasers will also exist though I don't see them being a death knell for such spy or weapon sats much like the SAM wasn't the death of the aeroplane.

[Illuminatus Primus]

When the Soviets developed their Fractional Orbital Bombardment System, they thought they'd be lucky to land the bomb within a 5x3 kilometer impact zone after deorbiting. Things haven't really gotten any better.

Isn't that why they wanted to use really high-megaton-range bombs with FOBS?

[RedX]

But again, ASAT missiles and lasers will also exist though I don't see them being a death knell for such spy or weapon sats much like the SAM wasn't the death of the aeroplane.

I agree. A higher-orbiting satellite (like at the Earth-Moon Lagrange points...) or one with an extremely low profile (stealth satellites, wheeeee...) will be still be feasible. It's just that you're unlikely to use them for weapons platforms, as they'd just be too expensive.

The price of getting heavy weapons, like Thor rods, into space is currently far too prohibitive. Only if we have a revolution in space travel will it be even vaguely feasible.

[Stark]

But again, ASAT missiles and lasers will also exist though I don't see them being a death knell for such spy or weapon sats much like the SAM wasn't the death of the aeroplane.

I don't know alot about satellites, but don't they move in predicable ways and have limited fuel for evasion? Aren't they the perfect target for things like guided missiles? You'd want to make sure they weren't detected, because they strike me as pretty easy to destroy and difficult to protect.

I thought SAMs were neutralised either by avoiding them or destroying their sensors; satellites really do this, since they're in space.

[Sea Skimmer]

Isn't that why they wanted to use really high-megaton-range bombs with FOBS?

Yes, they had plans for 50, 100 and more commonly 150-megaton warheads, and that was for destroying soft targets and industrial areas. To knock out a point very hard target, the only target worth using a sat bomb against these days, even with a nuke you'd be needing a multi hundred-megaton warhead I suspect, in ordered to be sure of a kill. I'm all for deploying 300 megaton nukes to orbit, then but I'm also all for deploying a mach 3.5 bomber which can drop multiples of that weapon utilizing its atomic ramjet engines.

Though I should note that the FOBS system the Soviets did briefly deploy, though not with a weapon constantly in orbit, they made two flights a year for testing with 18 loaded silos total, had only a 5 megaton warhead. It was only considered useful as a disruption weapon to screw up radar and communications.

[Sea Skimmer]

I don't know alot about satellites, but don't they move in predicable ways and have limited fuel for evasion? Aren't they the perfect target for things like guided missiles? You'd want to make sure they weren't detected, because they strike me as pretty easy to destroy and difficult to protect.

I thought SAMs were neutralised either by avoiding them or destroying their sensors; satellites really do this, since they're in space.

All true. The SAM doesn't drive aircraft from the sky because of several things, the aircrafts ability to come in on an unknown course, the limited horizon for the SAM radar or other sensor, and the aircrafts ability to directly evade, jam or decoy the missile while also shooting back at the launcher in time to make a difference. A weapon sat can only evade to a slight degree, it can be seen over a vast horizon, jammers will be of little value, as are decoys because of a lack of an atmosphere and ground to provide clutter and distortion. In any case any ASAT is going to have home on jam, there too big and expensive not to have it. Shooting back has some value, against missiles, but you'll be tracked by countless radars around the world, not to mention FLIR and other optics systems, stealth isn't possibul and you can't indiscriminately blow away radars. Anyway, if the enemy has a laser to shoot the sat down then nothing but avoiding detection has any possibility of working. And I suspect ground to space lasers will be on the export market before the US has any orbital weapons platforms that can harm a surface target.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Sats do have predictable paths and can be spotted by observers even if undocumented in public. One of the (many) reasons SDI died was because even the high orbital sats used to take out ICBMs would likely be targeted by Soviet nukes since the US was using the likes of Nike Zeus "Mudflap" missiles as ASAT units, albeit, with mixed results.

The tactic, while successful, is a double-edged sword. A nuke in space or even a large frag warhead will play merry hell with your own sats as they all subside in the Clarke Belt orbit unless used for more exotic missions. So you'd be blinding yourself or taking out your SDI sats if they existed.

There were also plans for such systems being put on stratospheric airships which were and still are being looked into as cheap satellite replacements. While able to manouevre, they're even bigger targets and just as easy to kill outright.

Though for a war on any forces like terrorist cells who can't afford such expensive weapons like ASAT tech., the ability to plink targets with impunity from orbit instantly is a nice thought.