If not dismantled how would CAD work and how would affect US

[Wanderer]

CAD=Continental Air Defense as I couldn't fit the whole term in.

Anyway, what would this command look like, what would be under its control, and how would it affect the U.S. politics and Economy?

[phongn]

The command probably would look like some sort of highly-modernized version of ARADCOM at its height, plus missile defense batteries all around the US.

What's more interesting isn't how this affects politics but how to change politics to get to this point. Keeping the air-defense system around effectively demands that Kennedy's doctrines never come into play, that MacNamara and his ilk never comes close to the DOD, etc. That right there will radically effect politics.

I suspect that continued heavy investment into American air-defense would help jumpstart widespread use of computer networks much earlier. If ICBMs and their like never get off the ground, it may reduce the impetus for early miniaturization of transistors until the consumer market takes off.

[CC]

Keeping the air defense system around wouldn't require a change of US politics, it would require the Soviets not to deploy ICBMs and SLBMs in force. Once they do that, an air defense network becomes fairly pointless since it can either be taken out by the ICBMs/SLBMs if they wish to pave the way for bombers or simply bypassed in favor of the urban targets that deterrence threatens.

[Wanderer]

Keeping the air defense system around wouldn't require a change of US politics, it would require the Soviets not to deploy ICBMs and SLBMs in force. Once they do that, an air defense network becomes fairly pointless since it can either be taken out by the ICBMs/SLBMs if they wish to pave the way for bombers or simply bypassed in favor of the urban targets that deterrence threatens.

Those weapons come on predictable ballistic courses entirely dictated by gravity.

A nuclear tipped ABM would destroy them before they debus.

[CC]

Keeping the air defense system around wouldn't require a change of US politics, it would require the Soviets not to deploy ICBMs and SLBMs in force. Once they do that, an air defense network becomes fairly pointless since it can either be taken out by the ICBMs/SLBMs if they wish to pave the way for bombers or simply bypassed in favor of the urban targets that deterrence threatens.

Those weapons come on predictable ballistic courses entirely dictated by gravity.

Which is why you use penaids and other fun toys. Depressed trajectory SLBM launches also add to the fun, 10 minutes from a SSBN 200 nautical miles off the coast to Grand Forks, ND. Less than five to Loring AFB Maine. As you might imagine, that plays royal hell with reaction time and likely restricts response to Sprint type missiles only.

A nuclear tipped ABM would destroy them before they debus.

Wouldn't actually, bus releases immediately following the boost phase.

[Wanderer]

Which is why you use penaids and other fun toys. Depressed trajectory SLBM launches also add to the fun, 10 minutes from a SSBN 200 nautical miles off the coast to Grand Forks, ND. Less than five to Loring AFB Maine. As you might imagine, that plays royal hell with reaction time and likely restricts response to Sprint type missiles only.

Decoys don't work and can not be made to work as you have to sacrifice a warhead to carry them. MRVs, MIRVs, and MARVs likewise don't work. MRVs, are closely pack together that a single nuke tipped ABM takes the whole lot out. MIRVs have to deployed one by one by the bus and thus its a non starter. MARVs can not manuever enough to give an ABM problems.

SLBMs will be harder to intercept, but should present no real problems to a competently set up ABM and sub chaser network, though I if in charge of an ABM battery shooting at a SLBM, you would bet I be praying hard to hit.

Wouldn't actually, bus releases immediately following the boost phase.

Which is in orbit and in range of the ABM that has sufficient range to hit it.

Stuart wrote an excellent articlehere.

It explains things far better than I can. But main point is this, nuke tipped ABMs are the way to go.

[phongn]

Keeping the air defense system around wouldn't require a change of US politics, it would require the Soviets not to deploy ICBMs and SLBMs in force. Once they do that, an air defense network becomes fairly pointless since it can either be taken out by the ICBMs/SLBMs if they wish to pave the way for bombers or simply bypassed in favor of the urban targets that deterrence threatens.

Ballistic missiles or no ballistic missiles, the cadre for the large conventional army has to come from somewhere and it's coming from ARADCOM. At it's heart, the loss of the US air-defense network was political.

[CC]

Browser crashes, how do I hate thee? Let me count the ways...

Decoys don't work and can not be made to work as you have to sacrifice a warhead to carry them.

Penaids do work and you do not need to sacrifice a warhead to carry them. Endoatmospheric decoys might be of sufficient weight as to require the sacrifice of a warhead due to the need to compensate for atmospheric drag, but exoatmospheric ones have no such similar requirement. Even if terminal intercepters are not degraded, forcing a reliance on endoatmospheric interceptors only is a major strike against any AICBM system. Furthermore, the deployment of penaids on Minuteman I, Minuteman II, and Polaris negates the idea that you must sacrifice a warhead to carry them (for the obvious reason that, with the exception of Polaris A-3, these were unitary warhead missiles).

MRVs, are closely pack together that a single nuke tipped ABM takes the whole lot out

That is entirely dependent on the actual spacing and the hardness of the RVs against the proposed nuclear ABM (I'm just going to refer to that as NABM in the future; it's a fun acronym to say anyhow).

MIRVs have to deployed one by one by the bus and thus its a non starter.

Why?

MARVs can not manuever enough to give an ABM problems.

Any maneuver in the terminal phase could pose a problem for an ABM, its dependent on whether the ABM has time to react to the maneuver. Its not assured of success or of defeat.

SLBMs will be harder to intercept, but should present no real problems to a competently set up ABM and sub chaser network,

And you base this opinion on what, pray tell?

Which is in orbit and in range of the ABM that has sufficient range to hit it.

No, it is not in orbit, it's in an unpowered ascent phase of a ballistic trajectory. A CONUS based NABM most certainly does not have the acceleration or the range to attempt an ascent or boost phase intercept of an ICBM launched from the Soviet Union. By the time it is within range of the CONUS NABM, it has already deployed its warheads and penaids and is rapidly descending.

Stuart wrote an excellent article here.

It explains things far better than I can. But main point is this, nuke tipped ABMs are the way to go.

Said article is flat-out wrong about MIRV release heights and probably wrong about MRV release heights. I've seen some references for a MaRV that wouldn't require a large volume or weight increase, it used a RV design that would result in a radical maneuver at a certain altitude due to pressure/lift. Probably a net decrease in accuracy, but that's fairly irrelevant for deterrence; cities are rather large targets.

NABMs also complicate defensive efforts due to nuclear blackout and possible uncertainty regarding whether an incoming RV has in fact been disabled (that could also complicate the picture for endoatmospheric interceptors).

There's also the problem that national city protective AICBM shield is far too resource intensive compared to using ICBMs to defeat it. Let's posit that 50 EMT arriving at countervalue targets is a sufficient threat to deter the US (for comparison purposes, McNamara's Assured Destruction required some 400 EMT and that was to ensure the destruction of 30% of Soviet population and 75% of Soviet industry if memory serves). 50 EMT is likely too high, but for our purposes it will function as a guide for when the US populace and leadership do not feel there to be sufficient gain from a strategic nuclear war even if the Soviet Union were utterly destroyed.

50 EMT would require no more than 75 warheads of 550kt each to penetrate the national AICBM field. Janurary of 1992, this represents a paltry 1.1% of the deployed ICBM force and only 0.79% of the total force including SLBMs. Counting only 550kt warheads, only 1.4%.

Now consider that any notional city-defending AICBM shield must be of sufficient strength to prevent local saturation. That means that New York and other major cities must be capable of staving off attacks by more than five hundred individual warheads and do so without one getting through (assuming that the Soviets attack at least ten major cities during a countervalue attack). To put things mildly, that's expensive. Arguably, its not even doable due to space considerations and the rather large likelihood that you will be unable to intercept all of them. Extending this such that the twenty largest cities have that capability and the next 30 largest have a defense against up to one hundred? That will break the US pocket book and the USSR can likely just build more ICBMs for cheaper.

Heck, let's use 400 EMT for complete destruction of the US. Counting ICBMs only with the January 1992 figures, and the UR-100U MRVs as only one 350kt warhead, there is approximately 4462 EMT available aboard. In other words, over 90% of their arsenal can be intercepted and the US would still fall subject to the same assured destruction it promised the USSR. 99% can be destroyed and the 50 EMT deterrence line still holds. That's before consideration of SLBMs

Ballistic missiles or no ballistic missiles, the cadre for the large conventional army has to come from somewhere and it's coming from ARADCOM. At it's heart, the loss of the US air-defense network was political.

It's hardly political if there's no rational reason to maintain a national air defense network. It's like saying that the elimination of Coastal Artillery was political.

[MKSheppard]

Penaids do work and you do not need to sacrifice a warhead to carry them.

WRONG

If they work; why have they not been deployed on US ICBMs/SLBMs since PX-1 for Polaris A2?

Please note that only a SINGLE SSBN load of PX-1 ever went to sea at all; and proved to be utterly useless against the Soviet Moscow ABM system.

[MKSheppard]

That is entirely dependent on the actual spacing and the hardness of the RVs against the proposed nuclear ABM

We tried that with Polaris and the Claw; by accepting a system that was a mix between the optimum release trajectory to gain maximum destruction on the target; and a trajectory which spread out the RVs fast enough to avoid nuclear ABMs.

So what went wrong?

The engineers when they did their calculations for RV dispersal, worked with the 20 kiloton warhead of NIKE ZEUS; and it was all for naught when the ABM-1 GALOSH was shown to have a 1 MT warhead; followed by SPARTAN with a 5 MT warhead; completely obliterating the RVs in huge sleets of radiation et al.

[phongn]

It's hardly political if there's no rational reason to maintain a national air defense network. It's like saying that the elimination of Coastal Artillery was political.

Except for the minor issue that the USSR kept their manned bomber and cruise missile force, which still needed to be defended against?

[CC]

Penaids do work and you do not need to sacrifice a warhead to carry them.

WRONG

If they work; why have they not been deployed on US ICBMs/SLBMs since PX-1 for Polaris A2?

Because the ABM threat didn't materialize. Why bother carrying something that you do not need? By the time the A-35 system was set up, we were deploying Poseidon and could easily overwhelm it with a single Poseidon boat (even if each RV could be intercepted by a single A-350, only four missiles would be required to absorb an entire launch complex with 32 interceptors and then drop the eight remaining warheads wherever they pleased; assumption is that a full load of ten warheads is used here).

Please note that only a SINGLE SSBN load of PX-1 ever went to sea at all; and proved to be utterly useless against the Soviet Moscow ABM system.

Source for it "proving to be utterly useless against the Soviet Moscow ABM system"? I'm especially interested in how it "proved" to be utterly useless. At least in the manner that I use the English language, that means that it was launched against the Moscow ABM system. I suppose you could cite the continued existence of Moscow as evidence in favor, but I'd like something a bit more substantial.

Incidentally, the discussion on Secret Projects indicates that the base A-35 system was not capable against jamming or other decoys until upgraded to the A-35M system.

We tried that with Polaris and the Claw; by accepting a system that was a mix between the optimum release trajectory to gain maximum destruction on the target; and a trajectory which spread out the RVs fast enough to avoid nuclear ABMs.

So what went wrong?

The engineers when they did their calculations for RV dispersal, worked with the 20 kiloton warhead of NIKE ZEUS; and it was all for naught when the ABM-1 GALOSH was shown to have a 1 MT warhead; followed by SPARTAN with a 5 MT warhead; completely obliterating the RVs in huge sleets of radiation et al.

In other words, what I said was entirely correct. It's a conditional statement against MRVs, not an absolute statement. As I said, it is dependent on the dispersion of the MRVs and the lethal radius of the ABM against the hardness of the RV (I rather doubt that the Polaris A-3 RVs were hardened to any significant degree for that matter).

Except for the minor issue that the USSR kept their manned bomber and cruise missile force, which still needed to be defended against?

Doe it really matter if the rubble bounces 20 times rather than only 19 times? Plus, again, fighter-interceptor bases and any fixed missile batteries are subject to attack by ICBM forces. They've some utility if the war is only conventional, but if its only conventional bombing, the money is better spent elsewhere in my opinion.

[MKSheppard]

Because the ABM threat didn't materialize. Why bother carrying something that you do not need?

Or because it didn't work.

By the time the A-35 system was set up, we were deploying Poseidon and could easily overwhelm it with a single Poseidon boat

That's only if you need 1 ABM per each RV; which you don't, because you can just make the ABM system highly energetic with enough delta v to make a long ranged exo-atmospheric intercept and kill the RV bus and all the RVs on it in one shot before it deploys any of it's RVs.

Source for it "proving to be utterly useless against the Soviet Moscow ABM system"? I'm especially interested in how it "proved" to be utterly useless.

I'll let one of the designers for the PenAids talk about it.

“they [the chaff] were all cut to the wrong frequencies, they [the decoys] were all too small to have been seen by these low frequency radars and they [the re-entry vehicles] were spaced improperly to accommodate the large yield weapons effects ranges of the big warheads. So other than that everything was just fine!”

Indicates that the base A-35 system was not capable against jamming or other decoys until upgraded to the A-35M system.

Which didn't stop the Russians from deploying it; unlike the political leadership in the US; which insisted on a perfect system, which was always conveintly off on the horizon.

As I said, it is dependent on the dispersion of the MRVs and the lethal radius of the ABM against the hardness of the RV (I rather doubt that the Polaris A-3 RVs were hardened to any significant degree for that matter).

Actually, they did deploy the "Topsy" A3T "hardened" Polaris missile as a "counter" to nuclear ABMs. No word on how effective the hardening was. They also did "Mark Up"; a program to harden the RVs against said effects; which eventually culiminated in "Antelope", which was taken up by the UK as "Super Antelope" and renamed "Chevaline" to avoid any hints of US influence.

Doe it really matter if the rubble bounces 20 times rather than only 19 times? Plus, again, fighter-interceptor bases and any fixed missile batteries are subject to attack by ICBM forces. .

Not really, no. The Soviets fudged quite a bit on the ABM treaty with their large scale deployment of the SA-5, which had a limited capability against incoming RVs -- enough to cause some thinking in the targeteering side of business over here.

[Wanderer]

And you base this opinion on what, pray tell?

First a sub must get in range of the coast. The closer it gets the more likely it will be discovered by regular surface patrols

With a proper defence combining naval and air forces tied to the Continental Air Defense system, the sub even if it launches one missile will quickly be pinpointed and attacked. As for the SLBM its approach is quickly calculated and fired on by any nuke tipped missile that has a chance of hitting it before it can reach its target.

No, it is not in orbit, it's in an unpowered ascent phase of a ballistic trajectory. A CONUS based NABM most certainly does not have the acceleration or the range to attempt an ascent or boost phase intercept of an ICBM launched from the Soviet Union. By the time it is within range of the CONUS NABM, it has already deployed its warheads and penaids and is rapidly descending.

Actually it appears we were both wrong, the warheads don't debus till after the mid course phase of the launch, that is when the bus gets hit before it can do much of anything.

Said article is flat-out wrong about MIRV release heights and probably wrong about MRV release heights. I've seen some references for a MaRV that wouldn't require a large volume or weight increase, it used a RV design that would result in a radical maneuver at a certain altitude due to pressure/lift. Probably a net decrease in accuracy, but that's fairly irrelevant for deterrence; cities are rather large targets.

Really, how so considering Stuart is an expert in this field.

NABMs also complicate defensive efforts due to nuclear blackout and possible uncertainty regarding whether an incoming RV has in fact been disabled (that could also complicate the picture for endoatmospheric interceptors).

What nuclear blackout? Military Radars are designed to see through nuclear blasts.

There's also the problem that national city protective AICBM shield is far too resource intensive compared to using ICBMs to defeat it. Let's posit that 50 EMT arriving at countervalue targets is a sufficient threat to deter the US (for comparison purposes, McNamara's Assured Destruction required some 400 EMT and that was to ensure the destruction of 30% of Soviet population and 75% of Soviet industry if memory serves). 50 EMT is likely too high, but for our purposes it will function as a guide for when the US populace and leadership do not feel there to be sufficient gain from a strategic nuclear war even if the Soviet Union were utterly destroyed.

What a load of bullshit, the cost of deploying an ABM system is lower compared to the costs of building hardened silos for ICBMs and the massive missiles themselves.

Further, how much does it cost to rebuild a city after its been destroyed? How destructive is it to a Nation if many of its citizens are killed or made refugees from an ICBM strike because we didn't deploy an ABM shield?

Even if we saved just one city, don't you think the costs were worth it?

50 EMT would require no more than 75 warheads of 550kt each to penetrate the national AICBM field. Janurary of 1992, this represents a paltry 1.1% of the deployed ICBM force and only 0.79% of the total force including SLBMs. Counting only 550kt warheads, only 1.4%.

WTF, did it occur that its model is flawed.

Now consider that any notional city-defending AICBM shield must be of sufficient strength to prevent local saturation. That means that New York and other major cities must be capable of staving off attacks by more than five hundred individual warheads and do so without one getting through (assuming that the Soviets attack at least ten major cities during a countervalue attack). To put things mildly, that's expensive. Arguably, its not even doable due to space considerations and the rather large likelihood that you will be unable to intercept all of them. Extending this such that the twenty largest cities have that capability and the next 30 largest have a defense against up to one hundred? That will break the US pocket book and the USSR can likely just build more ICBMs for cheaper.

The ABM just has to hit a few busses before they release their multiple warheads, and once again how much does it cost to rebuild a city after its been destroyed? How destructive is it to a Nation if many of its citizens are killed or made refugees from an ICBM strike because we didn't deploy an ABM shield?

Also consider building in bulk cuts costs considerably.

[CC]

Or because it didn't work.

Or we could go with common sense and Occam's razor and note that it is much more likely that the lack of a Soviet ABM system meant there was no reason to accept the decrease in range with the higher weight of the penaids and so they didn't deploy it past the one instance. I think that's rather more logical than your "It was completely ineffective against a non-existent system" explanation.

That's only if you need 1 ABM per each RV; which you don't, because you can just make the ABM system highly energetic with enough delta v to make a long ranged exo-atmospheric intercept and kill the RV bus and all the RVs on it in one shot before it deploys any of it's RVs.

A-35 is described by OKB Fakel (in the book quoted in that thread) as a Mach 4 missile with a range of 300 kilometers. Now, perhaps it is just me, but how do you translate that to being capable of making an ascent phase intercept several thousand kilometers away?

I'll let one of the designers for the PenAids talk about it.

“they [the chaff] were all cut to the wrong frequencies, they [the decoys] were all too small to have been seen by these low frequency radars and they [the re-entry vehicles] were spaced improperly to accommodate the large yield weapons effects ranges of the big warheads. So other than that everything was just fine!”

You know, it's highly courteous to cite your sources. As it turns out, Google has scanned it and for a wonder it actually brought me to the specific page rather than leaving it up to me to find it in the book. From Polaris to Trident by Graham Spinardi, page 72. See how easy that was? Perhaps you could try doing it in the future?

Now that I have access to the context, the quote was in response to first view of the Galosh system in 1964. Unfortunately for the Soviets, this wasn't operational until 1972.

Quoting your own source back at you:

Antelope focused on improving survivability in nuclear environments during the launch and exoatmospheric phases of flight. Another programme, known as Impala, also included endoatmospheric penaids or 'twisters'. Impala was incorporated into Antelope in September 1966. In all, sixteen test flights were carried out (including a few of Impala), mainly in the Pacific 'against' the Army's Safeguard radar at Kwajalein, with results that were considered successful.

Antelope, Impala, and Hexo were developed on an urgent basis, but as a backup to the next generation FBM system. As before there was little enthusiasm to begin complicating fleet operations with such modifications unless there was widespread ABM deployment. As Galosh only achieved limited deployment around Moscow, and penetration of those defenses was assigned to the Minuteman ICBM and its penetration aids, it was decided that the penetration issue could be better solved with a specifically designed missile.

Now, I'm rather curious: Is this innocent doublethink or intentional misquoting on your part? Because you managed to completely remove the quote from all the surrounding context, ignored that by the time Galosh was actually operational there were counters in place, and conveniently ignored that the next two pages directly contradicted your twin theses 1)Penaids don't work and 2)PX-1 was not deployed more than once because it did not work. In fact, your own source directly supports my argument that they did work and that it was not further deployed due to lack of operational need.

Actually, they did deploy the "Topsy" A3T "hardened" Polaris missile as a "counter" to nuclear ABMs. No word on how effective the hardening was. They also did "Mark Up"; a program to harden the RVs against said effects; which eventually culiminated in "Antelope", which was taken up by the UK as "Super Antelope" and renamed "Chevaline" to avoid any hints of US influence.

Yes and there had been absolutely no hardening of Polaris prior to Topsy. It is quite possible that the Topsy program eliminated the problem of multiple kills.

Notably, the problem considered was one "they are so close together and unhardened, therefore a single missile might take them all out" and not "They'll be killed in their bus prior to release."

Not really, no. The Soviets fudged quite a bit on the ABM treaty with their large scale deployment of the SA-5, which had a limited capability against incoming RVs -- enough to cause some thinking in the targeteering side of business over here.

Didn't Stas already show that to be bunk in this thread?

First a sub must get in range of the coast. The closer it gets the more likely it will be discovered by regular surface patrols

With a proper defence combining naval and air forces tied to the Continental Air Defense system, the sub even if it launches one missile will quickly be pinpointed and attacked.

By the time a submarine located through missile launch can be attacked, all of the missiles will be away unless you were lucky enough to have a P-3 or Perry overhead right at that exact moment.

As for the SLBM its approach is quickly calculated and fired on by any nuke tipped missile that has a chance of hitting it before it can reach its target.

You have a bare handful of minutes from missile launch until missile impact. While you might very well fire off any missile you can, what is the likelihood that you will actually hit the target, especially if it is aimed at the coastal AICBM facilities? Also note that the SLBM will not go ballistic until after burnout, almost three minutes into the game.

Actually it appears we were both wrong, the warheads don't debus till after the mid course phase of the launch, that is when the bus gets hit before it can do much of anything.

No, actually that's still wrong. Here is a paper on theoretically using a Trident II in a depressed trajectory shot. If you scroll down to page 130 "The post-boost phase during which MIRVing occurs is relatively long for ICBMs as there has been no reason to keep the time short. The MIRVing time for the MX is 30-50 seconds per RV. The MIRVing time of SLBMs must be shorter, and available figures suggest roughly 15 seconds per RV."

More, explicitly, in a pro-ABM paper by the Heritage Foundation:
"While the SS-18’s boost phase ends at 300 s, the release of RVs from its final stage, which was called a “bus” because it deployed MIRVs, continued until a time Tbus of about 600 s."

MISSILE DEFENSE FOR THE 21ST CENTURY

Really, how so considering Stuart is an expert in this field.

According to who else in the field? And if he is such an expert, then why does everything that I find on the matter contradict him?

What nuclear blackout? Military Radars are designed to see through nuclear blasts.

It takes time for the fireball and the resultant atmospheric conditions to clear. Until such time, radio waves are a bit screwed trying to go through it.

What a load of bullshit, the cost of deploying an ABM system is lower compared to the costs of building hardened silos for ICBMs and the massive missiles themselves.

For several years, the Clinton Administration estimated that a limited NMD system
would cost $9 billion to $11 billion to develop, test, and deploy. In January 1999, the Administration indicated these costs was closer to $13 billion. Since then, the price tag increased significantly to more than $30 billion. Currently, there are no cost estimates available for what the Bush Administration envisions for the Test Bed or the contingency deployment.

Page 5

BMDS (Ballistic Missile Defense System) – Program costs increased by $17,377.4 million (+20.2 percent) from $85,910.7 million to $103,288.1 million, due primarily to the addition of fiscal year 2012 and fiscal year 2013 funding (+$19,350.1 million), increases in Terminal High Altitude Area Defense program content (+$1,036.0 million), restructure of the Sea-Based Terminal program (+$860.4 million), additional sensors to support a proposed European site (+$2,489.3 million), and revised escalation indices (+$727.6 million). These increases were partially offset by delaying the Space Tracking and Surveillance System beyond fiscal year 2013 (-$1,472.3 million), restructuring the Kinetic Energy Interceptor program (-$3,396.5 million), and program-wide reductions (-$2,304.4 million).

Defenselink

Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (Missile Defense)
$30.7 billion

The Ground-Based Midcourse Defense program, an element of the Missile Defense program, is designed to defend against limited long-range ballistic missile attacks. According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), Boeing has already incurred cost overruns of $600 million in developing the first block of the program, a collection of radars and interceptors which are integrated by a central control system. GAO estimates that the contract will exceed its target cost by $1.5 billion.

House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform

So that's 30-100 billion dollars for a limited national missile defense.

Acquisition costs for the Trident II program are separated into two Selected Acquisition Reports (SARS)~ : (1) Trident II Missile and (2) Trident II Submarine. According to the most recent SARS, as of December 31, 1987, the projected total acquisition cost for the Trident II through the year 1999 is $51.3 billion in escalated dollars. This includes costs for the (1) total research and development of the sws and procurement of 28 development missiles, (2) research and development for Trident II submarines, (3) procurement of 815 production missiles, (4) construction of 11 Trident II submarines, and (5) military construction to support the Trident II. This acquisition figure has decreased by $400 million since the fiscal year 1982 SARS.:~ Estimated program cost reductions are attributed by the Navy to lower inflation indices and other changes. These reductions largely offset the cost of 4 Trident II submarines and 103 missiles added to the program since the 1982 SARS. The $51.3 billion acquisition cost does not include about $2 billion for
the planned conversion of eight Trident I submarines to Trident 11s.

Trident II Proceeding Toward Deployment pages 29-30.

To make the cost looks just a tad bit more obscenely in favor of the submarines (which presumably are more expensive than silos), page 31 has a table of the estimated life-cycle costs for Trident II capability through the year 2032. Construction of 11 Trident II submarines and 8 Trident I submarines is only 20.9 billion.

Now, I really doubt that the GMD, even assuming it "only" costs 30 billion, could be deployed on a national level against a MIRVing force cheaper than the Trident force was built up for.

Further, how much does it cost to rebuild a city after its been destroyed?

Quite a lot. That's why the idea is not to start a nuclear war in the first place. Even the original plans with Nike-Zeus didn't expect or try for an impenetrable shield, merely the reduction of damage.

How destructive is it to a Nation if many of its citizens are killed or made refugees from an ICBM strike because we didn't deploy an ABM shield?

And if they are killed or made refugees anyhow because the ABM shield was overwhelmed?

Even if we saved just one city, don't you think the costs were worth it?

Not really. That city would soon be worthless due to the loss of all the other cities and the resulting supply and economics that kept the city alive in the first place.

The ABM just has to hit a few busses before they release their multiple warheads

Show me the scholarly literature supporting that view. Or declassified stuff from the military.

Also consider building in bulk cuts costs considerably.

Individual costs to a certain point, yes (it doesn't keep dropping however simply because you add more units). Overall system cost, no.

[That NOS Guy]

CC

About Trident SSBN costs:

Unless I'm reading this completely wrong, your own source quotes costs of 19 Trident II subs at $154.6 Billion through 2032, not the mere 20 billion you're passing it off as.

It's one thing to build a SSBN for only a billion apiece, it's an entirely seperate matter to arm, staff, and keep the thing in shape. Keep in mind, this report is also almost 20 years old.

The thing you're missing with NMD costs is that once the basic framework of the system is established, it's very easy to expand at whim. Much more cost effective then say developing a new line SSBNs.

The rest of your argument is pretty much ballyho about how somehow no defense is better then some defense.

[Wanderer]

CC

The thing you're missing with NMD costs is that once the basic framework of the system is established, it's very easy to expand at whim. Much more cost effective then say developing a new line SSBNs.

The rest of your argument is pretty much ballyho about how somehow no defense is better then some defense.

I personally await his answer as to why no defense is a good deal better than some defense and why its not a good ideal to destroy missiles with 4 megaton warheads with 20 kiloton nuclear tipped ABMs.

But this is priceless:

It takes time for the fireball and the resultant atmospheric conditions to clear. Until such time, radio waves are a bit screwed trying to go through it.

Did it occur to CC that such problems have been solved since WW2 and present no problems at all?

I wonder how CC will handle Stuart when he arrives in this thread...

[CC]

CC

About Trident SSBN costs:

Unless I'm reading this completely wrong, your own source quotes costs of 19 Trident II subs at $154.6 Billion through 2032, not the mere 20 billion you're passing it off as.

That's the thirty year life cycle cost. The specific question was addressing what was cheaper to acquire, a comprehensive NMD or a force capable of defeating it. Hence I posted the acquisition costs for the limited NMD under development and the Trident II program. I lacked figures for a 30 year life-cycle of the NMD program. Doing some more research, I came across the following:

There has never been a clear, consensus cost figure for deploying an NMD system. For several years, the Clinton Administration estimated that a limited NMD system would cost $9 to $11 billion to develop, test, and deploy. In January 1999, the Administration estimated that an initial system of 20 interceptors would cost about $10.6 billion. In February 2000, the Administration provided a life-cycle cost estimate of $26.6 billion for an initial system of 100 ground-based interceptors, presumably in Alaska. A couple of months later, the Pentagon provided a life-cycle estimate of $30.2 billion for the NMD system ($FY1991). By May 2000, the General Accounting Office reported a cost figure of $36.2 billion (GAO/NSIAD- 00-131), which number BMDO also apparently was using.
A late April 2000 study by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that it would cost about $29.5 billion to develop, build, and operate an initial NMD system (the expanded Capability 1 system) through 2015. This total cost was comparable to the Administration’s estimate of $30.2 billion (now apparently $36.2 billion). CBO estimates it
will cost another $19 billion through 2015 to expand the initial system of 100 interceptors and build what is called a Capability 2 and Capability 3 system designed for greater numbers of more sophisticated potential missile threats. Additional space-based sensors would bring the total costs for NMD to around $60 billion through 2015. NMD critics argue that the true costs will be even higher, perhaps as much as $120 billion, to include other items some NMD supporters want: space-based and naval-based NMD interceptors.

National Missile Defense: Issues for Congress

Capability 2 is a single site with 100 GBI, Capability 3 is intended to open a second site with a similar number of GBI. So, 60 billion for 200 interceptors by 2015. Not bothering to adjust for inflation (plus the numbers were adjusted for expected inflation so that would take more effort than I care for), that's the 30 year life-cycle cost of 8 Trident submarines and their 192 missiles. Again, it looks like Trident II is cheaper than GMD.

It's one thing to build a SSBN for only a billion apiece, it's an entirely seperate matter to arm, staff, and keep the thing in shape. Keep in mind, this report is also almost 20 years old.

The thing you're missing with NMD costs is that once the basic framework of the system is established, it's very easy to expand at whim. Much more cost effective then say developing a new line SSBNs.

Why would you bother developing a new line of SSBNs? Simply keep the current class and build more of them. As for more cost effective, a single Ohio class vessel carries 24 missiles. Had the Cold War not intervened, we'd be looking at a notional 8 warheads per missile on patrol for a total of 192 warheads that need to be eliminated, requiring at least one interceptor each (hence the focus on MKV; its unfortunate that funding was cut on that). Under current plans, in other words, to defend against a single Ohio class submarine would require at least two Capability 3 GMD sites. The boat is simply more affordable.

The rest of your argument is pretty much ballyho about how somehow no defense is better then some defense.

If both have the same result, what is the point in putting money into a useless defense?

Edit: Since Wanderer posted while I did

I personally await his answer as to why no defense is a good deal better than some defense and why its not a good ideal to destroy missiles with 4 megaton warheads with 20 kiloton nuclear tipped ABMs.

Because the economics of a national missile defense are such that it is cheaper to build enough offensive weapons to overwhelm the defending force. Posit that Country A has a single 4MT ICBM capable of threatening 50 of Country B's cities. If Country B opts to build ABMs to defend those cities, he is obligated to spend a good deal of money to defend each one of those cities since the value of the ICBM lies in that the cities are threatened, Country A doesn't much care which one it is. Taking the same amount of money that Country B spent on building up a defense against one city, Country A can build an ICBM force capable of overwhelming those defenses over multiple cities. Ergo, Country B is better off spending the money elsewhere where it will do more good.

Did it occur to CC that such problems have been solved since WW2 and present no problems at all?

Did it occur to you that the universe has not changed the laws of physics in the intervening 60 years and that it still poses a problem? How about you define what precisely is the cause of nuclear blackout and how it is purported to be solved?

And on that note, it's not likely I'll be able to respond again before Monday.

[Adrian Laguna]

Did it occur to you that the universe has not changed the laws of physics in the intervening 60 years and that it still poses a problem? How about you define what precisely is the cause of nuclear blackout and how it is purported to be solved?.

There is no such thing as a nuclear blackout, it's actually a nuclear whiteout. The radar systems are overwhelmed by all the incoming radiation, atmospheric conditions have nothing to do with it. The solution to this problem is to have the radio waves carry a signature that doesn't appear in nature, and set the receivers up to ignore all radio waves save the ones carrying that signal.

[Stuart]

Keeping the air defense system around wouldn't require a change of US politics, it would require the Soviets not to deploy ICBMs and SLBMs in force. Once they do that, an air defense network becomes fairly pointless since it can either be taken out by the ICBMs/SLBMs if they wish to pave the way for bombers or simply bypassed in favor of the urban targets that deterrence threatens.

An integrated continental air defense system would (and was supposed to) include both anti-bomber and anti-missile systems. In the case of ARADCOM, missile batteries would have had both the Zeus anti-ballistic missile missile and the Hercules anti-bomber missile. Some Herc batteries would have been Herc-only for a variety of reasons but most would have been mixed.

Which is why you use penaids and other fun toys.

OK, a note before we start. I've been working in the ABM sector for most of the 1980s and well into the 1990s so I can speak to this sector from personal experience watching the systems develop and participating in that development process. I've kept more or less current with developments since then.

None of which work. We cracked the decoy problem back in 1964 and they have not been credible since. Various groups (like DARPA) continue to work ond eveloping decoys, primarily so the anti-decoy teams can measure their skills upon the state-of-the-art decoys but no decoy has ever withstood the battery of discrimination technologies we have been able to bring to bear upon it. This process of development and evaluation is going on constantly and the simple fact is that discrimination technologies are pulling steadily ahead of decoy technology. The reason is quite simple; in the final analysis, discrimination relies on data processing power and that's been increasing exponentially for years. Now, decoys not only have to look exactly like the target to a wide range of different observation technologies, they have to behave exactly like the target as well. We can see this in modern aircraft; chaff and flares are useless against modern anti-aircraft missiles. Why? because they don't behave like aircraft. What the missile guidance system sees is the track of the aircraft, then suddenly a mass of targets separating at 90 degrees from that track and describing a ballistic arc downwards. Aircraft don't do that, so the decoy tracks are rejected. That works so well that chaff and flares have become obsolete. As a result the air forces adopted towed decoys which do simulate the flight path of an aircraft. Unfortunately towed decoys have a serious weakness - they are behind teh aircraft towing them. So it was quite easy to negate towed decoys by programming the missile to hit the target in the lead. Now, people are working on ways for an aircraft to "push" a decoy.

In the ABM context, decoys have to exactly simulate the shape, mass, thermal signature, thermal distribution (plus many other factors) of the RV. In fact, the RV has to be an exact simulation of the warhead. If it is not, it will be filtered out. There are literally dozens of technologies used for the target discrimination process.

Depressed trajectory SLBM launches also add to the fun, 10 minutes from a SSBN 200 nautical miles off the coast to Grand Forks, ND. Less than five to Loring AFB Maine. As you might imagine, that plays royal hell with reaction time and likely restricts response to Sprint type missiles only.

Except nobody uses depressed-technology SLBMs for a very good reason. They are incredibly fuel-inefficient and thus short-ranged. Typically a multiple-warhead SLBM will only be a single warhead SLBM if fired on a dpressed trajectory. Thus, by forcing an enemy to use depressed trajectories we've eliminated nine of his ten potential warheads without firing a shot. That's 90 percent virtual attrition.

In fact though, depressed trajectory SLBMs are not used because there is a much better solution to the particular requirements involved. That's short-range ballistic missiles such as SSN-16 and the now-gone SUBROC. Just fuse their nuclear depth charges for a surface burst. However, the point is moot; all the good stuff is based in the central US where it's much harder to get at.

Wouldn't actually, bus releases immediately following the boost phase.

That's not correct. In an MRV, the bus discharges its warheads when making final descent, usually less than 100 kilometers from its target. In an MIRV, the discharge distances are greater but still relatively short. One of teh (not the only) factor determining that is accuracy; the process of bus discharge is such that there are considerable inaccuracies inherent in the process. The effects of those inaccuracies are exponential; if discharge is too early CEP becomes unmanageably big. As a rule of thumb, MIRV busses start discharging their RVs less than 1000 kilometers from the first target (the actual figure is classified).

Furthermore, the deployment of penaids on Minuteman I, Minuteman II, and Polaris negates the idea that you must sacrifice a warhead to carry them (for the obvious reason that, with the exception of Polaris A-3, these were unitary warhead missiles).

Decoys were never deployed on these missiles except for test purposes. However, even if they had been, the point on a unitary missile is that the weight of the decoys would come off other factors of the missile performance. They'd either reduce range or the trhow weight of the missile or both. Usually both. A good example is Chevaline, a British 'modernization' of Polaris. The Brits got seduced by the decoy people and rather than buy Poseidon, modified their Polaris inventory to Chevaline configuration. This involved installing the decoys they fondly believed would help them penetrate the Moscow ABM shield. The price of installing those decoys was one of the three warheads and a 30 percent reduction in range. When tested against the appropriate radars, Chevaline failed completely; the decoys were completely ineffective. The problems with the system were never solved and Chavaline is a horrible example of a failed defense project that was wrongly-conceived right from the start.

That is entirely dependent on the actual spacing and the hardness of the RVs against the proposed nuclear ABM (I'm just going to refer to that as NABM in the future; it's a fun acronym to say anyhow).

To some extent, but we don;t have to use a nuclear warhead; just hit the bus before it starts to discharge. A conventional or even a kinetic warhead will do the job just fine. We've had that capability since the late 1960s - its one of the differences between Zeus-XERA and LIM-49A

Why?

Because that's how the Bus works. It goes like this. The inertial error compensation system (necessary for any kind of pinpoint accuracy) is built into the bus, not the RVs (there are obvious reasons for that). So, what happens is the bus reaches a set point in its trajectory and uses its built-in thrusters to align itself so that the RV it discharges will follow a ballistic arc to its target. Once that RV has been discharged, the bus realigns to the next target and discharges a second RV. Then, it realigns to the third target and discharges the third RV, all the way up to maximum capacity. By the way, the number of RVs carried is determined more by the number of realignments the bus can make in the time available than any other factor. Usually, that's way less than nominal capacity. Also obviously, the greater the realignment between targets, the more time for the bus to switch from target to target and thus the slower the rate of fire. The result of all this is that a MIRVed missile has a limited target footprint into which it can fire its missiles. The closer to the target it releases its RV, the more accurate the RVs are but the smaller the footprint. The further out the missile starts to discharge its RVs, the larger the footprint (thus the more flexible the attack plan using that missile) but the less accurate (exponentially) the individual RVs are. One of the things I had to do during my tenure in the strategic nuclear business (which ended around 1998) was to work out attack plans for individual MIRVed missiles so that the dispersion and accuracy factors were balanced for maximum effects. That was very hard work and rarely gave a satisfactory answer.

Any maneuver in the terminal phase could pose a problem for an ABM, its dependent on whether the ABM has time to react to the maneuver. Its not assured of success or of defeat.

Nothing is assured in warfare. However, the sorts of manoeuvers performable by MaRVs do not cause serious problems. It's important to remeber that MaRVs are not intended to evade defensive missiles; they are intended to improve accuracy against point targets. Therefore their manoeuvers are severely limited to those needed to improve accuracy. If you think about its, that's logical. That RV is coming in F-A-S-T. It needs a LOT of energy to change trajectory. Energy means fuel and fuel weighs. Now, the key factor in missile design is throw weight. A missile has specific throw weight and that can be used for payload (warheads) or fuel. Exceeding the specified throw weight has dramatic reductions in payload and range, being below specified throw weight increases range or means more payload. If we load an MaRV down with fuel so it can make radical maneovers, the increased throw weight will drastically reduce range and/or payload. Throw weight is so critical it is worth spending a lot of money to save small fractions of an ounce in weight.

And you base this opinion on what, pray tell?

Experience.

A CONUS based NABM most certainly does not have the acceleration or the range to attempt an ascent or boost phase intercept of an ICBM launched from the Soviet Union.

Agreed, although there were solutions to that problem in the works.

By the time it is within range of the CONUS NABM, it has already deployed its warheads and penaids and is rapidly descending.

Already demonstarted to be untrue.

Said article is flat-out wrong about MIRV release heights and probably wrong about MRV release heights.

No it isn't. Remember, I worked on these systems; I know exactly what happens and where.

I've seen some references for a MaRV that wouldn't require a large volume or weight increase, it used a RV design that would result in a radical maneuver at a certain altitude due to pressure/lift.

What you've seen is distorted. The system you're referring to is the accuracy-enhancing design most typically used on Pershing II and some Trident D-5s. It's used there because the manoeuvers required to imrpove accuracy are not particularly violent or radical. They are not helpful in evading ABMs - which was never an MaRV requirement anyway,

NABMs also complicate defensive efforts due to nuclear blackout and possible uncertainty regarding whether an incoming RV has in fact been disabled (that could also complicate the picture for endoatmospheric interceptors).

Nuclear blackout isn't a problem. It was a surprise when we first observed it but the basic technology (tagged radar pulses) to defeat it was used in the Second World War. Radar shadowing from nuclear initiations wasn't a problem form the mid-1950s onwards - you can measure when by checking the date nuclear-tipped air-to-air missiles entered service.

Damage assessment is always a problem. It's not a killer though, that's why we have battle management systems. The ABM case is no worse than managing an air battle - in most ways, designing an air defense system is a much harder task (I know, I've been involved in the design of three) that designing a missile defense system. Target tracking in missile defense is much easier than in an air battle so the damage assessment problem is well-understood and we know how to cope with it.

There's also the problem that national city protective AICBM shield is far too resource intensive - snip -- That's before consideration of SLBMs

I abbreviated your comment because, frankly, it shows little understanding of what is involved here. Basically, what you go to such lengths describing is not how nuclear attacks are planned. Try going through it again and work out what a real attack plan would look like and what effects ABM would have on it. And, by the way, any argument taht includes the word McNamara is damned from that point onwards. The man is a monumental idiot.

It's hardly political if there's no rational reason to maintain a national air defense network. It's like saying that the elimination of Coastal Artillery was political.

But there was a very good reason to maintain ARADCOM; the reason why it was disbanded was purely political - Kenendy and his administration wanted to maintain a large standing Army and gutting ARADCOM wa sthe only way of freeing up the resources and trained personnel for that Army.

Why bother carrying something that you do not need? By the time the A-35 system was set up, we were deploying Poseidon and could easily overwhelm it with a single Poseidon boat (even if each RV could be intercepted by a single A-350, only four missiles would be required to absorb an entire launch complex with 32 interceptors and then drop the eight remaining warheads wherever they pleased; assumption is that a full load of ten warheads is used here).

IOnce again, you're showing you don't understand what's involved in planning a nuclear attack. Every warhead that's employed defeating or saturating an ABM system is one that isn't hitting a target somewhere. Look at it this way. In the 1950s, the British nuclear deterrent relied upon the V-bomber force and was assigned the destruction of 200 targets in the western USSR. However, by the late 1950s it was believed (whether rightly or wrongly doesn't matter) that the increasing capability of Soviet air defenses would mean the V-bombers wouldn't get through. So, the British shifted to Polaris. They had 4 boats, of which only one was on patrol at any one time. Each had 16 missiles, with three warheads per. However those warheads were MRVs and were assignable only to single targets. So, normally a British submarine could 16 targets. If a second boat was out, that went up to 32 targets. Therefore, the Polaris fleet could hit between 8 - 16 percent of the targets that had been hit by the bomber fleet. So, the Soviet air defense system had, without firing a shot, protected between 84 and 92 percent of the targets previously on the British hit-list. Unfortunately, it got worse. By the late 1960s, the development of ABM meant that the ability of Polaris A-3 was in serious doubt. So, the British decided to go ahead with the Chevaline program. We've already touched on that but here's the crunch. Because of the attrition expected from the ABM screen, all 32 warheads (16 missiles, two warheads per) were targeted on Moscow (which was probably the worst strategic error committed by enybody during the Cold War). In short, one city. So, as a result of Soviet defenses, the British target list had been decreased from 200 targets (cities) to one. In short the defenses were 99.5 percent effective. A bit rough if one lived in Moscow but very good if one lived in the other 199 cities that were once British targets.

However, the argument turned out to be irrelevent, The Chevaline clusters were vulnerable to single hits so the whole lot would probably have been taken out. just like your four Poseidon - they don;t get taken out by the whole defense system, tehy get taken out by four intercepts, leaving 96 on the ground ready for the next wave.

The British problemw as solved by going to Trident that gave them back the 200 target list - but that was made possible by the ABM Treaty. Because MIRV is only viable in the absence of ABM.

Now, perhaps it is just me, but how do you translate that to being capable of making an ascent phase intercept several thousand kilometers away?

Not needed

According to who else in the field? And if he is such an expert, then why does everything that I find on the matter contradict him?

Because I was working in it for 15 - 20 years. And if you do a proper unbiased search (I'll ive youa good starting point later) rather than one aimed at confirming your own opinions, you will find that the reliable data does agree with mine.

It takes time for the fireball and the resultant atmospheric conditions to clear. Until such time, radio waves are a bit screwed trying to go through it.

We don't have to wait for it to clear. We can see through it from initiation onwards.

Show me the scholarly literature supporting that view. Or declassified stuff from the military.

Check the intercept range of LIM-49 - which was specifically designed to cope with the MIRV bus.

Because the economics of a national missile defense are such that it is cheaper to build enough offensive weapons to overwhelm the defending force. Posit that Country A has a single 4MT ICBM capable of threatening 50 of Country B's cities. If Country B opts to build ABMs to defend those cities, he is obligated to spend a good deal of money to defend each one of those cities since the value of the ICBM lies in that the cities are threatened, Country A doesn't much care which one it is. Taking the same amount of money that Country B spent on building up a defense against one city, Country A can build an ICBM force capable of overwhelming those defenses over multiple cities. Ergo, Country B is better off spending the money elsewhere where it will do more good.

Once again, that's not how nuclear wars are planned. In fact, things work the other way. In any nuclear attack plan, there are certain targets that MUST be hit. Now, the attacker has no idea which targets will be defended and which will not and he has no idea which of his missiles will be shot down and which will not. So, when he attacks the "must kill" targets, he has to assume that his losses will be concentrated into teh "must kill" attack force and that force must be made much larger to absorb those losses. Every missile so absorbed is one less that can be assigned to other targets. Look again at the British example I gave.

The truth of the matter is that defense is much cheaper than attack and, once the defensive system is established, expanding it is very easy. Its very cheap and easy to add additional rail launchers and missiles. In contrast, adding additional ICBMs is very expensive; the silos have to be built (and they aren't cheap) and the command and control system has to be built (and like all C4ISR systems, that's blindingly expensive.) In fact, the costs involved in expanding an ABM system are about 4 percent of those involved in expanding an ICBM system.

Three final thoughts for you.

One is when Grazhdanin Stas and I discussed this in depth, he eventually admitted that his anti-ABM position wasn't based on ABM not working but that it would work so well that the US would be virtually immune to missile attack and that would allow us virtually unfettered strategic freedom. I agree, except to me a US that has unfettered startegic freedom is a good thing.

Second, if you want an insight into the real world of missile defense and the duplicity of the anti-ABM campaigners, read the following book.

"Shield of Faith" By B. Bruce-Briggs. I know Triple-B personally, he's a long-standing acquaintance although we disagree on many topics. Shield of Faith shows how ABM works and its source material gives you everything you need to confirm that it does work. Its a useful primer and starting point.

Third. Think on this. The US is not the only country developing ABM systems. In fact, more than a dozen countries around the world are developing their own and another dozen want to buy from the ones who are developing them. Over the last year, India has tried two test shots with their indigenous ABM and both were successful. India plans to have the start of its ABM system up in 2010. If India can do it with its limited technology and industrial base (albeit India has an unsually large number of the best mathematicians in the world) then the number of countries with said capability is very large.

ABM is a reality, the systems exist, they work and they are being deployed. That's it, its a done deal, end of argument. The only point about the anti-ABM debate is not whether ABM systems should exist, that's a done deal, its whether the U.S. should be one of the countries protected by such a system.

Until very recently, if a country fired a single nuclear missile at an American city, that city was gone. Short of the missile malfunctioning (a distressingly high possibility) there was no way that city could be saved. Now, given that single shot, we can shoot it down. It won't take much more before we can handle a larger attack. In effect we're taking dangerous toys out of the hands of people who shouldn't have them by raising the entry cost of ICBMs to the point where they are unaffordable except to people who have a lot to lose from using them.

[CC]

There is no such thing as a nuclear blackout, it's actually a nuclear whiteout. The radar systems are overwhelmed by all the incoming radiation, atmospheric conditions have nothing to do with it. The solution to this problem is to have the radio waves carry a signature that doesn't appear in nature, and set the receivers up to ignore all radio waves save the ones carrying that signal.

Incorrect actually. Nuclear blackout is in fact a real term used by the US military. Nuclear whiteout seems to be a camera term. Nuclear blackout is not because of incoming radiation, it is because the fireball and dust clouds bend, absorb, and scatter radio waves. Army FM 11-24 Chapter 10

An integrated continental air defense system would (and was supposed to) include both anti-bomber and anti-missile systems. In the case of ARADCOM, missile batteries would have had both the Zeus anti-ballistic missile missile and the Hercules anti-bomber missile. Some Herc batteries would have been Herc-only for a variety of reasons but most would have been mixed.

Was supposed to, however Nike-Zeus had effectiveness issues (to wit, it was not effective by the time it would have been deployed, the cost problems of deploying additional pairs of MTRs and TTRs for the expected threat were rather prohibitive nor was its computing capability up to task against the expected Soviet 1970s capability).

OK, a note before we start. I've been working in the ABM sector for most of the 1980s and well into the 1990s so I can speak to this sector from personal experience watching the systems develop and participating in that development process. I've kept more or less current with developments since then.

If that's true then you can go ahead and cite things to back you up. I do not trust your unsupported word. You have given no reason other than your own unsupported statements to trust your word as authoritative.

In the ABM context, decoys have to exactly simulate the shape, mass, thermal signature, thermal distribution (plus many other factors) of the RV. In fact, the RV has to be an exact simulation of the warhead. If it is not, it will be filtered out. There are literally dozens of technologies used for the target discrimination process.

Mass should only be an issue during atmospheric flight in which case it can simply be dispensed with if one prefers to concentrate on the exoatmospheric interceptors. As for an exact match, the concept of anti-simulation has been around for decades. If all of the decoys and RVs appear different from one another, then filtering out which is the decoy and which is the RV becomes just a tad harder, does it not?

Except nobody uses depressed-technology SLBMs for a very good reason. They are incredibly fuel-inefficient and thus short-ranged.

Yes, they have short range, but they are rather quick to reach that range. If the idea is to eliminate warning times or catch various equipment on the ground, then they become quite useful.

Typically a multiple-warhead SLBM will only be a single warhead SLBM if fired on a dpressed trajectory. Thus, by forcing an enemy to use depressed trajectories we've eliminated nine of his ten potential warheads without firing a shot. That's 90 percent virtual attrition.

Typically, but not necessarily. Paper I cited above retained MIRV capability aboard a DT Trident II for a flight length of 7 minutes or more. Plus, 90% attrition only sounds good in isolation. A virtual attrition loss of say, 100 warheads, that permits, through the destruction of key equipment, several hundred additional warheads to get through or denies several hundred warheads from hitting the DT launchers nation isn't really an effective virtual attrition.

In fact though, depressed trajectory SLBMs are not used because there is a much better solution to the particular requirements involved. That's short-range ballistic missiles such as SSN-16 and the now-gone SUBROC. Just fuse their nuclear depth charges for a surface burst.

SS-N-16 had a maximum range of 100km and SUBROC only 55km. Which is nice and all, but I prefer 1800km myself.

However, the point is moot; all the good stuff is based in the central US where it's much harder to get at.

NORAD, a couple of SAC bases, and missile silos, yes. Quite a number of bomber bases near the coasts however as well as most major cities and almost every Navy base. If we have the putative 1800km ranged DT TRident II, then if you can maneuver in for an SS-N-16 shot, you can can get at least to the Mississippi.

That's not correct. In an MRV, the bus discharges its warheads when making final descent, usually less than 100 kilometers from its target. In an MIRV, the discharge distances are greater but still relatively short. One of teh (not the only) factor determining that is accuracy; the process of bus discharge is such that there are considerable inaccuracies inherent in the process. The effects of those inaccuracies are exponential; if discharge is too early CEP becomes unmanageably big. As a rule of thumb, MIRV busses start discharging their RVs less than 1000 kilometers from the first target (the actual figure is classified).

Care to reconcile that with the BMDO's definitions?
"Post-Boost Phase - The period immediately after booster engine burnout; includes that portion of the flight during which the post-boost vehicle releases its reentry vehicle on predetermined trajectories." Glossary on an EIS they were doing

"Boost/Postboost. The period of a ballistic missile's flight while the booster is thrusting through the time it deploys its reentry vehicles (RV) and possible decoys.

Midcourse. The relatively long period of time RVs and decoys coast along their ballistic trajectories in space." Some old GPALS thing

I'd also like you to reconcile that with the Heritage paper that I cited earlier which stated that the SS-18 began MIRV deployment immediately following booster burnout.

To some extent, but we don;t have to use a nuclear warhead; just hit the bus before it starts to discharge. A conventional or even a kinetic warhead will do the job just fine. We've had that capability since the late 1960s - its one of the differences between Zeus-XERA and LIM-49A

Citation that Spartan was capable of so doing?

However, the sorts of manoeuvers performable by MaRVs do not cause serious problems. It's important to remeber that MaRVs are not intended to evade defensive missiles; they are intended to improve accuracy against point targets.

The ones deployed have been such. That does not mean that it is not possible to build one that is designed to defeat defensive missiles, merely that there has not been need for one.

If we load an MaRV down with fuel so it can make radical maneovers, the increased throw weight will drastically reduce range and/or payload.

Fuel is not necessarily needed, as I do recall proposals for various aerodynamic devices to effect the maneuver.

No it isn't. Remember, I worked on these systems; I know exactly what happens and where.

Mind proving that you worked on these systems? I find it rather doubtful given that you are rather contradictory to every single source and there doesn't appear to be any citation of you that I can find that cites you on these matters.

Nuclear blackout isn't a problem. It was a surprise when we first observed it but the basic technology (tagged radar pulses) to defeat it was used in the Second World War. Radar shadowing from nuclear initiations wasn't a problem form the mid-1950s onwards - you can measure when by checking the date nuclear-tipped air-to-air missiles entered service.

How does tagged radar pulses deal with the absorption, scattering, and bending?

I abbreviated your comment because, frankly, it shows little understanding of what is involved here. Basically, what you go to such lengths describing is not how nuclear attacks are planned. Try going through it again and work out what a real attack plan would look like and what effects ABM would have on it. And, by the way, any argument taht includes the word McNamara is damned from that point onwards. The man is a monumental idiot.

I'm sorry, is McNamara your personal bogeyman? If you have an issue with referring to his requirements for Assured Destruction and the calculated EMT thereof, then please kindly state what your problem is with it. Otherwise, please keep from crying at the mere reference of his name.

As for how the nuclear attack is planned, I know that it is not how they are planned. It was simply an exercise to demonstrate the futility of a national city protective AICBM system.

Now personally, I don't see much value in going through and setting up an actual attack plan of sheer overkill. But if you're really interested in it, since you're the resident self-proclaimed nuclear guru, why don't you go ahead and do a rough sketch of a Soviet counter-population strike on the 50 largest cities in the United States with the aforementioned Jan 1992 force levels? If there's a spare warhead somewhere, have it detonate above the Matterhorn at Disneyland just for kicks.

IOnce again, you're showing you don't understand what's involved in planning a nuclear attack. Every warhead that's employed defeating or saturating an ABM system is one that isn't hitting a target somewhere.

Yes, and we had such sufficient levels of overkill that it really didn't matter.

So, as a result of Soviet defenses, the British target list had been decreased from 200 targets (cities) to one

More as a result of British target selection rather than Soviet defenses. It wasn't necessary for them to choose to hit Moscow and they could have simply dropped Moscow from the target list if they felt they couldn't penetrate. On the other hand, Moscow is one of the more valuable targets (6% of Russian population, 5% of its production, and 20% of the Russian GDP, Source).

Because I was working in it for 15 - 20 years. And if you do a proper unbiased search (I'll ive youa good starting point later) rather than one aimed at confirming your own opinions, you will find that the reliable data does agree with mine.

Then perhaps you might like to start citing your reliable data?

Check the intercept range of LIM-49 - which was specifically designed to cope with the MIRV bus.

Source that it was specifically designed to cope with the MIRV bus?

Once again, that's not how nuclear wars are planned. In fact, things work the other way. In any nuclear attack plan, there are certain targets that MUST be hit. Now, the attacker has no idea which targets will be defended and which will not and he has no idea which of his missiles will be shot down and which will not. So, when he attacks the "must kill" targets, he has to assume that his losses will be concentrated into teh "must kill" attack force and that force must be made much larger to absorb those losses. Every missile so absorbed is one less that can be assigned to other targets. Look again at the British example I gave.

You're presuming a particular model of nuclear warfighting. Personally, I much prefer the French deterrent model, they were much more honest about cities being the intended target. As should have been clear from the example given, Country A has an explicit countervalue deterrent policy. What must be hit are the cities and the populace/industry contained within them. It really doesn't matter which cities are hit, so long as enough would be hit as to inflict unacceptable damage to Country B. If those missiles are launched, they are intended to kill as many people as possible. Mildly ruthless, but it cuts straight to the heart of deterrence.

The truth of the matter is that defense is much cheaper than attack and, once the defensive system is established, expanding it is very easy. Its very cheap and easy to add additional rail launchers and missiles.

Which are then horribly vulnerable to any warheads that do get through as well as special forces action, which is precisely why they aren't used. I don't think anyone's tried a rail launched fixed site SAM system since Nike Ajax or Guild.

In contrast, adding additional ICBMs is very expensive; the silos have to be built (and they aren't cheap)

Atlas and Titan were pricey, but the Minuteman silos were quite cheap, about half a million each in then-year dollars. Personally I'd build SLBMs rather than ICBMs, much less vulnerable to a first strike than their land based cousins.

and the command and control system has to be built (and like all C4ISR systems, that's blindingly expensive.)

C2 system has to be built for the ABM system as well. As an aside, how long until we get to C10ISR?

In fact, the costs involved in expanding an ABM system are about 4 percent of those involved in expanding an ICBM system.

I like SLBMs more than ICBMs, so let's use them instead. FAS indicates that the total acquisition cost of the Vanguard SSBN and Trident missiles was £12.57 billion. Do you honestly believe that an NMD system could be expanded to counter the additional threat (presume two at sea SSBNs) for only five hundred million pounds? If so, would you mind providing a cost-breakdown?

Three final thoughts for you.

One is when Grazhdanin Stas and I discussed this in depth, he eventually admitted that his anti-ABM position wasn't based on ABM not working but that it would work so well that the US would be virtually immune to missile attack and that would allow us virtually unfettered strategic freedom. I agree, except to me a US that has unfettered startegic freedom is a good thing.

That's nice. Is there some reason I should care?

Second, if you want an insight into the real world of missile defense and the duplicity of the anti-ABM campaigners, read the following book.

"Shield of Faith" By B. Bruce-Briggs. I know Triple-B personally, he's a long-standing acquaintance although we disagree on many topics. Shield of Faith shows how ABM works and its source material gives you everything you need to confirm that it does work. Its a useful primer and starting point.

I've read it before, though nothing stands out in my mind. Anything in particular you care to note from it? It would take probably a week for inter-library loan to get it, so it might be easier for you to simply quote from it or provide page numbers of particular sections that are relevant to your argument.

Third. Think on this. The US is not the only country developing ABM systems. In fact, more than a dozen countries around the world are developing their own and another dozen want to buy from the ones who are developing them. Over the last year, India has tried two test shots with their indigenous ABM and both were successful. India plans to have the start of its ABM system up in 2010. If India can do it with its limited technology and industrial base (albeit India has an unsually large number of the best mathematicians in the world) then the number of countries with said capability is very large.

How many of them are developing AICBM systems as opposed to ATBMs? Also, which countries are developing their own? The Prithvi system is only ATBM capable, it's really not relevant to discussion of AICBMs.

In effect we're taking dangerous toys out of the hands of people who shouldn't have them by raising the entry cost of ICBMs to the point where they are unaffordable except to people who have a lot to lose from using them.

And said people are who exactly? The Taepodong-2 isn't expected to be a threat for at least another decade, if ever, and should relations be sufficiently strained, we can easily preempt a strike. The fact that they've shut down their nuclear reactor also makes it rather improbable that they'd be a threat. Iran's even farther behind. I'm also curious as to who it would be that can afford to develop an ICBM program but not have a lot to lose from their use.

If you don't mind humoring me, what precisely is the point behind the KEI program and the proposed hundreds of billions to be spent on space based systems (such as GPALS or BP) if their stated rationale (intercept prior to MIRV release) is entirely unnecessary?

Also, what are the physical reasons requiring such a long wait until the post-boost vehicle releases the re-entry vehicles? While an error in initial accuracy would obviously multiply over the time of flight, it would require a great deal more fuel on the post-boost vehicle for appropriate separation closer to the target.

[Starglider]

I seem to recall a less extensive version of this debate occuring about a year ago. CC popped up, quoted one source, Stuart made a credible case for the document being biased (but didn't quote a similarly authorative source to support the counter-argument), CC didn't reply. At least he seems to have prepared a more thorough argument this time.

EDIT: Another relevant thread, not coincidentally featuring CC, who sidetracked a SAM debate into an ABM debate, demanded someone prove to him that skin-to-skin hits occured in the 1960s, then disappeared without a trace when Phongn did. Unfortunately I was away at the time so I missed that thread.

[Wanderer]

I sense another Coliseum Matchup.

Stuart vs CC

[Stuart]

Was supposed to, however Nike-Zeus had effectiveness issues (to wit, it was not effective by the time it would have been deployed, the cost problems of deploying additional pairs of MTRs and TTRs for the expected threat were rather prohibitive nor was its computing capability up to task against the expected Soviet 1970s capability).

I'd suggest you need to look at the history of the Nike system a little more closely. The original strategy was to upgrade the capability of the Nike system as the offensive threat grew. Today we call this spiral development. The limitation of having pairs of radars direct intercepts was the first phase only; it was intended to cope with the 1958 - 63 situation where we would have to deal with single-digit numbers of inbound missiles. The intent was to replace these radars with phased array systems (which eventually emerged as SPS-32 and SPS-33) which would have eliminated that restriction. There was never an intention of deploying the originally-planned mechanically-scanned radars against a post-1970s threat.

If that's true then you can go ahead and cite things to back you up. I do not trust your unsupported word. You have given no reason other than your own unsupported statements to trust your word as authoritative.

Let's hear your qualifications and experience in this subject area then. Its critical to be able to understand the material presented; this is where your efforts fall down

Mass should only be an issue during atmospheric flight in which case it can simply be dispensed with if one prefers to concentrate on the exoatmospheric interceptors.

Wrong. Again a lack of understanding of what's involved is causing you problems here. This is a simple ballistic problem. As it happens, mass is a critical factor in simulating RV flight paths.

As for an exact match, the concept of anti-simulation has been around for decades.

And was discredited decades ago. Chevaline relied on that concept and it failed. Dismally

If all of the decoys and RVs appear different from one another, then filtering out which is the decoy and which is the RV becomes just a tad harder, does it not?

No.

Yes, they have short range, but they are rather quick to reach that range. If the idea is to eliminate warning times or catch various equipment on the ground, then they become quite useful.

Actually, no. The targets that are susceptible to attack by minimal warning time systems are also subject to attack by much better alternatives. There small bracket of potential targets that are vulnerable to depressed-trajectory SLBMs but not to those other alternatives but their number is limited and they are low down the priority list. There is a reason why nobody uses depressed-trajectory SLBMs, their cost and tactical limitations exceed their potential value.

Typically, but not necessarily. Paper I cited above retained MIRV capability aboard a DT Trident II for a flight length of 7 minutes or more. Plus, 90% attrition only sounds good in isolation. A virtual attrition loss of say, 100 warheads, that permits, through the destruction of key equipment, several hundred additional warheads to get through or denies several hundred warheads from hitting the DT launchers nation isn't really an effective virtual attrition.

And protects many others.

SS-N-16 had a maximum range of 100km and SUBROC only 55km. Which is nice and all, but I prefer 1800km myself.

Every SLBM-operating country in the world disagrees with you.

NORAD, a couple of SAC bases, and missile silos, yes. Quite a number of bomber bases near the coasts however as well as most major cities and almost every Navy base. If we have the putative 1800km ranged DT TRident II, then if you can maneuver in for an SS-N-16 shot, you can can get at least to the Mississippi.

Nevertheless, the goodies are well inside the USA where they are protected by distance.

Care to reconcile that with the BMDO's definitions? "Post-Boost Phase - The period immediately after booster engine burnout; includes that portion of the flight during which the post-boost vehicle releases its reentry vehicle on predetermined trajectories."

Your lack of understanding of basic terminology is letting you down (again) here. My 100km comment referred to MRVs. As to MIRVs, in fact the documents you quote all actually confirm what I said. A picture might help here



This is actually taken from a Japanese paper on the developing missile defense system. Note the upper graph which demonstrates the arc of an ICBM and the various layers of defense that it meets on the way. Under that arc is a thick line entitled "GMD" - these are the missiles currently being deployed. That line covers the whole of the post-boost period, right up to re-entry. In short, no matter how early the bird releases its RVs, its still pre-release range of the GBI. However, your lack of understanding of the basic technologies here still lets you down. If indeed it is possible to release the RVs immediately after burn-out (note the qualification), there are other factors that creep in whioch constrain the system. Acciracy is one of them. In theory, a 16 inch gun on a battleship can fire at other warships more than 50 kilometers away; in reality, the furthest range a battleship ever actually hit such a target was around 26 kilometers.

Citation that Spartan was capable of so doing?

OR of LIM-49 missile. That's why I gave you the designation

The ones deployed have been such. That does not mean that it is not possible to build one that is designed to defeat defensive missiles, merely that there has not been need for one.

It might be possible to build a RV that can instantly transport itself from one point to another. It might be possible to bring the moon crashing down on a selected target. There are an infinite number of things that are possible; we're concerned with things that we actually face in the real world.

Fuel is not necessarily needed, as I do recall proposals for various aerodynamic devices to effect the maneuver.

Again, your lack of basic understanding is letting you down here. Aerodynamic manoeuvers are used to impove terminal accuracy; they are very limited in what they can achieve in terms of radical shift. To much and the RV destabilizes and disintegrates,

How does tagged radar pulses deal with the absorption, scattering, and bending?

Again, your lack of basic understanding of the systems involved is letting you down. The source you quote is specifically referring to ground burst nuclear weapons used in an Army-otrientated tactical environment. Exo-atmospheric and high-altitude nuclear air bursts are an entirely different matter. In such cases, electromagnetic radiation is the overwhelmingly dominant form of release from the devices. Dust and ground debris is conspicuous by its absence. A working knowledge of nuclear weapons effects on your part would have been quite helpful in avoidning this error. I suggest you read "the Effects of Nuclear Weapons"

I'm sorry, is McNamara your personal bogeyman? If you have an issue with referring to his requirements for Assured Destruction and the calculated EMT thereof, then please kindly state what your problem is with it. Otherwise, please keep from crying at the mere reference of his name.

I have a lot of issues with virtually every aspect of his so-called defense policy. Virtually every decision he made was wrong. And I will continue to ridicule you every time you use him as a source on anything.

As for how the nuclear attack is planned, I know that it is not how they are planned. It was simply an exercise to demonstrate the futility of a national city protective AICBM system.

And its that lack of basic understanding that causes you to make such cataclysmic errors. In this case, far from achieving your end, what your little exercise proved is the effectiveness of an ABM screen. What you showed was that in the presence of an ABM screen, the attacker has to pile so many resources into destroying a must-kill target that a very large number of other targets are protected by the expenditure of the warheads that would otherwise have hit them. Its a bit rough on the must-kill target but its gone anyway; the benefit is the other targets that now survive.

Now personally, I don't see much value in going through and setting up an actual attack plan of sheer overkill. But if you're really interested in it, since you're the resident self-proclaimed nuclear guru, why don't you go ahead and do a rough sketch of a Soviet counter-population strike on the 50 largest cities in the United States with the aforementioned Jan 1992 force levels?

Been there, done that, boring. The real point here is that because you don't understand what's involved in making an attack plan up, you don't recognize the fallacies in your argument. Again, a simple point; your argument above actually confirmed, not denied, the efficiency of an ABM screen. You're making my argument for me.

Oh, by the way, I'm not a self-proclaimed anything. All I've done is throw ideas and viewpoints out. Other people have picked them up, run with them and liked what they found when they followed the logic and did the research. I'm not infallible and have never claimed to be.

pquote] If there's a spare warhead somewhere, have it detonate above the Matterhorn at Disneyland just for kicks.[/quote]

As it happens I don't think the idea of initiating a nuke anywhere for any reason is funny. I do not take these weapons or their use casually.

Yes, and we had such sufficient levels of overkill that it really didn't matter.

Again, a lack of basic understanding of what is going on is defeating you. In fact, the number of targets always axceeded the number of warheads available. That's why we had different attack plans that specified different target priorities and we would have to select which ones we wanted to use. A lot of potential and very valuable targets were left off those plans because we didn't have the assets to engage them. So, forcing the wastage of valuable warheads was a very real consideration. So much so, it was worth us setting up specific targets as missle sponges (as did the USSR). That's very much more the case now that the numbers of warheads are much smaller than was the case. Now, attrition of warheads by the defense is a serious problem.

More as a result of British target selection rather than Soviet defenses. It wasn't necessary for them to choose to hit Moscow and they could have simply dropped Moscow from the target list if they felt they couldn't penetrate.

Again your lack of understanding is letting you down. In this case, the basic point went so far over your head, it didn't even ruffle your hair as it passed.

On the other hand, Moscow is one of the more valuable targets (6% of Russian population, 5% of its production, and 20% of the Russian GDP,

Nah. Moscow is pretty much a strategic decoy, a missile sponge. From a warfighting point of view, its way down on the priority list unless we're going for purely city targets which we didn't.

Source that it was specifically designed to cope with the MIRV bus?

LIM-49 OR

You're presuming a particular model of nuclear warfighting./quote]

No.

Personally, I much prefer the French deterrent model,

Really? Considering you are completely unqualified to make that judgement.

Country A has an explicit countervalue deterrent policy. What must be hit are the cities and the populace/industry contained within them. It really doesn't matter which cities are hit, so long as enough would be hit as to inflict unacceptable damage to Country B. If those missiles are launched, they are intended to kill as many people as possible. Mildly ruthless, but it cuts straight to the heart of deterrence.

Only its completely wrong. It doesn't reflect the way countries use nuclear weapons at all. And even if it did, we still come back down to the point that every warhead destroyed by a missile defense system means one less city destroyed by the attack. Given the economic cost of losing a city (which dwarfs the cost of an ABM system) its worthwhile to protect said cities.

Which are then horribly vulnerable to any warheads that do get through as well as special forces action, which is precisely why they aren't used. I don't think anyone's tried a rail launched fixed site SAM system since Nike Ajax or Guild.

Again your lack of basic understanding of what is involved lets you down. Out of kindness and compassion, we'll forget about the Tom Clancy-world bits

Atlas and Titan were pricey, but the Minuteman silos were quite cheap, about half a million each in then-year dollars. Personally I'd build SLBMs rather than ICBMs, much less vulnerable to a first strike than their land based cousins.

True, but SLBMs are about the most expensive way of basing missiles. wrt missile silos, now add in the C4ISR costs.

C2 system has to be built for the ABM system as well.

Once again, a lack of basic understanding of what's involved here. The C4ISR system used to support an ABM system is much less expensive than that used to support ICBMs/SLBMs. Now, an exercise for you, try thinking about this and see if you can come up with why that is so.

As an aside, how long until we get to C10ISR?

Ha Ha.

I like SLBMs more than ICBMs, so let's use them instead.

No.

FAS indicates that the total acquisition cost of the Vanguard SSBN and Trident missiles was £12.57 billion. Do you honestly believe that an NMD system could be expanded to counter the additional threat (presume two at sea SSBNs) for only five hundred million pounds? If so, would you mind providing a cost-breakdown?

Once again, the fact that you don't understand this area lets you down. UKP12.57 billion is USD25,6 billion; that bought 4 submarines for a unit cost of USD6.4 billion. So your argument has collapsed right there. However, to gain two additional at-sea boats does not cost 2 x 6.4 billion = USD12.8 billion. Gaining two additional at sea boats requires an additional fleet of 6 boats assuming the usual 3:1 ratio. Therefore, your proposed fleet enlargement would actually require US$38.4 billion.

This gives the UK 32 more deployable missiles. If we counter these by the addition of 128 interceptors. At a very generous USD10 million per interceptor, that's US$1.28 billion. Thus your offensive expenditure has been offset by 3 percent of its value in defensive systems.

That's nice. Is there some reason I should care?

Well, you did quote Grazhdanin Stas (for whom I have the greatest respect) when it suited you. You validated the source.

I've read it before, though nothing stands out in my mind. Anything in particular you care to note from it? It would take probably a week for inter-library loan to get it, so it might be easier for you to simply quote from it or provide page numbers of particular sections that are relevant to your argument.

Obviously not otherwise you wouldn't make the mistakes you are constantly making. I suggest you get it, read it carefully, and follow up the sources it provides. It'll be an eye-opener for you.

How many of them are developing AICBM systems as opposed to ATBMs? Also, which countries are developing their own? The Prithvi system is only ATBM capable, it's really not relevant to discussion of AICBMs

All of them. Who is talking about Prithvi?

And said people are who exactly? The Taepodong-2 isn't expected to be a threat for at least another decade,

Thank you one again for confirming my argument.

if ever, and should relations be sufficiently strained, we can easily preempt a strike.

I see, so you are now proposing the use of pre-emptive strikes. Personally, I prefer to set up a situation where these things will never be used. So would everybody else in my line of business.

The fact that they've shut down their nuclear reactor also makes it rather improbable that they'd be a threat. Iran's even farther behind. I'm also curious as to who it would be that can afford to develop an ICBM program but not have a lot to lose from their use.

Once again, a complete lack of understanding over what's involved here....

If you don't mind humoring me, what precisely is the point behind the KEI program and the proposed hundreds of billions to be spent on space based systems (such as GPALS or BP) if their stated rationale (intercept prior to MIRV release) is entirely unnecessary?

I do mind humoring you; I haven't the time or the inclination. However, teh reason is quite simple. Multi-layered defense. Also insurance against future developments.

Also, what are the physical reasons requiring such a long wait until the post-boost vehicle releases the re-entry vehicles? While an error in initial accuracy would obviously multiply over the time of flight, it would require a great deal more fuel on the post-boost vehicle for appropriate separation closer to the target.

Yet again, a comment that shows you don't understand the basic princuples involved here. I don't have the time to teach them to you; why don't you do some extensive and unbiased research (its painfully obvious that you only seek out information that you think confirms your own prejudices) and then come back when you do have the basic principles thoroughly grasped. At the moment, your lack of basic understanding (say again, its not just necessary to point to a document, its also necessary to understand what it says and why it says it in the context that it does/) is making you look rather foolish.

[Stuart]

I sense another Coliseum Matchup. Stuart vs CC

hey guys, I have to earn a living you know. You want a Coliseum match-up, I'll have to stop working on Armageddon for the duration......