Out 'Missiled': How Would America Stop Russia or China's Massive Stockpile of Missiles?

Discussion in 'Warfare / Military' started by Destroyer of illusions, Oct 29, 2018.

  1. Thedimon

    Thedimon Well-Known Member

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    Solid fuel is hard to control. Once you get it going it is hard to stop and for ICBM, or any rocket, precision up to 1/100th it a second is required.
    This just demonstrates that Russians demonstrate their own inability to control the rocket on solid fuel.
    No wonder why - in Russia you can get through a university by bribing instructors. The ones who are really good move to western nations and those nations benefit from their skills.
    Look at Russian R&D - nothing new from the times of USSR - space program saw marginal upgrades, every attempt to leave LEO ended in failure. Their best fighter jet is based on the design from 1970s. No one buys their equipment. The country is literally a gas station with a rude clerk running it.
     
  2. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    There is one fascinating little bit of Russian history that still lives on. And in this conversation it is rather ironic.

    The Potemkin Village.

    In the late 18th century under Empress Catherine II, she and her lover Grigory Potemkin took a tour of her outlying kingdom. And part of this was the Crimea. In order to impress her, Potemkin had phony villages erected along their path. These were filled with happy peasants, toiling away in pristine farms and well fed. But as soon as the entourage passed by these villages were then taken apart and moved ahead of the group to be set up again.

    Now I admit that most of that story is legend, but the fact that villages were decorated up to make them appear better than they were is known to have happened. And interestingly, this was done after Russia conquered the Crimea from the Ottoman Turks.

    And a few years ago when Putin visited Suzdal, the same thing was largely done. Houses and businesses that were abandoned and falling apart were covered with posters, so that in photographs it would appear he was touring a lovely Russian village. When in reality, he was wandering through horrible slums.

    Simply a modern Potemkin Village.

    http://vgorodok.com/main/125-narisuy-dlya-putina.html
     
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  3. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    Solid fuel is not all that hard to control, there have been controllable solid fuel rockets for decades.

    The real issue when it comes to this is generally QA-QC. Making solid fuel for rockets is very difficult, and it has to be done perfectly or it fails. Every step must be perfect, from making the actual fuel itself, to packing it into the rocket itself. Any mistakes, and it will fail.

    Liquid rocket fuel is much more simple. Simply make the required components of sufficient purity, then pump them into a suitable tank.

    And for nuclear weapons, they really do not have to be all that precise most of the time. Primarily they are political terror weapons, targeted at civilian population centers. Moscow, London, New York, Paris, targets of little military value. So if such a warhead detonated right over the Kremlin or 1 mile to any side, it really does not matter.

    The only real time such precision is needed is when targeting a hardened location, like an ICBM field. But even then it does not matter, since those are the first birds launched in response so most would detonate over empty silos, no matter how accurate they are.
     
  4. Destroyer of illusions

    Destroyer of illusions Banned

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    Always run only rats. This has been known for thousands of years.
     
  5. Destroyer of illusions

    Destroyer of illusions Banned

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    You can hope for it. You can even hang two or three American flags on your porch. Only this will not save you from a nuclear apocalypse.
     
  6. Dayton3

    Dayton3 Well-Known Member

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    IIRC virtually ALL of American nuclear weapons these days are targeted on hardened targets. Because the w88 (hope I got the model right) is fully capable of delivering its 475 kiloton warhead within 300 feet of its target. Which makes it more than capable of neutralizing the most hardened target known to man.
     
  7. Dayton3

    Dayton3 Well-Known Member

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    No I'm also counting on the legendary Russian military incompetence to help same me as well.
     
  8. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    Yea, a resolution that passed with 96.77% of the people voting to break away? Oh yes, that is about as valid as the elections in North Korea. Nothing funny there at all, obviously. That is why pretty much the entire International community rejected that "vote". Even neutral international observers that were there observing this "vote" said it was a sham at the time.

    And wow, less than a month later the Russian military moved in.

    In a true fair election, you will almost never get a resolution to pass with 96.77% of a vote. Even if the vote was that everybody should get 1 million Euros, less than that percentage would vote because there would always be a significant percentage to oppose it for various reasons.

    This is why in former Marxist and Socialist nations, the rest of the world laughs at their elections. Because those of us who know how the democratic process works knows that such extreme votes never happen in the real world. If it was say 55%, or even as high as 60%, it might be valid. But just under 97%? Nope, not possible. Absolutely no country of almost 2 million people could possibly vote so overwhelmingly for such an outcome.

    And yes, I would say the exact same thing if some said the number was 96.77% who opposed leaving the Ukraine. A fake result is a fake result, no matter which side it favors.
     
  9. Destroyer of illusions

    Destroyer of illusions Banned

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    If you want to talk about the illusion of wealth and well-being, you just need to talk about the American economy. And everyone immediately understands what illusion is.
    In addition, Potemkin did not hide the fact that cities and villages on the way of Catherine were decorated by his order. By the way, he even decorated the Crimean mountains with the Empress Catherine II monogram.
     
    Last edited: Dec 2, 2018
  10. Destroyer of illusions

    Destroyer of illusions Banned

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    Why do you ask then? I tell you - there was a referendum in the Crimea. The people supported the withdrawal of the Crimea from Ukraine and wished to become part of Russia. Now you are writing some kind of nonsense about North Korea. You will not please. You as a representative of a totalitarian sect.
    In Kosovo, there was no example of a referendum, but you have no objections.
    I believe that Texas, California, Alaska were illegally occupied. And if you start talking about some kind of desire to become part of the United States, I will point you to North Korea.

    It's a lie
     
    Last edited: Dec 2, 2018
  11. Destroyer of illusions

    Destroyer of illusions Banned

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    In this case, there is another American flag on the porch.
     
  12. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    Nope, generally it is around 10% (at most) at hardened targets. That is because there are really very few hardened targets to even attack in the first place. The majority of the rest are targeted at non-hardened military targets. Very few military facilities anywhere are hardened against a nuclear detonation. In the US, the few we have are the missile fields in the Dakotas, Cheyenne Mountain, and possibly a few others like some parts of White Sands. Most of such "hardened" locations are not military at all, but small shelters for the leadership (think The Greenbriar), which relied more upon the location not being known for survivability than the actual shelter itself.

    Most are not hardened at all. What I said about the Kremlin also applies for say Fort Benning, Elmendorf AFB, Little Creek Naval Station, and Camp Lejeune and Yuma MCAS. A nuclear detonation even a mile off course would still do enough damage to the base to put it out of commission.

    Atomic then Nuclear weapons pretty much made trying to make locations "hardened" impossible. Both sides knew this, and pretty much stopped trying. Oh, we all still harden locations against conventional weapons. But against nukes, it just can't be done. The few locations that are all tend to be either very small (a single mountain that is tunneled extensively), or very large (a dispersed missile field that covers hundreds of square miles).

    I have been working around hardened military facilities for decades. And none of them was hardened against nukes at all. I am not even sure if the massive Keroman German U-boat base in France would survive a nuclear blast, and that is probably the most massive bunker on the planet.

    That is why one of the alternatives to the MINUTEMAN was the PEACEKEEPER Missile (more popularly known as the "MX Missile"). Not used in bunkers or silos at all, but a mobile system that would be moved from location to location over 2 states. In that way it would be almost impossible to target them because opponents would never know where the missiles actually were.
     
  13. Dayton3

    Dayton3 Well-Known Member

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    IIRC there are less than 1,500 U.S. nuclear weapons that can reach Russia. 10% of that total would not even allow all the Russian ICBMs in silos to be targeted.
     
  14. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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  15. LangleyMan

    LangleyMan Well-Known Member

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    Beam me up, Scotty! No intelliigent life forms in the area.
     
  16. Dayton3

    Dayton3 Well-Known Member

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    "launch on warning" is a completely hypothetical military posture and neither the U.S. or Soviet Union(Russia) ever adopted that as an official procedure or policy.

    In fact, the efforts by the Soviets to develop the automated/semi automated launch system known in the west as "Dead Hand" and in the U.S.S.R. as "Perimeter" would suggest that the Soviets were fully prepared to allow nuclear weapons to begin impacting on targets in Russia BEFORE retaliating because part of the "Perimeter" system was analyzing data that indicated nuclear detonations on Soviet territory (seismic, atmospheric, EMP).
     
  17. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    You are making the mistake most do when talking about nukes.

    Nuclear weapons are not military weapons, they are political weapons. Targeting silos would be a waste of time, because when the other side realized they were targeted they would launch most if not all of them first. Those nukes heading towards the field will detonate over empty silos.

    Back in the mid 1950's to early 1960's, the idea of nuclear weapons as just another military tool largely died. With the transition from atomic fission to fusion thermonuclear weapons, the concept of this as a "military weapon" largely died out. The few systems that were almost purely military (like the Pershing series of missiles and the M-28 Davy Crockett) were small fission weapons, intended for battlefield use. But a thermonuclear weapon was useless on the battlefield.

    And as delivery systems became more sophisticated, the idea of a nuclear weapon as a military weapon largely vanished. Now they are pure political terror weapons. "I have these. So you had better not use one against me or my friends or I will use mine against you!"

    MAD is not a military concept, as much as a political one. It turns any attempt to use nukes in a military context into a Pyrrhic victory at best.
     
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  18. LangleyMan

    LangleyMan Well-Known Member

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    Even 10% might cause a nuclear winter that would kill most of the people on the planet.
     
  19. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    For the latter half of the Cold War, the US relied upon it's Nuclear Triad of bombers, land based missiles, and ships at sea.

    At notice of an enemy launch, all mobile platforms not deployed will immediately deploy. That means bombers and fighters take off from their bases, all ships and submarines depart port. During most of the Cold War, such systems were almost always ready to leave at very short notice.

    The assumption was that after such a launch, all attempts would be made to contact the other side via the "Hotline" in the hopes to defuse the situation, and to make sure the detected attack was not either a mistake from a rogue faction, technical glitch, or detection error.

    As far as allowing them to detonate, that all depends on the kind of attack. If a few are used, even the US would probably ride it out, using the time to deploy the remainder of their forces in preparation to a more devastating retaliation.

    But if it was an all-out large scale strike, I would expect either side would automatically respond the same way.

    The most frightening scenarios most talked about from the late 1970's until the end of the Cold War was the limited strike. Where one side uses a small number or even a single bomb as a form of intimidation to break the will of the other. "You do what I want, or you will get more of this!"

    The problem with that is that I find it hard to accept that any leader would simply sit back and do nothing as part of their country was vaporized in nuclear fire, they would respond in kind. 1 city on each side becomes 3 military bases on each side, which becomes 10 military bases, etc, etc, etc.
     
  20. Dayton3

    Dayton3 Well-Known Member

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    The idea of nuclear winter was admitted to not being supported by evidence even by its creator Carl Sagan decades ago.
     
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  21. Dayton3

    Dayton3 Well-Known Member

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    With respect to your knowledge Mushroom but though I've heard that many times before, I find it ludicrous. How far away from a targeted base can a B-52 from a runway roll in less than 30 minutes? How far can a ship in port get from the port in less than a half hour?
     
  22. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    No, that has pretty much been put to rest. At most, the effects would last a few years, with most regions having less than a 1 degree drop after 1 year.

    Many during the aftermath of the Gulf War speculated that the hundreds of burning oil wells would have a similar impact. Continent wide freezing events, global temperatures falling, to acid rain covering most of Asia.

    And as we all know, none of that happened. They came to those results by plugging in the actual data from the 500+ oil fires into their models, and then seeing what they gave up as results. And the results were pretty much all completely wrong.

    The consensus today among those who seriously look at the data without sensationalizing it is that it would result in a repeat of 1815. Known as the "Year Without A Summer" because of the massive eruption of Mount Tambora, it dropped global temperatures roughly 1 degree C worldwide. This resulted in snowfall in New York in July, and some glaciers started to advance again.

    But within 1 year things were returning to normal, and within 5 years the climate had returned to normal.
     
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  23. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    Actually, quite a ways.

    Remember, I am talking about the latter part of the Cold War. By that time, the huge 5+ megaton warheads had pretty much all been retired. Both the US AND Soviets had stopped with the "my bomb is bigger than your bomb" nonsense back in the early 1970's, and were concentrating on accuracy instead of making the largest craters. Warheads dropped in size, generally from 50 to 500 kilotons. And even with the larger 500 kt blasts, even a ship would be able to get out of range of the blast itself.

    Feel free to plug in a 500 kt blast into "Nukemap" and detonate it in downtown San Francisco. During the Cold War it would have taken several missiles to take out just the Navy bases in the Bay Area. And probably a dozen or more if they were trying to the extended ones like Travis and MacClellen Air Force Bases. Or even better, do that then drag it over to the big island south of Oakland.

    Within 30 minutes a BUFF would be at least 100 miles away, it might not even see the flash of the detonation. A ship would get some fallout, but that is about it.

    If a ship was at the Oakland Navy Yard an it got word a 500 kt warhead was going to detonate on the base, it only has to make it as far as Alcatraz Island to get clear of the direct effects. Even if it only made it as far as Yerba Buena Island, so long as everybody was inside the most it would get would be some burned paint on the hull.

    https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/....2984314&airburst=0&hob_ft=0&psi=20,5,1&zm=12

    Nuclear bombs were never the frightening boogiemen that most have been making them out for decades to be. Most have always been rather small, and not the "city killers" that most make them out to be. Unless the city was say San Francisco, which covers less than 50 square miles.
     
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  24. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    Prior to the Gulf War, Dr. Sagan was telling anybody who would listen that the climate effects of the Gulf War would be global. And as you said, he back peddled a lot and admitted afterwards he was wrong.

    https://www.forbes.com/forbes/1997/0210/5903123a.html#55348ce9b372
     
  25. Dayton3

    Dayton3 Well-Known Member

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    I tend to go with the stuff on nuclear winter from one of Sagan's official authorized biographies.

    In the one I read, Sagan openly admits that "the evidence does not yet support the idea of a nuclear winter, but the dangers of nuclear weapons demand we (his three fellow scientists pushing the idea) go forward as though it does".
     

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