Conventional ICBM

[Rebiu]

Defense Department proposes replacing ICBM nuclear war head with a conventional one.

Conventional ICBM

Is this wise? What does it say about the inability of US forces to stop scud missile launches the Iraq war and Israeli failure to stop Hezbollah rocket attacks?

[gcol]

Or perhaps it is the sort of weapon to be used against Iran's nuclear fuel enrichment facilities?

[Rebiu]

Or perhaps it is the sort of weapon to be used against Iran's nuclear fuel enrichment facilities?

At first I did not understand how a conventional warhead on an ICBM could do this. Then it hit me. The radioactive debris from the facility will hide the actual use of a small nuclear warhead. You are diabolically clever gcol.

[CPL.Luke]

their talking about replacing the warhead with a conventional one, ie non-WMD

 

it seems likee a good idea, modern ICBM's are quite easilly targeted to within a few meters of the target, and are practically impossible to stop.

[Severian]

I imagine it could lead to misunderstandings though. I presume tracking isn't sophisticated enough to tell what the installed warhead is, so how doe one tell if the ICBM in the air is conventional or nuclear?

[gcol]

I had in mid that a nuclear strike would would unleash such woldwide approbrium that it would be unthinkable. But a conventional payload delivered by ICBM could arguably be merely an escalation. The difference between short, medium and long range conventionally armed missiles is but one of degree. Would it make any difference to the target if it was hit by a scud or an ICBM?

[Rebiu]

How about a stealth ICBM?

[CPL.Luke]

you can't make stealth ICBM's, as they re-enter the atmosphere they make tons of plasma wich will show up on radar.

 

 

Would it make any difference to the target if it was hit by a scud or an ICBM?

 

I don't think so since they're both ballistic missiles, besides I don't believe that most countries have a sophisticated enough early warning system to know that an ICBM was coming

[Rebiu]

you can't make stealth ICBM's, as they re-enter the atmosphere they make tons of plasma wich will show up on radar.

Just a technicality. I vaguely recall a missile that fires a rocket contrary to its trajectory to flatten the ballistic curve and come in under the enemies detection capacity.

[YT2095]

unless you had a sample of the nuke reactor material you wanted to hit, here`s no way you could hide a small nuke in the warhead without detection after, it would need to be salted identcaly to the fuel being used in the reactor. you may as well sign it Love from <insert name>.

 

sorry dude, it`s just not that simple

[Rebiu]

unless you had a sample of the nuke reactor material you wanted to hit' date=' here`s no way you could hide a small nuke in the warhead without detection after, it would need to be salted identcaly to the fuel being used in the reactor. you may as well sign it Love from <insert name>.

 

sorry dude, it`s just not that simple [/quote']If all the radioactive material is mixed who is to say what comes form where in any given sample?

[YT2095]

oh dear, put simply each batch has it`s own signature, each contry that makes their own will have theirs also, it`s as unique as a fingerprint and any university chem lab could tell the difference too! nevernimd what the UN or Military labs have.

as I said, it`s NOT that simple, you`de need to salt your nuke accurately in order to hide it in the aftermath.

[Jim]

I imagine it could lead to misunderstandings though. I presume tracking isn't sophisticated enough to tell what the installed warhead is, so how doe one tell if the ICBM in the air is conventional or nuclear?

 

Exactly. This is the concern not that we add the ability to strike quickly from a distance.

 

OTOH, I'm sure the tracking ability does include a projection of where the missle will land. Still, it will put the world on edge to have a missile fire from a silo in Nebraska and start to head over the Atlantic.

 

I wonder if using a ICBM for a conventional payload is cost-effective.

 

What it gives us is the ability to react immediately instead of having to move ships into position to launch cruise missiles.

[swansont]

Exactly. This is the concern not that we add the ability to strike quickly from a distance.

 

OTOH' date=' I'm sure the tracking ability does include a projection of where the missle will land. Still, it will put the world on edge to have a missile fire from a silo in Nebraska and start to head over the Atlantic.

 

I wonder if using a ICBM for a conventional payload is cost-effective.

 

What it gives us is the ability to react immediately instead of having to move ships into position to launch cruise missiles.[/quote']

 

I would think not, since the ICBM would have been designed to withstand more violent accelerations. But cost is often not a primary consideration.

 

You can launch cruise missiles from planes, too, so you can send your B-52 out and launch from there if you need to do it sooner rather than a day or two from now. And you need to do that anyway of you can't get a ship or sub within the ~1000 km or so range of the cruise missile. Maybe that's the motivation: not putting people in harm's way while getting within shooting range.

[CPL.Luke]

I'm pretty sure that the US navy is capable of firing cruise missles to virtually any location on earth at this present moment. In other words, the ships are already there

[Pangloss]

A "conventional ICBM" would give additional tactical capability beyond that level, though. For example, you could drop one in any backyard on the planet within 15 minuntes of the decision being made, regardless of the position of your tactical forces at the moment. Carriers take days/weeks to reposition, and bombers take hours to reach an area.

 

Offset against that might be such factors as readiness, accuracy and expense. They're one-shot deals, and as far as I know there are zero ICBMs in production. So you wouldn't want to use them for just any old response-to-terrorist-attack-on-an-embassy scenario.

[Rebiu]

oh dear' date=' put simply each batch has it`s own signature, each contry that makes their own will have theirs also, it`s as unique as a fingerprint and any university chem lab could tell the difference too! nevernimd what the UN or Military labs have.

as I said, it`s NOT that simple, you`de need to salt your nuke accurately in order to hide it in the aftermath.[/quote']When weapons inspectors concluded Iraq had no WMD in Iraq their findings were disregarded. When no bodies were found in the wreckage of flight 93 it was disregarded. Remember the Gulf of Tonkin. When the signature of the fallout matches us material it will easily be disregarded and the testers discredited. The explosion will be said to have been conventional and all the fallout material will be said to have come from the facility.

[Rebiu]

I'm pretty sure that the US navy is capable of firing cruise missles to virtually any location on earth at this present moment. In other words, the ships are already there

There is a growing threat from the most advanced antiship weapons the world has ever seen. The Yakhonts and Moskit(Sunburn) and Novator are included in this family of supersonic surface skimming missiles that have a zig zag terminal pattern that defeats existing point defense systems. They are extremely accurate and can kill a carrier with kinetic energy alone. The Russians have sold them to Iran and China. Russia may also have supplied them with rocket torpedo as well.

 

American carrier power has dominated the world for some time now. The Russians have worked for years to counter the threat. It now appears they have the capacity to neutralize the carrier threat and have exported it.

[Jim]

When no bodies were found in the wreckage of flight 93 it was disregarded.

 

You're not talking about United 93?

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Unless we warned every country with an early warning system (like Russia) beforehand, I imagine you'd get about half of the world scared ****less within about five minutes of the launch. Even if they did know, how could they be sure it really wasn't a nuclear warhead?

 

How about a stealth ICBM?

Nope. What most detection systems look for is the heat emitted when the rocket launches, and unless you can come up with a rocket that doesn't involve heat, they'd still pick it up.

 

They're one-shot deals, and as far as I know there are zero ICBMs in production.

Right. It's a convenient way to get rid of our existing stocks, of course. Frankly, I think high-speed cruise missiles are a better system anyways - accuracy, difficulty of detection, flexibility - and ICBMs have all sorts of risks attached.

[padren]

Perhaps there is a military contractor out there who wants conventional ICBMs so that the ICBM can go back into production.

 

 

I really do wonder what the logicists would boil down to, when you compare cheaper cruise missiles with the expense of moving delivery systems into position vs the cost of a one shot ICBM.

[Sisyphus]

A "conventional ICBM" would give additional tactical capability beyond that level' date=' though. For example, you could drop one in any backyard on the planet within 15 minuntes of the decision being made, regardless of the position of your tactical forces at the moment.

[/quote']

 

I think that's the crucial point. We're not going to pass up the capability to have a literally unstoppable strike anywhere in the world in minutes. Cruise missles from ships and such can be potentially neutralized by attacking the ship or shooting down the missle. But not too many enemies are a threat to silos in Nebraska, and nobody can get an ICBM shield to work. It wouldn't take the place of cruise missles, but it could be a fail-proof backup in certain situations.

 

As for logistics, I don't think it's going to save any money, since the "full spectrum" philosophy of the U.S. military pretty much forbids it from relying on one technology at the neglect of another. In other words, we're not scrapping the navy any time soon.

 

And, of course, as mentioned, you would have to alert all nuclear powers beforehand, to avoid misunderstandings...

[Edtharan]

Im think the most effective use of a conventional ICBM would be using it as a delivery platoform for multiple conventiaonal warheads. If you could stock an ICBM with several conventional curise (like) missiles, you could use the ICBM to put the cruise missiles in place wihtin minutes, far faster than a ship or plane.

 

These cruise missiles could then be directed to individual targets as if they were fired form a ship or plane. With a Hybrid ICBM/Cruise system, you could get effective air domination over any battlefield anywhere on Earth.

[swansont]

When weapons inspectors concluded Iraq had no WMD in Iraq their findings were disregarded. When no bodies were found in the wreckage of flight 93 it was disregarded. Remember the Gulf of Tonkin. When the signature of the fallout matches us material it will easily be disregarded and the testers discredited. The explosion will be said to have been conventional and all the fallout material will be said to have come from the facility.

 

The residue from conventional bombing of an enrichment facility will not come close to matching the fallout from a nuclear detonation.

[Rebiu]

Right. It's a convenient way to get rid of our existing stocks, of course. Frankly, I think high-speed cruise missiles are a better system anyways - accuracy, difficulty of detection, flexibility - and ICBMs have all sorts of risks attached.

I doubt that we will rely on existing stocks once the technique is approved. We could be looking at 100-ton conventional warheads with current technology.