StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Stuart wrote:

Wanderer wrote: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......

Hey hey now, don't get crazy! We're still waiting for you to finish up Winter Warriors. Which, if you promise to finish soon, I will reciprocate by finishing up 'Unto the Tenth Generation'.

CaptainChewbacca wrote: Hey hey now, don't get crazy! We're still waiting for you to finish up Winter Warriors. Which, if you promise to finish soon, I will reciprocate by finishing up 'Unto the Tenth Generation'.

Actually, you may get some more parts of Winter Warriors quite soon. there's also a Conrad story "Eye of the Seducer" coming up (this one stars Igrat). The next part of Armageddon should be up in a day or so. the only problem is, I'm losing track of which universe I'm in.

Stuart wrote:

CaptainChewbacca wrote: Hey hey now, don't get crazy! We're still waiting for you to finish up Winter Warriors. Which, if you promise to finish soon, I will reciprocate by finishing up 'Unto the Tenth Generation'.

Actually, you may get some more parts of Winter Warriors quite soon. there's also a Conrad story "Eye of the Seducer" coming up (this one stars Igrat). The next part of Armageddon should be up in a day or so. the only problem is, I'm losing track of which universe I'm in.

I'm afraid I'm going to have to sig that last sentence and take it out of context, my friend.

BTW, I'm hoping to write up a few more vignettes for Armageddon, I'll be sending them to Starglider.

CaptainChewbacca wrote:I'm afraid I'm going to have to sig that last sentence and take it out of context, my friend. BTW, I'm hoping to write up a few more vignettes for Armageddon, I'll be sending them to Starglider.

Which reminds me, Crusade is nearing publication. Want to do the editing? Usual rates.

Stuart wrote:

CaptainChewbacca wrote:I'm afraid I'm going to have to sig that last sentence and take it out of context, my friend. BTW, I'm hoping to write up a few more vignettes for Armageddon, I'll be sending them to Starglider.

Which reminds me, Crusade is nearing publication. Want to do the editing? Usual rates.

Absolutely. Email me and we'll work out details.

Stuart wrote:

Wanderer wrote: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......

But watching you entangle the blind armored CC with a net and spearing him with a Trident is so worthy of seeing

Stuart wrote:

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.

Stuart - is this because any in-bound to an ABM site is going to be either a target or a decoy, and so long as you have a "powerful enough" computer (based on what I've learned about ABM from reading what you and others have said "powerful enough" would be three or four [for redundancy] modern laptops - just so you could also make your PowerPoint presentation of how well the site did in real time) to descriminate which inbounds to hit, (you already have to have some radar at the local command site), you don't need anything other than a raid warning (so you know that it's not at drill)?

[Dang that's a long thought- sorry about that]

If I'm wrong please let me know so I can try again.

MariusRoi wrote: Stuart - is this because any in-bound to an ABM site is going to be either a target or a decoy, and so long as you have a "powerful enough" computer (based on what I've learned about ABM from reading what you and others have said "powerful enough" would be three or four [for redundancy] modern laptops - just so you could also make your PowerPoint presentation of how well the site did in real time) to descriminate which inbounds to hit, (you already have to have some radar at the local command site), you don't need anything other than a raid warning (so you know that it's not at drill)?

That's a part of it but the key difference is in when the systems are used. A ballistic missile defense C4ISR system is intended to work up to the point the missile RVs begin to land on (or over) their targets. Once they're through, the BMD system's war as an integrated whole is over. the individual batteries will fight on as long as they have missiles but they do so on an individual basis. So the C4ISR system doesn't have to function under direct attack; it only has to function up to the point of direct attack.

Because of the fact that ICBM/SLBMs are unrecallable (once they're fired, they're on their way and cannot be recalled or aborted), the user has to be very sure of what's happening before they are fired. That means the first enemy warheads have to arrive (unambiguous confirmation of attack) before the ICBMs will be fired. So, the ICBM C4ISR system has to be capable of functioning while under direct nuclear attack. So, it has to be hardened, multiply-redundant etc etc.

Put simply the BMD system's war ends when the ICBMs war starts - and the war facing the ICBM C4ISR is orders of magnitude more complex and its environment many times more hostile. That translates into a much more expensive C4ISR system.

CC wrote: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.

Nope.

In August 1988, the Delta-181 Thrusted Vector Experiment demonstrated that space-borne sensors can detect small motions (“wobbles”) in both warheads and decoys. Because a decoy must weigh significantly less than a warhead to be feasible, the “wobble” of a decoy is greater than that of a real re-entry vehicle.

CC wrote: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.

The ABM-1 GALOSH system is not "non existent".

If you had read any of the Polaris to Trident book (which I did); you would have known that the designers of PX-1 had to make educated guesses on what frequencies and such that the threat radars and such would operate -- it was when the Soviets actually lit off their battle management radars for the first time; that the engineers realized that everything was completely wrong; they had spent $$$$$$ on expensive in-flight tests -- everything, from the chaff to decoys had been designed around a totally different threat than what actually materialized.

By the time that PX-2 was ready to deal with the actual GALOSH threat; nuclear ABMs had moved from relatively small, slow 20 kiloton tipped NIKE systems to fast, long ranged 5 megaton SPARTANS, and you would have reduced the range of your missiles for nothing.

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?

The warheads don't debuss from the RV immediately after boost phase. If they did that; they'd be horribly inaccurate.

page 73 wrote: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.

I've always wondered what exactly was tested against the Safeguard radar. I could try getting the classified appendix of Bell Lab's ABM Monograph declassified; or any results from that test series.

page 74 wrote: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.

Did you get to the lovely part about the severe PX-1 reliability problems, like batteries running dead? Oh, and how are your decoys going to work when they're too small to be seen by the long wave radars that the Soviets selected? Same thing for the chaff. They're cut to the wrong frequency and are ineffective.

And fixing these problems isn't simple. You can't simply replace the chaff with longer or shorter ones cut to the new frequency, or introduce bigger decoys; because you will have to do very expensive, full up tests of the PX-1 (Mod) system, to make sure it works reliabily. At which point it's just cheaper and faster to go straight to PX-2.

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.

Now you're being crazy. Each additional pound of weight added to a ballistic missile reduces it's range significantly; so they're still susceptible to multi-kills. Just not as easy as a non hardened system to get multi kills on.

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

You mean Marina's contention of widespread nuclear tipped versions? Yes.

However, the fact remains that the Soviets deployed a very large number of SAM complexes which had a marginal RV enagement capability; this was enough to throw some uncertainity into the targeteering side of the business.

Back when Stuart was working in the light-blue-touchpaper-and-retire-to-a-safe-distance business, the widespread proliferation of SAM systems in the USSR (SA-5 and SA-10); capable of having a decent kill capability on very high altitude, very fast, manouvering aircraft (and by extension a capability against ballistic targets) caused quite a bit of concern, and thinking over what to do about it.

It effectively meant that Stuart and his colleagues could no longer pick a missile from their chinese menu of options, whip out a pie cutter, do some calculations and mark off "Karovgrad" from their list of targets. They now had to do a more in-depth probability analysis on the p(k) of the target than simply looking at missile reliability (60-70% is a good round figure for modern ICBMs); it meant they had to factor in the chance of the incoming RV being intercepted by a SA-5 or SA-10. So more warheads on top of the extra one thrown that way to deal with a missile malfunction had to be thrown at poor "Karovgrad"; which meant that less targets overall could be hit, when this was multiplied by the other regions in the Soviet Union which had SA-5/SA-10 complexes nearby.