Stas Bush wrote: The Moscow system is good and it's definetely not our fault that you blew your opportunity to build one, because you could've had that per the ABM treaty.
I agree on both points. I did once propose that we buy an ABM system form you but nobody listened
Golan III wrote:Oh please, 20 interceptors versus how many thousand warheads? And Russia testing new MIRV missiles?
Stas Bush wrote:If you were just a little less ignorant, you would know that it's the base infrastructure like radars, targeting, precision guidance that is important, not the stated initial number of interceptor missiles - which, if you were willing, could be quickly ramped up to the number you need without any necessity to change the base infrastructure.
Grazhdanin Stas is quite correct; once one has built the system, thickening it up with additional missiles is relatively inexpensive. That's one reason why the original ABM treaty was so stupid. However, the MIRV thing is almost irrelevent to the ABM issue since MIRV is only viable in the absence of ABM. There's a technical reason for that; MIRV works by a navigation system in the bus making tiny alterations to the position of the bus when it discharges each warhead. The warheads are discharged one at a timewith the bus being re-aimed with each discharge. Now, the aim on that bus system isn't very good (think a shotgun with a foresight only vs a rifle with fore and rear sights) If the warhead is discharged too early, the aim is so bad the warhead will be almost useless (remember we blow up things, don't just toss warheads around). If we leave it too late, the bus doesn't geta chance to discharge its warheads before it reenters and the amount of manoeuver it can do to aim is limited so the footprint within which the missile warheads will land gets too small. So there is a narrow bracket in which the bus can discharge its warhead (I'm sure you'd like me to tell you what that bracket is
- tough) and its quite easy to take out the bus - even with a conventional EKV - before it discharges. The bus is very fragile so it won't take much to kill it.
(and I'm sure Stuart is pretty happy about the new work for the military-industrial complex
)
Ecstatic. New computer for me, new car for the wife.
To echo a previous thread dealing with this topic, if we nullify ICBMs using ABM to the point that a strike isn't the be all, end all of attacks on a decent military target, then other plans will flourish. Sub-orbital bombers, of which the US has something of an interest, or maybe ever more advanced, stealthy, NOE/high altitude bombers again.
The good thing about that is that it raises the entry cost to the nuclear business. If ABM becomes standard then developing a nuclear capability means that an ABM system has to be procured as well - and, as has been noted, such systems are not cheap. The ballistic missile has several advantages running for it; its unit cost as an individual item is relatively low (its when one adds in the extras that it gets fiendishly expensive but people don't realize that until they've made the commitment - to give you some idea, the cost of a ballistic missiles is about 10 percent of the ballistic missile system as a whole. Those silos are horribly expensive).
If we eliminate missiles, we force people to consider other delivery vehicles. That means they have to spend a lot more money and it limits the number of people who can enter the game. At the moment, any nation with a grasp of 1950s rocket technology and access to nuclear materials can drop a nuclear warhead on any target within 1,200 miles of its own territory. Take out ballistic missiles by a defense system and that goes away.
A lot of countrys have realized that; that's why ABM is spreading so fast. Earlier this month, Australia announced it was buying into the US/Japanese missile defense defense system. It's getting to be hard to think of a major world or regional power that doesn't have an ABM plan, either their own or buying into other people's.
