Moderators: Alyrium Denryle, Edi, K. A. Pital
Yes.Do the SLBMs have MIRVs?
I'd say the single-warhead "Topol" is more aimed at you than the MIRV heavy missile. Although technically if the number of heavy missiles in service remains the same and keeps the 10 000 warhead level, we can be more or less sure that this deterrent will work against the US too.I just find it ironic that Russia is still allowed to make new MIRV-capable designs, which are aimed squarely at us
I'd be surprised if it wasn't resurrected, especially given that ASAT they (successfully) tested recently.Pelranius wrote:Though I wouldn't be surprised if it's been resurrected already.
I recently stumbled across a site with pictures of Russian nationalists wearing Topol-M T-shirts proudly to defy any foreign interference in the motherland's affairs. Funny thing, but not quite as funny as the Hitler photo wielding nationalist in Moscow recently in the anti-gay riot. Methinks someone can't do history well.Stas Bush wrote: I'd say the single-warhead "Topol" is more aimed at you than the MIRV heavy missile. Although technically if the number of heavy missiles in service remains the same and keeps the 10 000 warhead level, we can be more or less sure that this deterrent will work against the US too.
Strange. Last time most of them wear T-90s. We clash with them often enough, but their fashion always dazzles me. Weapons no longer are any guarantee of sovereignity. I thought Yeltsin has proven that well enough, you can be taught to follow any demands with a big financial stickI recently stumbled across a site with pictures of Russian nationalists wearing Topol-M T-shirts proudly to defy any foreign interference in the motherland's affairs.
Like this one?Admiral Valdemar wrote: I recently stumbled across a site with pictures of Russian nationalists wearing Topol-M T-shirts proudly to defy any foreign interference in the motherland's affairs. Funny thing, but not quite as funny as the Hitler photo wielding nationalist in Moscow recently in the anti-gay riot. Methinks someone can't do history well.
Agreed. From what I've been able to piece together (one of the reasons why I haven't commented on this yet is that I've been trying to get some reliable data) this isn't a new missile, instead its an iteration of the Topol-M which trades off a lot of range in order to gain additional throw weight. This is quite a common trade-off, we do it a lot with Trident D-5, so there's nothing new there.Vympel wrote:It seems to me that it's probably a heavy modification of the Topol-M. A missile like that simply can't be in the class of the RS-18 or RS-20.
That's always the case at the sort of level you're talking about. We got on very well with our Soviet opposite numbers during the early '80s - we used to swap information on whatw as planned for our respective home towns.Stas Bush wrote:Actually from what I know about the SCO, Russia and China get along rather well so far. I mean, I know officials who actually went there (our regional delegates) and they overheard some of the speeches. China is not our enemy (for now, of course).
The Chinese have always had a serious problem is mass-producing electronics. A lot of their ships go to sea with only partial electronic fits while they've had a lot of problems building enough radars for their aircraft (the Blue Circle Radar serves in China as well). It's the shortage of adequate electronics that killed off their earlier ABM program. Now, with the way their electronics industry has developed, I'd guess that problem is a thing of the past.The ABM efforts of China are unsettling however (just like the US ones). We can still decimate both countries to ash, but apparently this is not enough. )
Apparently, since the local population has experienced a major decline during the 90's democide. There's a lot of Chinese in my region, and yet more of them in the Far East.Chinese illegal immigration into Siberia is very great, is it not?
So far they're pretty much satisfied with what we're selling them, and we're pulling a new pipe into China to keep them well-fed, which is the core of our alliance so far.
...besides moronic paranoid straw man arguments
There's no "strawman" here, unless you really think that ABM systems are not the gist of the new arms race (which pretty much everyone is sure about). Russia can be hypocritical, since that race will go on anyway, but this argument is not a strawman. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the United States has repeatedly explained its plan to Russia in considerable detail, and stands ready to discuss the matter further. She tartly noted that Russian President Vladimir Putin himself had said Russia’s own strategic defenses could easily overpower the U.S. system.
“We quite agree,” she said.
Lavrov made a dark joke in response.
“I hope that nobody has to actually prove that Condi is right about that,” Lavrov said.
The idiocy coming out of Russian bureaucrats is astounding. It probably wouldn't be a big deal if Russia developed its own ABM system...as long as it wasn't marketed and sold to every degenerate on the block like its IRBM systems were...“We are still convinced that the only target of that shield would be not the purely hypothetical threat that might come from Iran or some other remote state, but the only real target will be our country,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told The Associated Press on Tuesday.
Eh? What IRBMs are you referring to?The idiocy coming out of Russian bureaucrats is astounding. It probably wouldn't be a big deal if Russia developed its own ABM system...as long as it wasn't marketed and sold to every degenerate on the block like its IRBM systems were...
Moscow has had quite a nice ABM umbrella for decades, something Washington could have had if you went along with Nike Zeus and the like, I expect. I doubt that system is quite what the US wants today, nor do the Russians feel it is adequate when you can have far more accurate, non-nuclear interceptors covering a wider area with modern supercomputers and phased array radars.Golan III wrote:
Besides, hasn't Russia operated a semi-functional ABM system around Moscow for years?
The problem is that China's economic growth (which is high although the exact figure depends on which source one uses; the figure I use varies between 8.5 and 9.5 percent per year - with a growing number of years in the high end of that bracket) means its resource consumption is exponential while the supply from Russia is arithmetic. Also, as the Russian economy rebuilds after the 1990s melt-down, its own resource consumption is going to start growing making less available for export. That's one of the factors leading to the collision course I described.Stas Bush wrote:You get fuzzy with nukes when you know China wants to grab your resources, like the Siberian resource plants.
The Russians extensively rebuilt their Moscow ABM system during the 1990s - its a measure of their real opinions on ABM that they spent the money required to do that at a time when the rest of their military forces were falling apart from lack of funding. In away, the current Russian fuss over ABM can be seen as an endorsement of the efficiency of such systems - if they didn't work very well, why make a fuss over them?Moscow has had quite a nice ABM umbrella for decades, something Washington could have had if you went along with Nike Zeus and the like, I expect. I doubt that system is quite what the US wants today, nor do the Russians feel it is adequate when you can have far more accurate, non-nuclear interceptors covering a wider area with modern supercomputers and phased array radars.
As you can probably gather from the above, there's nothing semi-functional about it. It's pretty good given its conceptual date. Teh good Admiral is quite right, if we were designing it today, we'd do it differently but that doesn't mean the Moskva system isn't effective. It is, certainly enough to negate the current scale of Chinese attack.It probably wouldn't be a big deal if Russia developed its own ABM system...as long as it wasn't marketed and sold to every degenerate on the block like its IRBM systems were. Besides, hasn't Russia operated a semi-functional ABM system around Moscow for years?
Its a continuous process. We're updating them all the time. So the only real answer to that is probably "last week". (I'm not being sarcastic or trying to be flip; we really are working on the beasts all the time so its impossible to put one's finger on any specific date. That's deliberate policy. Very often important changes aren't even given mod numbers in order to maintain a screen over what can do what.When was the US's last update to the ICBM arsenal?
Absolutely right. Good engineering practice demands never changing more than one variable at a time. However, as far as I know, we're not expecting a new heavy ICBM to appear any time in the near future so this does appear to be the most plausible MIRV vehicle. That doesn't preclude a new heavy ICBM appearing out of the blue (although its unlikely) or that we do have information and its not accessible.Or the 10 warhead Topol M variant could easily be sort of a 'technology demonstrator' for a true MIRV ICBM. It's best to tinker with existing technology before trying something completely new.
