US tests 'most dangerous nuclear weapon ever produced'

[Smitty-48]

Might be good for stopping ICBMs.

Most definitely, because it can fry them in their underground silos, and certainly if they are MICBM's above ground, it doesn't have to actually hit them, you just pop it above them and the ICBM's are fried preventing them from launching at all. Also disables the command and control systems which launch the ICBM's

[Speaker to Animals]

I wonder if a detonation near one at its apogee would disable the warheads, though.

[SuburbanFarmer]

Might be good for stopping ICBMs.

Sir, I've got good news, and bad news....

[Speaker to Animals]

Might be good for stopping ICBMs.

Sir, I've got good news, and bad news....

We cannot allow for there to be a doomsday gap.

[Smitty-48]

I wonder if a detonation near one at its apogee would disable the warheads, though.

At that combined velocity? Easier to just intercept kinetically, since kinetic intercept is getting so accurate and reliable now.

[SilverEagle]

I wonder if a detonation near one at its apogee would disable the warheads, though.

At that combined velocity? Easier to just intercept kinetically, since kinetic intercept is getting so accurate and reliable now.

Right now Smitty is rock hard and most likely typing with his dick. No but seriously Smitty....Good stuff!

[Speaker to Animals]

I wonder if a detonation near one at its apogee would disable the warheads, though.

At that combined velocity? Easier to just intercept kinetically, since kinetic intercept is getting so accurate and reliable now.

It's not going so fast at apogee. You can forget trying to intercept that thing on it's descent. Warheads after apogee travel really fucking fast. Trying to intercept it on launch is what our ABM shield tries to do, but that's not complete coverage by any means, and it requires forward deployment.

At apogee, you know it can't be traveling more than about 20k km/hour or it would just go into orbit. If you have a constellation of missile platforms that carry missiles with neutron warheads, as soon as you detect the ICBM launching from Russia, your system would identify the most appropriate platform and launch the interceptor. By the time the ICBM reaches apogee, the interceptor would be right there in rendezvous with it. Both of them would be at about the same speed at that point, and the relative differences in velocity would make it pretty easy to get close enough to destroy it. For this to work, your interceptors are actually slowing down by burning in retrograde to match the projected velocity of the missile near apogee. So it's not as difficult a problem as it seems if you are envisioning launching something from the ground (which, seriously, wouldn't be practical).

You'd just need enough warning and enough coverage that you'd be able to make the rendezvous in time.

[Smitty-48]

But it's not going to be one ICBM, it's going to be many, and they're not all going to be hanging around at apogee at the same moment, it's going to be staggered, and they're not going to be flying through apogee doing nothing else, they're going to be deploying their launch platforms scattering MIRVs and decoys as they go, and they're not going to be coming on the same vector, they're going to be on multiple vectors from all over, including in the case of the RS-26 Sarmat, all the way around the earth from the backside, so if it was me, I would try to get them with counterforce, before they got off the ground, mix of depressed trajectory manuevering MIRV's from SLBM, with stealth bombers and cruise missiles.

[Speaker to Animals]

But it's not going to be one ICBM, it's going to be many, and they're not all going to be hanging around at apogee at the same moment, it's going to be staggered, and they're not going to be flying through apogee doing nothing else, they're going to be deploying their launch platforms scattering MIRVs and decoys as they go, and they're not going to be coming on the same vector, they're going to be on multiple vectors from all over, including in the case of the RS-26 Sarmat, all the way around the earth from the backside, so if it was me, I would try to get them with counterforce, before they got off the ground, mix of depressed trajectory manuevering MIRV's, with stealth bombers and cruise missiles.

It wouldn't be just one interceptor either and aside from the cost of getting them up into orbit and installed, they are generally cheaper than an ICBM. You don't need much fuel or delta-v to deorbit. These things would be quite a lot smaller than a conventional missile.

A platform could also launch a wave of kinetic rods at the missiles ahead of time like a shotgun blast, and if those things hit, then the interceptor could be recovered or used on another missile if possible.

Also MIRV doesn't come into play until *after* apogee.

So you basically have the conventional ABM shield in Eastern Europe. Then you have platforms that can rain kinetics down on it's ascent. Then you have interceptors at apogee. What gets passed that is still going to hurt, though. I don't think intercepting these things after apogee is a fruitful endeavor.


What sucks is that the distance between us crosses the north pole. So it's not like you can just maintain a geostationary orbit anywhere near the exchange. You'd need multiple platforms to maintain constant coverage. And for much of the time, any given platform is nowhere near position to intercept an ICBM. So you'd need a fair-sized constellation of them in polar orbits.

[Smitty-48]

Well if you pre-deploy to orbit, best start digging your bomb shelters then, as that will incite an ASAT war, which will bleed rapidly towards the event horizon of counterforce, where, again, best have them SSBN's up in the saddle and bombers at failsafe, if you're going to take it there.