Comment by derefr
4 years ago
On a tangent: it occurred to me recently that we also don't see much use of ICBMs with non-nuclear payloads, despite these being a fairly-obvious "dominant strategy" for warfare — and one that isn't banned by any global treaties.
I'm guessing the problem with these is that, in practice, a country can't use any weapons system that could potentially be used to "safely" deliver a nuclear payload (i.e. to deliver one far-enough away that the attacking country would not, itself, be affected by the fallout) without other countries' anti-nuke defenses activating. After all, you could always say you're shooting ICBMs full of regular explosive payloads, but then slip a nuke in. There is no honor in realpolitik.
So, because of this game-theoretic equilibrium, any use of the stratosphere for ballistic weapons delivery is effectively forbidden — even though nobody's explicitly asking for it to be.
It's interesting to consider how much scarier war could be right now, if we hadn't invented nuclear weapons... random missiles just dropping down from the sky for precision strikes, in countries whose borders have never even been penetrated.
> despite these being a fairly-obvious "dominant strategy" for warfare
I don't think these are quite as viable as you think. ICBMs are expensive. Probably tens of millions of dollars each, for a single-use item. Cruise missiles cost $1-$2 million to deliver the same payload and have a better chance of surprising the enemy.
ICBMs have longer range, but how often do you need to strike targets more than 1000km past the front line? They're inherently strategic weapons.
Even cruise missiles are horribly expensive for conventional munitions payloads. Cruise missiles were developed to deliver nukes.
An unguided 1000kg "dumb" bomb costs $2,000. A "smart bomb" costs $20,000 to $100,000. A cruise missile costs $1mil to $2mil.
In the scope of any protracted real war, sending out lots of cruise missiles is horribly inefficient. Much much cheaper to send out a few planes to drop 100's of tons of dumb or smart bombs. IOW, you can deliver 10x to 100x more boom if you just use planes and bombs. 1000x more if you use long range artillery. But then, the pilots or soldiers are at risk-- and that is a political calculation.
about cruise missiles, wasn't there one of those DARPA contests to see if a guy in the garage could produce a cruise missile? IIRC it got quite scary and was cancelled or something. Being in the drone and high power rocketry hobby i have absolutely no doubt there's enough knowledge and electronics availability for a guy in their garage to come up with something that delivers 50lbs to a precise gps coordinate a few hundred miles away for less than $10k. Once you do that, it's easy to scale up to 500lbs
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> ICBMs are expensive. Probably tens of millions of dollars each
For sub-launched ICBMs (like the UK's nuclear deterrent) you also need to factor in the through-life costs of the launcher platform, and the fact that once it starts launching, it has given itself away. We only have four subs, not all of which are on patrol, so it would be barking to compromise these to deliver a conventional payload.
Submarine launched ICBMs probably wouldn't be valuable without nuclear weapons though: they're valuable because they're a guaranteed second-strike capability to a nuclear first strike - you might plausibly get the land and air launchers, but there's no way to be sure you got all the subs and you only have to miss 1 (i.e. no country would survive losing 28 major cities).
Without nuclear weapons, they're kind of pointless - you don't inflict enough damage to warrant the expense. But the first strike is also so much more survivable.
Which country is "we"? The US has 14 Ohio class SSBNs in service until at least 2029
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> ICBMs have longer range, but how often do you need to strike targets more than 1000km past the front line?
Don't you need to also consider the vast expense countries (okay, mostly just the United States) spend to essentially extend their "front line" well beyond their own borders?
Well the first year of the Iraq War cost the US $54 billion, according to congress's budget[0]. This doesn't include the total cost of the supporting infrastructure need to be able to deploy troops in Iraq quickly, but we can estimate that using the increase in defence budget from 2002-3, or $94 billion ($132B in 2020)[1].
According to Wikipedia, Minuteman III ICBMs have a 2020 unit cost of $20 million[2], so for the cost of an Iraq invasion, the US could have fired about 6600 missiles. Considering the invasion toppled the Iraqi government, it's pretty unlikely that firing 6600 missiles with conventional payloads would have been anywhere near as effective.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_cost_of_the_Iraq_War...
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_...
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGM-30_Minuteman#Counterforce
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In a world without nukes, we would've been all about precision targeted ICBM munitions. In a war they would've been used to hit government centers, military bases, staging and supply areas, oil refineries and wells etc.
It's an infinite range weapon which arrives in 20 minutes to kill a target your spy satellites see. They would be used all the time.
Conventional Prompt Global Strike is intended to provide the ability to deliver a conventional kinetic attack anywhere in the world within an hour. It has been an active area of weapons research for the US for 20 years. As you speculate, misinterpretation of the launch is a concern. [1]
As opensocket points out, there are many shorter range conventional weapons used across borders. The cruise missiles of gulf war 1 or the drones of the post September 11 world.
[1] https://sgp.fas.org/crs/nuke/R41464.pdf
To tie this in with current events this is exactly what makes the no-fly zone idea in Ukraine so dangerous. All of the things you have to do to establish a no-fly zone and take away the enemy's ability to fire into and effect your no-fly zone look the same as a prelude to an invasion or nuclear first strike. This is made worse by the fact that many of the weapons systems you would be using are dual use. Meaning they were designed to deliver conventional or nuclear weapons. It's a massive gamble that the actions won't be misinterpreted or used to justify moving up the escalation ladder.
There are quite a lot of shorter-range conventional systems. In practice you don't need that inter-continental range for most purposes. For some modern examples you have the Chinese DF-21 and the Russian Iskander system. And a lot of those systems are dual-use: capable of delivering both nuclear and conventional payloads. It's not totally clear what that will mean in a conflict between two nuclear powers. What do you do when early warning radar picks up a ballistic missile coming in when you can't tell if it is nuclear or conventional? Plus this isn't a video game, you won't hear some alarm going off after it detonates indicating it was a nuclear explosion. You'll need to send someone to do a damage assessment, and that takes time.
We have satellites which can detect a double flash (characteristic of a nuclear explosion), the US and probably most other nuclear powers with the exception of perhaps North Korea and Pakistan would know instantly of any nuclear detonation above ground.
Not to mention the net of seismographs across the US. Those would tell us within our own borders if a nuclear detonation has occurred within seconds of impact.
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> It's interesting to consider how much scarier war could be right now, if we hadn't invented nuclear weapons... random missiles just dropping down from the sky for precision strikes, in countries whose borders have never even been penetrated.
Why are cruise missiles any less scary? They are indeed used in precision strikes across country borders, and can kill you just the same. The existence of nuclear weapons still allows some countries to use cruise missiles, as we see happen almost every year.
I'd consider how much more docile the nation's of the world would have become sans nuke.
If the possibility of an untraceable, space borne, hypersonic weapon was on the table we might have had a better deterrent than nuclear weapons. The lack of fallout and total deniability makes it almost certain they would have been deployed and quite concisely ended a few conflicts at the onset.
It is alarmingly frightening, moreso even, because the impact could be extremely precise- leaving infrastructure intact.
> I'd consider how much more docile the nation's of the world would have become sans nuke.
Interesting. I expected that nuklear weapons made us more docile. It's a huge deterrence for big powers to go to war with each other. I think we are seeing this play out in Ukraine right now. If Russia had no nuclear weapons, I'd expect NATO to have intervened much more directly at this point, especially after seeing that Russia seems much weaker than expected.
That is precisely why Putin keeps saber rattling about Russia's nukes. NATO (but mostly the US) would wipe out the Russian forces in Ukraine in a matter of days. Since he's committed so much of Russia's military to the invasion, the west would effectively castrate Russian defenses and likely all manner of hell would break loose in all those oppressed satellite regimes (hello! Chechenia, Georgia, Belarus, etc.)
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Nah. There's no point in putting hypersonic cruise missiles in space. Too expensive, and not survivable. Those weapons will be launched from air, ground, and surface platforms. Magazine depths will be so limited that they'll only be used for the highest priority targets. They won't be enough to end any major conflict by themselves.
> Magazine depths will be so limited that they'll only be used for the highest priority targets. They won't be enough to end any major conflict by themselves.
I'm probably being incredibly naive in saying this, but what about "non-wartime" decapitation strikes — where instead of going to war, you just lob some well-timed hypersonic missiles at your enemy's capitol building / parliament / etc. while all key players are inside; presumably not as a way to leave the enemy nation leaderless, but rather to aid an insurgent faction that favors you to take advantage of the chaos to grab power? I.e., why doesn't the CIA bring ICBMs along to their staged coups?
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So why are the Chinese doing it?
https://www.heritage.org/asia/commentary/chinas-new-weapon-j...
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Nah? You don't put cruise missiles in space. You put mass in space.
I supposed the point would be to hit the highest priority targets and nothing else. Loss of command and logistics has a profound effect on endurance
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I don't think you'd necessarily have deniability. We have early warning radars and satellite networks now capable of identifying an ICBM missile launch in the boost phase. Even with only ground-based sensor detecting the missile in the midcourse, it is a ballistic missile, which means the missile follows a predictable trajectory. This can be used to fairly precisely determine what it is aiming at, but also could be used to trace the missile back to a launch site.
Well from space, the point of origin is a bit arbitrary. We could just wait for our satellite to reach enemy territory.
Also, ICBMs in their present form would not likely resemble anything deployed in space
Didn't one of the old presidents propose that with the Star Wars program? Drop some metal rods from space and it's supposed to pewpew targets with minimal fuss?
Shorter range ballistic missiles have been heavily used in multiple conflicts around the world for many years. The US military has been researching the possibility of using conventionally armed long range ballistic missiles to fulfill the prompt global strike mission. Potential target countries have no anti-nuke defenses. But there is a risk that Russia or China could misinterpret a launch as aimed at them.
in WW2, Germany used V2 missiles for indiscriminate bombing of cities (primarily London). I can imagine it would look like that, but worse - and having gone to a few museums that showed Blitzkrieg London, that was bad enough as it is.
blitzkrieg is something else. You're referring to the London Blitz. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blitz was a bombing campaign (airplanes fly over and drop bombs on cities, a very WWII thing to do). V-1 and V-2 sort of came "after" when rocket and guidance tech developed enough that it was practical to target cities using missles from hundreds of miles away (northern france, I think).
Yes you're right, I meant the blitz, and regular bombing did indeed come first. It's been quite a while since I learned about ww2 history!
Agreed about the nastiness of V2 attacks.
However, the existence of nuclear weapons today doesn't seem to have prevented indiscriminate bombing (using whatever weapons: dumb bombs, unguided rockets, cruise missiles) of targets (including cities) in several countries in recent years.
Interesting tangent I hadn’t considered before. However, China is testing some ballistic anti ship missiles. https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2021/11/aircraft-carrie...
To be fair, if these become a reality, they would likely strike targets in the Pacific Ocean and South China Seas, far away from the US, but the potential to spook nuclear nations is still there.
i would imagine delivering a conventional warhead with an ICBM has a very high risk of being mistaken for a nuclear armed ICBM. Also, they're expensive. Putting a JDAM package on an old iron bomb turning it into the most advanced precision guided munition is very cost effective.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Direct_Attack_Munition
>game-theoretic equilibrium
Equilibriums change, every major US platform was at one point designed to be nuclear capable, i.e. cruise missiles now liberally launched from planes/bombers/ships that are all nuclear capable. There's no a reason nuclear countries who get attacked by any US platforms should assume any incoming ordinance ISN'T nuclear, down to gravity bombs, except for expectation - knowing US has overwhelming conventional capabilities and would rather use it than nukes.
Same will apply as conventional ICBM matures - we haven't seen much of it because ICBMs have not been sufficiently accurate unless carrying nukes where CEP in meters don't matter. For countries with power projection, it was dramatically cheaper to get closer first and deliver less expensive ordinance. Conventional ICBMs seem effectively forbidden because most actors assume they're too inaccurate for anything but nukes and too expensive for anything but nukes.
But that's changing - there are hints that PRC is pursuing rapid global strike i.e. US prompt global strike, because IMO it's the great equalizer in terms of conventional mutually assured destruction precisely because it isn't banned. A lot of articles being seeded on SCMP about PRC hypersonic developments that spells out meter level CEP ICBMs designed to conventionally attack strategic target of depth, aka Prompt Global Strike.
Ergo (IMO) PRC maintaining no first use nuclear policy while conducting massive nuclear build up to setup credible MAD deterrence. This sets up the game theory of accepting that conventional ICBM attacks on homeland from across the globe is possible and that it's best to wait for confirmation unless one wants to trigger nuclear MAD. Entire reason US / USSR and countries that could moved to Nuke triad or survivable nuke subs was because it bought more time than hair trigger / launch on warning posture.
This makes a lot of sense for PRC who doesn't have the carriers, strategic bombers or basing to hit CONUS (or much outside of 2nd island chain). It makes a lot of sense for any nation with enough resources for a ICBM rocket force but not enough for global force projection (basically everyone). World will be very different place if such capabilities proliferate. Imagine any medium size country with ability to hit stationary targets worldwide - fabs, server farms, power stations, carriers being repaired in a drydock.
Hypersonics are a boogieman imo. You'll get one volley before everyone starts rolling out flak or other anti-warhead defenses, and hypersonics have a gigantic weakness in not being able to maneuver for beans. Once you're going over a mile per sec -> predicting where you'll be to fill it with crap to destroy you isn't that hard.
Who cares if you can blow up one target once? Unless you marshal enough to wipeout enough infrastructure to really cripple your opponent, it won't do you much good anyway; and if you do cripple them, and they're nuclear, congratulations; you just won a nuclear response. You now have bigger problems.
>anti-warhead defenses
ABM unreliable, require multiple interceptors per incoming - exchange favors attackers who can always saturate. Also expensive, interceptors usually cost close or more than what they're designed intercept. And currently for anyone not US, just getting US to divert 100s of billions to homeland ABM defense is a win as it will take resources from other priorities. This is also assuming ABM works against hypersonics, including all the recent talk about flak/cloud defense. It's purely speculative.
> blow up one target once
For capital assets that takes billions and years to replace like carriers, subs, supply ships, long range bombers, awacs, critical infra nodes all you need to do is blow it up once. It doesn't take a huge pool of hypersonics to essentially dismantle major US force projection capabilities.
> you just won a nuclear response
Why? Primary motive is deterrence, but with conventional forces. And if it comes down to actually exchanging conventional hits, it will follow escalation ladder, no need to cripple, or cripple to point of existential threat that warrants moving to nuclear.
I’m not sure there’s much difference between the Russians using air-launched cruise missiles (with ranges of hundreds to potentially thousands of kilometers and almost always capable of carrying a nuclear warhead) launched from their Tu-95 Bear strategic bombers (equivalent to the B-52), which Russia has done several times now in Ukraine.
I think the difference is that air launched missiles could carry nuclear payloads but usually don't, while ICMBs could carry non-nuclear payloads but usually don't. All kinds of countries have been using air launched missiles all the time which at least on average tells us that every time one is fired it won't(shouldn't) have a nuclear payload. ICMBs on the other hand have never been used against anyone, and their stated goal for existence is carrying nuclear payloads - so if you see one coming your way you can assume it's a nuke, even though technically it doesn't have to be.
> So, because of this game-theoretic equilibrium, any use of the stratosphere for ballistic weapons delivery is effectively forbidden — even though nobody's explicitly asking for it to be.
Interesting! SpaceX was hoping to one day use Starship for quick intercontinental flights. I wonder if this unspoken rule would make that prohibitive?
Unlikely, as those flights would be scheduled and the launch site publicized. It wouldn't absolutely preclude a masked nuclear strike, but that would be possible already with space launches.
It'd also be a pretty shitty first strike, since you'd be limited to the count of starships scheduled to launch (and likely only ones headed generally in the direction of your target if you really want to mask it) at about the same time. So, probably just one or two, at best. Meanwhile, you'd need at least dozens (of missiles—more warheads) to have any hope of substantially reducing a major nuke-armed opponent's capability to retaliate.
Not remotely worth the complexity of setting up and executing. Maybe worth it against an opponent with extremely limited launch capacity (North Korea?) but that's a pretty niche application.
Until we have some magical non-polluting rocket fuel, I can't imagine intra-planetary rocket trips ever becoming permissible. Planes are bad enough.
Ignoring production, hydrolox would work, not that spacex are going down that road
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There could also be effective anti-missile defenses, which are currently politically impossible due to the fact that developing them puts you outside of the effectiveness of deterrence.
take a look at https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prompt_Global_Strike