Posted on 07/30/2016 11:03:39 AM PDT by BenLurkin
The Air Force said in a statement it expected to award up to two contracts for a new ICBM weapons system, or ground-based strategic deterrent, sometime next summer or fall. It also expected to award up to two contracts in the same time frame for a new nuclear cruise missile, or long-range standoff weapon.
Modernization of the U.S. nuclear force is expected to cost more than $350 billion over the next decade as the United States works to replace its aging systems, including bombs, nuclear bombers, missiles and submarines. Some analysts estimate the cost of modernization at $1 trillion over 30 years.
The new ICBM system would be a follow-on to the Minuteman missile, whose launch systems and physical infrastructure first became operational in the mid-1960s. The system has been upgraded over the years, but much of the infrastructure is original, the Air Force said.
The most recent versions of the Minuteman III date from the late 1990s and early 2000s and had an intended 20-year life span, the Air Force said. The missile will "face increased operational and sustainment challenges until it can be replaced,"
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Rods from God
Nothing else comes close.
Thor !!!!!!!
From Wikipedia:
The system most often described is “an orbiting tungsten telephone pole with small fins and a computer in the back for guidance”. The system described in the 2003 United States Air Force report was that of 20-foot-long (6.1 m), 1-foot-diameter (0.30 m) tungsten rods, that are satellite controlled, and have global strike capability, with impact speeds of Mach 10.
The time between deorbit and impact would only be a few minutes, and depending on the orbits and positions in the orbits, the system would have a world-wide range. There would be no need to deploy missiles, aircraft or other vehicles
hint:
Pay attention to space junk which are antiSAT
because coordinates matter.
They had to wait until Captain Kickass is out of power, in order to make these upgrades, I'm sure.
Those missiles were manufactured during the cold war when the United States had a huge space and missile infrastructure and lots of aeronautical engineers. I would be surprised if anything like that existed now so replacing these may not only be expensive but a very difficult and a lengthy process. Replacement devices will need to be smarter and maneuverable as there is a rapidly evolving intercept technology. Also, we may want to rethink the ground-basing concept as the circular error probability of a kill is pretty much dead on today whereas in the fifties, sixties and seventies you could be pretty sure your silos would survive a first strike. A ground based system that is vulnerable may increase the probability that a false attack reading, caused by human error, a software glitch or meteors, would need to be responded to more quickly than in the past. This could result in a first launch when there is no real threat.
Ya beat me to it.
I worked on the Minuteman platform back in the early 80’s. I might still have my SCS Key. Was stationed at Ellsworth, showplace of SAC.
If no course correction, daisies.
Be careful what you wish for. Kinetics have a lot less nasty side effects than nukes, so the temptation to use them would be greater. I mean something that doesn’t even explode would never be called a weapon of mass destruction right? ;-)
(Yes, I’m fully aware of the amount of kinetic energy a falling object from earth orbit can deliver. Others are not. Some of them may even be attorneys.)
What kind of damage would that cause? Like if you would hit Times Square with one?
“Rods from God
Nothing else comes close.”
Oh yeah, how about anti-matter weapons?
Absolutely!
A 3” rod, 3 feet long, dropped from space packs about 12 kilotons of energy. And you can store a LOT of those rods in a very small space! Something the size of a refrigerator could hold 100 units. That’s a megaton of highly directed energy that will strike individual buildings, sites, etc.
And zero fallout to deal with!
See my previous post... :)
A single, 3” diameter, 36” long rod of tungsten dropped from orbit would pack about the same energy as 12 kilotons of TNT. That’s about 2.5 times the energy of the Tim McVeigh van bomb in Oklahoma City.
It’s a big boom.
3 in diameter rod, 3 feet long. Volume is pi-rsquared times length. 3.1415 * (1.5^2) * (3*12) gives 254.5 cubic inches. Times (2.54 ^ 2) to convert to cubic centimeters, times 19.25 (density of tungsten in grams per cc) to give mass in grams, divide by 1000 gives mass in kilograms: 31.6 kg, about 65 pounds.
Above someone says that they're moving about Mach 10 by the time they hit the ground. That makes sense, orbital speed is Mach 25, but they'll lose a lot of that by the time they get through the atmosphere.
1/2 * m * v^2 = 1/2 * 31.6 * ((343 meters/sec * 10)^2) = 185,885,420 joules of energy. Convert joules to kilotons by multiplying by 2.4 x 10^-13. 1.85885420x10^8 * 2.4x10^-13 gives 4.46x10^-5 or 0.0000446 kilotons, quite a bit less than 12.
You know, when people say “do the math”, they generally don’t expect that anyone will actually do the math.
;)
What did we get for all the trillions the current group spent? Note: It was not my intent to say blown or pissed away.
WOW
Just great................
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