Russia says new Topol RS-12 mobile ICBM can evade U.S. missile defense

RBC.ru via translation ^ | November 2, 2005

[COEXERJ145]

Also, do we have any rail launched missiles anymore?

Did we ever, besides on the drawing board?

There were plans to have 50 Peacekeeper ICBM's moved around the U.S. by rail so it would be impossible for the Soviets to target them but Congress killed that idea.

[Texas_Jarhead]

I don't know. That's why I asked.

[Texas_Jarhead]

sorry I included the word "anymore"

[operation clinton cleanup]

Sorry, didn't mean it to sound that way. Democrat congress killed idea of making MX rail-mobile... or any scheme that would make the Soviets feel venerable.

[Rca2000]

You're part right. The ABM missile system, using stand-off blasts from 5 meg warheads exoatmospheric(meaning out of the atmosphere)and small, ER-type("neutron bomb") endoatmospheric interceptors was dismantled in 1975. The idea was to burst the big warhead in the path of a bunch of RV's from incoming Missiles, and knock them out , still in space, before reentry. Some of the RV's , would evade the blasts, and so the Smaller missiles with the ER warheads would burst inside of the atmosphere, at high altitude, to knock out RV"s that penetrated the atmosphere,before they reached the target area.

Democrats, listening to envoromental and anti-nuclear groups, however, fought the system from the beginning, and it was successfully dismantled, only 1 day after becomming operational!!

However, the missiles were called Spartans(exo') and Sprints(endo's) Look up the Sprint launch. It is fascinating to see, it is FAST!!!(had to be, to intercept an RV that had made it through reentry.)

[Rca2000]

SO right you are. Most people are more in tune, to Hollywood, and what Ben Afleck or Jennifer Garner are doing, or what fashion styles are hot nowdays, to remotely understand the threat that ICBM's (even the older ones) pose.Ask an average person what MIRV means, and they will respond"wasn't he a talk-show producer"? Ask what staging means, and they will probably say, " Oh , that is when the actors do things that are not spontaneous", and so on. Most even believe that we can stop ICBM"s, saying "we got a system to intercept them". If only this was true.

Now, it seems that the country that can't feed it's people, or pay its soldiers, is trying to one-up the US, and deploy a missile with MARV warheads. (maneuverable reentry vehicles, that can evade defenses against them). Of course, in Russia, they don't have to worry about special interest groups opposing any of this, like the US does. They "just do it".

I wonder how safe the average, uneducated US citizen would feel, knowing that the main US land-based ICBM, (the Minuteman III), is nearing 40 years old now, while Russia is preparing to field one worlds more intelligent, that the Minuteman.

[Thunder90]

Russia has tanks that are better than the M1, and are rebuilding/modernizing their Air and naval fleets.

[GeronL]

but are their tanks better than JSOW?

It ain't likely to be a tank on a tank battle.

[Thunder90]

Tac Nukes work too!

[GeronL]

Tac Nukes would be a good name for a rock band

[Toddsterpatriot]

The radioactive clouds of cobalt would overwhelm Russia's ability to respond for a few hundred thousand years.

IIRC, the radioactive cobalt has a half life of about 5 years. Still, that'd be long enough to make you want to move to a different neighborhood.

[garbageseeker]

Hey what kind of mobile launchers do we have? Also, do we have any rail launched missiles anymore

The rail and mobile missile systems were in the developmental stage but we never deployed the system. The MX program was to had a rail and mobile system but the idea was scrapped.

[operation clinton cleanup]

Seemed like a good idea at the time... probably saved us billions by going the silo route.

The MX system was to be built all over the Southwest United States. It would consist of a number of large circular (or close-looped) railroad tracks. All along the railroad tracks are missile sites, most of which are either fake sites or empty underground “silos,” and only a few of which contain missiles (intercontinental ballistic missiles, aimed at targets in the Soviet Union). A train keeps moving the missiles from site to site in a manner such that the Russians don’t know which sites contain missiles. The system was often referred to as “the racetrack system.”

[garbageseeker]

I seemed pictures and diagrams of it.It would have been interesting to see in operation.

[ffusco]

You mean Cobalt-Thorium G?
Thank you Dr. Stangelove!

[garbageseeker]

If you want to do some real damage explode one ton on antimatter. The result would be a 40,000 megaton explosion.

[garbageseeker]

Theoretically

[garbageseeker]

Simple answer, add one pound of cobalt to each American warhead and a proximity sensor trigger.

The United Kingdom reputedly conducted a nuclear experiment involving cobalt as a radioactive tracer in 1957, at the Tadje site, Maralinga range, Australia, but it was announced to be a failure.