Posted on 09/02/2003 6:48:24 PM PDT by Brian S
MOSCOW, Sept 2 (AFP) - Russia Tuesday successfully test-fired an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of carrying a nuclear weapon, Interfax quoted a senior navy official as saying.
The missile was launched by the Podolsk warship of the Russian Pacific fleet stationed in the far eastern Okhotsk Sea.
Minutes later, it successfully hit its target at the Chizha military target area near the Barents Sea in Russia's northeast, the news agency quoted navy spokesman Igor Dygalo as saying.
The launch came three days after the Russian navy lost another nuclear submarine when the decommissioned K-159 sub sank in Arctic waters while being towed to port, killing nine seamen.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov on Sunday said that negligence caused the sinking of the K-159 as authorities declared a day of mourning amid echoes of the Kursk disaster in which 118 people died just three years earlier.
zak/bb/sjw
Russia-military
Proof please
The same Russian soldiers that had a Commissar with a gun pointed at them to keep them moving forward? The same Russian soldiers that went into Germany and raped little girls and old women? The only difference between the Nazis and the Soviets is that the Soviets were on the winning team
Why, exactly?
Consider this: there has been ONE ballistic missile that was test-fired with a live nuclear warhead. That was the original Polaris A-1. Even that test was loaded, as all ballistic missile tests are. (The missile was not fired on anything resembling an operational trajectory, and it was extensively checked out prior to launch.)
That missile was retired from service shortly before I was born.
Now, fast-forward 41 years from that test, and 38 years from that missile's retirement.
Not one missile in the Russian or the US arsenal has been live-fired. They have undergone test launches. Those test launches feature extensive maintenance and testing from the missile manufacturer for several weeks prior to launch. After all that work by extremely knowledgeable engineers and technicians, the reliability of the missiles in these tests are roughly those of each country's space launch platforms (Delta, Proton, et cetera).
The result: after extensive maintenance and checkout that would not be performed prior to an attack (due to a shortage of skilled technicians and because extensive maintenance work would be easily noticed prior to an attack), a US missile will fail to reach its target 20% of the time. A Russian missile will fail to reach its target 25% of the time.
Combat firings would be very different. The failure rates would be much higher (probably double, at a minimum, the "test launch" failure rate). Bottom line: the Russians are looking at a failure rate of at least 50%, if not higher.
Now, look at the overall force structure of the US and Russian nuclear forces. A large difference jumps out at you.
The US force includes a significant bomber component. Bombers and cruise missiles have much higher demonstrated reliability compared to their missile brethren. The bombers are also reusable.
Additionally, note the historical performance of the Russian air defense forces. In 1978, a Korean Air Lines flight got very lost. After a comedy of errors, the Soviet PVO (Troops of Air Defense) managed to shoot down the bomber near Finland.
Heads rolled. Surely, after those heads rolled, things got straightened out, right?
Wrong.
Five years later, another KAL flight flew into Russian airspace off Kamchatka. After an even longer-running and more error-filled sequence of events, the plane was shot down.
Again, heads rolled.
And then, in 1987, a German teenager landed a Cessna in Red Square. He wasn't ever fired on. Hell, he wasn't even detected until somebody looked out a window in the Kremlin.
Well, at least heads rolled. But heads rolling is no guarantee of future performance...and there has been no test of the system since then.
Note that the circumstances that existed in each of these cases. There was no defense suppression effort accompanying these aircraft--but the PVO damn near let two of them escape, and the third one could've dropped off a W80 into the Kremlin courtyard as a candygram before anyone knew it was there. In a full-on war, with jamming, defense suppression strikes, and many more targets, the PVO is most likely not going to cover itself in glory.
And, finally, US bombers can deliver unguided bombs to within FEET of their intended impact points.
All of these points are seriously considered by the Russian leadership.
A full Russian strike would likely do far less damage to the US than they wished or deemed necessary for victory; it would do enough damage to the US to whip the American public into a genocidal fury; and the American's retaliation, relying as much as it does on bombers, would likely be able to reach out and strike the Russian leadership.
When uncorking the genie's bottle is likely to result in your own death...what is the incentive for doing so?
Yes, there are technical reasons--the damn thing is falling apart. Additionally, it's better to disperse 500 warheads among 500 aimpoints than to concentrate them in 50.
See my above post for why I think ICBMs are less important than advertised.
Lousy argument. A MIRV merely means that instead of a launch or staging failure costing you a single warhead, it costs you as many as ten.
And, on the far end, the warhead bus has to work three to ten times instead of only once. And THAT item is the least tested component of all.
And also, we'd retaliate on attack..
Yup. The guys in the silos would turn the keys, and four out of ten birds would never reach their targets.
Fortunately, the ACC B-52 and B-2 force would still be operational.
Possibly even launch on warning, so there wouldn't be any delay while the American people complained of nuclear holocaust.
And there'd be an FR Live Thread, with some folks blaming the "RINOs" and "Free Traitors" for not putting high tariffs on incoming reentry vehicles, and others claiming that this Missile Defense System isn't Constitutional, and that we should be relying on the militia to knock down incoming warheads. Meanwhile, some folks would be wondering what effect this will have on the Scott Petersen trial. And over on DU, the thread would read: "NUCLEAR WAR! WOMEN AND MINORITIES HARDEST HIT!" :o)
...yet I loved Jacob, But I hated Esau...
Malachi 1
Two-thirds of the Triad is of extremely dubious value. The USSR has a dyad (actually a monad) that has severe reliability issues.
But everyone panics about ICBMs...
And the situation of the Russians who actually gave that order would be far worse.
If the Russians are that suicidally stupid, then nothing will deter them, and all adding more warheads to the pile will do is make the rubble bounce some more. If they are not suicidally stupid, then they're going to be self-deterred by their force reliability issues.
"Dead" is considerably worse than "wrecked up."
My only complaint with our setup is we don't have enough B53 type 9megaton+ weapons. Only 50 of them, and those are probably phased out by now. Next in line is the B83 with 1.2megaton. I'd really prefer some more 20megaton range gravity bombs.
The US nuclear stockpile is there to accomplish military missions, not to make a wasteful fireworks show.
Very large-yield bombs are extremely wasteful of fissionable and thermonuclear components. 20 megatons will not appreciably improve the pK of a free-fall bomb. As I pointed out, when a one-megaton earth-penetrating bomb lands within FEET of its target, the pK is already quite high, even for something like the legendary Yamantau Mountain (which, if the stories about how much stuff got excavated are to be believed, would have a hell of a time not collapsing from its own weight, let alone from a B83 going off in a sweet spot like a tunnel entrance).
Bottom line: if the Russians shoot, they'll do SOME damage (not nearly as much as advertised), and the guys who gave the order to shoot will die very quickly after that.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
