MAD no longer feasible: America's got Hypersonic Missiles

Don't hold your breath. Humans have been waging war since we first could pick up stones, we will continue to do so until something takes Homo Sapiens out. (Be it evolution turning us into a different species or an extinction event of some sort.)

Then my transhumanism beliefs stay morally correct!

I'm hoping we don't kill earth. At the least establish self-sufficent off-world colonies before any more serious wars.

Major Tom, which definition of MAD are you referring to? There's two ways you can take it, and if you mean the balance of terror between the US and the Soviets during the Cold War, then yes, thank God that's over. But if you refer to MAD outside that geopolitical context, it basically means "don't nuke me because I will nuke you back—from beyond the grave if necessary—and there's nothing you can do to stop it". That bit hasn't changed at all.

Exactly.

This new thing with Autralia leaves me relieved, because I'd hate for some island to luck out and survive a nuclear war.

Forgive me if I am wrong, but I was under the impression that both sides already have missiles that could travel from their launch point to impact in under an hour. Thirty minutes or less and whatnot.

This really doesn't make MAD unfeasible. It changes very little.

Are that many nukes kept in silos these days anyway? We (the British) have been completely sub based for ages anyway and I think the French are to. So in short this eliminates one type of counter attack. I'll panic when they have this along with a system of stopping aircraft that are already up in the air and eliminating an entire SLBM arsenal at the same time.

The thought that a nation, any nation with nukes can fire theirs off and assure that 100% of their warheads hit the target even if 100% of the other side's come to hit them.

Basically the latter definition in your post. MAD is obsolete. Why? Between technology allowing first strike capabilities that can practically annihilate the other side's offensive capabilities, there's nothing "mutual" about such an exchange. One side will lose their capabilities while the other remains wholly intact unharmed by enemy retaliatory strikes. Combine this with the development and improvement of anti-missile systems first deployed in the 1960s and suddenly a nuclear missile exchange destroying both belligerents becomes infinitesimal in probability.

That's how.

So a nuclear holocaust is no longer in play? Why wouldn't the other side just hit a major city? That would do more to tie up a country than merely hitting their silos.

Not really. US and Russian protocol is immediate retaliation in the event of a nuclear strike against them by somebody. (Does not necessarily mean the Russians hit the US or vice versa.) In times of nuclear warfare, entire cities become expendable compared to stopping the incoming nukes from causing even more damage.

Meaning say China fires a nuke at Vladivostok, the Russian government is not going to care about the civilians there in the immediate term. They'll be scrambling for full retaliation against China before China can hit other populated areas like Volgograd, Omsk, or Moscow rather than scramble to respond to the attack on Vladivostok. Once the Chinese nuclear threat has been neutralized then they can focus their efforts on helping (what remains of) Vladivostok. In this scenario the city becomes completely expendable.

edited 17th Nov '11 6:05:15 PM by MajorTom

But you're heavily overstating the capability of any combatant to perform a counterforce strike with 100% reliability. Yes, conventional or nuclear-tipped ABMs can provide a shield of sorts against enemy ballistic missiles, but there will be leakers, and this is a scenario where even one leaker is one too many—and that's assuming the first few missiles aren't aimed at disabling or damaging your very complicated ABM system. Yes, a fast, stealthy first strike can knock out a lot of enemy nukes, even assuming your opponent's early-warning systems fail to catch it completely. But missiles in silos are absolute sons-of-bitches to kill. They are immune to nuclear airburst and strongly resistant to ground burst unless you can ground burst a strategic warhead within a few hundred yards of the target. The silo isn't there for show, after all. That in turn means you have to dedicate a lot of weapons to that job—and if you're even a few minutes late your missiles will be aimed at empty holes. That's not even factoring in SLBMs or dispersed bombers. Are you absolutely certain your own SSN force can find and kill those enemy missile subs with complete reliability and speed? Can you be 100% sure that you can neutralize those bombers before they reach position to fire their own cruise missiles at you? Of course not.

My latter definition did not hinge on a 100% certainty. Instead, it hinges on the opposite: uncertainty. My argument was the inverse of what you made it out to be: because no nation can be 100% certain that they'll be able to protect their citizens from enemy nukes, and because no nation can be certain that they can execute a flawless first strike—because that first strike will have to be flawless—they won't initiate a nuclear war. You don't have to be 100% sure that 100% of your weapons will hit their targets; you just have to be sure that some of them will. A stealthy strategic strike weapon and anti-ballistic missiles add confidence that a higher percentage of your weapons will make it through and a higher percentage of their weapons will not, but it is still far from certain. The US touts the SM-3 as an ICBM killer; the Russians tout the Bulava as an ICBM that will make it through defenses. Nobody is completely sure what would happen if you threw them against each other, since the stakes would be much too high, so nobody tries it. Even a 10% uncertainty means dozens of warheads will make it through. Hence MAD holds.

For further reading on the subject I recommend Stuart Slade's three-part article series on nuclear war: 101, 102, and 103.

edited 17th Nov '11 6:07:37 PM by SabresEdge

So, Congress likely just dumped a fuckton of money on the military-industrial complex to build a missile to do what we've been able to do with (relatively) less expensive pieces of hardware for upwards of 50 years?

Par for the fucking course.

Actually, USAF, think of it as a Tomahawk replacement instead of an ICBM replacement. Then it seems a lot more sensible.

Hm... that seems rather excessive, though. I mean, the Tomahawk doesn't really ever need to go that fast.

Do you know what this actually would be great for, if they could make it small enough?

Miniaturized heavy-duty anti-ship missiles. Preferably with a tactical nuclear warhead as an option for those pesky supercarriers.

Don't need to legislate the death of top-heavy, consolidated, and stupidly expensive naval forces when you can just obsolete them entirely with new-model missile tech, I guess...

It depends on your requirements. Danger Room's article on it is much more detailed and much better on the analysis.

Basically, the downsides of the Tomahawk are these: you need to get a missile-firing asset within 1000 miles of your target, and you need to figure out a way the missile can avoid being shot down. The first isn't a problem if you have several days to maneuver your subs and destroyers into place. The second is easy if your opponent possesses a shitty air defense network. But what if neither is the case? What if you want the ability to vaporize your target within an hour, even if the nearest SSN is thousands of miles away, and you want to make sure your missiles won't get downed by an errant SA-24 battery?

That's what this new missile is for. Now, you can do it with an ICBM; if you want you can load a conventional warhead onto it. But ICBM launches stick out like sore thumbs to early-warning satellites, and how would Moscow or Beijing know that you're launching a conventional warhead instead of a nuclear one? How would they know not to nuke the hell out of you because you've spotted the next Osama bin Laden out in Inner Nowherestan and you don't have any other assets that can get there in time, so you launch an ICBM? That was the problem the previous PGS program ran into, hence this new program. It's the ability to reach out and touch someone anywhere in the globe, delivery guaranteed in one hour or less, without having to worry about sparking a nuclear holocaust.

True, you could load it with a nuclear warhead and use it as a nuke, but ICBMs already offer that role, and because a single ICBM can carry many MIRVed warheads it's got that advantage over your hypersonic cruise missile. Also, an ICBM travels at Mach 20+. This missile travels at Mach 8.

^^ I'm reminded of 1960s ship design where defenses were eschewed in favor of speed and straight numbers (or was planned on numbers with the Sprucans). Then we learned how to Shoot the Bullet.

There is nothing you can say that supposedly invalidates the aircraft carrier that hasn't been done in the last 50 years. Submarines, anti-ship missiles, submarine launched anti-ship missiles, all of that and more have been thought of and countered by point defenses.

It's possible in the end even these hypersonic missiles will lose out the race of missiles vs missile defenses in favor of missile defenses.

edited 17th Nov '11 6:27:50 PM by MajorTom

...I find it far-fetched to believe that when push comes to shove, submarines couldn't beat out carriers.

Of course, if I were a submarine captain, I wouldn't bother with missiles. Too obvious. Just get reasonably close, launch a torpedo or two, and fade into the background.

@Sabre,

Hm, that is a good point. Question becomes, is it worth the money?

Although if we were willing to scale back the military as a whole and drop our neconservative stance on everything, I wouldn't mind the extra toy here or there like this, as it's actually useful in that context as its effectiveness as a sort of sniper missile offsets its cost...

Is it worth the money? There's the million-dollar question. I personally don't think we need such a capability, but there's clearly a lot of disagreement. Hypersonic missiles are nothing new—the Indians and the Russians, and even the Chinese if you count the DF-21D, are on the game there.

As for the whole subs versus carriers debate, that's better answered on the Military Thread. But, in short, there are a lot of difficulties involved with stalking and hunting a carrier force with a submarine. See this article for what I'm talking about.

Good luck getting past the carrier's entire battlegroup of frigates, destroyers and at least 2 Los Angeles/Seawolf class attack submarines escorting it to even get that close.

That's very hard to do when the ships are at combat readiness. And then what if your torpedoes miss? Now you have at least a half dozen vessels all capable of burying you in Davy Jones' locker within seconds out to find you. (And torpedoes are easily tracked in the water, it's possible you'll be dead from sub fired torpedo or ASROC before you find out your torpedoes missed.)

@Tom,

You got me with the fact that carrier battle groups have submarines, too. I never knew that. 0_o

@Sabre,

Well... once again, I'll trade them their fancy toys for less military and international involvement overall. Until then, fuck that, a waste of taxpayer dollars in its entirety, and the Tea Party supposedly hates that, so...

At risk of derailing the conversation (really, if we're not going to talk about strategic nuclear warfare or the implications of the new missile) I'll admit that I have no love at all for the Tea Party, since they seem intent on preaching isolationism, which has never once worked out to our favor.

But honestly, the new missile isn't going to change anything on the intervention front. Generally, crises spark up over a period of days or weeks, which is more than enough time to get a carrier battle group and your choice of Tomahawk-firing assets into place if needed, thus negating the need for the "Prompt" part of Prompt Global Strike. And regardless if you're using a Tomahawk or a hypersonic missile, it's still an act of war. The reason we're not involved in Syria right now isn't that we can't kill Khalid al-Asad Bashir al-Assad with a Tomahawk salvo/JDAM barrage/weapons of your choice, because we totally can. It's that it'd be politically stupid to do so, and it'd cause much more trouble than it'd be worth. Having PGS in our inventory won't change that.

As for submarines versus carriers, go to Military and ask your questions there. ASW is a huge, intricate game, and a carrier battlegroup is among the best-protected targets for a submariner to attack.

edited 17th Nov '11 7:07:57 PM by SabresEdge

If this missle did, in fact, eliminate MAD, it would only do so for as long as it takes another power to gain this technology.

I could see this used for more than just nuclear strikes. A KKV still packs a hell of a wallop.

I still don't see how they would replace effectively Tomahawk missiles, as you already have heavy bombers that can cross those distances and take out SAM defences (at least, that's what your military-industrial complex pretends with their stealth bombers... they're right, I hope, seeing the money your country spent on those). And for the few countries that can shoot those down (I won't give a chance for B-2 bombers to come back from a raid to Russia or China, TBH), we all know it'll end in ICBM launched from both sides.

Tom, I'll repeat what's been said by Sabre: MAD never required 100% of nukes. For example, take a medium nuke power like those Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys (I take them because I know our nuke power and to show you what could happen with a strike 5 to 10 times less numerous than a Russian one): the nukes are stealthed, launched by submarines at least as silent as your Seawolves (the Los Angeles are just a joke for Euro SSBN and they won't get close to Russian ones if those remains in the Bastion near Murmansk). Suppose that only half the missiles take off. It still means 32 missiles. Half of them get magically shot down (even if I really doubt that SM-3 can take down long-range SLBM). Still a hundred nukes to rain down on the continental U.S., and depending of the targetting, either your ten largest cities are annihilated to the last man and woman or all your State capitals are just merely devastated. Congratulations, you just "won" the nuclear war.

Missile defence and hypersonic missiles didn't change the fact that the only way to win this game is not to play.

As for subs, I'll just remind the audience that a s Chinese sub captain trolled the hell out of USN by surfacing at less than 5 miles from a U.S. supercarrier. And with some Russian subs able to dive at 900 meters (not feet, meters), it's easy to imagine one of them being let to the carrier a few days in advance thanks to sat observation (even if Russia has to launch one sat a day to replace those destroyed by SM-3 missiles), then keeping quiet until the carrier comes into range. Then, eight torpedoes right under the keel, and 6000 sailors and airmen will swim home.

Carrier=target for submariners (look for periscope photos of supercarriers, I managed to find some taken by German subs and others).