But the RV is coming towards you, by definition. And it can't come down at mach 25 or whatever, or it'll hit the atmosphere so hard it crushes the warhead (we're talking about literally millions of g). RVs have to slow down in the upper atmosphere or get destroyed. - ThreadSky

saphroneth.bsky.social • 32 days ago

But the RV is coming towards you, by definition. And it can't come down at mach 25 or whatever, or it'll hit the atmosphere so hard it crushes the warhead (we're talking about literally millions of g). RVs have to slow down in the upper atmosphere or get destroyed.

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dustinducane.bsky.social•25 days ago

Aha so you’re going to have a defense barrage at each site. Even Israel which is the size of a post stamp, has issues with coverage.

saphroneth.bsky.social•32 days ago

The critical period is the drop from 100,000 feet to detonation altitude (where a nuclear weapon can do appreciable damage). Interception is very much viable in that zone because of the aforementioned reason - the RV is going at lower mach numbers (early ones subsonic) and eminently interceptable.

saphroneth.bsky.social•32 days ago

And the thing that an ABM system does is that it raises the number of missiles that an attacker has to throw *per target* to be confident of at least one hit - virtual attrition. No attacker can ever afford *enough* RVs so they have to prioritize.

dustinducane.bsky.social•25 days ago

Yeah and you think each ICBM contains one warhead like it’s 1945.

saphroneth.bsky.social•32 days ago

A really bad ABM system that the attacker guesses will stops 50% of RVs means the attacker puts extra RVs assigned to the high priority targets... but that means low priority targets don't get *any* RVs. Because there's never truly enough RVs for the attacker to do everything.

dustinducane.bsky.social•25 days ago

Have you heard of MIRVs?

saphroneth.bsky.social•32 days ago

Also the intercepting rocket is smaller and has less fuel and is thus cheaper than the ICBM, all else being equal - it doesn't have to get to Russia or China, just to the upper atmosphere, and it needs much less delta-V to do it.

dustinducane.bsky.social•25 days ago

Let me tell you about cheap decoys in an ICBM…

dustinducane.bsky.social•25 days ago

Considering that each ICBM can carry 10 warheads and many more decoys, how many ABMs do you need? Considering you also need to be make sure each warhead and decoy is hit by ABMs, which despite what you may think is insanely difficult, how can you figure it’s cheaper to have ABMs?

saphroneth.bsky.social•23 days ago

So what are the decoys made of, then? My understanding is that most decoys are mylar balloons - they'll get filtered out by the upper atmosphere because they're not as dense as a warhead.

saphroneth.bsky.social•32 days ago

Plus of course, you know... the RVs can be seen coming ahead of time! There are tricks to mess that up, decoys etc, but even if you use the upper atmosphere to declutter the RVs you still have time. I suspect it's an easier problem than modern anti missile naval point defence, except for range.

dustinducane.bsky.social•25 days ago

Oh then so why didn’t it work in the 1980s.

Because maths and physics.

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