rickshaw said:
Appears you have little understanding of the physics of how either ICBMs or the ABM system worked.
Actually, I do.
I've managed to find one of the few books that detail how to calculate the defended footprint for an ABM system.
The missile defense equation: factors for decision making by Peter J. Mantle
While calculating the forward edge of the defended area is relatively easy, calculating the back edge and side edges is more complicated.
The book also explains why we use the Sea-Based X-Band Radar --a rough calculation I did showed that GBI's forward defended footprint against a 6.67 km/sec ICBM would be about 760~ kilometers in front of Fort Greely.
But if you added in the Sea Based XBR at Adak, some 2,250 km in front of Fort Greely, the defended forward edge footprint of the GBI against the same 6.67 km/sec threat rose to 1,500~ km from Fort Greely.
The greater the distance from the point of impact, the greater time required to mount an intercept. The site in North Dakota would not have been able to defend the eastern US seaboard and would have been very hard pressed to defend the relatively closer western US seaboard.
Actually, you're wrong. It was really ideally positioned to defeat Soviet ICBMs coming over the pole towards either coast, and would have protected the main mass of the US below it. The coasts would have been vunerable though. Ideally, we should have built two; one in Oregon and one in Maine.
This is why we picked Fort Greely for GBI; because of it's position, it made it possible to have a large defended footprint covering all of the continental united states from a single site.
If the fUSSR had used SLBMs, then it would have been impossible for ABM system to defend against them (particularly if depressed trajectories were utilised).
Depressed trajectories mean that you can't carry either decoys or MIRVs due to much greater atmospheric drag. And really, the solution to defending against depressed trajectories is to link in your existing SAM systems on the coasts to the missile defense radars, so they can engage the much lower and slower flying depressed trajectory missiles.
As all the history books relate - the concept of an ABM system in a MAD environment is potentially destabilising
False. When has a defensive system ever been destabilizing?
There was a good reason that Japan, for example, made a limitation of fortifications in the Pacific a key provision of her signing the Washington/London Naval treaties; because otherwise, there was no way Japan would be able to attack western colonies with a good chance of success.
Anyway, ABM systems are relatively easily defeated.
False. It's relatively easy to defeat decoys or MIRVs. In fact, this is why SPARTAN was developed, and why it had a significantly longer range than the original Nike-Zeus -- so that it could destroy incoming missiles well before they could debuss.
Fun fact -- the further away from the target a re-entry vehicle is released from the warhead bus, the less accurate it is -- and nuclear warhead yields have been trending down steadily since the fifties.
Finally, if desired, there is always the possibility of fielding FOBS which would increase the ABM defence problem considerably
You mean something that can easily be countered with an ASAT system (which an ABM system is, by default?)
There was little point in funding a system which provided limited coverage for a limited nuclear attack when it was likely that any attack would be massive and cover all the major cities and installations in the USA, numerous times over.
Again, you fail to understand the utility of defenses. The Soviet Union, by building up strategic defenses, was able to reduce the British nuclear deterrent from striking 200 cities (the V-Bomber force), to about 64 (Polaris force), to just one (Chevaline) by their continuous build up of strategic defenses in the form of an air defense network, and then later, an anti missile defense network.
Of course, the British then restored their 64 city destruction capability by going to Trident, and abandoning any attempt at penetrating the Moscow ABM system with Polaris Chevaline Decoys, but for a very long period from 1982 to 1994, the British essentially traded off a significant amount of warheads (1/3ds) and significantly cut the range of their SLBMs from 2,500 nm to 1,950 nm; meaning they had to be closer to Moscow in order to hit it, which was more dangerous in the 1980s, due to improved Soviet SSN forces.
The same defenses also significantly cut into SAC's capabilities.
It used to be that in the sixties; having a clip of four one megaton bombs in a B-52 for a weight of 10,000 lbs of weapons was sufficient to penetrate to your target and destroy it; and with 600 B-52s, you were assured that even if a goodly portion of the force was shot down, you'd still have enough to kill the Soviet Union.
But by 1979, you only had 343 B-52s, meaning that you had to load up the force with more weapons, not only to take up the slack of the cuts in bomber numbers, but also to suppress increasingly dense Soviet defenses -- a eight round rotary launcher for SRAMs is easily 20,000~ lbs fully loaded with missiles.
Later on in the eighties, EVEN more weight was added with the addition of ALCM pylons and launchers.
Basically, by the end of the Cold War, the B-52Gs and Hs would have had to tank up almost immediately after takeoff, in order to have the range to reach their targets -- and even then they would be nearly tanks dry over the target (courtesy of M. Kozlowski, 379th BW(H) Wurtsmith, MI).
