France's Ultimate Warning

[Scott Kenny]

More than one way to skin a cat. Disguised TELs for example. Missile trains for another.

Trains would be more viable, disguised TELs for an ICBM would look like a commercial crane truck. And those don't have much business outside cities.

 

[A Tentative Fleet Plan]

Dispersal isn't really viable in Western Europe, a US Minuteman based would take up a significant chunk of the land area of the UK or France, and Minuteman is a relatively soft and non survivable system. US plans for successors involved much more dispersal and/or hardening, and that was in the 1970s. Warhead accuracy and fusing has only got better.

 

[Scott Kenny]

Dispersal isn't really viable in Western Europe, a US Minuteman based would take up a significant chunk of the land area of the UK or France, and Minuteman is a relatively soft and non survivable system. US plans for successors involved much more dispersal and/or hardening, and that was in the 1970s. Warhead accuracy and fusing has only got better.

The dude in charge of Trident testing has said that most of the time, the target they were aiming at was inside the impact crater. The kinetic energy impact crater, so we're only talking ~250-500lbs TNT equivalent. (500-1000lb bomb crater size)

 

[publiusr]

“Crater lethal” it was called, I believe.

 

[Dilandu]

Dispersal isn't really viable in Western Europe, a US Minuteman based would take up a significant chunk of the land area of the UK or France, and Minuteman is a relatively soft and non survivable system. US plans for successors involved much more dispersal and/or hardening, and that was in the 1970s. Warhead accuracy and fusing has only got better.

Well, recent Israel experience demonstrated, that hardened targets could be reasonably well protected by multi-layered missile defense system. Assuming, say, 100 silos hardened enough to each require direct hit, and with 90% efficiency missile defense it would require 1000+ warheads to score just a single hit against every single one. Also, decoy silos could be build. Also, a large number of silos could be made for a few missiles constantly shifted between them (if we add decoy missilss, also shifted constantly, it would be very hard to pinpoint real ones)

 

[Archibald]

France did not invested too much in Plateau d'Albion silos, past the initial deployment. Just one place and a limited numbers of S-3 missiles (no more than 18, from memory). It was pretty obvious in the 1970's that SLBMs were the real, ultimate deterrent: although M1 to M20 had limited range.
No idea about how much hardening the Albion silos had. Probably not enough to resist a R-36 / SS-18 / Satan.

 

[Dilandu]

No idea about how much hardening the Albion silos had. Probably not enough to resist a R-36 / SS-18 / Satan.

Well, I found the data about "Laboratoire souterrain à bas bruit de Rustrel", which was build in one of former Plateau d'Albion command centers. The description states that the structure was designed to 20 bar (290 psi) overpressure. Considering that silos were build in late 1960s, it looks reasonable that they were build to survive about 300+ psi overpressure.