LGM-35A Sentinel - Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD) program
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Such a large redesign would require a nuclear-test to verify it.
Aint no way to stuff a B83 into reasonably sized RV, especially after adding a 3rd stage... Also zero need to come up with such a ridiculous warhead. Thats without getting into the cost of designing a booster for that warhead and retroffiting the silos for such a booster. Trying to do that would likely kill land-based ICBMs for real.
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Not necessarily. Full up tests were never done with the B83 itself.
Tests would need to be done with a two-stage design converted into a three-stage design, as for testing the W-83 it was a modified W-77 which ZIIRC was tested before the threshold test-ban treaty was signed.
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I’ve read and believe I posted the MCAT test story in another thread or maybe this one. The stories that come up are of a 52” diameter 2nd stage the same as MMIIIs diameter. Unless you’re saying they were testing propellant and other tech that will ultimately go on a larger stage, great.While I would love to give you links with chapter and verse on the current specs for Sentinel, I cannot. I work for one of the GBSD subcontractors, so I do have definitive information, but I cannot share it because there has not been any official public descriptions of the missile stages. The first static test of a Sentinel stage (1st stage) is supposed to happen in early 2023 which should have some additional public release information on specs.Sure it’s possible but every graphic depicts the exterior lines of the MMIII (even on the Air Force’s official website) plus with first test flight in 2023 what they are testing today seems relevant with the absence of them testing anything else.Just because there were tests of “advanced/modernized” versions of MMIII stages does not mean that is what will be in Sentinel. Those motors were derived from a program that was looking at “drop-in” replacements for MMIII stages in the event that it was determined that MMIII would have the propulsions stages replaced again. The decision was made to go clean sheet and Sentinel was the result. It will be larger and more capable than MMIII. It will not, however, be as capable as Peacekeeper.These are “advanced/modernized” versions of what is on the MMIII so it appears Sentinel will be a clone. What a wasted opportunity.
Plus your statement seems quite definitive so if you have links or other information you can share the forum would appreciate it I’m sure.
If you dig into the news release about the Aerojet test, it talks about an MCAT program which was a tech demonstration effort that followed a previous MCS3 (Medium Class Stage 3) program designed to test the limits of what new technologies could be inserted into a motor that fit the outer mold line of the MMIII 3rd stage.
You mentioned “larger” as well as more capable. While you’d expect more capabilities from decades newer missile technology I’m not seeing the larger part at this point.
But by your post you obviously know far more than I, a civilian, would know. I appreciate the information you were able to share.
And as a guy hoping for a larger system who would be more than happy with a missile sized between MMIII and Pk.
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BlackBat242
OK, I changed my personal text ;)
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I just ran across this thread... as Hill is the depot maintenance site for Mm3 & was for MX during its service, those silos have (or had) full-up control rooms to test all of the on-board systems after overhaul.
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U.S. Air Force Secretary Concerned With Sentinel ICBM Timeline | Aviation Week Network
U.S. Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall says he is “concerned” about the schedule for the LGM-35A Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile system as there has been a schedule slip, though it remains within its overall baseline while there is not much more slack to give.
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Yep. They also test silo mods out there before the deploy them to the force.
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Air Force Will Fire New "Sentinel" ICBM in 2024, Deploy by 2029 - Warrior Maven: Center for Military Modernization
What if the continental US were unexpectedly attacked by a massive salvo of incoming enemy nuclear missiles?
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Sentinel agreement signed in historic ceremony
More than 150 personnel who took part in drafting the LGM-35 Sentinel Programmatic Agreement participated in a historic signing event Dec 16, 2022, which simultaneously took place in 11 different
www.afgsc.af.mil
In the end the USA has mobile nuke missiles, albeit under the sea. Unfortunately its impossible to discuss mobile nukes before it gets political. Also our bombers can be dispersed if needed although they have a long fight time.
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The simplest solution is to make the TEL look like a tractor-trailer or an ordinary cargo or passenger train, like the Soviets did (at times, the Molodets was a passenger train in external appearance for this exact purpose). Yes, mobile nukes are "political" in the sense that the US can't just bulldoze your house for a nuclear missile highway, because there might be a particular form of tortoise there, but that's not the true issue. America can just build atomic highways in Alaska or Montana by asking a local rancher family or logging company if they want to be paid a large sum of money and Treasury securities for a patriotic duty certificate and a medal.
Theoretically, the US could attach nuclear missile rail cars to every Amtrak or insert nuclear missile launch trucks into the commercial shipping depots and road fleet. It does this with Pantex already after the White Trains were shut down, both because they were too high profile (easily tailed and protested) and because dedicated security is expensive. Adding launch capability and a booster is relatively trivial (it would be a laptop or something in a structurally strengthed sleeper cab) and a Midgetman could fit in a typical 53-foot semi-trailer.
Even under real-time space observation this will make finding the nuclear missile and strategic forces incredibly difficult and require an excessive expenditure of warheads on potential target zones to obliterate every truck and train with high psi yields. It won't do this because "people would be hurt" or something, as if a strategic nuclear war doesn't inherently involve the largest 20 to 50-odd American cities and suburbs being sent to the afterlife in voluminous plumes of radioactive dust and firestorms or something.
This is a uniquely American (or perhaps, uniquely Anglo) thing, though. Continental Europeans fundamentally do not think like this and never have, because I guess America never had enough Hundred Years' Wars or something. The USAF has likely suggested in very serious discussions with Congress about the viability of nuclear Amtraks and atomic Peterbilts, but was probably shot down less for reasons relating to "politics" i.e. negotiating a (deliberately) confusing and obscure tangled mess of legalese and contractual agreements, and more for a unique bugbear that America gets hung up on almost exclusively, that there is a fundamental difference between civilian and military targets.
Historically speaking, there isn't, but America doesn't have enough history to inform it of this, or it deliberately ignores it, or something else. Its wars are comparatively civilized relative to the rest of the world. Maybe it doesn't have enough of an identity as a culture to truly hate its neighbors yet? Even when the USAAC was arguing for nuking Kyoto or Tokyo, simply because they were the biggest cultural-moral center or economic-population center of Japan respectively, the American political corpus overruled them entirely and suggested a more industrial/"military" target in the form of the much smaller and less important shipyard cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
This weird logic simultaneously makes Americans one of the more genial imperialists but also results in frankly odd military decisions at times. The Americanization of Western Europe has exported this belief to a lot of cultures that it would never have natively appeared in, as well.
Suffice to say, if you're an armed force that genuinely cares about real-time observation, the simple solution is to make your armed forces not appear to be either armed or forces, but rather to blend into the surroundings and appear to be ordinary people going about their daily lives. This makes the targeting problem of actually hitting a moving target, such as a road mobile tractor-trailer TEL or disguised missile train, with a unguided ballistic RV much harder, and it also makes the targeting problem of finding out what's a threat and what isn't essentially intractable.
The only people nowadays who really understand this seem to be the various continental Asian armies that have successfully defeated the US multiple times explicitly by exploiting its fear of shooting "civilians" and desire to destroy "military" objects. It's a notable weakness that is fairly easy to exploit, both financially and militarily, in the US planning method from top to bottom. It would be a notable strength for a strategic weapons force to be able to blend in passively to the population, though, because it would confound the targeting matrix for a anti-strategic weapons force far more than something simple like mobility alone.
Nuclear wars are impossible to keep civilized when literally a quarter, or more, of a national population will be obliterated in a few minutes, so there's no particular reason for the land- or air-based missile forces to be explicit in their business.
If America made its strategic missile forces into genuine hard targets by moving all land- and air-based troops into civilian roadways, railways, and airports, but kept up a facade by having faux-strategic forces with B-52s or B-21s stationed alongside empty missile silos, it might actually be able to dupe its enemies like China and Russia into the Americanism of "counterforce". Having the Chinese or Russian rockets hit empty missile silos and conventionally rated airbases, only to discover that the real strategic force was on the Northeast Corridor or Anytown, USA's numerous truck stops, would be incredibly big brained. Well, big brained for capitalists, but a Tuesday for the USSR.
Having physically hard targets like SSBNs, hard mobile launchers, and hard silos just encourages opponents to target cities though, because striking weakness when your enemy is stronger than you is a truism. If America made its cities harder to attack than its silos, it might actually be capable of sustaining the "nuclear sponge", but that's approximately infinitely more expensive I suppose.
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The problem with road and train mobile missiles is likely security and cost more than any perceived need to separate military targets from civilian. That and the fact that the US already has the majority of its warheads on hidden mobile launchers. Neither Russia nor China are known to deploy their missiles in such fashion either.
The “nuclear sponge” strategy is I think something applied retroactively to the existing infrastructure rather a posture specifically adopt by the US. I don’t think it presumes that civilian targets won’t be hit so much as it assumes some of the silos will survive or alternatively they will absorb a disproportionate amount of warheads-one or the other.
The “nuclear sponge” strategy is I think something applied retroactively to the existing infrastructure rather a posture specifically adopt by the US. I don’t think it presumes that civilian targets won’t be hit so much as it assumes some of the silos will survive or alternatively they will absorb a disproportionate amount of warheads-one or the other.
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Forest Green
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Mobile only makes sense to me if it's underground inside a secured site moving between redundant silos.
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If this were the case, why does the US transport nuclear warheads in normal semi-trailers now?
Pantex no longer uses White Trains. It uses semi-trailer trucks with nuclear warheads in the back or it uses normal cargo trains. It's transported in the same manner as any other form of cargo. This is cheaper, it is vastly more effective than "security" that cannot shoot protesters, and it is less likely to be intercepted by malicious or nefarious subversive parties because it is neither public nor noticeable from any other form of cargo.
The driver is armed with a carbine, or a handgun, which is all the security you really need on America's highways and truck stops.
My point is that if you replace the Pantex trucks with just a 53-foot container that resembles externally a normal semi-trailer, but is staffed by a couple Airmen with a Grease Gun and a laptop between them, and carries a Midgetman, you could deploy a few hundred of these on America's highways. No security needed. If someone finds one missile, well they found one missile, so what? Just arrest them for tampering with government property and try them for espionage.
The purpose is that there are no overt security measures beyond protecting the vehicle from hijacking, maybe, because overt security measures invite electronic eyes to oogle you. Such anti-hijacking measures would be a pair of fit young men in the cab and a rifle, shotgun, or submachine gun in the door. Less to keep the enemy from finding out your dastardly plan (it would hardly be a secret after a couple years, everyone in the U.S. would know any random truck or train could be carrying nuclear missiles), and more to keep some car thieves from blowing up their neighborhood by trying to cut open a nuclear missile to get the copper, and igniting the solid fuel motor by accident.
If you don't want to be observed, but are being observed continuously, you simply don't make yourself noticeable and act like you're supposed to be there.
This is a rather bizarre statement, because it's wrong, and obviously so. The majority of US strategic warheads are deployed on the Minuteman III force. The US deploys 450 Minutemen IIIs with three warheads each. It deploys, barely, over half as many Tridents. It has 1,365 strategic warheads between the 76 B-52Hs, 450 LGM-30s, and ~280 UGM-133s. Nuclear force deployments are no longer obscure and haven't been secret for decades, neither to amateurs nor to experts, and the US is the least likely to be cheating since sticking to the treaties is in its best interest: it's the one writing them!
The Trident force typically deploys with fewer than three or four warheads on a missile, and several have a single warhead for the hard target optimized (read: old, outdated, and unreliable) W-76-1. The majority of the US's 14 SSBNs are not on patrol at any one time either. I think they actually rotate the warheads around the ships, with incoming ships swapping warheads with the outgoing ones, which is part of the job the USN's Missile Technician rating.
I don't know what you mean by this. Both Russia and China have SSBNs.
As I said too, the Molodets launch complex was disguised externally as a passenger train, for purposes of evading tracking by ground observers and satellite detection. The USSR was very much aware it was under an electronic eye of a world superpower, except unlike most superpowers these days, it actually took measures to deal with this. Sometimes.
RT-23 ran on passenger routes and was withdrawn not because it was ineffective, but because it lacked spare parts, while the Topol-M was already doing the same job better in terms of accuracy and availability of spare parts.
Except the USSR never targeted US silos, it targeted US cities, and it wasn't interested in targeting silos because it didn't believe it was important.
All US silos will survive, and they will absorb zero warheads, which makes the US obsession with their hardiness...odd, to say the least. The Soviet Union did not consider American focus on defending its silos to be of serious concern (it did not believe that ABM systems were particularly effective in defending against mass raids due to the discrimination problem) and it did not consider the SDI system to be particularly threatening in its "counter-value" emphasis, but more importantly it considered the lack of a deployment of an ABM system around D.C. to be indicative that the US had almost equally little faith in such a concept.
Russia has maintained both of these viewpoints, as evidenced by its further development of the Vanguard hyperglider (a Soviet system designed to evade the X-ray laser satellite and Brilliant Pebble ABM satellite) and the relative lack of development of the Gorgon ABM complex.
So what is purpose of having 1,400 land-based silo missiles if it was not to ensure that silos could die along with the cities then? Quite simply, it was to ensure that the Soviet strategic missile force would survive contact with SAC, be able to launch peri-attack or post-attack, and retain sufficient heavyweight ICBMs survive their initial ascent through nuclear detonations, ash clouds, and X-ray scattering/ionization caused by SRAM/ALCM/gravity bomb/Minuteman/Trident/Polaris to make it through the US orbital defense grid and obliterate New York City, Los Angeles, and D.C., and a few other major cities.
The USSR never had launch-on-warning, it lacked the technical capacity to deploy a globe-spanning satellite complex (Almaz was an attempt to develop a MOL-style orbital reconnaissance system, to detect new US silo developments, but was eventually discarded as the USSR realized it could simply look at map atlas and hit cities I suppose), so it required a massive stockpile to ensure sufficient missile strength survived a strategic exchange. Approximately 20 or so missiles of the complex R-36M2 would be required to vaporize both US coastal megacities to a state of uninhabitability, give or take a few, and the USSR had about 200-300 of them and the -UTTh, both with 10 warheads between 550-1000 kilotons.
The deployment of Perimetr automatic launch complex in 1984 is sufficient to demonstrate the sort of constraints the Soviets were working under, though. Much like the Americans' Emergency Rocket Communication System, but far more than just a command launch system, Perimetr is what helps the MOD make rational decisions regarding attack postures given the 4 to 7 minutes warning time they would have had before a missile impact in Moscow.
The fact that the Strategic Rocket Forces feel that approximately 70 silo based missiles and approximately 150 road based missiles is enough to defeat the US in a nuclear exchange (for the land forces anyway) is why it's generally believed that Russia has developed, at least partly successfully, the functional rudiments of a launch-on-warning system. It also (likely, correctly) believes that detecting and destroying a mobile missile unit before it launches is easier said than done. Desert Storm probably had a lot to do with this, as even with the JSTARS the USAF was unable to stop the Hussenite Scuds. The greater quantity of silo-based missiles is because of the dispersion of the silo fields among the Topol-Ms due to the threat of F-35 and Small Diameter Bomb/Conventional Trident on the Dombarovskiy missile forces.
All this was not because the USSR planned to fight a war after only being provoked, but rather because the USSR and the MOD were not stupid and that they knew that it was impossible to always catch the enemy with his pants down. Preferably it would be a surprise, "bolt from the blue" attack on American cities that kills the few hundred millions on the East and West coasts that power the US economy and war machine, but the US could easily do the same if it so desired, and so the missile forces needed to be large enough to make targeting them very tough.
The broad strokes plan got a wrench thrown it in by the rapid pace of US hard target accuracy capability, and by the late 1980's it was a dubious proposition with the deployment of Trident and the Ohios and their superior accuracy methods of gravimetric sensors and highly accurate gyroscopes, but by then the USSR was going to be fielding a true launch-on-warning system in the 1990's or 2000's and was programmed in. We know what happened next. Said launch-on-warning system was completed, likely adequately, by Russia.
However, this was the actual Soviet planning methodology, and we know this because it's not a secret anymore.
The assumption was that Soviet civil defense would be robust enough to ensure that pockets of civilization continued to exist throughout the USSR (both pockets and civilization are relative here, Moscow and Leningrad would be gone, as would most other major cities), that the NATO backbone (America) would be so thoroughly economically and demographically damaged to be out of the fight in the long run (perhaps for the entire duration of the post-attack war), and that the surviving Red Army troops in nuclear protected posture in Eastern Europe would be adequate to bulldoze the surviving NATO forces.
It was a pretty heady time, but not as heady as American bureaucrats inventing weird strategies based on the American idea that armies are civilized enough to keep a strategic nuclear war limited to the peripheries of polite society in the fields and mesas far from city centers. The USSR was the underdog in the fight and was aiming for the throat, not the ankle, because it knew where America's true strengths were: its finance economy. To defeat that would require destroying the biggest cities in the world, which is what the USSR planned to do, and likely what Russia still plans for.
As I said, the explicit targeting of materiel to the exclusion of more productive elements of the war economy is a uniquely American idea. The Soviets explicitly targeted capital/finance centers and population itself, to the exclusion of the more offensive/explicitly military materiel elements, which were the real lynch pins of the US war economy. This is where the US was simultaneously strongest (in its ability to passively exert influence) and weakest (in its vulnerability), as proven in WW2 when the USA won the war with its money and its productive urban factories, not with its meager pre-war ground army and Cavalry combat cars.
The Soviets and USA were simply too evenly matched in the military realm writ large for direct targeting of military forces, strategic or otherwise, by strategic weapons to meaningfully change the COFM.
Such a Rube Goldberg machine would make targeting trivial, as Iran shows. Just hit the "silos"/launch rails, entry doors, air vents, and let the garrison suffocate. You could probably do it with a couple F-15Es.
Dispersion in the face of lethality is the only meaningful way to survive. Being unlikely to be acknowledged as a target, i.e. blending in with civilian traffic, is a widely accepted and recognized method of avoiding being targeted. Naval ships do it all the time with carriers and destroyers pretending to be cargo ships or cruise ships using deceptive lightning and emissions practices, and moving in civil traffic lanes at civil speeds. They do this out of necessity, of course.
For some reason armies and air forces are averse to this, at least for now. Maybe armies will start shifting away from specific, high visibility, readily tracked and targeted platforms, and more towards general purpose platforms derived from/identical to common civilian equipment. I know the Swedish Army uses the Mercedes Sprinter work van as a transport for some motorized infantry units, but it's army green, and not particularly well camouflaged for that reason.
tl;dr It would be quite forward thinking to deploy a missile force disguised as civilian cargo trucks and passenger trains, but so far only the Soviet Union has bothered doing anything comparable to this. It has been successfully demonstrated on smaller scales by dozens of Asian militia and military groups for the past, well, forever more or less, and has likely been successful more than it hasn't.
There's no particular reason to dismiss mobile missiles, merely to think about them as insurgents or guerrilla nuclear forces, and simply map the difficulty America had in targeting guerrillas and insurgents hiding in the civilian population in Afghanistan and Iraq (or Vietnam or Korea, for that matter) "surgically" onto an adversary attempting to target a nuclear missile force hiding among the civilian shipping trains/trucks and passenger trains in America, which possesses the most expansive railroad system and expansive highway/gravel road system in the world. Plenty of room to hide.
It's not as if a strategic nuclear exchange would bother sparing Amtraks or tractor-trailers, after all. Those would be tertiary targets, after major cities' downtown commerce centers as primary and suburban sprawl secondarily, whereas missile silos and bomber bases might not even make the list to begin with.
That this hasn't been considered (who knows, perhaps it has) is mostly because Sentinel is meant to replace aging components (main stack solid rocket boosters, mainly) of the relatively decrepit (compared to Russia and China) land-based strategic missile force of the USAF. It's not intended to offer any greater capability than Minuteman, but rather to offer a functional level of reliability under combat conditions, which the USAF probably sorely lacks. This is why it's progressing so rapidly.
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The US discloses how many warheads it has in various deployment methods via NewSTART. Each deployed MMIII has a single warhead, for a total of 400 warheads, while the number of deployed W76/88 warheads fluctuates in the 950-1050 range across ~240 launchers (twelve deployed SSNs with 20 active tubes, usually two boats in overhaul scored as undeployed). Actual number of SSBNs at sea in general or on patrol station in particular isn't a known number but open source seems to guess more than half the deployed force at any given time. The average loading of Trident then is closer to ~4 per missile on average and "deployed" Trident force represents around 2/3s of the allowed deployed warheads, if rather less in number of missiles. So the US already does keep the majority of its warheads on mobile launchers. Bomber wise, no units are on alert and the only two air bases with actual weapons on site are Minot and Whiteman. Roughly half of the remaining 500 AGM-86Bs are thought to be available for the dozen B-52s at Minot in open (the rest thought to be in storage at Kirtland). Whitemen's nuclear weapons are thought to be complosed of various flavors of B-61s for the B-2 force. Only around 55 of the 76 B-52s and 20 remaining B-2s are scored as deployed nuclear platforms under NewSTART; the rest are denuclearized (at least temporarily - presumably this is inspected). Each bomber counts as only a single warhead contributing to the 1550 limit.
Were NewSTART to be abrogated, the MMIII force could be raised to 450 and the W78 missiles uploaded to three. The 200 missiles that underwent the Safety Enhanced Reentry Vehicle program and were fitted with W87 cannot apparently be uploaded, or at least not without major modification. So the MMIII force could be uploaded to as many as 950 (200 W87, 200 W78 + 400 uploaded W78 + 150 warheads on the extra 50 undeployed silos). The Trident force could be uploaded to at least eight warheads per deployed missile, which would out to be 1920 warheads (assuming the four deactivated missile tubes could not be returned to service and two boats would still be physically in overhaul regardless of the treaty). So I think it is safe to say the US keeps the majority of its nuclear eggs in the SSBN basket.
Kat Tsun
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Ah I stand corrected then, though that doesn't disprove the utility of a mobile land-based force.
There are better ways to field mobile ICBMs than centralized TEL bunkers and convoys of security troops in armored cars though. Russia does this simply because it fears land mines laid by its internal security threats. America ostensibly does the same, but when the White Trains ran into internal security threats, they were defeated without firing a single shot, despite their numerous machine guns, platoons of armed soldiers, and bulletproof chassis. They could have easily obliterated the protesters, drove over their bodies, and continued on. They didn't, because at least in America, it seems the pen is mightier than the sword.
It isn't clear why the US would need to copy the Russian method thus, as it has no major internal security threats besides protests, and when it runs into these threats its primary form of defense is camouflage rather than lethal force.
The TELs simply don't need to be particularly specialized vehicles, at least externally. The NNSA moves warheads in convoys with random, unmarked SUVs for ahead-route security, three armed agents per prime mover, and fairly ordinary looking semi-trailers. It would be fairly trivial to design a semi-trailer that can transport a 40-45 foot long ICBM with a single warhead with an external appearance identical (or near enough from above, assuming satellite observation is an actual concern) to a commercial 53-foot semi-trailer. They're typically rated for about 45,000 lbs, which is more than the MGM-134's mass by a country mile. The soldiers could maintain road watch with two or three troops per sleeper cab truck, take rest stops/resupply at gas stations, and move through weigh stations like normal civil traffic.
If the missiles need to be maintained or switched out or something (say they get bumped or something on the road?), they would just return to the Pantex plant, like the NNSA already does, and switch out at a loading dock. Put rain covers all the loading docks and no one would know what goes on inside or which trucks go where, at least until a Popular Science article spills the beans. Even then no one can really reliably track the NNSA's tractor-trailers enough to protest them like they did the White Train, because their comings and goings are unscheduled, and Pantex gets more than its fair share of just general supply of components and basic materials from similar 53-foot trailers. Most factories do.
For all intents and purposes they would be broadly undetectable by satellite visual or radar surveillance, so unless you attempted to steal the truck or got inside it/near it enough to plant a GPS tracker or something, you wouldn't be able to track a TEL reliably. It would be a road-bound form of the Molodets. The US just...doesn't do this, probably because it thinks making something military look civilian isn't morally good, I guess. A pretty silly reason, given the subject of the matter is a strategic bombardment weapon whose only actual purpose is vaporizing millions of an adversary's citizens in seconds, but it is what it is.
There are better ways to field mobile ICBMs than centralized TEL bunkers and convoys of security troops in armored cars though. Russia does this simply because it fears land mines laid by its internal security threats. America ostensibly does the same, but when the White Trains ran into internal security threats, they were defeated without firing a single shot, despite their numerous machine guns, platoons of armed soldiers, and bulletproof chassis. They could have easily obliterated the protesters, drove over their bodies, and continued on. They didn't, because at least in America, it seems the pen is mightier than the sword.
It isn't clear why the US would need to copy the Russian method thus, as it has no major internal security threats besides protests, and when it runs into these threats its primary form of defense is camouflage rather than lethal force.
The TELs simply don't need to be particularly specialized vehicles, at least externally. The NNSA moves warheads in convoys with random, unmarked SUVs for ahead-route security, three armed agents per prime mover, and fairly ordinary looking semi-trailers. It would be fairly trivial to design a semi-trailer that can transport a 40-45 foot long ICBM with a single warhead with an external appearance identical (or near enough from above, assuming satellite observation is an actual concern) to a commercial 53-foot semi-trailer. They're typically rated for about 45,000 lbs, which is more than the MGM-134's mass by a country mile. The soldiers could maintain road watch with two or three troops per sleeper cab truck, take rest stops/resupply at gas stations, and move through weigh stations like normal civil traffic.
If the missiles need to be maintained or switched out or something (say they get bumped or something on the road?), they would just return to the Pantex plant, like the NNSA already does, and switch out at a loading dock. Put rain covers all the loading docks and no one would know what goes on inside or which trucks go where, at least until a Popular Science article spills the beans. Even then no one can really reliably track the NNSA's tractor-trailers enough to protest them like they did the White Train, because their comings and goings are unscheduled, and Pantex gets more than its fair share of just general supply of components and basic materials from similar 53-foot trailers. Most factories do.
For all intents and purposes they would be broadly undetectable by satellite visual or radar surveillance, so unless you attempted to steal the truck or got inside it/near it enough to plant a GPS tracker or something, you wouldn't be able to track a TEL reliably. It would be a road-bound form of the Molodets. The US just...doesn't do this, probably because it thinks making something military look civilian isn't morally good, I guess. A pretty silly reason, given the subject of the matter is a strategic bombardment weapon whose only actual purpose is vaporizing millions of an adversary's citizens in seconds, but it is what it is.
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Forest Green
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As a side question, does anyone know why some ICBMs and other missiles are flared out at the bottom? Is it simply to stop the nozzle lighting the case?
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That must be why, well, everybody EXCEPT the US is using them. Satellites only tell you where the TEL is when you see it. It doesn't tell you where it will be by the time your hypothetical weapon lands. And that's if you happen to spot it. You'd need something like Starlink, with large optics, to track a force of TELs realtime 24/7.
Everybody includes China and Russia; full stop. And note that the Chinese seem to actually be shifting gears to silos, not doubling down on mobile launchers. The Russians lack the resources to change their deployment scheme but the fact they now deploy mobile dazzler laser systems with thier mobile ICBMs makes it clear they too know that the days of TELs is limited.
Satellite ISR might be patchy now, but it’s clear with things like Starlink and the MDA’s envisioned network that in the future it won’t be an occasional pass at known times, it will be a persistent and global capability with real-time connections to tactical units. The US Army has experimented with using commercial satellites and AI to generate fire missions in minutes to seconds. Maybe that capability doesn’t truly exist yet, but it seems like the entirely wrong time to invest in a capability that likely will be obsolete by the time it’s developed. The USN has solved the mobile hidden missile launcher problem in the 1960s.
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And North Korea and India and Iran. They ALL use mobile launchers for their long range missiles, be they IRBMs or ICBMs. Full Stop. And while China has built 400 silos for ICBMs they are also building mobile launchers for the DF-41 and DF-31.
Fair enough, point conceded. Of those countries, how many have an SSBN capacity though? In the case of those that do, how effectively can they disappear in the face of USN SSNs? It seems to be USN boomers have a unique invulnerability compared to the countries that deploy ICBM TELs. I don’t think it is cost effective for the US to invest in a capability that has a short future shelf life, regardless of whether everyone else is doing it. They are doing it because they lack a reliable SSBN option. France and UK also have zero interest in land based mobile missiles.
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All it takes is a breakthrough and those SSBNs are a dozen very ripe targets. With modern autonomous tech and satellite communications it's conceivable they could be tracked continuously from the time they leave Bremerton or Kings Bay. No need to find a needle in the middle of the Pacific if you've been following it all along.
That’s why there are bombers and ICBMs. Going mobile ICBM now isn’t buying anything. There might be some possible tracking ability against SSBNs based on principles we don’t know. There absolutely is technology to track mobile land ICBMs today; all that’s really lacking is enough money to buy enough satellites. All the other pieces are already proven. Tracking an SSBN by satellite on the other hand is Clansy theoretical at best, and any mechanism that could do so will be dramatically more expensive than EO or SAR satellites, so they will be much more limited if and when they exist.
I guess I’d ask the question of which specific ICBMs you are asking about and what flare? US missiles like Peacekeeper and Trident II D5 don’t have such a flare. I’m assuming that you do not mean larger diameter first stage, but please let me know if I’m mistaken.
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No, I understand having a larger diameter first stage, I mean an actual lip like the R-14 and Hwasong-17. Notice how it flares out at the bottom of the missile (like those weird trousers from the '70s).
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Survivability. Much harder to hit a moving target than a stationary one. Silos could be taken out with conventional warheads. Not really an option with mobile ICBMs unless you've got real time target updating.
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Coverage for the engine bells.No, I understand having a larger diameter first stage, I mean an actual lip like the R-14 and Hwasong-17. Notice how it flares out at the bottom of the missile (like those weird trousers from the '70s).
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Aside from the obvious problems of "SSBNs have to be in ports" which is the main method of tracking them, the most significant medium- to long-term threats are low frequency sonar (which everyone and their dog has, and only the UK has bothered investing any significant metal bending in defeating in the Dreadnought and Astute classes, which is why Astute has the funny shaped prow) and further along something like a neutrino detector. The latter would invalidate SSBNs overnight and mean that SSBs come back, which is not something the US or UK are prepared for industrially speaking, but Japan or France would be exceptionally capable at.
The other problem is that SSBNs are substantially easier to target, once they're found, than a fleet of dispersed TELs. An SSBN is one target with a dozen or two missiles while a TEL battalion is a dozen or two targets with one missile each. Dispersion, again, is the primary means of survival against lethality.
Land-based TELs are, in the long run, more viable and more survivable for the resources invested, for any country. Maybe Israel is the exception here because it is very small and there's more room in the oceanic EEZ than Israel's land territories? That hasn't stopped them from fielding Jericho though.
Sentinel, however, is just replacing the MMIII's decrepit booster stack with something that will actually function as necessary. Modernized, lower cost basing methods are beyond America's capabilities at present.
The other problem is that SSBNs are substantially easier to target, once they're found, than a fleet of dispersed TELs. An SSBN is one target with a dozen or two missiles while a TEL battalion is a dozen or two targets with one missile each. Dispersion, again, is the primary means of survival against lethality.
Land-based TELs are, in the long run, more viable and more survivable for the resources invested, for any country. Maybe Israel is the exception here because it is very small and there's more room in the oceanic EEZ than Israel's land territories? That hasn't stopped them from fielding Jericho though.
Sentinel, however, is just replacing the MMIII's decrepit booster stack with something that will actually function as necessary. Modernized, lower cost basing methods are beyond America's capabilities at present.
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Realistically most TELs spend most of their time hanging out in their garrisons which are relative soft targets, at least compared to silos. They are still more dispersed than a sub base, but for instance the Russian TEL force is largely constricted to three dozen regimental bases at any given time. Presumably in times of conflict they are more dispersed but to assume that the entire force is constantly mobile even in wartime is inaccurate.
As for detection of SSBNs, Russia and China seem to not have a significant ability to trail USN boomers from their bases. Detection in the open ocean seems almost impossible given that one wouldn't even known *which* ocean to look in. Trident has sufficient range that large portions of the Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, and Artic oceans would be viable for most of Russia and China. The US has the advantage of two large open ocean coasts to chose from and technical superiority in the field of submarine engineering; it makes sense for it to preserve its nuclear arsenal at sea.
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Report to Congress on LGM-35A Sentinel Intercontinental Ballistic Missile - USNI News
The following is the Congressional Research Service, Defense Primer: LGM-35A Sentinel Intercontinental Ballistic Missile on Jan. 10, 2023. From the report The LGM-35A Sentinel is expected to replace the Minuteman III (MMIII) Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) in the U.S. nuclear force...
news.usni.org
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USAF to begin Minuteman III silo conversion to house Sentinel ICBM by decade's end - Breaking Defense
The scale of the silo conversion effort is something the Air Force nuclear complex hasn't seen in "over 50 or 60 years," Lt. Gen. James Dawkins, deputy chief of staff for strategic deterrence and nuclear integration, said today.
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Now I'm confused. I thought the whole point of choosing a small MMIII-sized missile was that it fit in existing MMIII silos with minimal fuss.
Think of it more as a tech refresh. They are digging out the cabling and the command centers and rebuilding all the electronics; I think structurally the silo remains the same.
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With advances in materials should have had a parallel silo modernization program to build ultra hard - read somewhere about 25k+ psi reinforced concrete - silos.
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What are the current ones rated at, this website suggests 3k psi for 'missile bunkers' under the advanced options.
NUKEMAP by Alex Wellerstein
NUKEMAP is a website for visualizing the effects of nuclear detonations.
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I’ve always read between 2-3k psi. any other members with information?What are the current ones rated at, this website suggests 3k psi for 'missile bunkers' under the advanced options.
NUKEMAP by Alex Wellerstein
NUKEMAP is a website for visualizing the effects of nuclear detonations.
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