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That is why I'm a proponent of the mobile MPS basing scheme. The goal being not to make the missiles disappear but to increase the number of targets beyond the enemy's ability to target them. Simply having 200 missiles with 4 shelters each doubles the number of targets to 800. You don't even have to increase your missile number to increase their survivability, you just have to build more shelters. Having 10 shelters increases the targets to 2,000, that's more than the current deployed warheads (~1500) available to Russia. Would it be costly? Yes, it won't be able to use current MM3 infrastructure and will require new shelters (which will be a lot cheaper than new silos). But you could get it thru congress by passing it as a "denuclearization" (half as many missiles deployed) and the lost warheads could go on Trident IIs. The missiles to be road-mobile would likely be smaller than MM3 so you could always go back to MM3 silo basing if necessary. As far as needing new "heavy" ICBMs, don't forget that the majority of new Russian ICBMs are the Topol-m/Yars family which is similar size to MM3. And with improved propellants and materials, you could get MM3 performance from a smaller missile. Anything with more than 3 warheads is a waste of resources, since politically we won't be going back to Cold War era 10,000 warhead forces.
That is why I'm a proponent of the mobile MPS basing scheme. The goal being not to make the missiles disappear but to increase the number of targets beyond the enemy's ability to target them. Simply having 200 missiles with 4 shelters each doubles the number of targets to 800. You don't even have to increase your missile number to increase their survivability, you just have to build more shelters. Having 10 shelters increases the targets to 2,000, that's more than the current deployed warheads (~1500) available to Russia.
Would it be costly? Yes, it won't be able to use current MM3 infrastructure and will require new shelters (which will be a lot cheaper than new silos). But you could get it thru congress by passing it as a "denuclearization" (half as many missiles deployed) and the lost warheads could go on Trident IIs. The missiles to be road-mobile would likely be smaller than MM3 so you could always go back to MM3 silo basing if necessary.
As far as needing new "heavy" ICBMs, don't forget that the majority of new Russian ICBMs are the Topol-m/Yars family which is similar size to MM3. And with improved propellants and materials, you could get MM3 performance from a smaller missile. Anything with more than 3 warheads is a waste of resources, since politically we won't be going back to Cold War era 10,000 warhead forces.