MX (Peacekeeper) deployment concepts.

Maury Markowitz said:
I've done a lot of reading on these topics over the years, my personal interest being ABMs but that often pushes over to counterforce issues. Some of the studies I've seen are truly hair-raising.

One of the earliest is the PSAC report on Nike Zeus. They note that even if the system worked perfectly, the Soviets could simply drop their warheads upwind of the cities, just out of range of the missiles. These would cause so much fallout that it would kill almost as many people as a direct attack. With a few thousand warheads, 90% of the US population would die. Now later descriptions of such wars never seem to mention this, and I'm curious why. Does anyone know of changes to the understanding of fallout that might explain this?
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You may be interested in this article on US plans for suppression of the Soviet ABM systems.

 
RyanC said:
One of the earliest is the PSAC report on Nike Zeus. They note that even if the system worked perfectly, the Soviets could simply drop their warheads upwind of the cities, just out of range of the missiles. These would cause so much fallout that it would kill almost as many people as a direct attack. With a few thousand warheads, 90% of the US population would die. Now later descriptions of such wars never seem to mention this, and I'm curious why. Does anyone know of changes to the understanding of fallout that might explain this?

So, NIKE ZEUS forces the soviets to move from direct casualties (Blast/Thermal Pulse) which are somewhat hard to defend against, to indirect attacks such as down wind radio logical dirty bursts; which can be defeated with relatively cheap fallout shelters, and this is a failure, how?
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No, you overwhelm the defenses.

 
Bruno Anthony said:
No, you overwhelm the defenses.
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With what? The proposed attack in that link calls for over 100 missiles just to defeat the Moscow ABM system. Which is 100 missiles - ten percent of the entire Minuteman force, plus some Tridents - that isn't attacking some other target.

That probably doesn't matter a whole lot to Moscow, which is getting trashed anyway. But it matters for the 901st city on the target list.
 
Warheads, tge soviet system was just as bad with Mirv/Marv/decoys/whatever as the US one was.

So it be 35 ish minuteman.

Off course the big deal is that Moscow was the only city to have the system.

And the US had alot of nukes on ICBM types.

So even if Moscow soaked up soak up a outside amount.

It would not save the random Siberian TOWN from eating a nuke or 6 from an ICBM. Let alone the bombers coming.

Moscow already was the focus of nearly 200 missiles between the US, UK and French Arsenals before the ABM treaty.

The ABM sets up, as it was under the treaty, did not change the calculations.

As was design.
 
Yellow Palace said:
With what? The proposed attack in that link calls for over 100 missiles just to defeat the Moscow ABM system. Which is 100 missiles - ten percent of the entire Minuteman force, plus some Tridents - that isn't attacking some other target.

That probably doesn't matter a whole lot to Moscow, which is getting trashed anyway. But it matters for the 901st city on the target list.
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The point of the article is that ABM defenses will increase offensive systems growth to counter it as neither side would allow their retaliatory forces to become questionably. A questionable 2nd strike force leaves open the chance of a first strike.


The 901st city may survive to die in a completely shattered societal network.
 
Firefinder said:
Warheads, tge soviet system was just as bad with Mirv/Marv/decoys/whatever as the US one was.

So it be 35 ish minuteman.

Off course the big deal is that Moscow was the only city to have the system.

And the US had alot of nukes on ICBM types.

So even if Moscow soaked up soak up a outside amount.

It would not save the random Siberian TOWN from eating a nuke or 6 from an ICBM. Let alone the bombers coming.

Moscow already was the focus of nearly 200 missiles between the US, UK and French Arsenals before the ABM treaty.

The ABM sets up, as it was under the treaty, did not change the calculations.

As was
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Forest Green said:
100 warheads, or 100 missiles?
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In the 1968 attack plan, the Moscow system was targeted by 66 total missiles carrying 70 total warheads.
 

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Bruno Anthony said:
In the 1968 attack plan, the Moscow system was targeted by 66 total missiles carrying 70 total warheads.
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So 7 Peacekeepers or 9 Trident D5s does the same job. Or 6 D5s with the optional 12x100kT load or 6 Peacekeepers with the Mk12A RVs.
 
Forest Green said:
So 7 Peacekeepers or 9 Trident D5s does the same job. Or 6 D5s with the optional 12x100kT load or 6 Peacekeepers with the Mk12A RVs.
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I don’t know about post 1989 plans and I don’t know enough about MIRV bus footprints to say just 7 or 9 missiles can duplicate the coverage.
Remember the plans also went after the Tallinn system and the EW radars so it’s covering a lot of area.
 
Bruno Anthony said:
I don’t know about post 1989 plans and I don’t know enough about MIRV bus footprints to say just 7 or 9 missiles can duplicate the coverage.
Remember the plans also went after the Tallinn system and the EW radars so it’s covering a lot of area.
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Of course, something like Zenith Star could have neutralised all the radars in a completely uninterceptable way.
 
sferrin said:
Worth every penny.
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Although the Sentinel’s throw weight remains classified I will say this over and over, “given the current two peer nuclear threat we really missed an opportunity to build a MX sized weapon allowing significant uploading.”

If we eventually learn Sentinel can carry 5-7 W87-1s I’ll be mollified enough for the moment.
 
bobbymike said:
Although the Sentinel’s throw weight remains classified I will say this over and over, “given the current two peer nuclear threat we really missed an opportunity to build a MX sized weapon allowing significant uploading.”

If we eventually learn Sentinel can carry 5-7 W87-1s I’ll be mollified enough for the moment.
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I'll be shocked if it can carry anymore than 1. (And it won't fly it 9,000 miles either.)
 

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