"Anyone know off the top of their head why such a thing might not be possible? "

Firstly, it's illegal. Secondly, you could use the capability to knock out the silos in the first place. Thirdly, how many missiles can you carry on a sub compared to a ground installation?

In any case it's an exercise in futility. Even knocking out 90% of incoming - which would be incredibly ambitious - would not allow the US or anyone else to 'win' a nuclear exchange.

Incidentally, perhaps the biggest difference between the US and Russia is the ability to absorb damage and keep going. The Russians lost 20m+ during WWII and kept going; it's far from certain whether the US would demonstrate the same kind of resilience under current circumstances.

A single nuke would be enough to collapse the US economy, sending the dollar plummeting and making oil imports impossible. Where would that leave the nation? Of course it would do the same with Russia, but the impact on people's lives would be much slighter. The Russians simply haven't got as much to lose.

Originally posted by Wembley
Firstly, it's illegal.

Bush pulled us out of the ABM treaty 3 years ago.

Secondly, you could use the capability to knock out the silos in the first place.

Only by launching a first strike, and not only a first strike but a first strike specifically designed to do maximum damage on enemy territory. Politically less agreeable than shooting down the enemy's first strike while it is ascending over his territory, hypothetically doing a little less explosive damage to the enemy, although fallout remains an issue.

Thirdly, how many missiles can you carry on a sub compared to a ground installation?

24 Tridents (a large missile designed to carry 8 MIRVs) times 14 Ohio class SSBNs and 4 Ohio class SSGNs in our fleet. So, depending on the true limits of this hypothetical technology, our existing platforms can carry enough defense to knock out 336 missiles (everything North Korea currently has which possess the range to reach Japan) and very optimistically (assuming a MIRV like tracking vehicle allowing more multiple targets per missile) 2688- enough to shoot down every single ICBM Russia is allowed to have under our existing treaties. Long shot, probably. Likely to work better than this "hit a bullet with a bullet" crap that fails even in skeet-shoot tests- bet your most closely guarded orifice.

In any case it's an exercise in futility. Even knocking out 90% of incoming - which would be incredibly ambitious - would not allow the US or anyone else to 'win' a nuclear exchange.

Say it with me now, we'll sound it out to make it easy. DE-TERR-ENCE. Who is going to fly their birds when they know to a certainty that they aren't going to catch enough of our missiles still on the ground to prevent retaliation. More importantly perhaps, there goes any ambition that any rogue state may harbor for using ballistic missiles as instruments of blackmail.

Caspar Weinberger's book "The Next War" offers some great food for thought on what a nuclear Iran could mean- it's exactly the sort of scenario that vindicates this kind of an idea. In fact it was so grim that his friends from the Reagan administration stopped speaking to him after he wrote the book.

A single nuke would be enough to collapse the US economy, sending the dollar plummeting and making oil imports impossible. Where would that leave the nation?

Best guess? Angry, desperate, and still armed to the teeth. I've never heard a better recipe for a cataclysmic world war. Trying to create a situation like that is more up the alley of a Bond badguy or Dr. Strangelove. No nation in its right mind, especially Russia, would have any interest at all in getting just one nuke through on America. You may as well go around shooting pitbulls with a BB gun.

Pulling out of the ABM treaty is a dangerous precedent - what if the russians restarted there FOBS programme as a result?

in a nutshell, who would win? the cockroach!
there would be no winner russia, usa or any other country / people in the world.

Originally posted by FredT

Originally posted by tiddly54
well as for 100 nukes causing world wide enviromental change i think you better think again. there have been over 2000 nuclear weapons exploded scince the bomb was invented. with only very local damage.

Nice try, but the majority were underground and the aboveground ones made changes that can still be detected today. Now drop 100 city busters and you will get alot of change with radiation clouds and the like. Perhaps not a nuclear winter but change you shall have.

No, you won't. 100 nuclear weapons won't make much of a dent on the world at all. Fallout clouds would rarely travel more then 300 miles downwind of the blast.

Depends on the yield of these 100 weapons and their dispersal..
Also depends a lot on weather conditions..These substances can remain harmful for ages due to their half lives.. IF they remain in the atmosphere and don't settle then they could cause problems on a global scale if not continental at least..
Remember we're talking about fallout as well.. not only the intial impact..

"Say it with me now, we'll sound it out to make it easy. DE-TERR-ENCE. "

DE-TERR-ENCE is why we don't want people building these things - so some smart aleck doesn't say says "hell, we've got a shield, we can take on the other guy." Cue nuclear war in Asia, Middle East or wherever the next area to get them is. There are lots of players now.

Originally posted by The Vagabond

Now here is a question about missile defense that puzzles me a bit. The idea of using nukes to shoot down nukes is anything but new, and it would work. The only problem is the fallout.

Fallout isn't the only problem, in fact it is pretty much not a problem at all. The problem is EMP effects, when you start detonating large yeild weapons at high altitudes you will likely destroy all electronic on the ground anyway. The US decided that the Safeguard system was more of a threat to the Minuteman missiles it was designed to protect than the soviet ICBM's targeted at them.

Originally posted by Wembley
DE-TERR-ENCE is why we don't want people building these things - so some smart aleck doesn't say says "hell, we've got a shield, we can take on the other guy."

We don't want to be deterred. We ant everyone else to be deterred. Better to rely on your own common sense than somebody elses.
By your logic, we should reduce the size of our conventional military to a level where we might be beatable, so that we would be less likely to start wars, even though as a tradeoff the chances of somebody else playing chicken with us and forcing war by miscalculation might rise significantly.

We better get the bullet proof vests of our cops too, because if they feel too safe there will be more gun fights, right?

I argue that the increased risk of a future American administration starting a war because of the existence of a shield is outweighed by the possibility of somebody else creating a war by miscalculating their ability to push us around under the protection of their own deterrent.

"We don't want to be deterred. We want everyone else to be deterred"

Who is this 'we'? It all depends on who and where you are. You can't arbitrarily have one rule for one country and another for the others - unless you're tryimg to build an unstable situation.

Nuclear weapons are deterrents in themselves. Not only are they very expensive - but the considerations of their effects (even without a retaliatory attack) has kept them from being used for many years.

For example, Pakistan could not anihilate India if it had used nuclear weapons during the 80s or 90s, why then did India not attack Pakistan? Or for that matter the only countries that have had truly devestating arsenals are the US, Russia, France, UK, China, and Israel. Why did these countries not use nuclear weapons in the multitude of confilcts they have had with lesser countries?

If you follow the anti-ABM rhetoric, the only countries that should still be standing are those with large nuclear arsenals.

dont know if its been said, but there isnt going to be any 100 megaton war heads, and city levellers, and other such hhuge bmbs in a war.
they are going to be as small as is possible to not destroy, but incopacite the target.
old bombs were hugew because the had such a large error in where they might hit, so needed to be big to ensure they get the target

The United States will be destroyed in case of a nuclear war with Russia. Russia has a fair chance of surviving as a national entity considering the vast underground industrial base and civil defense shelters.

Stellar

Originally posted by kenshiro2012
in a nutshell, who would win? the cockroach!
there would be no winner russia, usa or any other country / people in the world.

Beat me to it! There would be no winner only billions of losers. It worries me someone can even ask this question - are memories that short?

Detonating ICBM's in space won't help either, radiation would still arrive on earth eventually - dangerous thinking

Originally posted by Wembley
Who is this 'we'? It all depends on who and where you are. You can't arbitrarily have one rule for one country and another for the others -

You're making the mistake of trying to use morality in a strictly logical situation. It's not a matter of what -should- be, it's a matter of what can and can't be, and what the self interest of each party dictates.

The rules are the same for everyone. Nobody wants to be deterred- they only want everyone else to be deterred. Every nation wishes to have the greatest possible control over its policy, including its foreign policy. Every nation has an equal moral footing in persuing such a goal.

It's not adviseable for us to stop others from doing so and accomplish it for ourself because we occupy a moral highground. It's adviseable because its good for us. I mean come on, we're talking about the basic principles of economics here- unlimited wants, limited resources, rational self interest. This is the stuff that conflict is made of. This is the stuff that dictates the moves people make in virtually every field.

The academic types are getting too smart for their own good. They're thinking themselves right out of reality. You focus so much on how a Utopia would work or on what is right that you fool yourself into thinking that it's all perfectly sound, forgetting that at the end of the day it all comes down to the fact that life is a competition to survive- always has been and always will be. Life is a dystopia. It WILL be unfair. The question is, will you make sure that it's unfair in your favor, or will you lose the competition to survive because you can't accept the fact that morality and utopia can't be imposed on an imperfect world where motivations are pragmatic, not idealistic?

Bravo. "You have voted The Vagabond for the Way Above Top Secret award. You have two more votes this month."

All too often people think that we are in some utopian world, where countries should abandon any leverage they may have because some others may be offended. The reality is that Russia would do the same things (withdraw from ABM, etc.) if they a) had the capability financially to develop a new system, or b) had the same enemies and risks that the US has (North Korea in particular).

Everything every country does is for their own interest - do you really think that Russia would oppose the US withdrawl from ABM if they could set up a system like the US has? Or would they oppose US "plans" to weaponize space if they could afford to do it? Absoolutely not, they are fighting tooth and nail to avoid giving up the last few areas where they have somewhat of a parity with the US that they cannot afford to sustain.

Thanks for your support starwars. It's always nice to get good feedback (and WATS votes) when one is forced to reveal the unpleasantries of reality, which most people want so badly to deny that they will flame you and call you a hatemonger and a war lover just to comfort themselves with the illusion that there's something wrong with the messenger and that the horrible truth isn't real. I was (and still am) expecting more flames than praise.

Originally posted by Starwars51
Bravo. "You have voted The Vagabond for the Way Above Top Secret award. You have two more votes this month."

All too often people think that we are in some utopian world, where countries should abandon any leverage they may have because some others may be offended. The reality is that Russia would do the same things (withdraw from ABM, etc.) if they a) had the capability financially to develop a new system, or b) had the same enemies and risks that the US has (North Korea in particular).

Everything every country does is for their own interest - do you really think that Russia would oppose the US withdrawl from ABM if they could set up a system like the US has? Or would they oppose US "plans" to weaponize space if they could afford to do it? Absoolutely not, they are fighting tooth and nail to avoid giving up the last few areas where they have somewhat of a parity with the US that they cannot afford to sustain.

Russia have been breaking the ABM treaties as i understand them for decades ( post near the top of the page) and there is no reason why the US should withdraw now. I think it's this is simple political manouvering to convince Americans that the president will do anything to secure their safety. Fact is the Russian government have been protecting their own far better for decades and if the American people came to realise this they would not be happy to say the least. North Korea is no more a risk to American security than Iraq was/ is and wanting a missile defense system against rogue states is much the same logic as investing in a flamethrower to combat a irritating fly imo. Kim still just wants a non agression treaty and i think that is a far more logical thing to build national security on.

There is other points i disagree on ( mainly the assumption that the US is somehow ahead in missile defense technology) but i want to make sure you read my earlier post and understood the implications.

Stellar

ahhh, the bases of the ABM treaty is that both nations only should have 1 point defended by ABMs it not eliminated tha ABM from the planet, but it LIMITED ABMs systems only to ONE POINT and only to 100 missiles

the SU chose moscow, the US didnt deploy any ABM system, just that

the great violation from the russian was a radar oriented in its own territory, but that radar was just for controll ICBMs like others -there werent more missiles, or tracking system, etc-, they deployed that in this way, to close the radar "wall" in a practical way, but that was used by politics, with that "the reds have a tracking system", yeah sure with only 100 interceptors and a a problem with a radar that wasnt oriented in the "hot area" (north pole)

so is ridicoulus to compare a stupid violation -in which isnt involved more missiles, a tracking system,fire control etc- with a open breake of the treaty as in the Star Wars project

there isnt winer in such war, there are enough missiles and heads to fry again and again every mayor city, saying "i will win" is just sick

but the problem isnt if "this guys broke the law", is ridicoulus if we are talking in such level, the problem is that in the future there will be more -a looot of more- interest in ABMs systems, and more interest in other missile technology,actually the russians have more experience than the US in such defence, nice bussanes selling knowledge to China or NK, but in the end the world will be more unsecure, but is obvious that there are the tipical nationalists that dont understand the consequences



[edit on 16-8-2005 by grunt2]