Russia poised to unleash 'Son of Satan' ICBM Russia has announced it's ready to start field trials on its RS-28 Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile, intended to replace the existing R-36M2 Voevoda (NATO designation SS-18 "Satan"). According to this report, quoting Russian news agency Zvezda, the two-stage, liquid-fuelled RS-28 tips the scales at 100 tonnes, and is …
... 10,000km back. It's a good thing everyone agrees that nuclear weapons are a bad thing and are working toward drawing down their provisioning. The former USSR bankrupted itself in part because of the arms race. The relative size of the various players' economies have not changed in Russia's favor. What has changed to make the outcome different?
This is the Russian response to US plans to put an anti-ICBM launch site in Poland, pretty much a direct challenge to the Russian nuclear deterrant. "To our NATO strategic partners. Try shooting this one down, suckers. Love, Ivan".
Basically, for Russian ICBMs to remain a part of a strategic defense (as well as projection of national power - Putin's Big Thing) they needed to a) replace the older system anyway and b) keep them technologically relevant.
If you can catch it on the way up
That is what the Shrub and his advisors thought. That Russians will try to do exactly that and will just put more missiles, more expenses, etc - the whole Reagan age race scenario.
They smiled and changed to suborbital trajectories - Iskander, Bulava and most likely the Son of Satan go on a much lower trajectory than USSR ICBMs. As a result USA wasted an ungodly amount of money on interceptor stations which was countered by one battery of Iskanders in Kaliningrad at something like 1% of the cost. Similarly, Bulava and its associated supersonic glider warhead prototypes cost a couple of percent of what USA invested in the reinstatement of Star Wars.
We are now in a reversal of the 80-s scenario. The ones wasting a ridiculous amount of money and not delivering are not the Russians.
"....Iskander, Bulava and most likely the Son of Satan go on a much lower trajectory than USSR ICBM...." That low trajectory makes them vulnerable to the battlefield anti-ballistic missile systems that became popular around the same time. Even old Patriot can deal with low-trajectory ICBMs - oh, I wonder if that's why NATO keeps a battery near the border with Kalingrad?
Even old Patriot can deal with low-trajectory ICBMs.
In their final approach - yes. If they are not maneuvering (Bulava and its recently tested Chinese equivalent). That is something Patriot can do. Sort off...
In their takeoff phase - not a fecking chance in hell. Patriot has >40 seconds response time from hot. By that time a low trajectory ICBM will be disappearing over the horizon on the other side of the Patriot battery that is supposed to intercept the launch.
For that you need a different class of anti-missile system - something like the David's Sling and other Israeli missile defense components. Even they will have difficulties in this particular configuration as the ICBM is going "away" from them, not towards them so they will be chasing it. A short range ICBM is past Mach 4 by the time an interceptor has launched and is not going towards the launcher. At best it is an overflight, at worst it is away from it.
".....Has Patriot's been tested in that role?...." Even first generation Patriot could, as shown during the 1991 Gulf War when they swatted Scuds out of the sky. Iskander is little more than just a developed Scud, not the all-singing, all-dancing, magically-teleporting-about-the-sky superweapon Voland thinks it is. What Iskander can do that the new RS-28 can't is go out on the road and be launched from just about anywhere, making it much harder to strike pre-emptively or monitor for launch plumes. That was the real problem of Saddam's Scuds during the Gulf Wars - their mobility. As the RS-28 will go into already known silos they will all be under 24x7 surveillance from US satellites watching for any hint of launch activity (such as fueling up), even before we get to launch plumes (nice big IR indicator). As it is, the Kaliningrad Oblast is small enough that satellite tracking of Iskander mobile launchers trying to hide wouldn't be too hard a task.
Iskander does pay a penalty for being mobile and staying sub-orbital in that it is smaller and much shorter-ranged (@280-500km). Going orbital makes for true long range, staying inside the atmosphere requires a massive amount of fuel to go intercontinental, especially if you want to try maneuvering inside the atmosphere. Iskander only maneuvers on the downward arc of its trajectory, not during the climb, making it vulnerable to anti-ballistic missiles after launch. If the RS-28 wants to try hypersonic maneuvering inside the atmosphere without folding up it will not be making small turns but massive arcs, which will not be hard to track and intercept. Claims that any ICBM will be flying nap-of-the-Earth like a cruise missile but at hypersonic speeds are too stupid for words, as maneuvering at such speeds would require a structure made with massive amounts of reinforcing to handle the stresses, so much so the warhead would be tiny. The fact that the RS-28 uses the same engine modules as the old R-36M2, which are not designed for hypersonic maneuvering inside the atmosphere, goes to show the RS-28 is just the same-old-same-old in an updated wrapper.
Pootie needs his part of the MAD balance to be at least a viable threat, and there are rumours that the older Soviet ICBMs simply rotted in their silos to the point where only one-in-four were fit to launch, let alone deliver their warheads successfully. The RS-28 is just Pootie updating his old kit with new kit plus a lot of propaganda.
From what I remember, the effectiveness of Patriot when used against Scud back in 1991 was massively overstated, but that's 25 years ago.
However, that Patriot might be effective against Scud isn't surprising since Patriot was designed to take down aircraft and tactical BMs just like Scud. Being an ICBM, RS-28's maximum velocity is four times faster.
Also I'm suitably embarrassed by my typo "Has Patriot's..."
"From what I remember, the effectiveness of Patriot when used against Scud back in 1991 was massively overstated, but that's 25 years ago."
I think its now fairly well accepted that the tally of Scuds intercepted by Patriot during the Gulf War was zero. However as you say, that was some years ago and there have been some targeting mods made which MAY give SOME ABM defence ability. But the Patriot was never designed as an ABM defence and can't be relied upon
"I think its (sic) now fairly well accepted....." Er, no. There was a particularly strident group of morons that tried to claim that the Patriots were a failure because they didn't actually hit the Scuds, but this ignores the fact the Patriots weren't designed to hit but to explode near bye, the shrapnel from the airburst then damaging the target so badly it would break up. This is common to the majority of SAMs - they don't usually aim for a direct hit. The same group of morons also tried belittling the Patriots' success rate by talking about "per-missile interception rates", which again ignored the fact that Patriots were fired in groups at a target to produce several airbursts around the Scud for maximum chance of breakup. But the biggest factor in the "low" rate of interceptions was the shoddy quality of Saddam's Scuds - many simply broke up on during flight, leaving nothing for the Patriots automatically fired in anticipation to actually hit! Plenty of Scud casings were recovered riddled with hits from Patriot shrapnel. Since then, Patriot has undergone a number of enhancements to make it even better as an ABM. So, think again.
"Europe and the USA will win that battle. The Russian economy is screwed".
I would digress from your statement about the Russian economy.
It is a country with enormous natural resources,whereas it's the USA\UK that are 'screwed'.
The only thing that stops America sinking economically, is it's currency,that oil is traded in.
Someday,it will end in a massive depression, thats why it wants the EU TTIP talks to succeed & if they do, it will be the EU thats screwed.
"....It is a country with enormous natural resources,whereas it's the USA\UK that are 'screwed'...." The USSR was an even bigger affair with much more resources, yet the it failed in economic competition with the West.
Rather than worrying about the US economy, I'd suggest the problem you should be looking at is closer to Gaul. The economies that are struggling in Europe are France and Italy, both due to slow reform of employment laws due to over-cosy relationships between politicians and the labour movements. France in particular is suffering from a lack of investment from abroad seeing as foreign companies are terrified by the way French unions act illegally and violently with impunity. Germany productivity is accelerating away from France and Italy, the second and third economies in the Eurozone, which is why the UK needs to make sure it doesn't get left holding part of the EU bill for France's and Italy's past socialist policies.
these fuels will be made this an easy target for high energy defense systems but these fuels are more stable for storage, lowering a silo blast. too much acceleration will create problems for warhead targeting and energy "bleeding", but that said, the Russians have been interesting creative using low tech.
"This is the Russian response to US plans to put an anti-ICBM launch site in Poland"
It has nothing to do with that. Emerging nuclear powers are the key here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_missile_defense_complex_in_Poland
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6720153.stm
As to our new Russian 'friends', Russian espionage activity in the UK became even higher after the cold war. Russian military activity (e.g., Chechnyz) became elevated after the cold war. The cold war itself was punctuated by acts of savagery such as the attempts by countries in which the USSR/Russia had no rights at all to regain their freedom, stolen from them after WWII by the Russian monster.
Russia has been assassinating any form of opposition that it can since Putin's time (e.g., more than 65 journalists, the irredentist activities in Crimea and the attack on Ukraine, which remembers the loss of 8 millions during the holodomor), and Putin has explicitly said the Soviet union was a good thing, whilst also trying to rehabilitate the mass murderer (of some 30 millions), Stalin.
The Russian state Duma is packed out with Putin's choice of former KGB and FSB staff, including the assassin Lugovoi (who murdered Litvenenko, the former KBG Lt Col who was when employed by them charged with the task of investigating Putin's corruption), and Putin has rearranged the security and military in such a way that they are probably the most powerful and effective praetorian guard in history.
Do not believe Putin's revisionism, no matter who spouts it.
This is the Russian response to US plans to put an anti-ICBM launch site in Poland
No it's not. That might be their official whine, but that system is not designed to deal with Russian missiles. It's designed to defend Europe from Iranian ones. Russian missiles live in Siberia, and would be fired over the North Pole.
This is part of the system the US have been working on to deal with threats like Iran and North Korea. Which is why they've so far deployed only someothing like 20-odd missiles, to Alaska and Guam. Although the US and Japan both station several Aegis ships around, specifically to deal with North Korean missile threats - as the SM3 can shoot ICBMs in space. Again Russian ones would be going the wrong way, and anyway there are too many of them for one or two ships only able to launch 1 or 2 SM3 at a time.
Obama cancelled the Polish site at one point. To keep the Russians happy. I think it only came back on the agenda after the invasion of Ukraine, though I've forgotten the current status.
You are however correct that the SS18 must have needed an upgrade pretty soon. Trident is expected to be upgraded in the 2030s, and that went operational in the 90s. But it's solid fuelled, so I'd have thought would expect to last longer. Also it goes to sea, but sealed inside a warm sub, whereas the SS18s have to live in Siberia - and I bet their silos aren't all that well heated.
No it's not. That might be their official whine, but that system is not designed to deal with Russian missiles
No. You are presenting only what was in the USA media. When dealing with cases like this you need to take what is printed in USA/UK media, what is printed in Russian media and remove all differences. The remaining (usually quite small) amount of information is likely to be true.
In any case, the Russians were extremely happy with the system to be put in place, under one condition - if it is against Iran and North Korea, they would like to cooperate and provide it with live radar feed from their early warning systems in Caucasus (which by the way cover all of Iran) and possibly more radars further East. That by the way was printed not only in their media, but in several Eu newspapers at the time.
Bush said "no way". That immediately defined for them this system as hostile.
The problem with getting Russia onside is - what if you don't trust them?
Someone on this thread mentioned how Russia has almost no national debt, and compared unfavourably with the US, which has much. But Russia voluntarily reneged on most of its national debt in the 1990s - at a time when they could have paid at least some of it. Thus they can't borrow easily, because nobody trusts them. This is why Greece can borrow on the markets cheaper than Russia, even though Russia has a huge oil income, and Greece is basically bankrupt. But Greece is trusted to at least make an effort to pay back.
Even the Russian government don't trust the Russian government. Which is why so many of the elites keep their money outside the country. Which is one of their many economic problems, because there's only money to invest when the oil price is booming. But they actually need to invest massively in their oil industry now, as much of their kit and wells are from the Soviet era, and need replacing.
I think the "rhetoric" against Russia might have something to do with their annexation of Crimea and active support by Moscow for separatists in the eastern Ukraine. Plus a downed Malaysian airliner can't have helped.
Pragmatism might explain why we've mostly shouted rather than done anything beyond sanctions.
@Mike Richards -
"'Middle East has been a total screw up since the demise of the Ottoman Empire'
Some would say since Moses got chatty with a bit of shrubbery, but I take your point."
- I nearly inhaled some tea reading that. Love that turn of phrase, whcih I am duly nicking, ta, very!
"No I am thinking of the Ukrainian Soviet leader who gave Ukrain Crimea."
It was given to Ukraine by the Presidium - which is a council of leaders, not by just the head of state at the time Kliment Voroshilov.
"Middle East has been a total screw up since the demise of the Ottoman Empire"
I think you mean since the demise of the British Empire....
".....I think you mean since the demise of the British Empire...." The Middle East has been screwed for centuries, regardless of the British Empire. The bizarre baaaahlief that all was rosy in the area until Britain took an interest simply doesn't stack up with historical fact. Even under the Ottoman Empire there was plenty of bloodshed, such as the Armenian genocide, and Arab nationalism kickstarted anti-Semitism in the Ottoman Empire long before Britain got involved (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_the_Ottoman_Empire#Antisemitism). Britain (and France) just inherited the results of thousands of years of ethnic strife in the region.
It's all about appearances rather than outcomes: "don't worry that you haven't got enough to eat, look at our lovely missiles and don't forget to vote for me". Russia doesn't want war with anyone with real weapons: remember the plane shot down over the Turkey-Syria border?
More interesting will be whether Russia has managed to replace the electronics that the Ukrainians used to develop for it.
Long term all the weapons tech in the world probably won't do it much good once conflict really starts in the Caucuses and the *Stans. And it's doing a bloody good job of stoking this. :-/
What has changed to make the outcome different?
I guess they are no longer interested in winning an all-out confrontation with the rest of the world - only in making the cost of a direct military intervention suicidal for an invader (or as a matter of fact, for both participating sides and most of the innocent bystanders). This, of course, requires a credible strike-back capability.
It may, of course, bankrupt them again. On the other hand, Russian national debt is less than US$1K per capita (just about), or a bit under 15% of GDP. The corresponding figure for US is over $59K per capita (106% GDP). UK is over US$35K per capita (83% GDP), and Canada is around $22K per capita (56% GDP; however, neither figure includes provincial debt - which would add about as much again).
At the same time, Russia spends about 4.1 to 5.4% GDP on its military. US is at 3.3 to 3.9%, not that much lower per capita cost despite its much bigger economy. UK and Canada are actually at a much more sensible 2% and 0.9% - although I doubt either country actually needs to spend even that much.
Overall, I would say that out-of-control military spending and runaway borrowing by the US is a much bigger threat to the rest of the world than anything Putin would ever manage to do.
References:
http://www.nationaldebtclocks.org/#countries
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures
Re. debt: those figures are gross government debt, so don't take into account outstanding loans given to other countries, which clouds things a little.
For example if Sweden has borrowed $10 and lent out $5 to Nicaragua, the figures will show Sweden is in $10 in debt and total debt is $15. In balance, both Sweden and Nicaragua are actually $5 in the hole.
I rarely comment against AC, but I have to jump in here.
Your statements are 95% correct in fact, ignoring the slight deltas in numbers which I attribute to your sources.
Unfortunately your conclusions ignore recent history. Russia defaulted on her debt in 1998 when inflation hit 84% and she appealed for international aid, including emergency food aid. This led to a crisis in government which resulted in the eventual resignation of President Yeltsin and the rapid rise of Vladimir Putin from Deputy Prime Minister to President where he has essentially remained since. Yes, I am hand waving the power swap between his second and third terms as President that took place with Dmitry Medvedev. Its easy to look good on paper when you wrote off every foreign debt in one fell swoop less than twenty years ago.
I agree that military spending is a threat to world peace, since you cannot justify the expenditures without using the new military toys a bit, which in turn leads to additional military spending, which leads to, which leads to, which leads to. That issue applies to the world as a whole, since no government can seem to avoid testing the latest military toy, be it a rifle, tank or aircraft. Thankfully we have well documented agreements for testing the subject of the article, at least sans warhead.
Where Russia and the United States differ is the US, at least under the most recent administration, lurches from good intentioned intervention that gets messy (see Libya), to cleaning up the previous administrations mess (Iraq and Afghanistan), to another good intentioned intervention that turns into a mess (see Syria). Russia on the other hand seizes territory for strategic advantage and to distract citizens from an economy devastated by the recent drop in oil prices. Neither is ideal, but I would rather work with the good intentioned neighbor than the calculating malicious one.
Finally, the market disagrees with you with the threat posed by borrowing. US 10 Year Treasuries are yielding just about 1.76%, while Russian Federation 10 year bonds are yielding just over 8.8%.
All told, I would much rather work with the US, at least until the body politic loses its mind entirely, yields to the lure of bread and circuses, and elects Donald Trump. Then all bets are off and I refuse to offer odds on the insanity that follows.
What has changed to make the outcome different?
No more tit-for-tat competition. Old USSR bankrupted itself trying to do what USA did - Shuttle program (Buran), gas turbine driven main battle tank (T82), etc - all these projects were a disaster financially and technically.
Putin's Russia has no such intention. It has concentrated on what Russians do best - simple engineering and evolutionary changes instead of gigantic technological step changes.
Examples: T-92 (and the new tank prototype shown 9th of May last year), a full range of new fighting infantry vehicles designed mostly for warfare against militants and based on observing the NATO clusterf*** in Afganistan and Iraq, AA missiles, sub-orbital trajectory ballistic missiles (Bulava), upgrades to the avionics and weapons of anything and everything - Su-24, Su-25, evolutionary (instead of a Raptor/F35 like big bang) step changes from Su-27 to PAKFA, etc.
All of these programs are relatively cheap. They are pocket change compared to some of the money floating around Russia nowdays (even with all the embargos and downturn).
They also have reduced the size of their active "combat deployable in a few hours" army and nuclear deterrent. It is much smaller than it was, but it is now really deployable and it got fangs and claws (that is not my personal opinion by the way - it is Jane's Defense analysis of Syria's "holiday"). It is also still more than sufficient to wipe out half of the planet so why really bother for more?.
Meanwhile, at the "Pivot to Asia":
US Pivot to Asia Poised to Enter Nuclear Phase
Hmm... US to deploy first-strike-capable tactical nuclear weapons in the Pacific Theatre. What could go wrong?
We need an icon for "warming"
the economies haven't changed (arguably the state of Rusia's is worse than the Soviet Union's), but the West, never keen to enter into a real nuclear exchange, is so much less keen now. The Russians know it, which makes they more... keen.
In theory, stepping down the "keen factor" would entice the other side to do likewise, but this doesn't take into account Russian mindset which revolves around posturing and showing who's got bigger balls. Speak quietly and carry a large stick, yes, but who cares about the stick if you know the head above the stick goes into BSD mode on a mere thought it might HAVE TO use this stick. PANIC, PANIC! Russians know this, and use it very well to their advantage.
Doesn't it give one a warm happy glow; how the human race has progressed from chucking rocks at each other to this (and it's US/Chinese/French/British/Israeli/Pakistani and Indian brothers)?
Now we can presumably spend our own money to a) build better anti-hypersonic-missile-missiles, and b) build our own anti-hypersonic-missile-missile-proof-missile.
But I guess as we have sorted out cancer, poverty, global warming and conventional war, there's nothing better to do.
@AC
On a slightly more positive note we dont seem much country to country war any more. Granted the EU sparked a war in Ukraine where the Russians annexed land they loaned to Ukraine but even that had to be through subversive methods. The all out country vs country has gone from the developed world.
Such stability could be a factor on our developments against cancer, poverty, global warming and as above- conventional war. The problem with solving conventional war is the reliance on unconventional war which we are still feeling our way through.
And decommissioned nukes can be used for energy production. We will probably be grateful for nukes if NK figure out how to make them.
@AC
"Oh yes, those war-mongering Brussels bureaucrats!"
It might not have been their intention to cause the war but I have yet to hear any other reason beyond Putin wanting to re-establish the USSR, which I am sure was bigger than just the Crimea. You may not like that the EU (the bringer of peace, and yes I am laughing as I say that) triggered the war and at no point does that apologise for Russia doing what it did at all (looking @Charlie Clark).
What revised history do you guys have for Russia invading to annex just the portion it needs to stay military relevant as the EU tries to persuade Ukraine to become part of the EU but runs away when Russia reacts?
I will say @Charlie Clark I do agree with- Had the new nukes still been stationed in Ukraine, Putin might have thought twice about his "little green men". That is actually the point I was making.
We see war every day, modern wars do not use tanks or bombs.
Now we use "Business", "Financial", and "Trade" restrictions to wage most of the wars.
Why has the US opened Cuba back up?... It is because none of those restrictions have worked, so we are looking for a place to put hotels and McDonalds. The US claims they invented everything from the English Language to Apple Pie. They to this day keep some of these claims not because they are first, but because so much research and documentation behind science and industry is locked up behind American PayWalls.
The war is going strong, you just didn't know you were part of it.
If NATO deploys into Ukraine, the "loaned area" might well extend up to Kiev all of a sudden.
You just don't fuck around with the military interest and need of strategic leeway of an ex-super-centralized state that doesn't particularly trust you, then play nonchalant while letting your generals pump aggressive messages into the aether and having the press/TV (clearly heavily freedomized if not dogwaggified) issue incendiary commentary.
Funny how these things always happen during Olympic Games, too.
@DAM "Funny how these things always happen during Olympic Games, too."
Check the notes again. Unfolded just *after* the Olympic Games, when Russia no longer needed to 'pretend' it was a modern forward-thinking freedom-loving non-ursine. Can't be shooting down passenger jets before they've arrived at Sochi, right?
Call me naive, but I thought Kernighan and Richie invented C? I.e two individuals.
Actually, a lot of computer science comes straight from the UK. The Americans got hold of it to be able to help out during the war. There's a lot of cross-pollination going on all over the world, so I'm a bit sick of the whole "we are so great, we did this and that"-thing.
Granted the EU sparked a war in Ukraine where the Russians annexed land they loaned to Ukraine
Don't you just love Russian-apologist revisionism? Even if Kruschev's donation of Crimea to Ukraine was a bit of harmless fun back in the day, it became permanent with the fall of the Soviet Union with Russia agreeing to accept Ukraine's borders in return for Ukraine returning the nuclear weapons stationed there. Had the new nukes still been stationed in Ukraine, Putin might have thought twice about his "little green men".
"the Russians annexed land they loaned to Ukraine"
It was given, not loaned:
"the transfer of Crimea from the RSFSR to the UkrSSR was carried out in accordance with the 1936 Soviet constitution, which in Article 18 stipulated that “the territory of a Union Republic may not be altered without its consent.” The proceedings of the USSR Supreme Soviet Presidium meeting indicate that both the RSFSR and the UkrSSR had given their consent via their republic parliaments."
"the Russian Federation expressly accepted Ukraine’s 1991 borders both in the December 1991 Belovezhskaya Pushcha accords (the agreements that precipitated and codified the dissolution of the Soviet Union) and in the December 1994 Budapest Memorandum"
"....assholes...guns....bibles...." Really? I quite liked Alabama when I passed through, the people seemed a damn sight friendlier than in those bastions of liberalness like New York or Chicago (which both have much, much higher levels of guncrime). Per chance, are you posting from one of said liberal "wonderlands"?
"There is also a Cardiff, London, Manchester, Dublin and Edinburg in Texas."
Hope no one uses Google Maps to target places. They only seem to give one answer to a query for latitude/longitude - even though that may be the "wrong" place. Why can't they give a collection as an answer to indicate ambiguity and allow a chance of a resolution.
Germany seems fond of same name places which sometimes have an after-thought of a qualifier of the nearby river.
England has the obvious ambiguities like the many Newcastles or Whitwells - but at least two Broughtons was unexpected. There was a time when the ancient county names rolled off the tongue - but those are no longer in everyday use even where they haven't been renamed.
"Hope no one uses Google Maps to target places. They only seem to give one answer to a query for latitude/longitude - even though that may be the "wrong" place. Why can't they give a collection as an answer to indicate ambiguity and allow a chance of a resolution."
That's one of the reasons why I switched to HERE maps.
"Hope no one uses Google Maps to target places. They only seem to give one answer to a query for latitude/longitude - even though that may be the "wrong" place. Why can't they give a collection as an answer to indicate ambiguity and allow a chance of a resolution."
You can always use OpenStreetMap instead - if there's a bus station called "Cardiff" it'll list that too somewhere at the bottom... ;)
You can stop and re-light a liquid fuelled engine. On an ICBM that means you can make it difficult to predict where the thing is headed. This in turn makes it very difficult to intercept during the sub orbital cruise phase.
To intercept it with your own missile you have to be reasonably sure of its course and speed to give yours a chance of getting into the right part of the sky at the right time. However this thing can speed up and change course. Give it an on board ESM capability and it can make up its own mind for when to do this too.
I don't actually know whether this is their actual intent, but it all follows through reasonably logically. Certainly it's an operational capability that would justify the development nausea that results from building a liquid fuelled ICBM.
It's also quite ironic. Blue Streak, the UK's rocket ICBM development programme way back in the 1950s, 1960s was cancelled because the liquid fuelled design they were pursuing couldn't be kept fuelled up ready to launch. That meant it had to be fuelled before launch, which takes longer than the 4 minutes warning available from surveillance radar, etc. That would have meant having silos capable of withstanding a first strike, for which the UK has very little appropriate rock (we're mostly mud...). So the whole Blue Streak idea was considered redundant. We eventually gave it to the French as a bribe to let us join what's now the EU, but they said "Merci, pizzouf" and turned it into Ariane (only the world's most successful launcher). Ruddy typical. However if the Blue Streak guys had rummaged around their chemistry books and thought of the mixture the Russians are now using, Blue Streak could have been something like the new Russian design but 50 years earlier... Same goes for the US's Atlas, Titan, etc.
Another reason is that the IR signature for UDMH/N2O4 is much lower than for the usual aluminum and ammonia perchlorate solid fuel mix. The IR signature is also less than the RP1/LOX mixture but greater than LH2/LOX.
FWIW, the Titan II was fueled by UDMH/N2O4, but there were a few nasty accidents involving fuel leaks.
Faced with the possibility of a President Trump one can hardly blame the Ruskies for wanting to keep their deterrent delivery systems up-to-date.
So, it uses the existing launch silos that NATO have already mapped out and have targeted? And it needs a nice, long, pre-launch fuel-up with liquid fuel, meaning it can be targeted in its silo long before it is ready to be fired? And it's so big and expensive to make that Pootie can only make so many with his crumbling economy?
Pootie has a similar fixation with "big is best" as Hitler had. He should have read some Cold War history and realised what really scared NATO was mobile and quick-response ICBMs like the SS-25/27.
The point about the propellants is that they can be stored in the missile, unlike the cryogenics. The last time I saw rockets on the pad, I didn't know enough to be scared, but they were on exposed launch pads and using liquid oxygen, and the RAF wouldn't have done that unless it expected to use them. They were horribly vulnerable to blast.
So was I.
"The point about the propellants is that they can be stored in the missile, unlike the cryogenics"
I may be wrong about this, but aren't there missiles using packaged UDMH/RFNA with a 5 year shelf life?
"Mmm, yes and that was the theory with the liquid propellants in the torpedo's"
That is hydrogen peroxide, which is a single-component propellant. It was very popular in UK rocketry, but somehow we got away with it. In a submarine, it isn't really practical to flood malfunctioning peroxide with large amounts of water. Well, not more than once, anyway.
...the US is making great strides in funding future Russian missile programs through our own ineptitude and almost comical dependence on Russian engines.
...SpaceX has landed TWO rockets now, so yay! Those will be quite handy after the Chinese shoot the ISS out of the sky, I'm sure.
...I'm still waiting for Blue Origin to reach an altitude of relevance.
...the US is making great strides in funding future Russian missile programs through our own ineptitude and almost comical dependence on Russian engines.
Don't worry: you are also making great leaps forward in funding Chinese missile (and carrier, and fighter, and electronic warfare) programs through your own ineptitude and clearly comical dependence on Chinese manufacturing capability for pretty much anything and everything you consume.
I always thought that in the Asimov's Foundation series, America was the Foundation. Now I am not so sure: perhaps it is the old Galactic Empire after all, and China is the Foundation.
While I struggle to keep me and my family alive making sure my children are happy and well looked after, leaders of this world are planning to destroy it and turn paradise into hell. Why do we let these people in power for? They have got it all wrong . When looking at the world like this it's easy to see how God is waging war against Satan.
"Why do we let these people in power for?"
Because we are a cooperative hierarchical animal. The tribal mindset is always rearing its head in a "them or us" conflict - even if only posturing. The eponymous "Utopia" was postulated as a place where everyone knew their birth rank - and stayed put.
It is an old adage that the people who want power are the last ones who should be allowed to have it. They fall into two camps. 1) Those who are insecure and need to have total control of their environment to quell their inner demons. 2) Those whose hubris borders on being psychopathic.
The earth's diameter is 12742 km, so the missile could reach nearly everywhere just about.so the 10000 km range is significant. US is 8800 km away and Australia, a US lapdog, is 9977kms away so that would definately need to be hit if the balloon went up.
Not withstanding Oz is a major source of uranium.
It would unfortunately not stop the most horrific product of Australia. ...Foster's beer. As that's made globally now:(
" Australia, a US lapdog, is 9977kms away so that would definately need to be hit if the balloon went up."
Yeah but are you sure they'd even notice? It's a place where everything is already trying to kill you - is a radscorpion really that much worse than a normal one...? Now at least they would glow in the dark even without a UV light...
Hell no, don't give them ideas. The last thing we want is space to be weaponised. There's more than enough to fight over down here (excluding Antarctica, another area where global cooperation has prevented militarisation) without expanding this fight as far as humanly possible.
OTOH, I concur wholeheartedly with your final statement.
Speed of missiles? Suborbital flights are typically set by how far they go. Note you *can* make the missile come down that much faster, but you equally warn the victim that much earlier that you are blowing a corner of his country off the map, so it is rarely done (and would typically require an equal boast about an ability to target areas even farther south than Texas).
I strongly suspect that the rest of the boast is equally absurd. Takeaway: Russia has missiles, just as they have since the mid-1950s. If the missiles launch, the USA and Russia will more or less cease to exist and the resulting economic and ecological damage will likely collapse the nations of anyone not already glowing. And "blowing up Texas"? Are they claiming to be able to launch (and MIRV) the "Tsar Bomba"? I think that even Pravda would have trouble with that one. Better cut off the propagandist's vodka supply.
Reagan's Star Wars ideas are even more futile than George Lucas's (although it might not be such a bad idea to circle North Korea with counter missiles that hit things on the way up. You just need agreements with China to cover the Northern boarder as well).
All Russia is doing is ensuring that their missiles are going to be able to get through the USA's deployed anti missile system to maintain the balance of terror.
Frankly, if I were planning on nuking a country then instead of deploying my weapons via missle which leaves an trail the entire world can track back to the launch point i'd deploy my weapons via shipping crates and airmail on timers. <BOOM> Targets badly hit, assuming that the planes and ships keep to their scheduled routes and timetables.
Then there is no immediate target to nuke in retaliation. After painstaking investigation does trace the weapons to a particular country that country is of course "shocked" and "horrified" to discover that their weapons handling proceedures were lax enough to let a group of well known terrorists to acquire a bunch of weapons by bribing the staff looking after them and plan a shocking attack. Of course, we deplore this shocking atrocity etc etc etc, but if you were to nuke us then we will of course have to conduct a full retaliatory response etc etc etc. Would they then get nuked? Probably not, though they would probably get sanctioned quite massively.
I submit that while more probably the plot of a bad book, this is how you'd go about nuking somebody. It's not going to be done via launching an ICBM at somebody, sabre rattling from North Korea to stay on the international agenda instead of being totally ignored notwithstanding. Anti missile defences are therefore pretty pointless both politicially and militarily, and just encourage stockpiling more and nastier missiles.
"Frankly, if I were planning on nuking a country then instead of deploying my weapons via missle which leaves an trail the entire world can track back to the launch point i'd deploy my weapons via shipping crates and airmail on timers2
there are radiation detectors at most ports in the USA and Europe
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"Why in the world would they make new liquid fueled ICBMs?"
because they have the plant and handling skills to make it, but don't have much in the way of solid fuel technology. As someone else has already pointed out, the motors are simply an extension of their existing reliable technology
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