The easiest method to destroy any orbital weapons platform would be an interceptor satellite of any stripe sharing the same orbit yes. This is already a combat risk for MEO GNSS, GEO SATCOM, and to a lesser extent LEO swarming platforms. Sheer mass of systems and redundancy is partly why Starlink and Starshield will be likely be highly resilient in wartime.
That's why, like a hypersonic bomber or silo-based missile, they're almost entirely a first strike weapon. Given the amount of orbital shenanigans the USSF and PLA Strategic Support Force have been having for the past half decade they'd both probably just base each warhead individually on a reentry bus, and bet you can punch through a defense grid with sheer mass, like a high frontier bomber stream.
America, however, are the only ones not refurbishing their silos on a periodic schedule. The last major deep modernization was REACT and AFAIK the MM3s still use 5.25" floppies for targeting upload. The US has the oldest and least functional launch infrastructure in the world, at present, and I suppose they would be tied with France if France had retained the S3s.
The nuclear triad is probably unaffordable given the twin problems of the deficit and need to cut costs, so the MM3s will likely be LEPed until the '50s, and be the first ICBM to see 100 years of continuous service. That or retired without replacement to feed B-21 and Columbia. New silos seems rather distant given Sentinel has already breached Nunn-McCurdy twice now.
A Midgetman 2 TEL, no need to be hard, and based in the missile fields followed by implosion of the silos would be the best case.
USAF never liked the strategic missile or space observation missions anyway. It's why USSF has had to crash budget for replacement of PAVE PAWS old mainframes and is trying to expedite like four new space based sensor platforms. Taking away their ICBMs so they can focus entirely on the strategic bomber mission would make them happy. Space Force can have them.
The land-based part of the triad is actually the cheapest one with the lowest operating costs. its just the USAF just hates to operate it and would rather spend nothing. TELs, even plain non-hardened ones have much higher operating costs.
The land-based part of the triad is actually the cheapest one with the lowest operating costs. its just the USAF just hates to operate it and would rather spend nothing. TELs, even plain non-hardened ones have much higher operating costs.
They would just move to the Switzerland, Panama, whatever, and take their wealth with them lol. There is no practical way to fund LGM-35A at present, because DOD is in the middle of a budget cut, and Sentinel still needs new silos. Maybe they can put it on a big truck but getting something like Midgetman would be easier at this point.
There's already US Laws that say any company with money flowing through the US is subject to that law. The US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
It wouldn't be hard to say, for example, that any company subject to FCPA is also subject to US corporate taxes. And that any company listed on the NYSE is liable for US corporate income tax on their GROSS.
Also arguably the most reliable one? The air launched portion is dependent on an aircraft to launch it, while the Tridents are packed into a pressure hull underwater next to a nuclear reactor.
The Minuteman/Sentinel on the other hand is stored in hardened, stationary silos. They are reliable in that sense.
“Distraction” notwithstanding a superpower should be able to walk and modernize its strategic forces at the same time.
The Bush administration did propose a fairly robust warhead modernization and development of a MMIII replacement called the Land Based Strategic Deterrent that his own party helped vote down along with ACI, RNEP & RRWs
At the time, it probably wasn't considered necessary anymore, or at least not prioritized.
The Soviets were gone, Russia was in shambles, these Chinese? Pff, sure they won't be a problem in the future. And even if, the B-2 and Ohio would be enough. Right? Right???
If something was very low on the priority list in the 90s and early 2000s it was the strategic deterrent and particularly the missile silos.
Although the missile silos are like the cactus you got to your birthday by a distant relative like 5 years ago. They sit in a corner, not being paid attention to, they don't need much aside from a little bit of water (maintenance/modernization) in regular intervals.
Also arguably the most reliable one? The air launched portion is dependent on an aircraft to launch it, while the Tridents are packed into a pressure hull underwater next to a nuclear reactor.
The Minuteman/Sentinel on the other hand is stored in hardened, stationary silos. They are reliable in that sense.
Tridents don't blow up inside the sub. They fire the motor after breaching the surface. It's why the Royal Navy's have funny corkscrews. Minuteman, being a hot-launch missile, might actually have serious unresolved reliability problems but it's never been demonstrated in test launches AFAIK unlike UK Trident.
The land-based part of the triad is actually the cheapest one with the lowest operating costs. its just the USAF just hates to operate it and would rather spend nothing. TELs, even plain non-hardened ones have much higher operating costs.
Cheap operating costs are offset by expensive modernization costs. Sentinel is likely unaffordable at present and will be deferred at best. TELs are easy to modernize. You replace the cab and put the rocket in a new trailer. The missile is the most expensive component, after all. NNSA already has a demonstrated ability to move warheads surreptitiously using American roadways and commercial transporter trucks. The maximum gross weight of a heavy truck, like Australian iron road trains, can exceed the MGM-134A.
The low operating costs and relatively cheap modernization of the TELs for the Russians, compared to refurbishing a few worn out R-36 (not the -M) silos, was a factor in the decision to widely expand the mobile missile force of the Yars complex.
Close protection measures, like the kind introduced by the USSR and their TEL force, are actually unnecessary unless you're a police state facing multiple organized internal security threats after all. NNSA and Pantex get by with a couple airmen with a submachine gun in the door, a couple SUVs, and a phone call to the local law enforcement agencies to stay away from the two black Chevies and white Freightliner.
I am surprised that no western countries use TELs if they are easy to modernise unlike silo based ICBMs, think of the money that would be saved plus there would be no need to keep on constructing new silos each time a new missile system gets built that is going to also happen to the Sentinel missiles instead of utilising the existing Minuteman 3 silos.
America, however, are the only ones not refurbishing their silos on a periodic schedule. The last major deep modernization was REACT and AFAIK the MM3s still use 5.25" floppies for targeting upload. The US has the oldest and least functional launch infrastructure in the world, at present, and I suppose they would be tied with France if France had retained the S3s.
Spot on. They were retired in 1998. But compared to the Minuteman fleet, Plateau d'Albion was peanuts: just one field with barely 18 silos (from memory), plus the missiles were IRBMs, not ICBMs.
I am surprised that no western countries use TELs if they are easy to modernise unlike silo based ICBMs, think of the money that would be saved plus there would be no need to keep on constructing new silos each time a new missile system gets built that is going to also happen to the Sentinel missiles instead of utilising the existing Minuteman 3 silos.
Well, with regards to France and the UK they simply lacks the money I'd argue. Given they only operate a handful of SSBNs each as their main nuclear deterrent. With France also having a couple nuclear ALCMs.
While for countries like Russia and China, the maintenance of an effective and layered nuclear triad through SSBNs, Silos, TELs and Bombers is paramount to the idea of national security on the global stage. North Korea lacks a proper, survivable ballistic missile submarine yet, so they rely on TELs. I don't know how Israel, India and Pakistan keep their nukes and plan to deliver them.
As for the US, the US seems averse to the idea of TELs due to the existence of sufficient availability in their silos, subs and air launched warheads. So it's not considered necessary in the face of large silo fields, a big bomber fleet including the B-2s and several trident SSBNs (arguably the favorite child). While TELs are somewhat cheap-ish, they're still an expense and need associated infrastructure and development. And I assume the US rather invests into already existing assets.
I am surprised that no western countries use TELs if they are easy to modernise unlike silo based ICBMs, think of the money that would be saved plus there would be no need to keep on constructing new silos each time a new missile system gets built that is going to also happen to the Sentinel missiles instead of utilising the existing Minuteman 3 silos.
Every Western country except Turkey, Norway, Luxembourg and Denmark had nuclear TELs in the 1980s.
They don't use them because they don't modernize their missile forces. Supposedly there were "security concerns", but in the context of the Cold War this seems to be that it stepped on the polite fiction that the USSR was going to just let the Eastern Seaboard continue existing and hit some empty silos instead, rather than anything actually serious for the security of the missile force. The NNSA replaced the White Train at the same time, which was the main argument for Mobile Peacekeeper's SF platoon car (among other things), because it kept getting stopped by protesters.
So far, not a single Safeguards Transporter has ever been stopped, let alone attacked. They are deliberately disguised as commercial trucks and work with local law enforcement agencies and USAF for close protection, so a similar scheme of disguised TELs stationed on commercial truck routes would likely be entirely credible for a TEL in all honesty.
The real surprise is why don't Western/American countries modernize their nuclear missile forces? The last American SLBM was developed in 1984 and IOC in 1990. It is the oldest SLBM in service in the world. The B-2s were supposed to receive a major penetration software upgrade that was canceled in 2019. The AGM-129 was retired without replacement. RNEP remains an unfilled requirement for deep earth penetrating. SLCM may see deployment on fast attacks...in 10-15 years. Trident II won't have any replacement lined up for at least another twenty.
In that same time period, both the PRC and Russia have managed to refurbish and replace most of their missile forces' production lines at least once, sometimes two or three times. The last time the United States talked seriously about investing nuclear missile forces was before the Internet existed.
You would be forgiven for thinking the United States expects to never fight a nuclear war.
The real surprise is why don't Western/American countries modernize their nuclear missile forces? The last American SLBM was developed in 1984 and IOC in 1990. It is the oldest SLBM in service in the world. The B-2s were supposed to receive a major penetration software upgrade that was canceled in 2019. The AGM-129 was retired without replacement. RNEP remains an unfilled requirement for deep earth penetrating. SLCM may see deployment on fast attacks...in 10-15 years. Trident II won't have any replacement lined up for at least another twenty.
Yeah it baffles me Trident hasn't been replaced yet. I mean, the US and UK submarines... around the Tridents have changed a few times since the 1970's.
I think France in 1990's did the right choice. We canned every single Cold War nuclear system delivery - Pluton & Hades, AN-52s, Plateau d'Albion S3 IRMBs - except a) the submarines and their M4+ SLBMs and b) the ASMP (now ASMP-A) as a secondary, complementary weapon.
The land-based part of the triad is actually the cheapest one with the lowest operating costs. its just the USAF just hates to operate it and would rather spend nothing.
Well they could transfer the ICBM force to the Army as was briefly proposed in the 1960s. After all, the Corps of Engineers built the Minuteman silos and the Army is responsible for all other ground-launched ballistic missiles...
Spot on. They were retired in 1998. But compared to the Minuteman fleet, Plateau d'Albion was peanuts: just one field with barely 18 silos (from memory), plus the missiles were IRBMs, not ICBMs.
Well they could transfer the ICBM force to the Army as was briefly proposed in the 1960s. After all, the Corps of Engineers built the Minuteman silos and the Army is responsible for all other ground-launched ballistic missiles...
Back to Nevada Arizona dense pack scheme with ultra high strength concrete and other materials providing 50k psi protection. Or maybe WS120a heavy ICBMs in granite mountain silos.
Build completely invulnerable silos in mountains but have each (but fewer say 150) missile carry 25 warheads.
Every Western country except Turkey, Norway, Luxembourg and Denmark had nuclear TELs in the 1980s.
They don't use them because they don't modernize their missile forces. Supposedly there were "security concerns", but in the context of the Cold War this seems to be that it stepped on the polite fiction that the USSR was going to just let the Eastern Seaboard continue existing and hit some empty silos instead, rather than anything actually serious for the security of the missile force. The NNSA replaced the White Train at the same time, which was the main argument for Mobile Peacekeeper's SF platoon car (among other things), because it kept getting stopped by protesters.
So far, not a single Safeguards Transporter has ever been stopped, let alone attacked. They are deliberately disguised as commercial trucks and work with local law enforcement agencies and USAF for close protection, so a similar scheme of disguised TELs stationed on commercial truck routes would likely be entirely credible for a TEL in all honesty.
You misunderstand what I was saying, I know that the Trident is cold-launched from the SSBN I'm referring to an accident causing the detonation of SLBM's rocket-motors while in the launch-tube.
You misunderstand what I was saying, I know that the Trident is cold-launched from the SSBN I'm referring to an accident causing the detonation of SLBM's rocket-motors while in the launch-tube.
Midgetman was 46 ft long, modern American trailers are 54 ft.
I am quite certain that there might be some giveaways, perhaps in the number of road wheels, or the exact layout of the trailer to withstand launch forces.
But all of these seem relatively easy to mitigate, especially since the threat might be overhead surveillance, and you can always confuse and confound OSINT.
Midgetman was 46 ft long, modern American trailers are 54 ft.
I am quite certain that there might be some giveaways, perhaps in the number of road wheels, or the exact layout of the trailer to withstand launch forces.
But all of these seem relatively easy to mitigate, especially since the threat might be overhead surveillance, and you can always confuse and confound OSINT.
Midgetman was a much different weapons system, the smallest possible missile able to throw a single warhead. The existing trailer was not only visually distinctive, but the wheels are in the wrong place for a large load if you tried to dummy it up.
Ignoring the really big off-road truck pulling it. Midgetman basically had a HEMTT pulling the TEL trailer!
It only needs to be compared to aerial and satellite photography and radar surveillance. It also doesn't need to be hard, since it will launch on warning rather than peri- or post-attack, and making a truck that has similar overhead appearance and radar signature is trivial. Nobody is going to transmit the location of a nuclear missile launch truck by looking at non-existent American CCTV, and photographs from ground level by sympathizers are not serious in any credibly threatening manner, since the information would be outdated when the truck moves to a firing position anyway. If it is useful, it will be because a bomber has spotted the truck in a FLIR, and already deployed a glide bomb to it.
That's the same problem as the B-2 and the Minuteman fields, but at least the truck can move, which means it is harder to detect.
Each TEL would have a single warhead and there would be like a thousand of them just driving around on highways. Pretty much impossible to attack in any reasonable manner without a huge number of aircraft, whereas a silo field can be dismantled by sending glide bombs to fixed points with a minimum of terminal guidance. There's nothing impossible about the weight, either, since Australia routinely pulls 200-tonne road trains with conventional Volvo, Scania, and Freightliner rigs. It's actually pretty easy.
You won't be able to go off road but that's the point. You're deliberately hiding within commercial truck fleet traffic so that a GMTI satellite doesn't detect you for an orbital tracked bombing run. USSF GMTI directing B-21 attacks is a credible, and mostly immutable, threat to Russian off road TELs in the coming 10-20 years. Their trains might be okay, since they'll blend in with commercial train traffic, though.
You misunderstand what I was saying, I know that the Trident is cold-launched from the SSBN I'm referring to an accident causing the detonation of SLBM's rocket-motors while in the launch-tube.
I suspect that with minimal effort, you won't survive OSINT snoopers or special forces, but those probably aren't relevant on the timeframes of a nuclear war. You can almost certainly confound overhead surveillance.
But certainly, the <30-tonne TEL form factor is going to make it a much smaller missile than MX, and accordingly less capable.
Midgetman came in at an impressive 14 metric tons, and could still lob a 500kt warhead 11,000km! And that was thirty plus years ago, so there's probably room for improvement (marginal improvement, nothing huge, because physics, but still room for growth - see PRSM vs ATACMS).
Also, assuming a 30-tonne trailer, there would seem to be plenty of room to distribute the weight across the desired wheelbase.
Minuteman silo program (in reference to building new silos)
A Silo A Day
On September 10, 1961, the groundbreaking ceremony for Ellsworth AFB's Minuteman installations took place at Site L-6 near Bear Butte. The festivities started with a bang. While the Sturgis High School band played, representatives from Boeing, Kiewit, the Corps of Engineers, and Ellsworth AFB set off an explosive charge to begin the excavation.
Despite extreme cold, high winds, and heavy snowfall, construction proceeded at a furious pace through the winter of 1961-62. In mid-December, the Corps of Engineers told reporters that "men are working seven days a week, three shifts a day on Minuteman construction. " A Corps spokesman said that crews were "able to dig five silo emplacements simultaneously. Each takes from four to ten days . . . " The first squadron, near Wall, was well underway, said the Corps, and work on the second squadron, near Union Center, had already started. In February 1962, General Delmar Wilson told the Rapid City Chamber of Commerce that despite an ongoing labor dispute between Peter Kiewit Sons and the Ironworkers Union, South Dakota's ICBM deployment suffered fewer work stoppages than any missile program in the Nation. "We're all out . . . to assure that our way of life is maintained," stated Wilson. "This missile project ... is the number one project in the country today. If this guy in Russia wants to start a show, we'll be there to put a hole in him to the best of our ability."
By early summer of 1963, the steel fabrication was finished at all 165 South Dakota sites, and crews were completing the silos at the rate of one per day. On the last day of June, the first 20 silos were turned over to the Strategic Air Command. On October 23, the Nation's second wing of Minuteman ICBMs was fully operational. The work was completed nearly three weeks ahead of schedule.
I suspect that with minimal effort, you won't survive OSINT snoopers or special forces, but those probably aren't relevant on the timeframes of a nuclear war. You can almost certainly confound overhead surveillance.
But certainly, the <30-tonne TEL form factor is going to make it a much smaller missile than MX, and accordingly less capable.
Midgetman came in at an impressive 14 metric tons, and could still lob a 500kt warhead 11,000km! And that was thirty plus years ago, so there's probably room for improvement (marginal improvement, nothing huge, because physics, but still room for growth - see PRSM vs ATACMS).
Also, assuming a 30-tonne trailer, there would seem to be plenty of room to distribute the weight across the desired wheelbase.
I think it was in the MX Basing report (but might be somewhere else) it describes many of the ways they had to mimic the actual missile with the simulator. Was far more than just mass. And this was almost half a century ago.
I think it was in the MX Basing report (but might be somewhere else) it describes many of the ways they had to mimic the actual missile with the simulator. Was far more than just mass. And this was almost half a century ago.
MX multiple shelter shell game is a very different scenario than midgetman on random trucks across the length and breadth of North America.
MX transporters were restricted to very specific routes in very specific operational areas (indeed, the missiles would mostly be in the shelters!), and it was expected that they would be under surveillance. Preservation of location uncertainty would thus hinge heavily on the signature being very close to the decoy.
Here, you're scattered across the length and breadth of CONUS, or even North America, and survival is from mobility moreso than, or as much as, deception. Since you're mimicking the average 53' 18-wheeler, there are also a lot more "decoys".
I suspect that with minimal effort, you won't survive OSINT snoopers or special forces, but those probably aren't relevant on the timeframes of a nuclear war. You can almost certainly confound overhead surveillance.
But certainly, the <30-tonne TEL form factor is going to make it a much smaller missile than MX, and accordingly less capable.
Midgetman came in at an impressive 14 metric tons, and could still lob a 500kt warhead 11,000km! And that was thirty plus years ago, so there's probably room for improvement (marginal improvement, nothing huge, because physics, but still room for growth - see PRSM vs ATACMS).
Also, assuming a 30-tonne trailer, there would seem to be plenty of room to distribute the weight across the desired wheelbase.
Yeah. Not that anyone will do it. It's something the USAF in particular is concerned about for some reason. "Security" doesn't seem a real threat IMO since NNSA does the exact same thing and their mobile White Trains (i.e. centralized depots and restricted movement similar to Russian TELs) were way more vulnerable than "unmarked freight truck" to the notorious Greenpeace picket and Holy paint buckets. Which is about the biggest actual security threat you get CONUS.
The only real argument is "they will hit our cities" which like sure okay but it's a nuclear war. That's the point!
For a transcontinental based system, airborne and space based surveillance guiding stealth aircraft or long range weapons are the biggest threats I think. It was the case in the USSR and I assume it's the case in America too until someone proves otherwise. Mobility negates the threat of SLBMs and ICBMs in real terms I think.
The optimal nuclear basing strategy, assuming you have high accuracy lightweight warheads (<100 meter CEP, 300-400 KT), is to put one missile on one warhead and put them everywhere. MIRVs aren't super great now since they were a little bit of a cope for low accuracy moderate yield weapons like W76 that would plaster half of Talinin and still miss what you were aiming for. Later they became an expedient way to "boost" warhead counts/megadeaths without investing in new silos.
As Sentinel proves the latter idea kind of mortgaged SAC's future and that future has now become the present. Heavy ICBMs like Minuteman or Peacekeeper are mostly good for flinging hypergliders and FOBS payloads now and those are both only needed in a few numbers.
I think it was in the MX Basing report (but might be somewhere else) it describes many of the ways they had to mimic the actual missile with the simulator. Was far more than just mass. And this was almost half a century ago.
If you wrap it in a metal box, it is indistinguishable to radar and infrared detection to any other commercial truck on the road, with the exception that it might tip the scales at a weigh station I guess? Big deal. Plenty of things are heavy. Have the crew flash their CACs at the x-ray scanner man and he waves them through so there isn't any photographic evidence the ICBM vehicle rolled through.
Your main observation threats will be VLO robotic aircraft, essentially a Communist version of Sensorcraft or P-ISR, and orbital platforms. To a lesser extent you will face ground based reconnaissance but that isn't going to collate every single truck in America based on their ICBM patrol route. Not only could you just randomize routes but you can also just fabricate records that get entered as a form of cyber camouflage.
There's a lot of ways to hide a TEL in a commercial trucking fleet. Even if some, or most, get detected it's still true that all of them better than "known GPS coordinates on Google maps" by merely being mobile and resembling a commercial truck to the point that VID is going to be required by the H-XX weapon systems operator.
Chop up the missile fleet among 1,000-2,000 road mobile TELs across the country, and you're looking at a target set so large you need a hundred or more bombers to hit it, much less catch it with its pants down. Throw out the arms treaties and make it 10,000-20,000 TELs with individual missiles. Impossible to defeat without a full strategic attack, which is impossible to hide, and reasonably cheap. We'd need to go back to having a 1970s sized stockpile again but we've done that before.
It's not doable but neither is Sentinel right now. We'll probably see Navy take the lion's share of triad lifting until the B-21 grows up.
The optimal nuclear basing strategy, assuming you have high accuracy lightweight warheads (<100 meter CEP, 300-400 KT), is to put one missile on one warhead and put them everywhere. MIRVs aren't super great now since they were a little bit of a cope for low accuracy moderate yield weapons like W76 that would plaster half of Talinin and still miss what you were aiming for. Later they became an expedient way to "boost" warhead counts/megadeaths without investing in new silos.
They're accurate enough to hit targets inside cities without needing MIRVs and high yield enough to destroy them completely with one warhead now. Poseidon and the firecracker W68 warhead was a long time ago.
MIRVs also encourage concentration of missiles and their delivery systems, which is bad in the age of stealth bombers and orbital surveillance, because they can be attacked immediately. You want to distribute these things. Since land-based weapons can't hide underground they have to hide amongst vehicle traffic instead. Finally, they make missiles heavy, and heavy missiles are expensive. They need specialized trucks to move while Midgetman is about at the tail end of the commercial GVWR for the U.S. DOT, which is good, because differentiating between two commercial trailers (according to space based observers) without also making visual identification is hard.
The alternative is that you divest land based weapons and go entirely based on strategic bombers (first strike) and submarines (second strike). I have a pretty good idea of which one of these the USA will actually pick, but if you want to keep a land based missile force you need to make them move and blend in with commercial traffic, or else you simply won't have a land based missile force.
The PRC is in a particularly bad bind here since their long range bomber force and SSBN forces are noticeably less capable and less modern than their TEL force. I suppose building silos is easier than building Columbia SSBNs in China, though, so they're doing that. It doesn't mean the United States needs to follow their lead. The United States isn't China, after all, and should find different solutions to its problems.
The current economic situation in the United States resembles the late Soviet Union so looking at late Soviet solutions is probably good.
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