There are no pet agendas, just responses to other moves. You can't allow chess opponents to have free moves. Improved ABM capabilities is a response to nuclear proliferation to North Korea plus the introduction of HGVs and a likely expanding Chinese nuclear arsenal plus their ASBMs. A reversion to START I would also address China's expanding arsenal and ambitions. Russia has cruise missiles sitting in land-based TELs that are identical to the 2,800km-range cruise missiles sitting in their warships' VLS containers, which has already clearly broken the INF Treaty and in all honesty the Islander-M probably already had a range greater than 500km based on size by my calculations anyway. Then you have the nuclear-powered cruise missile, which is a breach in principle of the INF Treaty with an actual nuclear-equipped weapon without breaching it technically. Sure the missile has a range over 5,500km, but it can still land anywhere inside that range making the maximum range moot, and the same probably applies to HGVs too really. So there has to be a response to that too, which could also double-up to provide a conventional response to China's ASBMs.
Broad Area Announcement I think
All solid Antares with 25k payload. A guy can dream.
One thing I've always wondered about is that whilst land-based missiles are more vulnerable to attack, communication with them is arguably more secure, making their deployment more reliable. The interesting thing is that the other side has opted for missiles capable of carrying many warheads (10+), whereas currently MMIIIs can only carry 3 warheads.
Interesting about the SSBNs thanks.
It was a mistake getting rid of the Peacekeepers in my opinion. The capacity advantage lies on the Russian side.
Exactly we just talk as if it’s gospel that in a crisis an opponent will fire 800-1000 warheads at our ICBM fields. Also to my knowledge there has never been a full range over the pole missile shot that would give me any confidence a mass attack could disable even 50% of our ICBMs.
I contest this idea of a limited strike being 'rode out'. A strike with 100 warheads or even 50 warheads on CONUS would generate a near full out response, with perhaps a few SLBM missiles kept behind for a second strike.
Neither DF-41, DF-31 or DF-5 are that small and 10 warhead ICBMs lead me to wonder how many warheads China really has.
They need much more capable ICBMs than MMIII or a MMIV, and need something like AMARVs on them. An assessment needs to be done on how many warheads China actually has too, because the idea that they have 40 less than France is difficult to even say without scoffing. Between the US, UK and France, NATO should have at least as many strategic warheads as Russia and China combined. And as a broad-ass estimate, I put that at ~2,600 deployed right now (1,600 for Russia and ~1,000 for China). I mean if China has just 20 DF-5Bs, 20 DF-41s and 20 DF-31Bs, that alone would be 560 warheads, ignored SLBMs, ignoring older DF-4s, and JL-2 and JL-3 SLBMs, not to mention what are probably considerable intermediate range nuclear forces and ALCM capabilities.
You honestly believe if we nuked 50 targets in either Russia or China they'd restrain themselves to 50 targets in the US? Good luck with that.
SICBM? Is that the same as AICBM? The other thing about Sarmat is that, at that size, but carrying only 4 warheads (as specified in START II), it could be a FOBS.
