WHO HAS THE MOST NUCLEAR WARHEADS
In east Europe, the war over Ukraine has heated up to
unprecedented levels.
Despite being cautioned against it, Russian president
Vladimir Putin has authorized the use of chemical weapons against the stubborn
Ukrainian resistance.
Thousands have died since the attacks began.
The president of the United States of America had warned
Putin there would be “appropriate response” if he dared to use weapons of mass
destruction.
Stockpiles of American VX gas had been moved to Europe in anticipation
of just such an event, and now cruise missiles laden with the deadly gas rain
down amongst Russian troops.
VX is banned by the UN's Chemical Weapons Convention of
1993, but the US has retained its Cold War era stockpiles as a deterrent.
Now thousands of Russian soldiers die as the deadly nerve
agent paralyzes their bodies and they slowly asphyxiate to death.
Russia is quick to respond with the use of low yield,
tactical nuclear weapons incident bases in Poland.
President Putin claims these bases are legitimate targets,
as it's through here that NATO and partner nations such as Japan and Australia
have been resupplying the Ukrainian army.
Thousands more die in the attacks, and NATO responds in kind.
Just hours later, NATO nuclear weapons are striking bases
along the Russian border, destroying troops, armored vehicles, aircraft, and
thousands of tons of critical supplies badly needed by Russian forces inside
Ukraine.
For twelve hours there is no reply and the world breathes a
sigh of relief.
Perhaps this small exchange of tactical nuclear weapons is
enough.
Maybe a full-blown nuclear confrontation can be avoided.
Those hopes are dashed however as twelve hours and eleven
minutes after the first nuclear strikes inside Russia, Russia's nuclear forces
unleash a small- but deadly salvo- against NATO's strongest member, the United
States.
The United States has approximately half an hour to react,
but can the US really defend the homeland from a nuclear attack? The first line
of defense against nuclear weapons comes with detection, and for this task the
United States has been operating Defense Support Program satellites for decades.
These special satellites use very sensitive infrared sensors
to detect the tell-tale infrared plume of a rocket launch, and they do it from
a geosynchronous orbit many thousands of miles above the earth! Their unique
orbit allows them to always face the same side of the Earth at all times, much
like the moon, so they can remain vigilant twenty four seven and have zero
lapse in surveillance.
Traditional satellites that orbit the earth will only be
able to observe one part of the earth for a limited time, and even
constellations of satellites can produce coverage gaps overtime.
As added defense, the high altitude of DSP satellites makes
them difficult to destroyer interferes with from earth, making them more
resilient during a conflict.
Defense Support Program satellites are aging however, and
currently being replaced with the new generation Space Based Infrared System,
which builds on the core concepts of DSP and adds more robust capabilities such
as better resolution to detect the launch of even smaller, shorter range
missiles, and increased resiliency against attempts to spoof, jam, or destroy
them.
SBIRS High GEO 1 was launched on May 7th, 2011, and two
other classified satellites believed to be a part of the program were also
launched in 2006 and 2008.
Further satellites have since then been launched, giving the
United States a robust early warning capability.
SBIRS Low was planned to be a constellation of 24 lower
orbit satellites meant to also track ballistic missiles, but with the ability
to distinguish between warheads and decoys-a critical need if an incoming
nuclear attack is to be stopped.
The system would have had two major sensors: a scanning
infrared sensor which would acquire ballistic missiles during the boost stage
of flight, and a tracking infrared sensor which would follow the missiles and
also track warheads, debris, and decoys.
SBIRS Low was eventually absorbed into the Space Tracking
and Surveillance System program, which aimed to test technologies for the
tracking of missiles to aid in targeting.
STSS proved to be very successful, tracking not just
traditional ballistic missiles and their payloads, but even intermediate-range
ballistic missiles which have a shorter flight time and are thus harder to
track and target.
In tests, the STSS program successfully destroyed
intermediate-range ballistic missiles by guiding interceptors to their targets.
The program further proved its capabilities on 8th July 2011
when it was tested against short-range air-launched target, simulating a
shorter-range air-launched cruise or similar missile.
Since these missiles are already hoisted high up into the
atmosphere, they are much smaller and dimmer as they require less powerful
rockets burning for a shorter amount of time to get them to their target.
In September 2021 the two satellites taking part in STSS
testing were decommissioned and moved to higher orbits to prevent accidental
collisions in the future with other objects in the same orbit.
Since then the US has been very secretive about any
low-altitude missile tracking and targeting systems, but it's likely they are
looking for more survivable options given the proliferation of anti-satellite
weapons in the militaries of China and Russia.
Once an incoming missile is tracked, targeting data can be
fed to interceptor systems- and of those the US has a few with varying rates of
success.
During the Cold War, President Ronald Reagan imagined a
comprehensive anti-ballistic missile defense system that would make the United
States safe from nuclear attack.
Since then attempts to implement successful missile defense have proven Difficult.
The main problem is that ballistic missiles are moving at
thousands of miles an hour, giving any defenses very little time to react, and
even less time to launch a second setoff countermeasures if the first fail.
The second problem is the sheer altitude of an incoming
ballistic missile.
These missiles leave the atmosphere and cruise through space
for the mid-course portion of their flight, meaning that any defense against
ballistic missiles requires the ability to reach up and into space.
This requires a missile of significant size if taking the
traditional ballistic approach.
Another option is laser weapons, but they are mostly
ineffective due to atmospheric scattering, and would instead need to be
installed on satellites.
Thanks to dispersal of the beam though, these satellites
would have to be in fairly low orbits, which means you would need a lot of them
to maintain a constant screen of protection over the US homeland.
The next issue is actually hitting the missile itself.
Our best option for missile defense is kinetic- meaning that
the best method we have for destroying nuclear ballistic missile is by using
another missile.
HOW FAST CAN NECULEAR MISSILE TRAVEL
However, this requires two missiles moving at thousands of
miles per hour to physically ram into each other- a ballistic missile is moving
so fast that traditional anti-air kill methods such as fragmentation warheads
that only require a missile to get close to its target to shred it with
shrapnel, simply aren't effective.
Plus, ballistic missiles are large and once they are in
their mid-course phase simply shredding some critical systems isn't going to
stop it from releasing its nuclear payload down on your head.
It's been described as hitting a bullet with another bullet,
and requires math so precise it would make Einstein cry himself to sleep at
night.
Even the slightest miscalculation, or a particularly strong
gust of wind as the interceptor rises into the sky, could be enough to spell a
miss, and thus the US has developed some very powerful computers to guide
interceptors to their targets.
To be safe though, an intercept attempt will typically
involve multiple interceptors.
But there's yet another hurdle in knocking out incoming
enemy ballistic missiles- decoys and countermeasures.
A modern missile is capable of carrying multiple warheads,
but only some of these will be real.
The rest will be dummy warheads meant to lure enemy
interceptors.
This means that it's best to intercept a missile before it
has a chance to release its payload-but this is highly unlikely and requires
missile defenses very close to the launch site.
It's the entire reason that Russia has been so cautious
about US missile defenses in Europe, and China has joined in after the
deployment of US missile defenses to South Korea.
With multiple decoys, an interceptor has to strike the
correct target or else you've just wasted a very expensive missile of your own
and accomplished nothing.
But ballistic missiles will also carry chaff to confuse
radar tracking the incoming warheads.
Basically a cloud of highly radar reflective material, its
un-stealth technology meant to be as visible as possible and thus confuse
radar, making targeting impossible.
The best or worst part is that it's really cheap too,
basically costing only a few thousands of dollars while defeating radars and
computer systems costing tens of millions of dollars.
So how in the world does the US defend against nuclear attack?
The main defense against nuclear attack on the homeland seeks to destroy the
enemy missile during the midcourse phase, this is when the missile has entered
space and is cruising along, making small adjustments, and preparing to enter
the atmosphere.
This will be the largest portion of a missile's flight path
depending on how far away the target is.
To knock enemy missiles out of space, the US has developed
the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense system.
These large missiles are designed to fly into space and
smack head-on into an enemy missile, using a dummy, kinetic kill warhead to
smash the enemy missile into dust.
The system consists of approximately 60 interceptors
deployed in two bases, one in Fort Greely, Alaska and one in Vandenberg Space
Force Base, California.
A third site was proposed to be based in Poland, but Russia
got extremely upset over it and it was eventually canceled.
This geographic dispersal allows GMD missiles to knock out
threats coming from Europe, which would be traveling over the North Pole, and
threats from Asia or the Pacific.
If you're wondering how the system defends against missile
launches from enemy submarines close to shore, it doesn't, and you better hope
that on that day the US navy is on the ball and hunting down hostile subs.
The GMD system is made up of six main sub-systems.
The first is the exoatmospheric kill vehicle.
This consists of a solid metal 140 lb. (64 kg) interceptor
fitted with various maneuvering thrusters.
These thrusters wouldn't help the kill vehicle accelerate,
but are instead to help the interceptor make course adjustments and hit its
target with pin-point accuracy.
The Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle was meant to be replaced
with a Redesigned Kill Vehicle in 2025, but the contract was canceled due to
serious design problems detected by the Department of Defense.
A replacement will have to wait until the Next Generation
Interceptor program begins to mature.
Next is the boost vehicle, the massive rocket that carries
the interceptor up and into space.
This comes with its own missile silo and silo interface
vault, all located underground.
The Battle management command, control, and communications
system, or BMC3, helps guide the missile to its target by feeding it targeting
data and ensuring uninterrupted communications with the interceptor and boost
vehicle.
Ground-based radars, space-based early warning radars, and
forward-based X band radars all make up the final sub-systems of the GMD
program.
This veritable fleet of radars is all designed to provide
high resolution data during various phases of an incoming missile's flight, and
their capabilities are classified at the highest levels.
It's thought that these highly sensitive radar systems are
so capable that they can detect aliens farting inside their UFOs- and they need
to be if they're going to have any chance of hitting an incoming ballistic
missile with another missile.
GMD's effectiveness has been a subject of much contention,
especially since its cost the US billions of dollars.
To date, the system has a success rate of about 55%, and
critics are quick to point out that none of these tests have been carried out
against dummy targets using a full suite of countermeasures.
In reality, one could expect a success rate much, much lower
than 55%.
Luckily, the US has additional layers of protection against
nuclear missiles.
In response to Russia's anger over the proposed deployment
of a missile shield in Poland, the US shifted focus to the development of the
Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System.
This system is split into two components, the ABMD is
designed to destroy short to intermediate range ballistic missiles while they
are still in the atmosphere, either on ascent if close enough to a launch site,
or more likely on descent.
AEGIS BMD, also known as Sea-Based Midcourse, is designed to
intercept ballistic missiles during their flight through space, and is thus
capable of targeting missiles of any range.
The origin of this program is in the mid-1980s with
President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, the much vaunted attempt at
creating a shield against any missile threat.
Initially SDI called for space-based railguns, but forty
years on and railgun technology is far from mature with the US navy canceling
its own railgun cannon project.
A new system known as Lightweight Exo-Atmospheric
Projectile, or LEAP was developed and testing began in conjunction with the
sophisticated AEGIS system.
LEAP would eventually lead to several successful tests
against ballistic missile targets and become Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense,
using the Standard Missile-3 to pulverize a ballistic missile.
The first Block 1 system was delivered in October 2004 and
an Aegis 3.
0 update delivered in 2005.
The world's best air defense system had just gotten the
capability to knock ballistic missiles out of the sky.
AEGIS BMD would prove so successful that Aegis Ashore was
developed as a land-based component, with a NATO Aegis Ashore ballistic missile
defense system site being built in Romania, and in Poland.
On May 21st, 2014 Aegis Ashore successfully detected,
tracked, and destroyed a ballistic missile target.
Aegis ballistic missile defense, whether ashore or at sea,
uses the Rim-161 Standard Missile3 for mid-course interceptions, and the RIM
156 Standard Extended Range Block IV for termminal-phaseinterceptions.
An interceptor is launched from a vertical launch cell and
guided to its target by its home ship or AEGIS Ashore facility; it then collides
with an enemy missile with over 130megajoules of kinetic energy, requiring no
explosive charge.
Interceptions inside of the atmosphere, or during the
terminal phase of an attack, carry blast fragmentation warheads since the
reentry vehicle of a missile is much smaller than the larger ballistic missile
body that needs to be destroyed during the mid-course in order to neutralize
the threat.
The benefit of AEGIS ballistic missile defense when mounted
on ships is that ships are mobile, and thus can be quickly repositioned to
defend likely target areas- or to be closer to likely launch sites.
As it's better to target a ballistic missile as early as
possible to avoid it deploying countermeasures, the ability to reposition your
ballistic missile defenses is greatly valued by the US Navy.
As is the ability to help cover facilities or locations that
may be left vulnerable either because no other defenses exist, or because
mid-course defenses have failed.
A terminal-phase interceptor fired from an AEGIS equipped
ship may be the last-ditch effort that saves your city from nuclear
annihilation.
The US, Japan, Romania, and Poland all have Aegis Ashore
facilities, and the US Navy has5 Ticonderoga-class cruisers and 28 Raleigh
Burke class destroyers equipped with ballistic missile defense capabilities.
These ships are split up with 17 assigned to the Pacific
Fleet and 16 to the Atlantic fleet.
Future shipbuilding plans however calls for 80 to 97 total
ships to be equipped with ballistic missile defense capabilities within the
next thirty years.
This is driven not just from fears of nuclear attack, but by
the necessity of protecting the US Navy from China's ever-evolving anti-ship
ballistic missiles.
China's missiles represent a serious threat to America, and
could push the US Navy out of the South pacific for good if not countered.
The US has also helped Japan equip four of its ships with
ballistic missile defense capabilities, and this number is also expected to
rise in response to the development of North Korean nuclear weapons and the
Chinese threat.
The next layer of protection for the United States is the
Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense system.
THAAD, as it's also known, was first proposed in 1987 as a
mobile ballistic missile defense system.
At the time, the problem with ballistic missile defenses was
that they were vulnerable to conventional attack as their locations were well
known.
Adding mobility not only increased survivability, but also
allowed the US Army to move them to locations where no other ballistic missile
defense capabilities existed.
At first, THAAD failed miserably, scoring only two
successful intercepts out of eight tests.
However, as the technology matured the success rate
increased to nearly 100%- though again the system has been criticized for not
tackling realistic threats making full use of dummies and countermeasures.
This hasn't stopped the system from being exported to US
bases around the world, and even for use with partner nations such as Turkey,
the United Arab Emirates- where it intercepted a Houthi ballistic missile in
2022-, South Korea, Romania, and Israel.
THAAD works much the same way as any other terminal-phase
defense system.
Its powerful AN/TPY-2 X-band radar tracks the target as it
flies through space, and once it's plotted where and when the target will
re-enter the atmosphere, launches an interceptor.
The interceptor is then guided to the target by the radar
where it uses a kinetic warhead to smash the incoming missile to pieces.
THAAD is believed to be so effective that China has
complained about its deployment to South Korea, despite US assurances that its
goal is to protect the nation from North Korean nuclear weapons.
Next, the US has one final line of defense for ballistic
missile intercepts- the US Army Patriot missile defense battery.
Originally, the Patriot system was meant to take on airborne
threats, but as the threat grew to include cruise missiles and ballistic
missiles, the system was evolved to allow it to destroy these faster, nimbler
targets.
As a replacement to the Nike Hercules system, the Patriot is
now the US Army's only line of defense against airborne targets.
The Patriot's main appeal is its ease of set-up, requiring
less than an hour to prepare for operation.
All of its components, including fire control, and the
launchers are all truck or trailer mounted, giving them great mobility.
The Patriot uses AN/MPQ-53 and AN/MPQ-65 passively
electronically scanned array radars, which are faster and more efficient than
older mechanically scanning arrays like the type you've probably seen deployed
on Russian vehicles inside Ukraine.
The AN/MPQ-65 radar features a second traveling wave tube
which amplifies the radar's signal and gives it more power to track and detect
hostile threats.
Unlike similar SAM units, the Patriot uses only a single
unit to search, identify, track, and engage targets, while other systems use
multiple radars to do the same job.
The Patriot's radar beam is very narrow in comparison with
traditional radar dishes.
This however allows it to focus more energy in a smaller
space, which in turn allows it to better detect and track small, very agile and
high-speed targets such as missiles.
The radar also has increased effectiveness against stealth
aircraft, and the focused beam is very resistant to attempts to jam it or
interfere with its operation.
If the system detects it is being jammed, it quickly changes
frequencies to avoid the jamming signal, repeating as necessary to provide good
data to intercepting missiles.
Patriot missiles work much the same way as any other
terminal-phase defense system, by launching a missile on an intercept course
with an incoming target.
This is a short-range defense only though, and can only
protect small geographic locations and only during the terminal phase of a
ballistic missile's flight.
In essence, Patriot batteries are the last line of defense
when all other options have failed.
The current state of US ballistic missile defenses leaves
some serious doubts as to whether protecting from a nuclear attack is
realistically feasible.
To date, successful intercepts have been carried out under
very controlled conditions, and there’s a lot of reason to doubt that any of
these systems would be able to defeat modern ballistic missile equipped with a
full host of countermeasures.
Even if capable of doing so, each intercept would require
multiple salvos of interceptors for redundancy, which means that even with the
full complement of US ballistic missile defenses operating at peak efficiency,
only small pockets of the US homeland could be offered some measure of
protection in the case of all-out nuclear war.
Compared with the ballistic missile defense capabilities of
other nations though, this might be all that's needed for the United States to
survive as a nation, and to do so in a far better state than any of its
potential adversaries.
To be truthful though, that's not saying much as the global
consequences of a full nuclear exchange will likely trigger human extinction
anyways.
This brings up the question if ballistic missile defense is
even worth it, especially considering the extreme cost.
To try to improve ballistic missile defense in the future,
the US is already looking anew technologies.
During the 2000s the US experimented with an airborne laser
concept.
Essentially just a Boeing 747 equipped with a massive laser
at its nose, the Airborne Laser solved many of the problems of ballistic
missile defense- namely the difficulty in guiding a kill vehicle to its target
when both it and the target are flying at hypersonic speeds and over great
distances.
The Airborne Laser could instead target a missile during its
most vulnerable phase-the boost phase- and destroy it at the speed of light.
In multiple tests, the Airborne Laser successfully destroyed
ballistic missiles and other airborne targets.
However, ultimately the project was scrapped in 2010 due to
numerous problems.
First, the laser was only effective at very short ranges due
to atmospheric scattering, so as Secretary of Defense Robert Gates stated, if
the laser was to be used to intercept missiles from Iran, it would have to be
orbiting inside of Iran's national borders to do so.
Secondly, in order to successfully defend against ballistic
missile threats from a single hostile country, a fleet of 10 to 20 of the
aircraft would be required at a cost of 1.
5billion each and costing $100 million a year to operate.
The Airborne Laser was officially dead- but the data gained
from testing has been invaluable in developing other directed energy weapons.
In fact, the concept of an airborne laser has now been once
again resurrected, only this time with the laser mounted on very high latitude
unmanned drones.
These drones would fly at altitudes far in excess of large
jet aircraft such as the original test platform, and at such heights would
maintain laser beam integrity over longer ranges.
An unmanned drone flying at 65,000 feet would be able to
engage targets as far away as hundreds of kilometers, and a fleet of smaller
unmanned drones would be cheaper to procure and operate.
They could also fly for very long periods of time through
airborne refueling.
As technology improves, we may once again see the return of
the canceled Airborne Laser program, albeit in a much different form than
predicted by its original builders.
It's even possible that lasers could be installed on low
earth satellites, and this would infect be the most efficient method of
ballistic missile defense.
However, doing so would prompt other nations to begin arming
their own satellites and create space weapons race.
Inevitably, in order to protect from space-based
interception, nuclear weapons would logically be moved into space themselves
where they could be dropped straight down onto targets below, making most forms
of interception impossible or mostly useless.
But as it stands today, while the US could probably successfully defend from an attack by a rogue state such as North Korea, there is little hope of surviving even a moderate exchange of nuclear weapons even after hundreds of billions spent in ballistic missile defense.