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Russia already has hypersonic. And there is no realistic defense against them. They scare the crap out of DC because a Russian sub could pop up off the coast

Russia already has hypersonic. And there is no realistic defense against them. They scare the crap out of DC because a Russian sub could pop up off the coast of New Jersey and 5 million people including 99% of all US politicians would be dead 6 minutes later. So of course the US needs them.

jpm_sd 4y ago
The US having our own hypersonic missiles is not actually a defense against this scenario you have outlined?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- softcactus 4y ago
  No, hypersonics would be too fast and have too low of a flight profile for our early warning systems to work. Our second strike facilities would be destroyed before they could launch a counter-attack. Game theory-wise, the winner would be whoever struck first, since they would get to use their full arsenal. Retaliation could only be done reliably with submarines. That's what frightens me the most about hypersonic development. Whoever cracks the secret and can field the most will potentially upend MAD.
  - LegitShady 4y ago
    only if you pretend nuclear submarines don't exist, and that russia knows where all second strike facilities are, and can target all of them with supersonic missiles. I don't think so.
    - softcactus 4y ago
      > only if you pretend nuclear submarines don't exist Did you read my comment? I acknowledged that submarines would be the most reliable second strike option. Those are a lot of "ifs" sure, but it's a numbers game. If deployed hypersonics were as numerous as ICBMs in the 80s, then it would be about who strikes first. If a first strike can reduce the enemy population by 90%, and reduce their second strike capability to kill only 70% of your own population, then striking first is in your best interest. I am talking about the 21st century as a whole. Can we really be so sure that at some point MAD will cease to exist and someone pulls the trigger? I wouldn't be so complacent about it.
      - myrandomcomment 4y ago
        US boomers have enough firepower to wipe out everyone in Russia without the need for other weapons. That is the point. There is no 70%, it is 99.999%. At the end of the cold war a Soviet naval admiral said they had managed to track a US boomer twice for a few minutes. The MAD balance is still there for the most part. The most part being it is unclear what % of Russian nukes still work given the shit show of maintenance and graft shown in the convention forces used in the Ukraine. US has 14 Ohio class subs, ~90 warheads each. This is in addition to 400 MM3 ICBMs. Unlike the Russians the US knows their weapons system will work.
        _kbh_ 4y ago
        It wont just be the US who responds either I think that its highly likely that both France and the UK launch nukes if the US gets attacked.
        softcactus 4y ago
        My point is not that Russia is going to overpower us. My point is that without significant second-strike capabilities like submarines, hypersonic weapons could destabilize MAD at some point in the next 100 years. Early detection becomes moot meaning that bombers and possibly some silos become useless. Also I don't know what a "boomer" is, do you mean submarine?
        myrandomcomment 4y ago
        A "boomer" is slag for a nuclear missile submarine. Hypersonic missiles do not change the logic behind MAD which is "you can launch a first strike, but we can still respond with enough damage that it makes doing so untenable."
        softcactus 4y ago
        I am aware, but it renders a lot of our existing infrastructure useless which means we'll have to invest a lot in other second strike measures. Which is gonna cost a lot.
treeman79 4y ago
20 minutes later Russia would be dead. 20 minutes later the world. Been like this for many decades. That it hasn’t happened is kind of surprising.
- tintor 4y ago
  How would US attribute who's sub it was? They would have to retaliate on every other (non-allied) country.
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    > How would US attribute who's sub it was? The US has quite a.lot of ASW resources, can identify subs, and you can't do that attack without providing a position fix. Also, the US has other intelligence sources. Also, current political situation helps narrow likely attackers. Also, and perhaps most importantly, not a lot of people have hypersonic weapons and subs to deliver them near the US. Flashy unique capabilities are great in many ways, but they are absolute crap for obscuring responsibility.
  - myrandomcomment 4y ago
    The US pretty much knows the location of the Russian missiles subs most of the the time. It would be a bit crazy to gamble on being sure the one you launch from was the one that was missed. Also most of the Russian boomer fleet is in dock most of the time.
- logicchains 4y ago
  > 20 minutes later Russia would be dead. 20 minutes later the world. The idea of nuclear winter has been largely debunked by modern science. Sure the places hit by nukes would be destroyed, but most nukes aren't powerful enough to push smoke into the atmosphere, so there'd be no global cloud blackening out the sun and ending all life on earth.
Hayvok 4y ago
“Mutually assured destruction” is still the defense in this particular case. Anybody who thinks that America wouldn’t retaliate and turn half of east-Asia into a sheet of radioactive glass is kidding themselves.
- dylan604 4y ago
  Does MAD still work if the person threatening the first strike is a literal mad man that is suffering a terminal illness knowing their time is short anyways?
  - ip26 4y ago
    If he wants his legacy to be a newly forged Russian Empire, then maybe yes.
  - dismantlethesun 4y ago
    It worked well enough for Ronald Reagan who believed he was protected from assassination by psychic powers, and had Alzheimer’s while in office. A nation is stronger than just the leader. Even in the age of kings, subordinates aristocrats wouldn’t walk willingly into a no win situation.
jeffbee 4y ago
This seems irrelevant. It has been conclusively demonstrated that the U.S. (like everyone else) lacks any kind of meaningful ready air defense. Some trucker crashed a Cessna into the White House, and DCA flights pass within 5km of the Capitol. If you wanted to decapitate the U.S. you wouldn't need a submarine, you'd just load your weapon into a 747 and file a flight plan for DCA. Nobody will stop you.
- Victerius 4y ago
  Oh boy, this comment is all kinds of wrong. Everything changed after 9/11. There is a permanent Flight-Restricted Zone above the capital now.
  - jeffbee 4y ago
    Yes, DIRECTLY above the Capitol. But: https://flightaware.com/live/airport/KDCA https://flightaware.com/live/airport/KDCA
  - jjoonathan 4y ago
    and anyone who has walked around DC in the last 20 years can attest to the missile trucks they conspicuously park around the place.
  - missedthecue 4y ago
    he said 5km from the capitol
JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> a Russian sub could pop up off the coast of New Jersey and 5 million people including 99% of all US politicians would be dead 6 minutes later Anyone pitching this is talking tripe. Russia can already do this. They’ve been able to do this since the 60s. We have no missile defence against a MAD attack, which is what you propose involves. Also, mechanically, Russia’s hypersonics are air-to-ground, anti-ship and ballistic or semi-ballistic. They evade naval and missile defences with more kinetic energy. Even theoretically, a gliding hypersonic missile (a) screams a heat signature more trivially detectable than a ballistic and (b) rapidly bleeds off the kinetic energy that separates it from a cruise missile. In summary, it’s not some magic new category of weapon, but a trade-off between ICBMs and cruise missiles. (Note: not best of both worlds. More expensive, more detectable and less accurate than ballistic. More expensive, more detectable and less manoeuvrable than cruise.) The real threat hypersonics pose is to carrier groups. With Russia that’s mostly hypothetical, since they apparently can’t even get their subsonic weapons to hit targets with accuracy.
- swamp40 4y ago
  I don't disagree with you, but Russia IS firing the 3M22 Zircon from nuclear subs now. At Mach 9, that's about 2-3 minutes to impact DC. And everyone knows, first strike, best strike. Putin would survive.
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    > Russia IS firing the 3M22 Zircon from nuclear subs now A semi-ballistic cruise missile. > At Mach 9, that's about 2-3 minutes to impact DC ICBMs go Mach 20+ in their final stage. Falcon 9 flies faster than Zircon. Hypersonics don’t instantly accelerate. Their advantage is in flying low and plasma stealth, both of which are good against ground-based radar but not against anything in the air or in space. If your stealth comes from submarine launch, you gain little from flying hypersonic. It’s faster than cruise or short-range ballistic, but much less accurate for a decapitation strike. > Putin would survive So would most of the U.S. government. (Not the civilian government, perhaps. But again, this is old news.) Certainly almost all of its military.
  - 4y ago

jpm_sd 4y ago

The US having our own hypersonic missiles is not actually a defense against this scenario you have outlined?

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
softcactus 4y ago
No, hypersonics would be too fast and have too low of a flight profile for our early warning systems to work. Our second strike facilities would be destroyed before they could launch a counter-attack. Game theory-wise, the winner would be whoever struck first, since they would get to use their full arsenal. Retaliation could only be done reliably with submarines. That's what frightens me the most about hypersonic development. Whoever cracks the secret and can field the most will potentially upend MAD.
- LegitShady 4y ago
  only if you pretend nuclear submarines don't exist, and that russia knows where all second strike facilities are, and can target all of them with supersonic missiles. I don't think so.
  - softcactus 4y ago
    > only if you pretend nuclear submarines don't exist Did you read my comment? I acknowledged that submarines would be the most reliable second strike option. Those are a lot of "ifs" sure, but it's a numbers game. If deployed hypersonics were as numerous as ICBMs in the 80s, then it would be about who strikes first. If a first strike can reduce the enemy population by 90%, and reduce their second strike capability to kill only 70% of your own population, then striking first is in your best interest. I am talking about the 21st century as a whole. Can we really be so sure that at some point MAD will cease to exist and someone pulls the trigger? I wouldn't be so complacent about it.
    - myrandomcomment 4y ago
      US boomers have enough firepower to wipe out everyone in Russia without the need for other weapons. That is the point. There is no 70%, it is 99.999%. At the end of the cold war a Soviet naval admiral said they had managed to track a US boomer twice for a few minutes. The MAD balance is still there for the most part. The most part being it is unclear what % of Russian nukes still work given the shit show of maintenance and graft shown in the convention forces used in the Ukraine. US has 14 Ohio class subs, ~90 warheads each. This is in addition to 400 MM3 ICBMs. Unlike the Russians the US knows their weapons system will work.
      - _kbh_ 4y ago
        It wont just be the US who responds either I think that its highly likely that both France and the UK launch nukes if the US gets attacked.
      - softcactus 4y ago
        My point is not that Russia is going to overpower us. My point is that without significant second-strike capabilities like submarines, hypersonic weapons could destabilize MAD at some point in the next 100 years. Early detection becomes moot meaning that bombers and possibly some silos become useless. Also I don't know what a "boomer" is, do you mean submarine?
        myrandomcomment 4y ago
        A "boomer" is slag for a nuclear missile submarine. Hypersonic missiles do not change the logic behind MAD which is "you can launch a first strike, but we can still respond with enough damage that it makes doing so untenable."
        softcactus 4y ago
        I am aware, but it renders a lot of our existing infrastructure useless which means we'll have to invest a lot in other second strike measures. Which is gonna cost a lot.

treeman79 4y ago

20 minutes later Russia would be dead. 20 minutes later the world. Been like this for many decades. That it hasn’t happened is kind of surprising.

tintor 4y ago
How would US attribute who's sub it was? They would have to retaliate on every other (non-allied) country.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > How would US attribute who's sub it was? The US has quite a.lot of ASW resources, can identify subs, and you can't do that attack without providing a position fix. Also, the US has other intelligence sources. Also, current political situation helps narrow likely attackers. Also, and perhaps most importantly, not a lot of people have hypersonic weapons and subs to deliver them near the US. Flashy unique capabilities are great in many ways, but they are absolute crap for obscuring responsibility.
- myrandomcomment 4y ago
  The US pretty much knows the location of the Russian missiles subs most of the the time. It would be a bit crazy to gamble on being sure the one you launch from was the one that was missed. Also most of the Russian boomer fleet is in dock most of the time.
logicchains 4y ago
> 20 minutes later Russia would be dead. 20 minutes later the world. The idea of nuclear winter has been largely debunked by modern science. Sure the places hit by nukes would be destroyed, but most nukes aren't powerful enough to push smoke into the atmosphere, so there'd be no global cloud blackening out the sun and ending all life on earth.

Hayvok 4y ago

“Mutually assured destruction” is still the defense in this particular case. Anybody who thinks that America wouldn’t retaliate and turn half of east-Asia into a sheet of radioactive glass is kidding themselves.

dylan604 4y ago
Does MAD still work if the person threatening the first strike is a literal mad man that is suffering a terminal illness knowing their time is short anyways?
- ip26 4y ago
  If he wants his legacy to be a newly forged Russian Empire, then maybe yes.
- dismantlethesun 4y ago
  It worked well enough for Ronald Reagan who believed he was protected from assassination by psychic powers, and had Alzheimer’s while in office. A nation is stronger than just the leader. Even in the age of kings, subordinates aristocrats wouldn’t walk willingly into a no win situation.

jeffbee 4y ago

This seems irrelevant. It has been conclusively demonstrated that the U.S. (like everyone else) lacks any kind of meaningful ready air defense. Some trucker crashed a Cessna into the White House, and DCA flights pass within 5km of the Capitol. If you wanted to decapitate the U.S. you wouldn't need a submarine, you'd just load your weapon into a 747 and file a flight plan for DCA. Nobody will stop you.

Victerius 4y ago
Oh boy, this comment is all kinds of wrong. Everything changed after 9/11. There is a permanent Flight-Restricted Zone above the capital now.
- jeffbee 4y ago
  Yes, DIRECTLY above the Capitol. But: https://flightaware.com/live/airport/KDCA https://flightaware.com/live/airport/KDCA
- jjoonathan 4y ago
  and anyone who has walked around DC in the last 20 years can attest to the missile trucks they conspicuously park around the place.
- missedthecue 4y ago
  he said 5km from the capitol

JumpCrisscross 4y ago

> a Russian sub could pop up off the coast of New Jersey and 5 million people including 99% of all US politicians would be dead 6 minutes later Anyone pitching this is talking tripe. Russia can already do this. They’ve been able to do this since the 60s. We have no missile defence against a MAD attack, which is what you propose involves. Also, mechanically, Russia’s hypersonics are air-to-ground, anti-ship and ballistic or semi-ballistic. They evade naval and missile defences with more kinetic energy. Even theoretically, a gliding hypersonic missile (a) screams a heat signature more trivially detectable than a ballistic and (b) rapidly bleeds off the kinetic energy that separates it from a cruise missile. In summary, it’s not some magic new category of weapon, but a trade-off between ICBMs and cruise missiles. (Note: not best of both worlds. More expensive, more detectable and less accurate than ballistic. More expensive, more detectable and less manoeuvrable than cruise.) The real threat hypersonics pose is to carrier groups. With Russia that’s mostly hypothetical, since they apparently can’t even get their subsonic weapons to hit targets with accuracy.

swamp40 4y ago
I don't disagree with you, but Russia IS firing the 3M22 Zircon from nuclear subs now. At Mach 9, that's about 2-3 minutes to impact DC. And everyone knows, first strike, best strike. Putin would survive.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > Russia IS firing the 3M22 Zircon from nuclear subs now A semi-ballistic cruise missile. > At Mach 9, that's about 2-3 minutes to impact DC ICBMs go Mach 20+ in their final stage. Falcon 9 flies faster than Zircon. Hypersonics don’t instantly accelerate. Their advantage is in flying low and plasma stealth, both of which are good against ground-based radar but not against anything in the air or in space. If your stealth comes from submarine launch, you gain little from flying hypersonic. It’s faster than cruise or short-range ballistic, but much less accurate for a decapitation strike. > Putin would survive So would most of the U.S. government. (Not the civilian government, perhaps. But again, this is old news.) Certainly almost all of its military.
- 4y ago