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I think they sell short the destabilization argument. In practice these systems aren't going to be able to shoot down a fixed percentage of a strike. In a strik

I think they sell short the destabilization argument. In practice these systems aren't going to be able to shoot down a fixed percentage of a strike. In a strike all missiles are going to be coming in more or less simultaneously, and the ABM system will be able to shoot down a fixed number of them. So it's not a case of shooting down 50% of a strike, it's being able to shoot down 12 missiles from a strike. And that number isn't far off from how much GMD is going to be able to do. And that's the thing about GMD and other BMD systems: they aren't going to be much use against a full nuclear exchange. But what they are great for is the ragged second strike scenario. If the US goes first in a nuclear war and catches Russia/China off guard, it's possible for most of their hundreds of missiles to be taken out in their silos. And they might only be able to answer with a dozen or so missiles in response, which GMD could take care of. And that's the destabilizing aspect of this, it encourages the holder of the ABM system to go first in a nuclear exchange. Because no one cares if 12 out of 400 missiles are shot down, but they do if 12 out of 12 missiles are shot down. It then encourages the opponent to make more survivable nuclear delivery systems. Which is exactly what we see from Russia and China: hypersonic glide vehicles, fractional orbital bombardment systems (basically sending the ICBM all the way around the planet so it strikes at the US from the south instead of the north and away from where GMD is deployed), crazy stuff like nuclear-powered cruise missiles and the Poseidon bomb. It encourages further development of nuclear weapons, meaning creating an arms race. In short, I don't think the ABM systems help us very much in the nuclear war scenario (conventional short-ranged and theater ballistic missiles are a different story).

ceejayoz 4y ago
A single Russian nuclear submarine can carry 800 nuclear warheads [edit: Misread a number; 96 is apparently the max. Still, enough.]. The chances of Russia getting down to twelve nukes after a first strike - even if they don't get off a response while they're in flight - is slim. The nuclear-powered cruise missiles and Poseidon bomb are just Russia's versions of the V weapons in WWII; flashy, but not actually useful, and taking resources from the more staid and boring aspects like "keep your logistics vehicles' tires from exploding".
- jjk166 4y ago
  > A single Russian nuclear submarine can carry 800 nuclear warheads. A Borei class submarine can carry 16 missiles with up to 6 warheads each, for 96 total. The older Delta class can carry 16 missiles with 4 warheads each for 64 total. The 800 warheads is the total capacity of Russia's entire fleet, not all of which are active at any given time.
  - bilbo0s 4y ago
    - thfuran 4y ago
      >is there really that serious a lack of information in the world's general populace on how nuclear war would likely play out given the capabilities of all the delivery platforms? Of course there is. There's a serious lack of information in the world's general populace in pretty much everything. Most people have at best a surface level oversimplified understanding of most things and then probably a few things they're reasonably well-informed about, and nobody's an expert in everything.
    - tiahura 4y ago
      If only people would watch Dr. Strangelove.
      - zeruch 4y ago
        ...they'd be deeply confused, and likely revolt at the satire, mistaking it for jingoism.
    - zeruch 4y ago
      In the 80s, most teens could rattle off some measure of nuclear stats, in between bouts of jingoistic refrains. We were more technically literate, and still dangerously stupid. "Just reiterates how important it is to ensure that weapons of mass destruction are kept in the secure custody of competent authorities. Not only in America, Russia and China, but the rest of the world as well." Given the governments mentioned, the first and second sentence would appear to be in contradiction.
VictorPath 4y ago
Yes. it is destabilizing. Trump pulled out of the Open Skies treaty in 2021, Obama opened the Aegis mentioned in the article in Romania in 2016. It's the restart of a nuclear arms race, which will mean a lot of money for military contractors. Apparently it hasn't gone far enough for this person, who wants more of the money I make working be taxed and sent to military contractors so they can heat up a nuclear arms race that had quieted down by the 1990s.
- aerostable_slug 4y ago
  Open Skies was a net loser for the US. The Russians were abusing the system and everyone who "counts" either has recce satellites of their own or access to reporting from friendly nations. Aegis GMD has zero effectiveness against a missile field filled with SS-19s, or mobile SS-27s, or anything else that poses an existential threat to the United States. Russia knows this. "Destabilizing" would be an order of magnitude increase in the GMD interceptors at Greely and Vandenberg and the proliferation of battle management radars, and we aren't doing that. And if you weren't paying attention, there's no "restart" of the arms race. While the US was involved in the -stans, Russia was moving forward with a variety of delivery systems. The race never stopped.
  - twelve40 4y ago
    > Aegis GMD has zero effectiveness against a missile field filled with SS-19s, or mobile SS-27s, or anything else that poses an existential threat so... why is it there then? just curious. I think the official publicly touted reason at the time was to protect Romania from Iran, is that it?
    - riku_iki 4y ago
      early warning system for US defense?
      - aerostable_slug 4y ago
        Iran.
pydry 4y ago
I agree. I was pretty shocked to see this: >The difficulty of shooting down an incoming missile is broadly overstated I figured it would back this controversial claim by explaining how some clever new tech is able to shoot down Russia's current state of the art - its hypersonic missiles. Nope. Zero mention of hypersonic missiles. Why? Is this just a military contractor putting its cap out and asking for $$$?
- scottLobster 4y ago
  Hypersonic missiles are still in the prototype/research stage, the short/medium-term nuclear threat remains non-hypersonic. Regardless, right now there are zero systems that can hope to stop a hypersonic missile, reaction time limitations alone are a huge hurdle there. That said, effective missile defense is theoretically possible even given current tech, it's just extremely hard. In that sense it's not different than the various AI initiatives. Lots of wasted money on goose chases, but also lots of advantage for those who get it right, and some legitimately useful innovations along the way.
  - lsllc 4y ago
    According to a late August Reuters article, Russia has deployed hypersonic missiles at least 3 times in Ukraine: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-says-it-has-deployed-kinzhal-hypersonic-missile-three-times-ukraine-2022-08-21/ https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-says-it-has-depl...
    - 988747 4y ago
      Still counts as "research", just this time in actual war conditions.
    - scottLobster 4y ago
      Research includes live fire tests. Russia has the advantage of an actual warzone with actual air defenses to test in. That or they're running out of missiles and down to pushing research prototypes into service (which given their use or Iranian drones and other supply woes would not surprise me).
newsclues 4y ago
What we have recently seen from China is actually just a missile sponge of large silo fields of ICBMs being built so that even if America does strike first, China still has a nuclear deterrent in the form of the missiles not wiped out. It's hard to take out a lot of targets even if they are relatively soft. https://www.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/1212970/a-second-silo-field/ https://www.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/1212970/a-second-sil...
- krunck 4y ago
  Regan proposed this in the 80s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dense_Pack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dense_Pack
  - sidewndr46 4y ago
    Wasn't "dense pack" the scaled version? The previous concept was to just build huge fields of silos that were mostly empty I thought.
- openasocket 4y ago
  There are a variety of different approaches to counter the ABM and ragged second strike scenario, China is investing in several. * Just build more nukes. Adding more warheads, especially ground-launched ones, is cheaper than adding more interceptors to the ABM shield, so it's always a losing game. Thankfully, no one seems to be pursuing this route, since that is massively destabilizing. * Make it harder to take out all of your missiles in a first strike. Your link is an excellent example of this. Building additional silos is even cheaper than building additional missiles, and then you can play a shell game where you don't know which silo houses a missile and which does not so you have to strike at them all. There are other basing options available, like road-mobile launchers, which China and Russia have both invested in, though this is easier with shorter range ballistic missiles. And of course there are ballistic missile submarines, which give most survivable second-strike capability, but are much more expensive to operate. * Use a delivery system that is harder to intercept, which I mentioned before. China has tested using both hypersonic glide vehicles and fractional orbital bombardment, in fact both at the same time (https://www.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/1213655/a-fractional-orbital-bombardment-system-with-a-hypersonic-glide-vehicle/ https://www.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/1213655/a-fractional... ).

ceejayoz 4y ago

A single Russian nuclear submarine can carry 800 nuclear warheads [edit: Misread a number; 96 is apparently the max. Still, enough.]. The chances of Russia getting down to twelve nukes after a first strike - even if they don't get off a response while they're in flight - is slim. The nuclear-powered cruise missiles and Poseidon bomb are just Russia's versions of the V weapons in WWII; flashy, but not actually useful, and taking resources from the more staid and boring aspects like "keep your logistics vehicles' tires from exploding".

jjk166 4y ago
> A single Russian nuclear submarine can carry 800 nuclear warheads. A Borei class submarine can carry 16 missiles with up to 6 warheads each, for 96 total. The older Delta class can carry 16 missiles with 4 warheads each for 64 total. The 800 warheads is the total capacity of Russia's entire fleet, not all of which are active at any given time.
- bilbo0s 4y ago
  - thfuran 4y ago
    >is there really that serious a lack of information in the world's general populace on how nuclear war would likely play out given the capabilities of all the delivery platforms? Of course there is. There's a serious lack of information in the world's general populace in pretty much everything. Most people have at best a surface level oversimplified understanding of most things and then probably a few things they're reasonably well-informed about, and nobody's an expert in everything.
  - tiahura 4y ago
    If only people would watch Dr. Strangelove.
    - zeruch 4y ago
      ...they'd be deeply confused, and likely revolt at the satire, mistaking it for jingoism.
  - zeruch 4y ago
    In the 80s, most teens could rattle off some measure of nuclear stats, in between bouts of jingoistic refrains. We were more technically literate, and still dangerously stupid. "Just reiterates how important it is to ensure that weapons of mass destruction are kept in the secure custody of competent authorities. Not only in America, Russia and China, but the rest of the world as well." Given the governments mentioned, the first and second sentence would appear to be in contradiction.

VictorPath 4y ago

Yes. it is destabilizing. Trump pulled out of the Open Skies treaty in 2021, Obama opened the Aegis mentioned in the article in Romania in 2016. It's the restart of a nuclear arms race, which will mean a lot of money for military contractors. Apparently it hasn't gone far enough for this person, who wants more of the money I make working be taxed and sent to military contractors so they can heat up a nuclear arms race that had quieted down by the 1990s.

aerostable_slug 4y ago
Open Skies was a net loser for the US. The Russians were abusing the system and everyone who "counts" either has recce satellites of their own or access to reporting from friendly nations. Aegis GMD has zero effectiveness against a missile field filled with SS-19s, or mobile SS-27s, or anything else that poses an existential threat to the United States. Russia knows this. "Destabilizing" would be an order of magnitude increase in the GMD interceptors at Greely and Vandenberg and the proliferation of battle management radars, and we aren't doing that. And if you weren't paying attention, there's no "restart" of the arms race. While the US was involved in the -stans, Russia was moving forward with a variety of delivery systems. The race never stopped.
- twelve40 4y ago
  > Aegis GMD has zero effectiveness against a missile field filled with SS-19s, or mobile SS-27s, or anything else that poses an existential threat so... why is it there then? just curious. I think the official publicly touted reason at the time was to protect Romania from Iran, is that it?
  - riku_iki 4y ago
    early warning system for US defense?
    - aerostable_slug 4y ago
      Iran.

pydry 4y ago

I agree. I was pretty shocked to see this: >The difficulty of shooting down an incoming missile is broadly overstated I figured it would back this controversial claim by explaining how some clever new tech is able to shoot down Russia's current state of the art - its hypersonic missiles. Nope. Zero mention of hypersonic missiles. Why? Is this just a military contractor putting its cap out and asking for $$$?

scottLobster 4y ago
Hypersonic missiles are still in the prototype/research stage, the short/medium-term nuclear threat remains non-hypersonic. Regardless, right now there are zero systems that can hope to stop a hypersonic missile, reaction time limitations alone are a huge hurdle there. That said, effective missile defense is theoretically possible even given current tech, it's just extremely hard. In that sense it's not different than the various AI initiatives. Lots of wasted money on goose chases, but also lots of advantage for those who get it right, and some legitimately useful innovations along the way.
- lsllc 4y ago
  According to a late August Reuters article, Russia has deployed hypersonic missiles at least 3 times in Ukraine: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-says-it-has-deployed-kinzhal-hypersonic-missile-three-times-ukraine-2022-08-21/ https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-says-it-has-depl...
  - 988747 4y ago
    Still counts as "research", just this time in actual war conditions.
  - scottLobster 4y ago
    Research includes live fire tests. Russia has the advantage of an actual warzone with actual air defenses to test in. That or they're running out of missiles and down to pushing research prototypes into service (which given their use or Iranian drones and other supply woes would not surprise me).

newsclues 4y ago

What we have recently seen from China is actually just a missile sponge of large silo fields of ICBMs being built so that even if America does strike first, China still has a nuclear deterrent in the form of the missiles not wiped out. It's hard to take out a lot of targets even if they are relatively soft. https://www.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/1212970/a-second-silo-field/ https://www.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/1212970/a-second-sil...

krunck 4y ago
Regan proposed this in the 80s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dense_Pack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dense_Pack
- sidewndr46 4y ago
  Wasn't "dense pack" the scaled version? The previous concept was to just build huge fields of silos that were mostly empty I thought.
openasocket 4y ago
There are a variety of different approaches to counter the ABM and ragged second strike scenario, China is investing in several. * Just build more nukes. Adding more warheads, especially ground-launched ones, is cheaper than adding more interceptors to the ABM shield, so it's always a losing game. Thankfully, no one seems to be pursuing this route, since that is massively destabilizing. * Make it harder to take out all of your missiles in a first strike. Your link is an excellent example of this. Building additional silos is even cheaper than building additional missiles, and then you can play a shell game where you don't know which silo houses a missile and which does not so you have to strike at them all. There are other basing options available, like road-mobile launchers, which China and Russia have both invested in, though this is easier with shorter range ballistic missiles. And of course there are ballistic missile submarines, which give most survivable second-strike capability, but are much more expensive to operate. * Use a delivery system that is harder to intercept, which I mentioned before. China has tested using both hypersonic glide vehicles and fractional orbital bombardment, in fact both at the same time (https://www.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/1213655/a-fractional-orbital-bombardment-system-with-a-hypersonic-glide-vehicle/ https://www.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/1213655/a-fractional... ).