3 ms·

It makes a difference for hard targets, see the new nuclear "super-fuzes." It can take several warheads to destroy a missile silo with high probability, becaus

It makes a difference for hard targets, see the new nuclear "super-fuzes." It can take several warheads to destroy a missile silo with high probability, because even landing a little off-target can spare the silo. Greater precision means it takes substantially fewer. https://thebulletin.org/2017/03/how-us-nuclear-force-modernization-is-undermining-strategic-stability-the-burst-height-compensating-super-fuze/ https://thebulletin.org/2017/03/how-us-nuclear-force-moderni...

littlestymaar 2y ago
I don't really get this argument: if you have a metric precision munition in an ICBM then even an inert warhead is going to be enough to penetrate and destroy due to the kinetic energy coming from the hypersonic nature of the reentry vehicle (and even if kinetic energy itself wasn't sufficient, a conventional payload would be) Nuclear bombs are useful because you don't need precision to get the effectiveness, but if you have the precision then why would you bother with the consequences of using nukes…
- roywiggins 2y ago
  Not if the silo can withstand a direct hit from anything short of a nuclear bomb going off nearby. ICBMs aren't that precise- or they didn't used to be- and that's why you'd compensate for that with nuclear warheads. Or, alternatively, early ICBMs would have seemed nearly pointless to develop before nuclear weapons existed to put on them. If a superfuze or a super-IMU means that you can kill one silo with one nuke, that is a huge improvement over the old status quo, where it was assumed to take several, simply because the CEP was larger than the radius at which they can destroy a silo. If someone does have an conventional ICBM that can reliably take out nuclear silos that would be an even bigger deal. Of course the US military has been working on conventionally-armed ICBMs: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conventional_Prompt_Strike https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conventional_Prompt_Strike
  - littlestymaar 2y ago
    > Not if the silo can withstand a direct hit from anything short of a nuclear bomb going off nearby But this kind of silos simply doesn't exist. Yes you could theoretically imagine such a silo, but because the threat of a conventional bunker buster payload hasn't been very realistic when it comes to nuclear silos, they aren't designed to deal with such a thread and instead focus on protection against the kind of overpressure that is caused by an nuclear explosion occurring around.

littlestymaar 2y ago

I don't really get this argument: if you have a metric precision munition in an ICBM then even an inert warhead is going to be enough to penetrate and destroy due to the kinetic energy coming from the hypersonic nature of the reentry vehicle (and even if kinetic energy itself wasn't sufficient, a conventional payload would be) Nuclear bombs are useful because you don't need precision to get the effectiveness, but if you have the precision then why would you bother with the consequences of using nukes…

roywiggins 2y ago
Not if the silo can withstand a direct hit from anything short of a nuclear bomb going off nearby. ICBMs aren't that precise- or they didn't used to be- and that's why you'd compensate for that with nuclear warheads. Or, alternatively, early ICBMs would have seemed nearly pointless to develop before nuclear weapons existed to put on them. If a superfuze or a super-IMU means that you can kill one silo with one nuke, that is a huge improvement over the old status quo, where it was assumed to take several, simply because the CEP was larger than the radius at which they can destroy a silo. If someone does have an conventional ICBM that can reliably take out nuclear silos that would be an even bigger deal. Of course the US military has been working on conventionally-armed ICBMs: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conventional_Prompt_Strike https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conventional_Prompt_Strike
- littlestymaar 2y ago
  > Not if the silo can withstand a direct hit from anything short of a nuclear bomb going off nearby But this kind of silos simply doesn't exist. Yes you could theoretically imagine such a silo, but because the threat of a conventional bunker buster payload hasn't been very realistic when it comes to nuclear silos, they aren't designed to deal with such a thread and instead focus on protection against the kind of overpressure that is caused by an nuclear explosion occurring around.