7 ms·
> Line of sight free space optics can be immune to many many forms of jamming The most powerful weapons on earth already are immune to jamming. ICBMs use celes
by umvi 2y ago
> Line of sight free space optics can be immune to many many forms of jamming
The most powerful weapons on earth already are immune to jamming. ICBMs use celestial navigation (pictures of the stars) to course-correct, which is a form of navigation you cannot jam.
- charliebwrites 2y agoDamn guess we have to blow up the stars …you know, for defense
- echoangle 2y agoOr create a lot of artificial ones to confuse the missile.
- rapind 2y agoSwarms to block the cameras maybe? At this point though, couldn’t you just blow up your own country and thus accelerate warming so much as to doom the rest of humanity in a dozen years? I might have read the wrong article on that though so don’t quote me.
- LoganDark 2y agoAperture Science would do it.
- charliebwrites 2y agoThey still owe me some cake
- quinndexter 2y agoI have terrible news regarding said cake.
- bsimpson 2y agoCan you imagine if someone just turned off the sky?
- runako 2y agoSpin by Robert Charles Wilson is based on this premise.
- AyyEye 2y agoSingularity Sky Nine Billion Names of God
- faraaz98 2y agoWho are you? Cixin Liu?
- sunshinerag 2y agoThe universe winks for thee.
- echoangle 2y agoThis form of navigation is probably only accurate enough for nuclear weapons, you’re not going to get meter-Range CEPs with that. You probably have to select a city you want to hit.
- cogman10 2y agoWhile you probably can't target a cigarette butt on the street, you could definitely hit a building. Especially if the ICBM is paired with image recognition (which it has already for star nav) and/or backup positioning mechanisms like cell tower locations or well-known broadcasting tower locations (think television stations).
- echoangle 2y agoAn ICBM is coming in at hypersonic speeds in the terminal phase, you’re not going to guide it anywhere using cell tower signals. The guidance is done much earlier. And I would doubt image recognition for ground features would make it that accurate, too. Before reentry, you’re very high and fast and reentry isn’t that predictable to get you accurate enough to hit a house. And during reentry, you’re not going to see anything though plasma. And after reentry, you probably don’t have enough time and control authority to still guide into a specific house. ICBM guidance is very different from cruise missiles.
- datadrivenangel 2y agoYeah that would work for drones and slow cruise missiles but not ICBMs.
- alienthrowaway 2y ago> An ICBM is coming in at hypersonic speeds in the terminal phase, you’re not going to guide it anywhere using cell tower signals. Hypersonic glide ICBMs have been successfully tested by China, and are under development in the US, so it's entirely possible to maneuver, and optionally guide them in the terminal, though perhaps not advisable on a jammable channel, except perhaps as an anti-radiation weapon.
- aerostable_slug 2y agoTo risk being pedantic, US SLBMs (Tridents) indeed use stellar updates for their inertial guidance system. Our ICBMs have no update mechanism at all. Once they're out of the silo, they're completely on their own.
- HPsquared 2y agoICBMs would be more confident in their starting position and orientation. SLBMs would necessarily have more uncertainty in the initial conditions.
- varispeed 2y agoYou can create nuclear load so powerful it won't matter where it hits.
- m4rtink 2y agoTeller, is that you ?
- red-iron-pine 2y ago"close only matters in horseshoes and nuclear strikes"
- BurningFrog 2y agoThe BM part means "Ballistic Missile", which sounds like they're basically "thrown" into a parabolic path towards their target, like a falling rock. Or am I over-interpreting the name?
- gghffguhvc 2y agoHave a read of how MERV part of some ICBMs works. Lots going on as far as targeting goes. Also take a look at Trident 2 which can use GPS for course correction but isn’t reliant on it.
- dreamcompiler 2y ago
- tryauuum 2y agothat is so romantic. Rockets looking at the stars one last time before obliterating $cityname
- HPsquared 2y agoObserving distant nuclear fusion, before unleashing it locally.
- gonzo 2y agofission != fusion, but yeah
- chairhairair 2y agoI’ve got some bad news for you about modern nuclear weapons.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- graevy 2y agoh-bombs do both
- juancampa 2y agofission + fusion
- bagels 2y agoThe fission primary is used to trigger a secondary fusion reaction in modern weapons. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermonuclear_weapon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermonuclear_weapon
- dreamcompiler 2y agoAll fusion weapons are fission weapons first (like a few nanoseconds first). All fission weapons are not necessarily also fusion weapons. But probably most are nowadays.
- freddie_mercury 2y agoThis makes me wonder how many fake stars an adversary would have to put up (and for how long?) in order to confuse a celestial navigation system.