this post was submitted on 28 Sep 2024
226 points (97.9% liked)

politics

19237 readers
1981 users here now

Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!

Rules:

  1. Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.

Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.

Example:

  1. Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
  2. Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
  3. No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
  4. Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
  5. No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.

That's all the rules!

Civic Links

Register To Vote

Citizenship Resource Center

Congressional Awards Program

Federal Government Agencies

Library of Congress Legislative Resources

The White House

U.S. House of Representatives

U.S. Senate

Partnered Communities:

News

World News

Business News

Political Discussion

Ask Politics

Military News

Global Politics

Moderate Politics

Progressive Politics

UK Politics

Canadian Politics

Australian Politics

New Zealand Politics

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (2 children)

The issue with ICBM interception as I understand it is that it's one of those cases where the economics heavily favor the attacker. An intercept missile requires a rocket just as capable the one launching the target, if not more so. But, you can't afford letting even a few nukes get through, even one is devasting, so given that the chance of a successful intercept isn't 100 percent (my understanding is that it's well below 100% currently, for likely real world conditions), you need several intercept missiles for every missile your enemy has. Any countermeasures that make taking the enemy missile out harder, like deploying decoys or such, increases the needed resources on your end far more than it increases the resources used by them.

It might be viable against countries like North Korea where the difference in resources is vast enough, but against any serious opponent like Russia or China, it's not likely to work out.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

There are a couple things working in the defender's favor. The payload isn't nearly as heavy or large, so the rocket actually is quite a bit cheaper. This means putting multiples up for each ICBM isn't impossible. Also countermeasures deploy after re-entry. The SM-3 taking out a satellite was a big deal because it means it can hit stuff before re-entry and the protective covers come off. This also significantly cuts down on the number of intercepts required because Russian missiles actually carry a whole bunch of warheads and decoys.

So yeah it's still pretty hard to stop every warhead, but it's not the same situation as the 1980's where we'd be living in a post nuclear wasteland with every major city obliterated. Which is the point. We can go on as a country with a few craters. We cannot go on if we eat a thousand warheads.

To add really quick, it is a lot less missiles than people think. For example the Russians have 5,500 warheads. If all of them were slated for ICBMs then that would be around 500 missiles. Less because their smaller yields fit 15 per missile. And they aren't all slated for ICBMs either. Their current idea of ICBM defense is actually to send up short range nukes and nuke their own sky. They also have submarine and plane warheads which are dealt with by other missile defense systems. I don't want to make it sound like nukes are no big deal. I just don't want people thinking we're in the same situation we were 40 years ago. It would be a lot less devastating today.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

MIRVs also throw the advantage heavily to the offense