Nuclear Deterrent

[Wader2]

The verbosity of the post by Modern Elmo either misses the point or is so obtuse that I missed it.

When we got Polaris from the USA it was said that it had to have a white ensign on it but a target country would not be able to distinguish between a 'friendly' US missile or a UK missile. In other words we were firmly wedded to the US trinity.

A similar concern must attach to a conventional BM. Does it have a conventional or nuclear warhead? If it originates from a nuclear power, can you afford to sit back an wait to see whether it is nuclear or conventional?

If it be assumed that detrrence will not work the only other option is to eliminate the nuclear option before it is developed. To use a CBM once the target country has its own nuclear capability is to risk armagedon.

[ArthurBorges]

847NAS

I always thought the advantage of a sub-surface system was...

One serious advantage is that subsurface systems have complacent neighbours: fish don't lobby MPs and Congressmen to dig the silo someplace else.

Land-based missiles make local populations nervous, particularly when East/West tension rises and they start wondering how good their suntan lotion when the payback payload drops in.

Come election time, they vote for the wimpier candidate too.

And in between, military installations make natural lightning rods for demonstrations you can't always keep off the front pages.

[ArthurBorges]

Glad Rag

Was there not some kind of British/French deterrent interface last year?

I understand that France and the UK jointly developed the Chevaline warhead.

[ArthurBorges]

Manuel de Vol

China is certainly an impressive military power, but somehow, I can't see them nuking anybody. - They appear to be a bit too smart for that; they've cottoned on to the fact that you can win more easily through trade.

China cottoned on a long time ago. Read the books "1421" and "1434" by Gavin Menzies, incidentally ex-captain of a RN Polaris submarine, where he describes the naval expeditions of Adm. Zheng He and lays out the evidence that (1) China made the world's first world map in the early 15th century and (2) its technology transfers in that timeframe triggered the Renaissance. Obviously, this is so mind-blowing that it meets fierce criticism.

On the Chinese ICBM fleet, see Federation of American Scientists. It has a total of about 200 warheads, mostly tactical. Same as France, India, Israel, Pakistan and the UK -- Russia and the USA are the only loonies to have thousands.

[Manuel de Vol]

Originally Posted by ArthurBorges

... (1) China made the world's first world map in the early 15th century ...

Pity they didn't make it a few years earlier and sell a copy to that klutz Columbus.

... But had they done so, the Americans wouldn't be celebrating 'Get Lost' day today.

There might not've been a strong market for maps in the 15th Century, but the Chinese have certainly found a market for clothes, shoes, furniture, electronics, etc. It's getting difficult to find things that are not 'made in China'.

[Carnage Matey!]

Perhaps see 1421exposed to see what credible historians think of Gavin Menzies fantastic history of the world.

[glad rag]

Quote:
Was there not some kind of British/French deterrent interface last year?
I understand that France and the UK jointly developed the Chevaline warhead.

Hmmmm thinking something more intimate than that....

[bjornhall]

If it originates from a nuclear power, can you afford to sit back an wait to see whether it is nuclear or conventional?

That is one argument I have never understood. A single missile, even with a few warheads, won't take out anyone's ability to strike back. Yes, you can certainly afford to wait! Why would anyone adopt a launch on warning strategy against a single inbound missile?

[PTT]

Several million voters in the cities the warheads are likely to be aiming at may well argue the point

I know it's make no difference, but people tend not to think too logically when warheadds start raining...

[bjornhall]

Several million voters in the cities the warheads are likely to be aiming at may well argue the point

They won't be voters in the next election anyway...


Yeah, I know, really bad taste...

[cornish-stormrider]

going back to the "Trident is crap and the Bomber is as niosy as a Megadeth concert" poster. I have a question. If they are so bloody loud how did they not hear each other prior to impact and take evasive action?

I do not think that trident will be so easy to destroy as is made out.

In fact, I will put my salary on it. (it's a win win, coz if I am wrong we are all going to get a real good tan)

I think we need a more moderately priced solution, multiple strike weapons on a mix of air, surface and sub launched platforms.

[MAINJAFAD]

Hmmmm thinking something more intimate than that....

Indeed your correct, The British SSBN in it's patrol area couldn't hear the French SSBN in its patrol area, the French SSBN couldn't hear the British one, and the first they knew of thier patrol areas overlapped, was when they collided (thankfully at a very low speed). Rumour has it that a national red top was offering lots of money for good photos of the damage to the British boat. BBC play on the incident here

[Double Zero]

We don't need and cannot afford a Trident replacement - get a sensible no. of Astutes and let the world know we have the choice of conventional ( much more likely to be used, I hope ) or nuclear tipped Tomahawks.

Get 3 modern CVS style carriers, operating Harrier 2+ with AMRAAM ( and Sea Eagle, if anyone's sprayed them with WD40 or not sold them to India ) - and a decent no. of Type 45 ships and Harrier 2+ ( great deal of commonality with the GR9 bomber, and it can actually provide fleet or other defence with AMRAAM !

The carriers need to be more versatile as in amphibious warfare capable, and as for the chap who suggested we ditch the Marines, there are 2 choices; mad, or hooting mad...

[FJJP]

Don't worry, there will be a Trident replacement. If the Government got rid of the nuclear deterent, it would lose its place on the UN Security Council. They would not countinence that, so there will be an update...

[Blacksheep]

CVS Carriers - the modern battleship. Look what happened to the battleships when the balloon went up.

The bigger the ship, the bigger the target. Remember the Atlantic Conveyor? Eggs and Baskets spring to mind. Meanwhile, you can launch a cruise missile from almost anything, including a lorry, and you can't see them coming until they're almost on top of you.

[Modern Elmo]

Submarine Launched Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile (SLIRBM)

Submarine Launched Global Strike Missile (SLGSM)

A new SLBM would be needed in about 2029 to match the schedule for a follow-on SSBN. The Navy has begun studies to examine range-payload requirements and missile size, but no specific plans for a follow-on SLBM at this point other than extending the service life of the Trident D-5.

The Department of Defense does not plan to pursue a common ICBM/SLBM ballistic missile. However, the Air Force and Navy are cooperating in research and development on common technologies related to current and future ballistic missiles - the Guidance Applications Prograrn (GAP), Reentry Systems Applications Program (RSAP), Propulsion Applications Program (PAP), and Technology for the Sustainment of Strategic Systems (TSSS) programs.

The Trident II (D5) system is currently undergoing a life-extension (LE) program to extend the service life of the weapon system until 2042, to match the hull life of the Ohio-class submarine. The life-extension strategy uses a mix of continuing production of the existing design, as well as redesign based on component criticality, expected life, and future supportability and affordability. The D5 Life Extension program will be sufficient for training and transferring domain knowledge to the next generation of inertial guidance and electronics engineers.

However, there is no clear long-term strategy beyond the end of this decade. The combined impact of no clear national strategy, workforce demographics, and no planned development activity beyond circa 2015 will, in the absence of corrective action, put the workforce in serious jeopardy.

...

On 25 August 2003 the Department of the Navy, Strategic Systems Programs [SSP] issued a Request for Information (RFI) to determine the latest plans and programs including technology challenges and proposed solutions for affordable Submarine Launched Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles (SLIRBMs), including launch considerations and potential payloads. Responses to this RFI were used by the Government to select presentations to be given at the upcoming SLIRBM Technical Exchange or to otherwise be reviewed by the government.

The SLIRBM requirements include: 1. System must be affordable 2. Range - IRBM 3. Missile diameter - 32.5 inches maximum [ie, half that of the current Trident-2] 4. Both conventional and nuclear payloads to be considered 5. Payload weights, diameters and length to be consistent with missile dimensions and range 6. Conventional payload system to have GPS accuracy 7. Missile subsystem hardened to Space Grade 8. Control of collateral damage to be considered (e.g., stage debris control) 9. Intermediate range ballistic missiles, including their payloads, and all of the launcher subsystem except for electronics, are to be contained within the 86 inch diameter TRIDENT missile launch tube 10. Usable missile tube length (for missile, payload and launcher) of 36 feet maximum.

...

On 12 July 2005 Alliant Techsystems and Lockheed Martin were awarded a $9.2 million contract by the U.S. Navy’s Strategic Systems Program (SSP) office to demonstrate and validate solid rocket motor technologies suitable for a Submarine Launched Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile (SLIRBM).

Submarine Launched Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile (SLIRBM) / Submarine Launched Global Strike Missile (SLGSM)

[Modern Elmo]

... The proposed missile ... offering the war fighter an extremely accurate, no-notice prompt global strike capability from an undetectable, highly mobile platform that is on station around the clock.

In November 2007 Aerojet, a GenCorp company, recently conducted a critical static fire test of an innovative, low-cost large booster in support of the U.S. Navy's Submarine Launched Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile (SLIRBM) demonstration. ...

With U.S. Navy personnel in attendance, the 12-foot, 32" in diameter, high-performance demonstration motor was tested, and achieved a peak thrust of over 50,000 lbf. Post-test inspection and data will be used to compare component performance and ballistic performance to analytical prediction models. Primary ballistic and structural composite case performance goals were met. Test data will be used to improve design margins in areas where performance fell short of analytical prediction models. Aerojet incorporated several state-of-the-art modeling and analytical tools throughout design, fabrication and testing.

The Aerojet team will use the results from the SLIRBM test to advance rocket motor design options for the Submarine Launched Global Strike Missile (SLGSM) concept.

Submarine Launched Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile (SLIRBM) / Submarine Launched Global Strike Missile (SLGSM)

[Modern Elmo]

The Russians have made a lot of noise about the possibility that advanced conventional weapons in the US arsenal place their nuclear forces at risk and, as a corollary, that certain capabilities should be included in future arms control negotiations.

Which raises an interesting question — do they? Can the proposed Conventional Trident Modification (CTM) program — the program to put a conventional warhead on a D5 submarine-launched ballistic missile — or its likely follow-ons, bust Russian silos?

I should start by noting that CTM, as proposed by the Navy had little or no capability against hard and deeply buried targets.

However, one of the little noticed aspect of the National Academies report on U.S. Conventional Prompt Global Strike is that the Committee invented a hard-target kill capability for the Conventional Trident Modification (CTM) program — a “committee-proposed additional CPGS option” that would have have the space for an “earth-penetrator munition weighing on the order of 1,000 lb” that could “attack small, hardened buried targets…” They called this little devil the CTM-2.

This surely has to be a first in the history of the National Academies.

So, could CTM-2 bust Russian silos?

Keeping in mind that this is a paper-weapon, as it turns out the Committee on Conventional Prompt Global Strike was not the first set of smarty-pants to think about arming an SLBM with a conventional penetrator. As the slide atop this paper demonstrates, Lockheed Martin’s Nancy F. Swinford and Dean A. Kudlick were were doing similar work in the mid-1990s.

Dennis Gormley found the Swinford and Kudlick paper, and then used it to assess whether a hard-target CTM (or similar capability) could hold at risk Russian silos, in his new paper, The Path to Deep Nuclear Reductions: Dealing with American Conventional Superiority:

Tomahawk cruise missiles are surely accurate enough to hit on or very near to a Russian missile silo, but their warhead carries only 450kg of either blast fragmentation or combined-effects submunitions. The former is a mere pinprick vis-à-vis hardened missile silos; the latter is only relevant against soft targets. Indeed, even a Trident missile armed with a conventional penetrator would require Herculean accuracy and absolutely perfect targeting conditions to have any chance whatsoever of threatening silo-based missiles. ( Not everyone agrees with that assertion. -- Elmo )

Russian concrete silo covers are dome-shaped and approximately 20 feet in diameter and 5 feet high in the center. This means that they have a radius of curvature of about 12.5 feet. Employing the targeting requirement of approaching the target at less than 2 degrees from the vertical, the penetrator would have to impact less than 5 inches from the absolute center of the silo cover, or within a 10-inch diameter circle whose center is at the apex of the dome. My thanks to Dr. Gregory DeSantis, a former U.S. Department of Defense scientist, for making these calculations based on the penetrator design discussed in Nancy F. Swinford and Dean A. Kudlick, “A Hard and Deeply Buried Target Defeat Concept”, op. cit.

As you can see, Dennis is very, very skeptical that a conventional weapon will achieve the accuracy necessary for busting silos.

But perhaps this is the sort of thing we might usefully crowd-source.

The Swinford and Kudlick paper — “A Hard and Deepl Buried Target Defeat Concept”, Lockheed Martin Missiles & Space, Sunnyvale, CA 94088, Defense Technical Information Center document no. 19961213 060, January 1996, — is online and unbelievable. Take a look.

And kudos to Dennis for digging out a hard and deeply buried bit of paper!



...


Interesting stuff. I look forward to reading the original report.

Before people begin to weigh in on “whether a conventional weapon will achieve the accuracy necessary for busting silos” we need to take a step back and ask ourselves about the scenarios — as the scenario will drive the accuracy requirements.

a) how many silos are we trying to destroy? 1,000 Russian, or 20 Chinese? For any given level of desired target destruction (e.g, 90%), the required pK of the system goes up rapidly as the number of targets increases. Therefore, it’s possible that we can get good enough accuracy with conventional Trident to destroy 20 hardened Chinese silos but not 1,000 hardened Russian ones. Or perhaps neither. But this is a key question before one can talk about accuracy requirements.

b) how many conventional warheads do we have per silo? Obviously, the more warheads per silo, the lower pK you need for each warhead to achieve any given level of success.

c) what is the required level of target destruction? If this is a preemptive strike on, say, China, you might need 95% (or greater) of destroying them all (which requires 99%+ per target). On the other hand, if North Korea has fired a nuclear missile at Japan, we might not require anything close to 95% of getting them all to launch a conventional trident strike — or a nuclear counterforce strike — because reducing the number of remaining NK nuclear-armed missiles would presumably be seen as vital, even if we couldn’t get them all.

This isn’t a criticism of the question you raise AT ALL. I’m just hoping to frame the debate that I hope comes in response to your post.

For what it’s worth, Keir Lieber and I have a Foreign Affairs article coming out in about two weeks that, among other things, argues that even highly-precise conventional warheads are unlikely to be sufficiently effective against hardened silos to obviate the need for nuclear counterforce capabilities.

— Daryl

— Daryl Press · Oct 5, 10:40 AM ·

Eugene Miasnikov wrote a paper on counterforce capabilities of U.S. conventional weapons back in 2000. It is available in Russian, but he may have an English version as well.

— Pavel · Oct 5, 10:49 AM ·

ArmsControlWonk: Can CTM Bust Russian Silos?

[Wholigan]

Modern Elmo

I may have asked you this before, I have certainly asked a few times in here. Is it possible that you might like to think about posting links to all this stuff that you find, rather than cutting and pasting pages of stuff that fill up PPRuNe's pages? Thanks.

[tornadoken]

FJJP: UK's seat on UN Security Council, like France's, USSR's and (Nationalist) China's pre-dates its nuclear status, and derives from the Allies' victory,1945.

ABorges: UK's nuclear weapons competence is wholly derived from licences of US products. Chevaline, TK-100 penetration-aids enhancement of US W68 warhead, was done with no link to France, which persists in wholly-solo nuclear work.