Thread 64485485

(Fuck greentext)
"The closest analogue to the Minuteman III is considered to be the Soviet and later Russian mobile ICBM system Topol, decommissioned in 2023. It was replaced by the far more advanced RS-24 Yars (first test launch in 2007), deployed in both mobile and silo-based configurations, and its further development, the RS-26 Rubezh - a next-generation mobile system. The most sophisticated to date is the RS-28 Sarmat (first test launch in 2022), a fifth-generation heavy silo-based missile equipped with the Avangard (U-71) hypersonic glide vehicle. According to some Ukrainian sources, the “Oreshnik” (first test launch and military use in 2024 ) system is derived from the RS-26 Rubezh."

Are technological perfection and modernity of nuclear missiles really that important in today's world? If not, then why do Russians pay so much attention to this, while Americans are quite happy with rusty junk from the 1970s?

This entire zigger thread falls apart with a single word, Sentinel. Don't even get me started on zigger hypergolic corrosion.

>>64485485 (OP)
>why do Russians pay so much attention to this
Russian conventional forces cannot even offer the facade of security from the US let alone if NATO was actually as aggressive as they imagined

>>64485493
Stop shitting your pants, pigger. We're talking about real weapons that are in service.
Also, Sentinel is inferior to Sarmat\Avangard in terms of open technical characteristics and does not carry hypersonic warheads. Hypersonic weapons are a complex issue for the US military.

>>64485485 (OP)
the US doesn't care because sub launched nooks are the real meta. land based missles are for poorfags

>>64485540
Landlet cope. Even with Alaska, America is a puny, puny nation in terms of landmass.

>>64485485 (OP)
Sarmat doesn't even work.

>>64485485 (OP)
America had a Sarmat equivalent, it was the Peacekeeper. They got rid of it in the early 2000s I believe. There's just no point optimizing for anything but ease of maintainence/low cost with ICBMs, because they already are basically impossible to intercept conventionally in even moderate numbers, and even if the enemy tries to build a anti-ICBM air defense system, it's going to be cheaper for you by an order of magnitude to increase your ICBM fleet one-to-one to their interceptor fleet. Plus, there's already a limit to warheads set by target choice and treaties, so why sacrifice flexibility by heavily MIRV'd payloads instead of 1-3 warhead ICBMs?

>>64485485 (OP)
I sometimes genuinely question whether past a certain point you even need nuclear warheads considering how precise modern ICBMs are (at least western ones). For 99% of targets, other than hardened bunkers like Yamantau, a regular conventional warhead ICBM + B2 bombers and cruise missiles will do the trick as far as counterforce is concerned right? But of course you do need something for the bunkers...

>>64485607
>a regular conventional warhead ICBM + B2 bombers and cruise missiles will do the trick as far as counterforce is concerned right?
No it will not, you'd need a squad of 2-3 B2s carrying 14 ton gbu-57s to come close to plausibly disabling a single silo. Typical ICBM warheads (less than a ton) wouldn't be nearly enough.

>>64485485 (OP)
>If not, then why do Russians pay so much attention to this, while Americans are quite happy with rusty junk from the 1970s?
Russia needs a cutting edge strategic arsenal because being able to reliably defeat US ABM systems is the only thing that stops NATO from marching into Moscow. The USA can mop the floor with any non-Chinese military and our silo-based missiles are mostly there to eat strikes from warheads that would otherwise be aimed at actually valuable stuff like critical infrastructure and military bases.

How does it matter considering that there is no technology that can reliably stop MIRVS unless they are still grouped up (which wont happen) and posts like >64485632 are work of retard thinking that striking enemy nuclear silos is counterforce despite being guaranteed to only happen as a part of countervalue exchange.
USA or Europe doesnt need nuclear warheads for tactical warfare because they both would have total air supremacy in the air since day 1, even if Russoid tankie cope scenario happens and they fight independently of each other. TZD

>>64485513
All ICBM warheads are hypersonic.

>>64485513
>ICBM warheads are not hypersonic
Holy fucking retard.

>>64485639
The thing keeping the US from marching into Moscow is that if they do, China will invade Taiwan, and then the US is in a simultaneous war and occupation on the other side of the world, where the rest of NATO isn't required to help because the US was the aggressor, and they probably couldn't do anything useful anyway because they've been farming their national defense out to the US for the past 3+ decades.

Russian nukes are literally irrelevant to the equation, it's not even clear if any of them work.

Semi related

Russia said theyre going to try to develop the nuke cruise missile into making a hypersonic nuke cruise missile

is that possible?

>>64485513
Never ceases to amaze me when a zigger outs himself that fast.

>>64485967
>nuclear silos
>countervalue

>>64486030
Yes you tard. In any nuclear doctrine getting your strategic nuclear assets destroyed, is going to trigger an all out response. Therefore striking strategic nuclear capability is a part of countervalue exchange. What, you think in all out nuclear war its only cities that will be targeted? The primary target will be destroying enmy nuclear capability.

>>64486008
Seems unlikely, and even if they did, what's the point? They already have the ability to land hundreds if not thousands of warheads on any country on earth, and they've never fired a single one in anger for obvious reasons. Why do they keep wasting money on weapons they'll never use instead of weapons that might help them win in Ukraine?

>>64486041
Thanks for proving that you are a retard.

>>64486050
>Why do they keep wasting money on weapons they'll never use instead of weapons that might help them win in Ukraine?
Just like every other wunderblyatffe they come up with - the weapon was never real but they use it to spam the internet with agitprop about how stronk russia is in order to convince retarded right wingers / boomers that russia is actually quite strong and must be feared

>64486079
Can you present me a scenario where striking enemy silo is going to be part of counterforce strategy?

>>64485562
>America is a puny, puny nation in terms of landmass.
LMAO the FUCK are you talking about? Plus barely any of our country is worthless shithole like 80% of Russia/ China landmass.

Even flyover is full of mega corp farms.

>>64486041
>In any nuclear doctrine getting your strategic nuclear assets destroyed, is going to trigger an all out response
Ukraine btfo Russian warning radar multiple times so far kek. Paper bear imo.

>>64486113
If you think you can nuke all their silos before they can launch, then targeting silos makes sense as part of a counterforce first strike. Countervalue never makes sense as a first strike when you still have the ability to cripple their military and win the resulting war. In a countervalue retaliatory strike, aiming for silos is a waste of warheads since they've already launched.

>>64486151
>If you think you can nuke all their silos before they can launch
But that's not possible unless their entire OTH and satellite network goes down all perfectly at the same time

>>64486162
Which might be possible to arrange. Therefore targeting silos may have value in some counterforce scenarios, but never in countervalue.

>>64486178
Preventing enemy secondary strikes has an absolute value

>>64486151
You don't need to waste you time with him anon, he is either trolling or too dumb.

Just put a constellation of rocketmissiles in a like 180k km orbit or some shit and make them so they can accelerate "straight down" to whatever the target is (i know how orbital mechanics works so quiet your tism). And so you have this thing that is of the mach 50+ regime down to about 90km and crosses high atmosphere to target in less than 4.5 seconds.
>no u cant put weapons in space!
>treaty!
No, fuck your laws and shit white man I was never asked to read and decide on those words on those papers.

>>64486191
See >>64486151.

>>64486241
They're cheaper and easier to maintain if you don't launch them until you plan to use them.

>>64486241
>180km
too low, would require frequent maneuvering to stay orbital against atmospheric drag. Orbiting nukes in general are dumb because your opponent could launch ASATs against your nukes as a first strike.

>>64485513
SARRmat isn't in service, and won't be for another year based on Putin's statements, and going by how much he's lied about the fielding of SARRmat since 2018, and the last 4 out of 5 test launches falling (an 80% failure rate) I doubt very much it will be fielded before 2030. Also, there's literally zero proof that Avangard BGRV even exists, let a lone works.

>>64485596
It's a neat missile

>>64485596
Watched the video on its INS design. Its fucking insane what they pulled off with that beryllium basktetball of an INS. You could target an actual basketball court in Moscow from bumfuck Wyoming and reliably hit the halfcourt in fucking arbat street

>>64486041
That doesn't turn it into countervalue, it just asserts that counterforce must accompany countervalue to prevent retaliation. Words have meanings, stop abusing them.

>>64486511
>Sarmatians
at least it has a cool name, those dudes were hardcore

>>64485513
Besides all ICBMs being Hypersonic the hypersonic missiles you are talking about are a meme if your nation doesn't have adequate anti ballistic capability.

>>64485596
We should restart the "Reliable Replacement Warhead" program from the Bush era though.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliable_Replacement_Warhead

>US creates, tests, and deploys Nike interceptors across the US during the cold war.
>Warheads rely on a small nuclear explosion that basically turns the hypersonic missile (this is the 19060's btw) into a gamma-ray pump
>Gamma Rays molest incoming warheads and fizzle enough fuel that they fail to create fission/fusion explosions at target after intercept.
>These were all retired and the US actually signs an anti-ballistic missile treaty in 1972 to stop scaring the russians that the US could conceivably intercept and neutralize hundreds of ICBMS.
>DoE and the national labs definitely just dropped all that tech and research.
>The ~50 GBI's we've got in Alaska and California are definitely it guys that's all. And they rely on a literally kinetic kill vehicle yup that's the best we've got!
>Don't mind the X-37b!
>Don't mind the entirety of the NRO and DGIA!
>Just watch House of Dynamite and relax because the US definitely hasn't pursued nuclear first strike supremacy.

>>64485632
>you'd need a squad of 2-3 B2s carrying 14 ton gbu-57s to come close to plausibly disabling a single silo.
delusional vatnigger coping about <20ft concrete lid
>Typical ICBM warheads (less than a ton) wouldn't be nearly enough.
they've been more than enough for 60 years by now.

>>64486162
their OTH network has holes and against SLBMs it lacks reaction time to respond to them by the time they're detected.

>>64487316
I would love to believe we're that competent, and maybe it's true. But I wonder

>>64485493
>hypergolic corrosion
Sounds deliciously vile, do tell?

>>64487452
I'm personally of the mindset that we molest them with gamma rays in an entirely different sense now. I think the ground targeting was just a happy coincidence.

>>64488409
careful with that picrel mate you might summon zapperanon

>>64487762
35% of Russia's ICBM warheads are on hypergolic fueled missiles which are disastrously corrosive owing to the nature of having a purely chemical oxidizer. Therefore these missiles from the 80s must go decennial fuel purges and inspections, and we haven't really seen much of that since the fall of the USSR.

>>64487285
I don't think we ever really dropped this, it just a different program name now. There are a bunch of programs that are still running that aren't explicitly nuclear weapons related, but you can read between the lines
>laser initiated reactive foil detonators
>halogen nanoparticulate composite explosive lenses
>Solid hydride only designs for dial-a-yield
>Weird aspheric new primary designs outside the peanut that allow for primary sizes well below the known limits for criticality
I specifically remember reading some defense rag years ago that was complaining about huge cost overruns in the RWRP because the detonators were only good for 10 years and they needed better longevity to be comparative with other components from a maintenance standpoint for the program to move forward. This in of itself is pretty telling because there are several components of a W-88 that require outright replacement after a few years, so the fact they nearly tripled their service intervals and the bottleneck isn't even a radiological component like the gas booster. From what I can tell, we're pretty close to achieving a "wooden nuke" that COULD be significantly smaller and requires far less maintenance.

>>64488436
Well, that's me.

>>64485632
I like to make stuff up too.

>>64488442
FUUUUUUCK

>>64485596
>there's already a limit to warheads set by target choice and treaties
Not OP but isn't the last and only treaty with Russia set to expire in February 5th of 2026?

>>64488688
Well, it's not wrong. If you want to get real technical, we've been at this in one way or another since Project Excalibur and the Starfish Prime series of nuclear tests. If you read the test debriefing from the DoE, they were very, very interested in the x-ray and gamma energies generated in the ionosphere and how far they propagated along magnetic conjugate points. Unfortunately all the actual readings are redacted. Pretty sure this is the moment the DoE found out they can make a cyclotron in the sky.

>>64487762
Storable liquid fuels are generally nasty substances, and the red fuming nitric acid and unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine combination used in a lot of Russian ICBMs in particular was given the charming nickname of "devil's venom" by Soviet scientists. As a rocket fuel, it has a lot of pluses, but the corrosiveness means a missile will require extensive, periodic maintenance over its lifespan, but the fuel's toxicity (and the fact hypergolics ignite on contact) can make that maintenance difficult and dangerous to perform. It's why the West phased out liquid-fueled ICBMs decades ago, but the Russians only introduced the Devil's Venom-fueled Sarmat *last year*