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from the remember-that-story-this-past-weekend? dept.
A few days ago, on August 8, there was an explosion on a barge in the White Sea near Nyonoksa, Russia. That explosion tragically killed seven people, nuclear engineers and technicians working on a project. The project was described as "an isotopic power source for a liquid engine installation," but let's be completely clear here: they were developing the nuclear propulsion system for a genuinely brutal and terrible weapon.
That weapon is known as 9M730 Burevestnik, known to NATO as the SSC-X-9 Skyfall, but is perhaps best understood as a modern rebirth of a terrifying American weapon concept from the 1960s known as the Flying Crowbar.
The Flying Crowbar was a nuclear-powered scramjet missile, capable of flying at hypersonic speeds with an almost indefinite range, spewing extremely radioactive exhaust and nuclear bombs all over the place.
[...] While this accident is absolutely a tragedy because of the loss of life and the significant radiation exposure in the area, the blow to the development of the 9M730 Burevestnik missile is not the tragic part.
The Burevestnik is not a defensive weapon; it's a weapon to attack at long range and spread death and destruction all along its path, even over people that have no involvement in whatever bullshit reason this thing was launched for.
Wikipedia entries on 9M730 Burevestnik and Flying Crowbar (aka Supersonic Low Altitude Missile).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 14 2019, @06:35AM (10 children)
Not sure how true this is, but I have heard that one of the problems with Hyper-sonic missiles is that they disrupt MAD by being fast enough that a response to a first strike cannot be made until after the missile has reached it's target. Thoughts?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Coward, Anonymous on Wednesday August 14 2019, @07:09AM (1 child)
Supposedly, half of all US strategic missiles are in submarines. Those would not be disrupted.
(Score: 1) by purdy on Wednesday August 14 2019, @05:23PM
Actually, your SWAG of half is pretty accurate.
The US has 14 SSBNs (aka Boomers), a max of 10 of which are at sea at any given time. (They usually operate on something like 80 days on/35 days off. Each SSBN carries 20 Trident II D5 missiles. Each Trident can carry 8 - 14 warheads depending on the MIRV version. (The newer MIRV V carries only 8 warheads but larger.)
So that gives you about 2200 warheads at sea at any given time with a theoretical max of 3920 if you scrambled all the SSBNs (which would be impossible to do) and they all had the old MIRV IV Tridents. In reality both those numbers are high.
The US nuclear arsenal is estimated at around 4000-4500 warheads so about 2000 in the boomer fleet is a pretty good guess.
Source:
https://www.navy.mil/navydata/fact_display.asp?cid=4100&tid=200&ct=4 [navy.mil]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by zocalo on Wednesday August 14 2019, @07:22AM
IIRC, the US removed independant launch authority from their SSBNs some time ago as part of the mutual stepping back from MAD, but there may be some scenario left whereby the crews could still launch if they are certain that a nuclear first stike has occurred and that the official authorisation to launch a retaliatory strike cannot possibly be issued. I have no idea what the Russian process is, but I suspect it's similarly robust and involves whatever they are calling the onboard "Political Officer" now; it might be MAD, but no one was crazy enough to not try and prevent it all kicking off by mistake.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 14 2019, @08:17AM
MAD isn't truly disrupted by hypersonic missiles. You might be able to realize the moment that hypersonic missiles are launched with satellites. Even if many of your cities are wiped off the map before you can give the order to return fire, more than enough nuclear assets needed to wipe out the enemy will survive. If that isn't true now, it will be if the stockpile starts increasing again with modernized weapons.
If Russia takes another decade to develop these weapons, what will the U.S. get in the meantime? Can Russia even afford this development?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 14 2019, @10:22AM (2 children)
Who would care then? Enjoying nuclear winter or fallout that's coming back anyway?
The point of MAD is there is NO WINNERS. Even if you "win", you lose. 100% lose.
https://www.wagingpeace.org/nuclear-weapons-do-not-keep-us-safe/ [wagingpeace.org]
https://interestingengineering.com/broken-arrows-the-worlds-lost-nuclear-weapons [interestingengineering.com]
The world would be safer if only North Korea had nuclear weapons. The reason is simple math. We will accidentally kill ourselves if we continue like this. There will be no avoiding that.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 14 2019, @06:57PM (1 child)
Yeah, we've already come close quite a few times with one soldier outright disobeying the SOP to avert nuclear war.
We should really make Dr. Strangelove mandatory viewing.
(Score: 2) by Farmer Tim on Thursday August 15 2019, @04:21PM
Came for the news, stayed for the soap opera.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 14 2019, @04:42PM (1 child)
That's what a doomsday machine is for. No human intervention necessary.
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Thursday August 15 2019, @06:01PM
My understanding is that the Russians built one. It's called Perimetr, is the subject of the book Doomsday Men by P.D. Smith.
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Thursday August 15 2019, @06:03PM
Ironically the entire reason Russia wants nuclear powered cruise missiles, nuke drone subs, and other advanced weapons is because we've developed anti-ICBM interceptors, missile interceptors, and very good anti-stealth AA.