Why do they start maneuvering so early in the flight profile ? They are loosing a lot of energy in the process.
The target location is pretty fixed, as is the areas where ABMs can be located, so you get the MARV to start manuovering at the point where is could start to be intercepted with manouverings calculated to allow the target to still be hit, but to maximise the chances of the warhead surviving to target.
Interception won't be a problem. At least 2 - 3 interceptor missiles will be fired. MARVs can manoeuvre slightly (unlike fighter jets) because MARVs don't have sensors. So if one missile misses the other 2 will surely strike the MARV.
Really... it is that easy is it? So if it starts to climb and turn will all three adapt to that manouver or just one? If it changes direction 3 times then all three will miss... once they have perfected scramjet engines they could fit one to each warhead so they could accelerate inside the atmosphere and manouver freely... a 5 degree turn will take a while for the tracking system to detect and recalculate an intercept point for... the interception point could have shifted hundreds of kms... it would only take a few seconds for the interceptor to change course but if it then turns back 10 degrees then the interceptor might have to turn and move 500km the other way... is there time for that? Does the inteceptor have that much fuel?
Remember a mid course interceptor in Alaska might not be within 1,000km of the flight path of the target going over the north pole on its way to New York, so you might have to launch as soon as the target is detected coming over the pole... it might be heading for middle America and then over Canada turn to target new york... will your interceptor be able to move that far that fast after already travelled 2,000km from where it was launched from?
And what about the fact that there are 20,000 targets of which perhaps 600 are actually warheads and the rest are decoys... by the time they re enter the atmosphere it is too late because it will be only seconds to detonation...
How about making things fun by launching a satellite before the full scale attack... it fails and is dead in orbit... but as it passes over the US it detonates... a 100MT nuclear bomb blocks out all radar and radio waves for hours and the EMP pulse damages electronics over the whole US of A... and then Russia launches its missiles to attack...
It was a typo, I meant 20000 m/s, my fault.
I thought as much but it is still wrong... 11000m/s is escape velocity...
When RVs start their dives, they have so much speed it is actually hard to intercept them.
No it isn't... satellites in orbit move faster... that space craft that landed on that comet was moving faster than anything that is man made and falls back from space.
A a last note, I do not think is possible to make a RV in any way similar to a decoy. A RV has strict requirements coming from its payload, its reentry characteristics and so on.
By the time they are reentering the atmosphere it is too late to intercept them... perhaps 60-70kms max of real atmosphere... well who am I kidding... there is fuck all above about 30km... so moving at about 6 or 7km/s they have about 5 or 6 seconds to impact with the ground... so 3-4 seconds to detonation for an air burst...
The new generation of glider warheads is basically the final nail in the ABM coffin. No interceptor can afford to chase gliders in
vast horizontal pathway excursions at high altitude. The premise of an ABM warhead is rapid interception and not target chasing.
Gliders that skip across the atmosphere will be tricky, but if they add scramjet engines to allow them to actually fly and accelerate inside the atmosphere then the defenders are in trouble... really only lasers and beam weapons are an option...
The question is the price of so many interceptors vs 1 warhead.
And the amusing problem... the large missile they were going to deploy in eastern europe had a range of 2,500km which means it would violate the INF treaty... the size of the weapon would mean its cost was likely a very large fraction of that of an ICBM if not more...
Eventually one ASAT carrier will have many sub-munitions to cover all possibe variations of glider in close range?
With a scramjet engine the warhead could dip into the atmosphere and accelerate to a high enough speed to climb back out of the atmosphere and into partial orbit... there is no upper flight speed for a scramjet engine...
knowing about mass and energy of warhead you can calculate all possible trajectories it can fly. Depending on which moment you want to hit the ICBM (ideally when it is in active phase
- all warheads in one place) you know where it potentially can send you warheads. The business is how to optimize number of ABM interceptors not having to build 50 for every warhead.
That is like trying to calculate all the possible flight paths of a helicopter from a helo pad to its destination... it is not infinite, but it is variable enough to result in too many alternatives to conceivably cover.
It is like the Serbian shoot down of the F-117 some claim it was never tracked or detected and the only reason they shot it down was because it repeated its flight path over and over... well even if you got a precise bus time table and took a rifle and fired 10 shots where you expected it to be the chances of actually hitting the bus would be zero... even if you launched 122mm grad rockets by the thousands you still would not hit it.
Obviously they detected it and got enough of a lock to shoot it down.
the real problem in this case is that the warhead has tons of energy... it is after all falling... and also moving very very fast.
Even a small angular change in trajectory in three dimensions means an intercept point can change by hundreds of kms in seconds... but more importantly change back or even further the other way seconds later... even with multiple interceptors such changes would be hard to manage and counter... and is it a warhead or a decoy?
How about this... decoys are very light so only make the decoys manouver in the mid course phase... being very light it would not take very much fuel at all... and only move some of them... MARVs separate from the warhead bus after final stage burn out, so warheads and decoys deploy very very early...
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