DiscussWorldIssues - Socio-Economic Religion and Political Uncensored Debate - View Single Post

**cauddyVab** · 09-05-2010, 05:49 AM

Sorry about that. I know that this can seem like a foreign language to some people.

When you launch an ICBM it has a particular heat signature that can be (is ) picked up by defense satellites. We have these satellites as do other countries. When the see the flare they have to make a determination as to whether the launch is hostile or not. A bunch of different stuff goes into figuring out what the threat is and if there is a possibility that the threat is an ICBM the military goes into an alert posture preparing for both defense and retaliation.

The problem with a "conventional" ICBM is that there is no way to tell whether the launch is nuclear or conventional. Because of that the threat posture necessarily skews to the highest threat. This could very easily result in nuclear retaliation for a conventional strike.

That was problem #1

Problem #2 comes up when someone here decides to launch one of these things because he or she feels that it is a "less lethal" option than a nuke when they would never consider using a nuke. That is, their reasoning is that such a launch would only incur conventional retaliation.

The enemy, however, having no way of knowing whether the launch is nuclear or conventional (see problem #1) would be pressed into a nuclear response because they, like us, prepare for the worst.

All of this assumes that the folks on the other end (folks who actually HAVE ICBMs) are complete and total idiots and can't calculate trajectory through triangulation and intersection.

That is to say, in a round-about sort of way, that the two countries in the world (Russia and China) from whom we might actually have to worry about a nuclear response are both perfectly capable of determining within seconds or minutes of launch (at the outside) whether or not we're actually launching a missile at them.

Of the other nuclear powers, it is my contention that they are either incapable of detecting an ICBM launch - OR- incapable of responding in any appreciable way (MAD would stop them but only to the extent that THEIR destruction would be assured) - OR - such strong allies of the U.S. that we needn't worry about this scenario.

09-05-2010, 05:49 AM	#14
cauddyVab Join Date Oct 2005 Posts 602 Senior Member	Sorry about that. I know that this can seem like a foreign language to some people. When you launch an ICBM it has a particular heat signature that can be (is ) picked up by defense satellites. We have these satellites as do other countries. When the see the flare they have to make a determination as to whether the launch is hostile or not. A bunch of different stuff goes into figuring out what the threat is and if there is a possibility that the threat is an ICBM the military goes into an alert posture preparing for both defense and retaliation. The problem with a "conventional" ICBM is that there is no way to tell whether the launch is nuclear or conventional. Because of that the threat posture necessarily skews to the highest threat. This could very easily result in nuclear retaliation for a conventional strike. That was problem #1 Problem #2 comes up when someone here decides to launch one of these things because he or she feels that it is a "less lethal" option than a nuke when they would never consider using a nuke. That is, their reasoning is that such a launch would only incur conventional retaliation. The enemy, however, having no way of knowing whether the launch is nuclear or conventional (see problem #1) would be pressed into a nuclear response because they, like us, prepare for the worst. All of this assumes that the folks on the other end (folks who actually HAVE ICBMs) are complete and total idiots and can't calculate trajectory through triangulation and intersection. That is to say, in a round-about sort of way, that the two countries in the world (Russia and China) from whom we might actually have to worry about a nuclear response are both perfectly capable of determining within seconds or minutes of launch (at the outside) whether or not we're actually launching a missile at them. Of the other nuclear powers, it is my contention that they are either incapable of detecting an ICBM launch - OR- incapable of responding in any appreciable way (MAD would stop them but only to the extent that THEIR destruction would be assured) - OR - such strong allies of the U.S. that we needn't worry about this scenario.
	Quote