this post was submitted on 20 May 2025
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chapotraphouse
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Not if your plan for keeping your hegemony is nuking China and coming out the other side much less damaged than them.
This shit is scary and dangerous because it's a clear attempt to undermine mutually assured destruction which is what keeps everyone from launching the nukes or otherwise escalating to incredibly devastating wars between major powers. Even if they achieved a system with 50% intercept rate that would mean China and Russia would need to ensure they retained at least twice as many nuclear weapons as America had interceptors and with that amount likely to be classified it would send both on nuke building sprees which would result in the US 1) building even more interceptors and feeding the mil-industrial complex more money and 2) building more nukes because now they have less and have to have at least as many. Eventually, sooner than later some genius maniac puts a bunch of nukes up in space as a doomsday weapon, they automatically launch and attack say China if they don't get the stand-down signal every 20 minutes. Eventually a technical glitch due to this being outsourced to Musk results in the weapons firing anyways because the signal not to fire was broken too long.
I don't think modern missiles can be intercepted though, no?
Israel is intercepting manuverable warhead ballistic missiles from Yemen. It's not an issue of tech, but if quantity of missiles and launchers. Israel is miniscule compared to the USA and they spend a shit ton on anti air missiles, so think of how much money would have to be given to war profiteers for missiles for all the USA?
that's what this program is seeking to change.
A missile-intercepting missile has to be many times more maneuverable than its target missile...
And if you can make an interceptor that maneuverable, then you can also make a warhead missile with (nearly) the same maneuverability...
I don't see how it's feasible without being 100 years ahead of your adversary in missile technology.
Edit: Unless this tech is real.
Edit2: Okay, it's a little more complicated than that, because of the three "missile phases". I see.
A missile interception scheme doesn't have to work (and it won't, total pipe dream) to ruin MAD, it just has to convince the bloodthirsty maniacs in charge that it works.
Yeah longer range ballistic missiles, from MRBMs to ICBMs, travel above the Karman line in space for long portions of their flight, where the only forces acting on it are gravity and inertia, there is no aerodynamic movement. However, you can put a thrust vector control rocket motor on a warhead like Iran did for the Fattah 1 MRBM to allow trajectory changes, and the MIRV bus or space vehicle of most IRBMs and ICBMs have small rocket motors on them to change course and aim the MIRVs before releasing them. The Soviets also made a MIRV capable MRBM at one point. But the exoatmospheric kill vehicles on interceptors also use lots of mini rocket motors for guided exoatmospheric flight, the SM-3 Block IB interceptor has a 10 rocket thruster solid throttling divert and attitude control system (TDACS/SDACS) on the kill vehicle specifically to counter maneuvering ballistic missiles or warheads.
This is why modern ballistic missiles and their interceptors are quite expensive...
Fascists aren't really known for accurately assessing the strength of their enemies, or their own military capabilities.
They can be. The more modern ones that travel at high mach speeds (colloquially "hypersonic") are harder to intercept simply on the basis of the fact that they're already moving so fast it's harder to hit them when what you're firing can't move meaningfully faster than them but you can still compute trajectory and if you have enough anti-air to commit to it just fire off 4 of them in the projected path and count on it not changing course radically to dodge all 4.
When you're the US and have a MASSIVE satellite spy network, a MASSIVE radar network that is able to peer over most of the world thanks to NATO hegemony (Greenland radar gives them visibility and warning over the north pole and parts of Russia itself, they also have visibility via radar in their island chains around China and in Asia as well as in Europe) you have significantly more warning and more chances for likely successful intercept than China or Russia who both have very limited warning because they have no forward comprehensive radar nets off their soil between them and their enemies while the US literally has its enemies ringed with them to say nothing of thermal and image satellites constantly looking for launch activity over the entirety of enemy territory. Additionally the US has forward stationed nukes in Europe it can use as well as nuclear submarines regularly parked off Russia and China.
The strength of the US position is hard to overstate, as it is they're barely abiding by MAD with the strength of their offensive capabilities and their early warning systems as well as stealth first strike and revenge systems via placements with European vassals and on nuclear subs.
I personally think the whole "space force" thing is part build CIA in space to take out/sabotage Chinese/Russian hardware in the event of war (ideally by using secret operations to get people to their assets in space before war during peace to plant remote explosives or hacking chips), part defense contractors seeking new money, and part deranged idea of militarizing space with kinetic anti-ballistic missile satellite constellations. They were seriously toying with Brilliant Pebbles in the 90s but ultimately canned it not because the idea had no practicality but because they decided they'd neutralized Russia and believed China would be collapsing into a capitalist comprador state any year then thanks to comrade Gordon Chang. The technology for doing it automatically admittedly still isn't there but with the US forward radar systems, comprehensive satellite coverage, AND importantly being the one to strike first so knowing when they're going to launch at you ahead of time could come together to create something semi-viable.
It really doesn't matter if it actually works or if China or Russia could still destroy most of the US, the desperate backs against the wall planners of empire need only believe in their wunderweapons to give the go-ahead to strike first and then we're all dead including China and the US perishing with them because their wunderweapons are only 50% effective will be little solace to the survivors in the nightmare they'll endure. (Bonus: even if the US is taken out Europe will strike out to rebuild the western hegemonic white capitalist world order intact as I don't think China targets them or really presently has enough nukes to hit them plus Asian US vassals and the US, Russia on the other hand could but Russia coming along after the US and China are destroyed and imposing itself on Europe and becoming a capitalist hegemon itself would also be very bad and hardly any better).
China cannot build more nukes fast enough is my thinking. It better be a priority to hit a much higher number by or before 2030 with as many as possible on the most advanced missiles.
Shields especially in nuclear game theory are offensive in nature, they are something you can hide behind and if you can protect yourself while your opponent cannot that gives you an advantage in being able to strike out and bloody them while avoiding being bloodied.
One last thing, back in the day there was this idea of using nuclear weapons as missile interceptors. Basically back then there was no hope of intercepting missiles kinetically, the technology wasn't even on the horizon so instead they had these missiles (Nike program) with nukes which would be shot up in the incoming path of enemy ICBMs, detonate their warheads and hope that the blast or EM radiation destroyed or disabled most incoming enemy warheads.