So if you look at a map of the United States, and try to red team out what a hypothetical Soviet attack might try, you notice an obvious vulnerability.
The Pentagon, the White House, the aircraft that can serve as a mobile command post - all are within just a few miles of the ocean.
An obvious thing for the Soviets to try would be to attempt to sneak a submarine loaded with ballistic missiles right into Chesapeake Bay and fire at basically point blank range.
The Soviets apparently never managed to make their submarines quiet enough to do this, and there are supposedly vast underwater hydrophone arrays in the Atlantic for the specific reason of preventing this kind of attack*, but nevertheless, it makes for an interesting question.
Hypothetically, the Soviets had pulled this off. They have an Akula class submarine with it’s pumpjet propulsor in Chesapeake Bay and they open fire.
Would the ballistic missiles be able to hit their targets without first traveling up into space? It seems physically possible to just cant the missile over and use the remaining rocket fuel to get it to the target even faster, reducing the warning time to less than 60 seconds.
Do ballistic missile submarines have the capacity to fire their entire payload all at once, or must they fire each missile individually? The reason this is important is that according to books like Blind Man’s bluff, the US managed to tail many of the Soviet submarines while they were on patrol, and would obviously have several torpedo tubes loaded and ready to fire at a moment’s notice if they heard the Soviet submarine firing a missile.
But they couldn’t tail all that close, and it seems like at least the first missile would escape the submarine before the torpedo coming to kill it could possibly get there…
*this also would explain why the PAL codes were not actually used for years. If the Soviets could plausibly hit in 2 minutes every individual with authorization to order a nuclear launch and destroy every copy of the codes, it would be a vulnerability to have them.
I’m not an expert, but there are some preparatory steps to launching, like opening the missile launch doors, that a nearby submarine could probably detect and identify.
And I don’t believe they can fire all their missiles simultaneously, but they can shoot them off in pretty close succession. For example, here is a Russian Borei-class SSBN firing off four missiles within a few seconds of each other.
But, what good would nuking the White House and Pentagon do anyways? Russia still gets nuked in response, even if they’ve managed to kill the President, VP, Congress, and the Joint Chiefs.
I don’t know about “less than 60 seconds”, even for Washington, D.C., but in general this is referred to as a depressed trajectory launch. This paper* from the early Nineties discusses some of the strategic relevance of the concept.
*About a 7.5 meg PDF file, if that’s of any relevance to whatever device you’re using to read stuff on the Internet.
Thanks for the video, Ditka. Those launch intervals are so fast as to be basically simultaneous. The Mark 48 torpedo only travels approximately 60 mph - if the trailing submarine is 1 mile away, at the launch rate shown in the video, the boomer is going to be empty before the torpedo arrives.
As for why - if there are a finite number of copies of the nuclear launch codes, and the Russians/Soviets knew where they all were (with spies like Anna Chapman’s hot sisters on the case, how could they not?), in principle they could prevent themselves getting nuked in response. A slim chance but not impossible. Sort of like the math during the Cuban missile crisis - if the US had made a devastating first strike with ballistic missiles, especially aimed at the Russian bomber bases, and had been very lucky with their air defense that day, they would in principle have “won” ww3 with just a few million casualties, “depending on the breaks”.
Similarly, how effective would a nuclear torpedo be if a submarine launched it at a coastline hoping to do some shoreline damage against nearby buildings?
The real trick would be limiting the range. SLBMs are typically solid-fueled rockets, and meant to be launched within a very narrow span of ranges.
Depressed trajectory launches would be made primarily to achieve very short in-flight times- 7 to 10 minutes according to MEBuckner’s PDF cite, giving your adversary little time to react, even relative to the ~15 minute normal SLBM time-on-target. Even ICBMs are roughly 30 minutes.
But this is achieved by flying unusual flat trajectories. Even at that, they’re still on the order of 1500-3000 km (as opposed to the more typical 7500+ km range of modern SLBMS). What this means is that a SSBN sitting in Chesapeake Bay would be limited to hitting targets somewhere along a minimum range arc that would be defined *very roughly * by Minneapolis, Des Moines, Kansas City, Springfield, MO, Little Rock, Jackson, MS, and New Orleans.
That range would be great for taking out the bomber bases, but the ICBM fields in the far northern Midwest are still mostly out of range.
If the goal was some kind of nuclear decapitation strike, they’d do better to figure out how to ship a bomb to Washington DC in a shipping container or on a fishing boat or something innocuous like that.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but this things are better used as air burst, exploding above the ground. If so it seem like just having it fly over the target then detonating it is trivial.
If a Russian submarine were to seek to attack the coasts of the United States, I can’t see why it would use a ballistic missile to do so. Russia has developed extremely effective cruise missiles, including submarine-launched ones.
Sure, but you have to do it at the right height. Just detonating a nuke over something at 100,000 feet isn’t going to do much.
The optimal height for the largest nuclear weapon ever designed is a little less than 50,000 feet. For your more everyday nukes, we’re looking at more like 10,000 feet.
I’m confused by the original post. Here’s where. . .
Why would this be obvious? Why would a competent Soviet sub Captain put his entire payload of ballistic missiles and independent warheads at risk of detection and destruction in near-littoral waters of the United States?
The Akula Class is an attack submarine (SSN equivalent) and does not carry ballistic missiles. It does carry cruise missiles. I think you are either confusing weapons or confusing classes of Russian submarines. Clarifiy?
No. Ballistic missiles need time to do things prior to detonation–i.e. navigate. Missiles are built for axial load support, not lateral. The missile would be unstable if it just “canted over”. Missiles also do not have flight control surfaces to sustain horizontal flight and guidance. Missiles use thrust vectoring to position the payload above the earth, and drop payload items from above. ICBMs are not built for lift generated by airflow, they are built for lift generated by thrust. Cruise missiles are built for lift generated by airflow.
I feel like I read somewhere that nuking the other side’s leadership was not considered a good strategy because the missiles and bombers would fly anyway, but there would be no one to recall them or shut it down.
Which leads me to wonder what the actual strategies were for nuclear war, aside from the concept of “MAD” and simply having so many nukes that neither side would benefit from starting a war.
Missed the editing window, but I wanted to clarify.
Msmith, read Command and Control. It’s about the Damascus disaster, but it brings up a good point—if you decapitate a government via nuclear strike, who do you negotiate a cease fire with?
Good question. I also don’t see why this is a obvious thing to attempt.
Huh? I mean, the axial loads on a missile during launch are tremendous, yes. But missiles are always launched axially; launching them sideways doesn’t seem to work very well. I hear the rule of thumb is to keep the nose cone pointed in the direction of travel.
Why do you say that?
And even if it were true, why aren’t ballistic missiles unstable when they cant over just before apogee? Horizontal is horizontal, even 600 miles above the earth. At this altitude—the apogee of a Polaris S3—the earth’s gravity is still about 75.5% as strong as it is on the surface at the equator.
ICBMs do this—that is, they fly ballistic trajectories after their engines burn out, putting the B in “ICBM.” But plenty of non-ballistic missiles fly arbitrary trajectories, whether guided to those trajectories by fins, thrust vectoring or both. External control surfaces aren’t necessary to sustain horizontal flight.
The only requirement for horizontal flight is that the missile generate a ~1g acceleration in a direction opposite to the gravity vector, whether that’s done with fins, thrust vectoring or conventional wings.
That’s true, but either could fly horizontally and either could fly vertically. The cruise missile may not have the thrust-to-weight ratio to sustain vertical flight for long, but cruise missiles have no inherent inability to fly vertically. Neither is there an inherent barrier to a vectored-thrust missile vectoring its thrust to fly horizontally.
I know you’re talking about both, but ICBMs can’t be recalled once launched. There’s no self-destruct (it would be vulnerable to being used by the enemy).
There’s no turning back - if an ICBM were launched [Kiefer Sutherland voice] MILLIONS OF PEOPLE WILL DIE![KSV]
Actually, there are two different Akulas - one is the fast-attack SSN, as you mention (but which is designated by NATO as Akula,) and then there is the Typhoon-class ballistic-missile sub, also known as Akula. I am assuming **SamuelA **meant the Typhoon.
Thank you. I mean, why put your SLBMs at risk, when you can use a more apporpriate weapon–cruise missiles–and save your SLBMs for second-strike capability?
[sub]Combining comments here to address them in one response.[/sub]
I was speaking in the context of the OP–in the context of ballistic missiles. And my answers are caveatted against his “point blank, less-than-60-seconds-warning” supposition. Yes, all missiles are launched and powered with the pointy end into the direction of travel. However, not all missiles are constructed the same.
In broad brush terms, there are “lift” missiles and “attack” missiles, based on their flight profile (yes, I’m coining those terms for just this discussion). For example, AGM-114 Hellfires and AIM-120 AMRAAMs are fired at their target to ‘attack’ them. Their flight profiles are more-or-less horizontal to the earth, to deliver their payload to a target in roughly that same plane. “Lift” missiles on the other hand, like the Delta IV, the Minuteman, and the Trident D5 are designed to lift their payload to a higher altitude, in a more-or-less perpendicular flight profile to the earth. This difference in flight profile drives mechanical design difference between the “lift” and “attack” missiles. Lift missiles are obviously larger, and can use their fuel systems to support the mass of the missile against the pull of gravity axially. Attack missiles are constructed with a body structure that resists gravity during handling, loading, and time of flight laterally. Lift missiles go up, but can tip to some degree–not much. They normally just don’t have the design features; adding them in would cut back on the range of the missile (the “NASCAR” principle–‘less weight, go further’).
At apogee (or just before), the missile has shed its first and second stages after they have burned out. The geometry of the flight body has changed, and thus its center of gravity.
No, but some sort of control surface or thrust vectoring is necessary to sustain controlled horizontal flight. SLBMs are meant to lift their payload, not fly them roughly perpendicular to the surface of the earth. With the weight of a fully-fueled, just-launched SLBM from its position, it would have one mother truckin’ hell of a time maintaining the proper control to fly horizontal.
I disagree. Without control surfaces, the output thrust by the SLBM would be split between two things: maintaining forward velocity, and maintaining it’s altitude. Just like the cruise missile would perform poorly flying vertically, the SLBM would perform poorly flying horizontally.
MEBuckner that’s a good paper–I read it earlier today. Thank you!
Tripler
There’s other factors besides SLBM performance that make the OP a no-go.
As for canting over - this works in Kerbal space program, a notoriously loose simulator for structural dynamics and aerodynamics. So I had a feeling it wouldn’t work - but the basic trajectory does work. Basically the ICBM would ascend to just a few thousand feet and immediately use it’s thrust vectoring to angle below the horizontal for a ground burst on the white house or Pentagon. I think you are right, the missile would fail from the structural stresses and fixing this would make it a less good ICBM because it would be heavier.
I meant this was an obvious attack in that if Soviet submarines were as difficult to detect as American submarines supposedly are it could sneak there. And firing from point blank means the enemy gets no chance to respond and the various atomic blasts might destroy any aircraft coming to destroy the submarine.
If the missile launch interval is 10 seconds between missiles the sub could empty it’s payload and sneak away before anything could be scrambled to stop it.
Again, this assumes stealth on approach -obviously if it’s detected this won’t work.
Though having the subs fire from the territorial limit doesn’t give much warning either does it.
Let’s think about the relative magnitudes of the vector components of the forces acting on a submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM). The gravity vector is trivial compared to pretty much everything else.
If you still disagree, you’re making an extraordinary claim. To coin a phrase, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. What evidence do you have?
“Um. . .” let me spell it out for you. The fully-weighted SLBM (a heavy cylinder) with one point of lift (the exhaust), canted over in such a way to achieve a an overall horizontal trajectory, would have to fly in an attitude that would make it look like an drunken sailor, unsteady on his feet, just thrown out of a bar: moving in a direction, but wildly unsteady.
Want an example you can practice? Balance a pen/pencil on your finger, pointy end down, and try to walk to a corner of the room. Tell me how straight of a line you make. . .
Okay, lets do that. The gravity vector is trivial compared to what, exactly? Gravity is the first and foremost problem you’ve got. Drag is induced by velocity, and lift is generated by thrust, in which thrust is shared between generating that lift and fighting its induced drag.
And an SLBM is not a single point in space–it is a weighted cylinder with a CG far offset (to the center of length of the cylinder) from its center of lift (the exhaust). Stability is achieved by balancing the CG atop the center of lift, or damned close to it.
These missiles are designed to overcome gravity (and axial drag). Try the afore-recommended pen-on-finger trick.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Are you claiming that gravity is not the first and foremost problem with a missile designed to boost a payload?
Here’s a YouTube of a D5 test gone wrong. What happened? Multiple things. This pen didn’t make it to the corner (it was command destructed)
