Inspired by a recent movie or two, and in my tradition of contemplating contingency plans for every horrific occasion, I was just wondering…how quickly could the International Space Station—or a spaceborne target with a similar orbital altitude and inclination, if you’d prefer—be destroyed with a nuclear weapon, should the need suddenly arise?*
Assuming it was an official government/military operation, of course, with full cooperation and support from any or all countries planetside.
And not just “destroyed” as in “left wrecked and inoperable,” I mean literally reduced to plasma by a nuclear weapon detonating as close as possible to the target.
Now, there are a few ASATs in service or in development, but none I know of is nuclear armed. I also don’t know if any nuclear-armed ballistic missiles could be used to attack a target in Earth orbit (something a bit outside of the original operational requirements), at least without considerable re-engineering; or how long it would take to prepare an existing space launch system (Progress? Dragon? Pegasus, even?) for a rapid trip to the ISS, even aside from how long it would take to rig up a special weapon “cargo” (the latter probably being unanswerable, unless some really unnerving Field Manuals got declassified when I wasn’t looking).
So…any Dr. Strangeloves in the crowd willing or able to take a guess at this one?
*Say…Mathilda May and her space-cadre of space-fanatics have holed up there, and are consolidating their power.
Yeah, sure.
But the guidance system in the missile may have limitations on trajectories. Also, the arming of the Nuke would need to be modified. And, since the missile is ballistic, it would all come down to how precisely the launch could be timed - something that isn’t a big deal for a terrestrial target.
The ISS orbital speed is 4.6 miles per second. I would guess you need to be within at least a mile to destroy the ISS. That kind of makes it seem like you need to time the launch to within about 1/4 of a second. That seems pretty tough to me. I could be persuaded to believe that electromagnetic pulse could disable the the ISS at significantly greater range. So maybe you need to time the launch to about 3 seconds which seems more doable.
I don’t think targeting is a problem. We send rockets that rendezvous with the ISS all the time – that is, they come within inches of it. Worst case, you launch a crewed rocket with a nuclear weapon on board, they navigate to within feet of the target and then detonate the weapon. (The OP didn’t say there needed to be zero casualties.) But I’d bet a remotely piloted vehicle could do almost the same thing.
We have missiles that could hit the ISS … easy peasy … regular conventional explosive would be more than enough to blast the ISS to smithereens … I might be wrong but I don’t think there’s any armor plating on the thing …
"Starfish Prime caused an electromagnetic pulse (EMP), which was far larger than expected, so much larger that it drove much of the instrumentation off scale, causing great difficulty in getting accurate measurements. The Starfish Prime electromagnetic pulse also made those effects known to the public by causing electrical damage in Hawaii, about 1,445 kilometres (898 mi) away from the detonation point, knocking out about 300 streetlights, setting off numerous burglar alarms and damaging a telephone company microwave link. "
Although that was 1.4 megatonnes… I don’t think we need quite that much to finish off the ISS.
Wow, amazing (Starfish Prime). The visible effects from Honolulu and elsewhere sound like a brilliant public art piece – something along the lines of a Christo work, or a fireworks display – if you weren’t aware of the deadly weapon connection.
Using a partial payload, an existing ICBM has plenty of delta-V to reach ISS. The Titan II ICBM launched the Clementine space probe to the moon. The former Peacekeeper ICBM is used as a satellite launcher: Minotaur IV - Wikipedia
However an ICBM has no terminal guidance, not even mid-course guidance to a moving target. The post-boost bus does not have maneuvering capability to rendezvous with an orbital target. There is no ground-based on onboard radar guidance. I doubt an unmodified ICBM could get within miles of ISS – it would be flying blind. The OP scenario – vaporizing ISS – would require (at a minimum) a near miss, even using a nuclear warhead.
The SM-3 ABM missile has terminal guidance and been used for ASAT tests but the Block I versions are limited to about 300 km altitude (186 miles), whereas ISS is at about 250 miles. It also doesn’t have a nuclear warhead: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaKpJ7i-JXA
The SM-3 Block IIA missile which was recently tested probably has the delta-V to reach ISS. The OP question is “how rapidly” could this be achieved. Fitting a nuclear warhead and the required fuzing technology to a SM-3 Block II would take a while – probably weeks or months.
There are 44 Ground-Based Interceptor ABMs in Fort Greely Alaska and Vandenberg AFB CA. These are much larger and higher performance and have reached 1,100 mile altitudes in tests. They have terminal seeking but (like the SM-3) would require fitting with a nuclear warhead and fuzing technology. Like the SM-3 this would likely take weeks or months, even in a contingency: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tW-WROYdTP8
There are multiple unmanned supply vehicles which fly to ISS periodically. If one of these was ready, it would be easy to put a warhead on it and detonate it by remote control. Re “how rapidly”, this totally depends on the launch prep cycle for booth booster and cargo vehicle. This could vary from days to months: Uncrewed spaceflights to the International Space Station - Wikipedia
There’s also the, um, lack of targeting precision needed for even a small-yield nuke in an unobstructed environment. A 50kt warhead within a mile of the ISS would destroy it physically and likely vaporize all but the big chunks. Getting within a few hundred yards, even in the hastiest launch with errors, should be no problem.
Doubtful.
In the vacuum of space, there would be no blast - just a whole lot of hard radiation. Some of that would end up vaporizing the skin of the ISS, but a lot of it would just penetrate and keep on going.
So, does that imply that the best plan would be to put it in either a manned capsule or a SpaceX cargo shuttle? Then the explosion would have something to accelerate beyond it’s own casing.
This is correct and often misunderstood. There is no blast, no fireball and no thermal radiation from a nuclear detonation in space. Within earth’s atmosphere, the fireball only happens due to X-rays interacting with surrounding matter. IOW it’s the atmosphere itself absorbing and re-emitting energy that creates the fireball. In the vacuum of space there is no atmosphere, hence no fireball.
In an atmospheric detonation, the fireball is what gives the impression of sustained energy release over several seconds. However in a vacuum, the total energy release from a nuclear bomb finishes within one microsecond – one millionth of a second.
There is likewise no blast effect in space since that’s also caused by an atmosphere.
A nuclear detonation in space is more like the instantaneous blink of a strobe light, only vastly more powerful. It is very different than happens within the atmosphere or how space detonations are depicted in fiction: