So the warheads are glowing from re-entering the atmosphere at 16000 kph / 9940 mph / 14578 ft/sec. I wonder if they use heat shields like the manned reentry vehicles use? I’m guessing they use thermal tiles like the space shuttle used. (?)
Recall that in kinetic-kill anti-ballistic missle systems the total engagement time is twice as fast, with ever shorter time windows the closer to engagement for the defensive missle to track and acquire (open its last stage optics) the incoming one.
Not an easy job.
African or European?
From the nuclear weapon archive, the Mk 21 reentry vehicle (RV) used on the Peacekeeper ICBM (LGM-118A) is composed of:
Before reading the archive’s entry, I had thought the RV’s exterior was simply the U-238 outer skin of the warhead, with maybe some epoxy paint for weathering. My understanding was that U-238 is somewhat tough, and rather refractory. I would not be surprised if additional coatings were also used on the RV, to improve survivability against fratricide, to better match IR and other signatures of decoys, or to make the RV “lower” observable.
A thing to consider when comparing thermal protection systems is the environment of launch and re-entry. NASA got cranky when they had to launch the Space Shuttle in anything other than perfect conditions: no rain, couldn’t be too cold, etc… An ICBM has to be much more robust. It may have to fly through debris and high thermal and ionizing radiation on the way up and the way down. Also, the Space Shuttle re-entered much shallower than an ICBM—the Shuttle was going to be exposed to high heat for much longer than the steeper descending ICBM. The Shuttle’s cargo was much more sensitive to heat and acceleration than the ICBM’s. OTOH, the ICBM’s thermal protection system only has to work once…
Disposable Hero
I watched a SCUD hit Dhahran Saudi Arabia once. During the first Gulf War I was at a customer site, about 9PM IIRC. I couldn’t see a clear horizon due to trees and buildings but still saw a large arc of sky. The SCUD went from horizon to horizon MUCH faster than I could turn my head or even track with my eyes. It looked like a giant sparkler and the boom when it hit was impressive.
Regards
Testy
Thanks Testy, I wasn’t really expecting eye-witness accounts, but this is a lot of the reason why the straightdope is so interesting. For pretty much any question someone has been there, done that, or studied it intently.
I meant to ask this above, from your perspective what did the incoming Scuds look like?
Disposable Hero
I’m always amazed at the experiences and knowledge I find here. Best thing about the 'Dope!
Another little thing about the Patriots, they are the loudest things I’ve ever heard. Early in the war, they had the Patriots in some kind of “auto engage” mode where they would attack a SCUD, which would usually break up, and then start engaging the pieces. Each Patriot missile had a big bang when it launched, another when it hit supersonic, and a third when the warhead went off. When a SCUD came in, it sounded like WW III.
The Patriots were cool but they were just about as scary as the SCUDs. The day after an attack we would all go SCUD-Hunting, looking for the bits and pieces of SCUDs and Patriots that hit the ground. Great times!
Regards
Testy
I think you have a different definition of those words than me! 
Leo Bloom
So where were you during the first Gulf War? I was in Dhahran, just a few miles from the airport.
Regards
Testy
I was a a US volunteer for the IDF at a back base, Tel HaShomer, schlepping, checking, and stuffing medical kits (we also were packing biological warfare defense kits for civilians, which was not made public). The bulk (all?) of the Scuds came towards us, some enough to blow out our windows. I was scared shitless.
Also, you’re correct about the sequence and impression of the Patriots. We were aware that their landing was just as dangerous, and would not come down as shrapnel, but as a single missile.
They had 0% kills. (Although the Patriot I was basically a jacked-up surface-to-air missile, and was totally screwed by Saddam’s not playing by the rules and sending out unpredictable trajectories due to his poor design: something the Patriot designers and the Israeli ABM people presumable can deal with now. Of course, different kinds of ABMs are designed for differing closeness of engagement.
You just reminded me of a memory I have as a child, visiting my grandmother in Tel Aviv just after the war. I was out for a walk with my mom, and we came upon a huge crater right smack in the middle of an intersection. Naturally the houses surrounding the intersection were flattened, with the insides of peoples’ apartments from the adjoining buildings showing like doll houses. The hole itself was deep, with piping and drains all bent out of shape. I found out later that even my grandmother’s house, two blocks away, had its roof blown off by the blast.
The funny thing they told me though was that it wasn’t a scud strike, but a Patriot that missed its target.
Leo Bloom
Being in Israel must have been tough, I think y’all got the bulk of the SCUDs that were launched. In Saudi, it was like a 6 week holiday right up until the end. The last SCUD that was launched landed a measured 286 meters from my back door. That one killed some US troops and was very bad.
We did the whole gas thing, with drills and the like. I spent most of the war pissed off at the US embassy since they wouldn’t give me a gas mask but the Saudis passed them out like M&Ms to anyone that asked.
I’m not sure how many kills the Dhahran Patriots got. I spent almost the entire war trying to get video of the SCUDs coming in and still have a half-hour tape somewhere. Unfortunately, most of the tape is the ground, the moon, random buildings, me cursing in the background because I’m barefoot and stepping on rocks and crap. There is about 5 minutes of twinkly lights in the sky and some huge booms. I had to rethink that plan of being a war correspondent.
OK, here’s a question for you. At the beginning of the war, we all jumped out of bed and ran around trying to see what was happening whenever we heard the alarms. Toward the end of the war, we’d just roll over and go back to sleep. Did you notice anything like that? I’ve always wondered whether that was a normal reaction or not.
All the best
Testy
LMAO!!! I see what ya did there!!! “What!? I don’t know that! Agghhhhh!!”
This reminds me of another nuclear weapon story. I read “The Making of the Atomic Bomb” many years ago, so hopefully I am getting this right.
When they were making “Little Boy” weapon, they needed to make/use a barrel inside the bomb since this was the “gun-type” nuclear weapon. So they looked at large bore barrels that were already in use by the military as a guide for how to make a barrel appropriately. When they saw those barrels they were unhappy because the barrels were so heavy and thick (not something they wanted in their bomb).
They were discouraged by this for a while until someone realized that the gun barrels they were looking at had to be thick and heavy because they had to be fired many times. For Little Boy, it only has to fire once! They could make it thinner and lighter.
Night-time missile tests are visible, but I believe ICBM’s move even faster than the missiles do and don’t have thrusters. They may catch and reflect light though. The missile tests I’ve witnessed looked like a very pale star moving very quickly towards the horizon. It had no trail or exhaust, so I think it was not thrusting at the time, but I don’t have any details. It was very fast. I only happened to notice it because I was stargazing with a friend.
The two of us saw it, looked at each other and said “Whelp…” because he happened to have been talking about possible nuclear engagements. Quite a comical moment.
I thought this was an interesting thread headline when I saw it today, and didn’t realize it was a zombie, and one I’d replied within a few times.
Anyway, one very interesting thing happened between the OP and its rebirth, and that’s the meteor over Chelyabinsk, Russia. Chelyabinsk meteor - Wikipedia Meteors do come in much faster than ICBM RVs. It came in at 19-ish Km/sec vs 8-10 Km/sec for modern RVs. The early Atlas ‘brass-hat’ RVs famously decelerated to near sonic speed before detonation. The Chelyabinsk ‘superbolide’ was also much bigger, at 20 meters across vs ~1 m or less for an RV.
Still, videos of its re-entry are still pretty close to what I’d think that particular end of the world would look like. See videos like, Chelyabinsk Meteor Dashcam View - YouTube : glowing vapor trail, object traversing large chunks of the sky per second, massive bright light at the end. It should have been bright, as the main burst had an energy, IIRC, of around 440 kt, or the explosive yield of a modern typical RV. Does a lot less damage when the airburst is at 100,000 feet instead of 5,000 though. The trail continuing after the big fireball does ruin the effect, but up until that point? I’ll say I’m glad this didn’t happen during the worst parts of the Cold War
The “B” in ICBM stands for ballistic - IOW, yes, they are unpowered for most of their flight. Since the “I” stands for intercontinental, yes, they are hauling ass in the terminal phase, several miles per second. That’s enough to develop a healthy glow as the pass through the atmosphere.
