Suppose that someone wanted to fire an ICBM such as the Minuteman III so that it hits a target just 10 miles away (don’t ask why they’d want to do this.) Is it possible to just fire it on an extremely weak trajectory so that it goes up to a low altitude then hits the target 10 miles away?
What about 100 or 1,000 miles away?
I found this thread from back in 2007:
The links in this quote don’t work any more, but this is one of the answers given:
This post gives some of the reasons for the minimum range:
Jurph also mentions a “cold launch” failure. In a cold launch, the missile is propelled out of the silo and then starts its engines, as opposed to a “hot launch” where the missile starts its engines inside the silo and the engines propel it out. In this case, the missile’s engines did not start and the missile went tail first back into the silo and exploded.
So the minimum distance in that case would be zero. 
I suppose you could fire the missile essentially straight up with just enough forward velocity to keep up with the rotation of the Earth, and then redirect the reentry vehicle(s) (RV) back down. However, it probably won’t be very accurate compared to the advertised CEP at normal operating range, both because the inertial navigation system is going to get confused by the ballistics of going straight up and down, and the RVs are designed to enter at a range of angles of attack rather than straight down, so that’s going to mess up the terminal ballistics behavior of the RV.
It would also be theoretically possible to perform a general energy management (GEM) maneuver in which the vehicle performs a series of extreme thrust vector maneuvers to waste thrust so that it doesn’t get as much range, but the Minuteman III is not designed for this kind of maneuver. The SR73 third stage motor is designed with thrust termination for precision control of delivered impulse, but it won’t be able to compensate sufficiently to send the RV back near the launch origin.
Stranger
Ah, much thanks!
Can submarine-launched and truck-launched BMs have a really shallow trajectory and land 10-100km away?
SLBMs typically fly what is referred to as a ‘suppressed’ trajectory (the flight is more forward than upward), but for the sake of the security of the launch platform it is still typically significantly more than 100 km. US nuclear ballistic missile submarines generally have a patrol area that is at least a few thousand kilometers from their target zone.
TEL launched ballistic missiles may have a range that is as little as 50 km or as much as 10,000 km depending on the size of the boost vehicle and reentry vehicle.
Stranger
A problem you may face is arming the warhead.
The warhead is designed to be safe under all circumstances while in storage. (In a silo Etc.)
The warhead may need to see several stages of flight before it will arm itself.
Typical, hard launch acceleration, then free flight, then acceleration towards the ground.
Short range battlefield weapons like the M28 Davy Crocket and Pershing were designed for short range immediate use.
Small warhead like W54 so it was not a suicide weapon!
Their security before launching, at detonation or after launching?
In general ICBMs and SLBMs must fly on a ballistic trajectory since that’s how the propulsion, guidance, structure and thermal protection is designed. It is also how they are tested. I don’t recollect any flight test (at least in the public domain) of any ICBM on a depressed trajectory. If it’s not flight tested you don’t know if it will work.
There is little public information on minimum ICBM ranges but it may be about 1/4 of the maximum range. That means if the max range is 12,000 mi the min range would be 3,000 mi. That would be an actual effective range, verified through testing, analysis and modeling. Of course you could launch one straight up, compensate for earth’s rotation and it would come down somewhere close. However that would be an experiment. I am pretty sure that’s never been tested, as it has no tactical use.
There has been lots of discussion about using ICBMs and SLBMs on depressed trajectories but to my knowledge this is also hypothetical and they are not tested or designed for this. It would impose greater structural and heating loads which the vehicle is not designed for. But with proper design modification and adequate testing, it could likely be done. Here are some papers discussing this.
Depressed Trajectories: Unlikely Role for Soviet SLBMs: Redirect Notice
Depressed Trajectory SLBMs: A Technical Evaluation: www.scienceandglobalsecurity.org/archive/sgs03gronlund.pdf
OTOH no ICBM or SLBM has ever been tested on a polar trajectory which would constitute the most likely flight profile, and no ICBM has ever been tested with a live warhead.
Pretty sure the Chinese did some live tests and one Polaris shot was live.
Wait, wait, wait. Are you telling me that the heart-wrenching climax of Iron Giant couldn’t actually happen?
Or am I remembering wrong, and that wasn’t an ICBM they launched?
On a more serious note, it seems to me that if you increased the range of an ICBM (so that it could loop around the Earth) you would be able to hit the target next door. No ICBM I know of can actually achieve a full orbit, though, and it might even be in technical violation of the international treaties against space-born weapons.
There was one short range Polaris shot but it was not remotely an ICBM. To my knowledge there has never been an active ICBM test with a live warhead, and there are none listed here for China: List of nuclear weapons tests of China - Wikipedia
However if the Chinese have done an ICBM flight test and detonated a live warhead, I’d be interested in hearing about it.
:smack:
You are right. I was counting the CHIC 4 test, which was a live missile shot, but it was only 900 km, not an ICBM as I remembered.
The big problem with a lot of ICBMs is going to be that they have solid rocket motors, which can’t be throttled back or anything like that. They can be steered to some extent, but not shut off early or anything like that.
I’d imagine that you’d have to tread a fine line between sending your payload into orbit, or dropping it at a minimum distance from the launch site, because you’re going to get XXX seconds of full burn out of those stages regardless. Maybe the best way to do it would be to actually put the warhead into orbit and de-orbit it to drop it near the launch site?
If you fire a missile straight up, it already has enough forward velocity to keep up with the rotation of the Earth. At least for a short while.
I was surprised at first upthread about there being no live-warhead US ICBM tests (well, ultra-realistic), but then I stopped and thought about the years when they were developed.
I remembered all those dramatic/spooky shots of incoming at Kwajalein Islands. Live tests would have discomfited those hardy Bechtel employees and the locals: Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site - Wikipedia.
Great username/OP combo by the way.
Solid rockets can be both throttled (statically) and shut down early, and this is commonly done.
The throttle schedule of space shuttle SRBs can be seen in this thrust/time graph. The SRBs throttle back in a predetermined sequence to reduce dynamic pressure in the thicker lower atmosphere, then later throttle up. This schedule is fixed at manufacturing time:
Solid rockets can also be shut down via thrust termination ports, which are used on the Minuteman III 3rd stage and was used on some Titan III SRBs. Forward-facing exhaust ports are opened in the motor case which depressurizes and quenches the combustion process. This was evaluated for the space shuttle SRBs and found feasible but it would have required structural reinforcement that adversely impacted payload capacity, so was not implemented.
Solid rockets can have extreme steering ability, as demonstrated by this Sprint missile turning sharply while accelerating at 100 g: http://williamson-labs.com/images/000102m0.jpg
If you want a range of 10 miles, wouldn’t it be simpler to just *drive *the ICBM there ? 
Any current ICBMs capable of going once around? They seem to achieve near orbital speeds, so a once around doesn’t seem too far fetched. Given the capabilities of the first Atlas and Redstone rockets used for Mercury and Gemini, once suspects the ability go go once around with a nuclear payload was once realistic.
