In the movie the Sum of All Fears a nuclear device is smuggled into the US and goes off. The President and his cabinet cannot verify where it came from and believe it might be Russia urging us to stay out of Chechnya. I know this is based off a Tom Clancy plot but even at that it still seems vastly unrealistic to me. If this really happened in real life would we really assume its Russia and try to attack them that fast? Could a modern day nuclear ICBM launch source go undetected?
Todays world is vastly different to 1991 which is when the book was set.
I believe the USSR still hadn’t collapsed at that time.
No. An ICBM launch could not go undetected.
An ICBM absolutely would not go undetected. In the book the US believes that the Russians smuggled a nuke into the US and set it off from the ground.
The reasons that they blamed the Russians were based on faulty intelligence that suggested that the Russian military had co-opted some Russian nukes and was planning a coup, and the initial estimate of the size of the nuke was way too high because the nuke had gone off in Colorado in the winter. The snow reflected more energy than was accounted for in the calculations of the yield of the nuke.
Keep in mind that the book was set in 1991.
Ex Air Force and ex NORAD here.
During Desert Sheild/Storm we could detect SCUD launches with about a 25-second response time in which we determined the point of origin down to a few meters, course speed and target.
That was just from space-based sensors from one command center (SPADOC – space defense operations center) and not from all of them (ADOC – air defense grid) and Navy operations to name a few.
They even track sizable objects originating from space (space junk or meteors) and in orbit.
And this was back when the book was actually written.
So, to answer the OP, no. No launch of any kind will go undetected, and no airborne object will be able to enter our airspace undetected whatsoever.
The USSR was dissolved on December 8, 1991, per the Belavezha Accords.
I haven’t seen the movie but I think it differs widely from the book, in which the bomb is processed from a Israeli fission device lost during the Yom Kippur War and detonated in Denver during the Superbowl (IIRC). Clancy isn’t much of a prosaist, but he did do some substantial research, and in a twist an examination of fallout by a NEST team determines via relative isotope ratios that the bomb material was produced at the Savanah River facility. (In a somewhat more absurd plot development the President, panicked and refusing to listen to advisors verges on ordering a nuclear attack, while several other side plots come together to reinforce the idea that the Soviet Union may be attempting an attack.) Similarly, we would likely be able to identify a Soviet- or Russian-manufactured weapon from previous fallout residue catalogues and a knowledge of their weapon-producing reactors. Ditto for the French and British, and we could likely make educated guesses about the origins of weapons produced from Indian, Pakistani, or Chinese, or Japanese material.
Despite the removal of the Peacekeeper wings and C4 Trident forces from operational status, and reduction of warheads to a single one per vehicle per the SALT II agreements, we could certainly respond with a devastating retaliatory strike in minutes; that is, after all, the point of deterrence, to be able to respond to an attack before your own forces are destroyed. I find it highly implausible, however, that such an immediate response to a single explosion without any other provocation would occur, especially one that did not otherwise threaten or damage strategic forces.
An ICBM launch anywhere in Eurasia would be immediately detected by Defense Support Program (DSP) Satellite Early Warning System (SEWS), and would be detected coming over the Arctic Cap by the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System (BMEWS) that are essentially dedicated to this function. A sea- or terrain-skimming low observable cruise missile might be able to penetrate American airspace without detection, but the range for that is going to be limited to about 2000 nmi at best. The rationale you state from the film makes no sense, but then, very little that comes out of Hollywood really does.
Stranger
I realize that you are referring to ICSM and tactical missiles but what is the feasibility of a cruise missile making it through? The maximum range for a subsonic cruise missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead is about 600 miles. Since they have terrain mapping capabilities that enable them to fly nape of the earth flight plans, isn’t it theoretically possible for one to get through?
In short, no. The US (and Canada – NORAD is a joint operation) have an extremely tight air defense. We routinely busted drug runners coming in flying NOE (nap of the earth) in small little Cessnas.
Theoretically, yes. The human error factor will always allow this, however unlikely with all the eyes on various radar screens in the Mountain.
Actually, that’s almost exactly like the movie. The Superbowl is in Baltimore, but it’s still an Israeli bomb lost during the Yom Kippur War, IIRC. And I do remember the nuclear team saying it was an American made bomb/made from uranium or plutonium processed in an American facility.
Savannah River, to be exact.
A single engine Cessna has a comparatively huge radar cross section (RCS) signature, though. A composite-body low observable subsonic cruise missile, on the other hand, has the RCS signature of a large bird. A cruise missile like the AGM-129 or the Russian Kh-55 Granat (NATO: AS-15 ‘Kent’) is designed to and could likely penetrate modern air defenses in less guarded areas. The problem is getting these weapons in range; the above-mentioned missiles are air-launch, though the Kh-55 also reputed has a submarine launched variant (similar to the sub-launched version of the BGM-109 Tomahawk, but longer range). Clearly it would take a well-equipped military to launch a strategic attack on the US with cruise missiles, but for regional conflicts they are an ideal way to get around early detection and anti-ballistic missile defense systems.
Or you can build this thing: SLAM:*Apart from the thermonuclear warheads, SLAM itself was also a very formidable weapon. The sonic boom of a 25+ m long vehicle flying at Mach 3+ at 300 m altitude would cause severe destruction in non-hardened structures on the ground. Additionally, the nuclear ramjet continuously left a trail of highly radioactive dust, which would seriously contaminate the area below the missile. Finally, when the SLAM eventually crashed itself at the end of the mission, it would leave a wreckage of a very hot and radioactive (“dirty”) nuclear reactor.*Not low-observable, of course, but it would be a hideously destructive threat nonetheless.
Stranger
Yeah, the big difference is that the bad guys went from being Islamic extremists in the book, to the much more plausible Austrian neo-Nazis in the movie.
A weird thing in the Clancy-verse is that nobody ever talks about the Denver bombing. When characters are outraged about terrorism they talk about 9/11. You’d think somebody would say, “Yeah, that was bad, but not as bad as that time they nuked Denver.”
Even stranger, since 9/11 would have been the second (and possibly less destructive) suicide airliner attack on America in the Clancyverse. The first the time being when that Japanese airline pilot flew his 747 right into the Capitol Building, killing the President, at least half the Congress, and probably several thousand staffers and visitors.