How do ICBM early warning systems differentiate between a real threat and a launch of a normal rocket intended to go to space?

Question

How do ICBM early warning systems differentiate between a real threat and a launch of a normal rocket intended to go to space?

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Answer 1

They don’t and can’t in the initial (boost phase) of the launch. Certain ICBM’s will dump stages at certain times typically much earlier than commercial orbital rockets will, but this isn’t proof positive. ICBM’S also typically have a faster acceleration profile but this also isn’t diagnostic.

ICBM’s will shut down their rockets a few minutes before orbital launch rockets do.

Another clue is that there aren’t that many launch sites on earth which are used for commercial or scientific rocket launches. So you can automatically assign low risk status to launches from certain areas. There are a lot of treaties and agreements against using commercial launch areas for ICBM’s.

The biggest fail safe is certain national launch control organizations, which laws in most countries will require you to file a flight plan and launch information ahead of time before launching above, say, 2000m so . In the USA legally you’re required to get in touch with the FAA and NASA for example.

These organizations then share relavent information with other countries informing them of the launch plans so there are no surprises.

There was an infamous incident in Norway in 1995 where scientists launched a high altitude research rocket from the Norwegian coast over the island of Svalbard. Through some series of miscommunications the Russian military and particularly the Early warning radar command failed to be notified. This led them to declare high alert within about a mintute of the launch, because the rocket initially had sufficient similarity to a US Trident 2 SLBM. This caused the Russian nuclear Briefcase to be activated and given to then President Boris Yeltsin. After some 8 minutes of the 10 minute alloted decision time it was determined that the rocket was headed northwest away from Russian territory and therefore was unlikely to be a threat. Yeltsin was informed of this and wisely decided to order a stand-down.