if companies experience a lot of trial and error getting rockets into space (because, ya know, rocket science… is hard) how do we know ICBMs won’t fail in their trajectory?

Question

It just seems like a lot of ICBMs may be based on older technology, and even the new space exploration companies out there have a lot of difficulty along the way. In an extinction-level, all-out nuclear war, are we even sure ICBMs and other similar weapons won’t fail?

In: Physics

Answer 1

In theory, we don’t, but ICBMs have been tested time and again. Also, ICBMs aren’t that complicated. Launching a payload from one point to another through a ballistic trajectory does not require many maneuvers; it’s essentially the simplest spaceflight trajectory involving a vehicle leaving the Earth and coming back. ICBMs are designed to be self-sufficient, navigating using inertial navigation systems to avoid reliance on external sources like GPS.

The only reliability risk is that if nuclear war breaks out, some of the missiles might be duds due to age, but that’s why the U.S. has thousands of them. I assume the military has taken in to account that a percentage of the missiles will be duds regardless of maintenance procedures.