is there any military tactic to counter a nuclear warhead once it’s launched?
In: 13
There are measures in place. Anti nuclear weaponry in play. but they are limited. They can stop a few. Maybe a few dozen or more. But anymore than that? Well, it is doubtful we could stop them.
There are various “anti-missile” systems employed by the US, Russia, and more, in very limited amounts, to counter ICBMs or sub launched missiles, however, their effectiveness is quite low. You might get lucky and shoot one or two down, if things go right, but don’t count on it. The missiles should be expected to get through.
Yes, ranging from “shoot it with another missile” to “hit it with a laser”, but there is understandably little else that the public knows about these systems, as if you know what’s happening, you can work to stop it. And there’s enough nukes that some are going to hit. It’s not like we could test these systems on the scale of full WWIII.
So yes, but we don’t know much, and don’t rely on those systems, there’s enough nukes that if one flies, it’s not a good time. Just don’t launch the nuke in the first place
It all depends on why there is a nuclear launch. Is the US or Russia committed to ending you? You’re dead, there is no protection against that.
North Korea mad at you, maybe a rogue Chinese general? There might be an anti-missile solution.
That the public knows about? We have a very poor missile to missile system, laser based systems, SUPPOSEDLY according to some buried patent HAARP could be utilized to destabilize a missile trajectory or strip the protective coating off missiles.
Though I’m sure the good stuff is top secret. I know in August the Pentagon was going to announce a new missile defense system but they ended up holding off due to Ongoing concerns. Which I’m betting we are seeing now.
Edit: Also airplane deployed bombs (the majority) are going to be useless for anyone but the USs due to their clear air superiority. The largest most advanced air force in the world is the US air force. In second place is the US Navy. We have air planes in the air 24/7 (can’t remember what they are called)
ICBMs are the easiest to shoot down if you get them at lift off. That’s goal one. It you don’t then we have like 60 missile to missile defense systems that’s terribly unreliable. That being said both US and a Russia only keep 1500-1600 ready to fight nukes due to an agreement.
That leaves submarines and again the US has clear sea authority with a navy literally larger than the rest of the worlds combined. We also have built nearly undetectable submarine submarine hunters that are only a few seconds louder than ambient sea noise.
Still… Everything would have to go right for us not to get hit by at least one.
If it’s just one, and it’s launched from far away, there’s a good chance we could shoot it down.
It’s pretty much accepted that the strategy of “mutually-assured destruction” will result in mutually-assured destruction. The fact that neither side is trying to arm itself with bigger or more or better nuclear weapons is evidence that we both acknowledge that it’s pointless.
There is. Russia, China, Israel, Europe, and the US all have anti ballistic missile programs designed to intercept nuclear missiles throughout various stages of their flight. Generally, the cost of the missiles and tracking infrastructure, and the non-100% probability to hit a given missile means they wouldn’t be able to defend against all out nuclear war, but if one, or two, or a couple nukes were launched, there’s a good chance they would be intercepted.
In the US, there is the Patriot Missile system for the launch and reentry/terminal phases of ICBM flight, and THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) for the middle.
As far as the exact scale, the US has many hundreds, maybe thousands, of patriot interceptor missiles across, probably in the low hundreds, of launch sites all over the world. The Patriot system was mainly built for shooting down aircraft and cruise missiles, so it probably wouldn’t be very effective against ICBMs (given their speed, and the fact that most nuclear missiles contain 4-6 warheads/decoys which split up upon reentry to confuse and overwhelm air defenses). But, in the Gulf War, Patriot did supposedly intercept a high percentage (80-90+%) of slightly slower, lower altitude ballistic missiles.
For THAAD, there are only a handful of radars/launch sites across the entire world, notably: Hawaii, Guam, South Korea, Romania, Etc. THE THAAD missiles cost hundreds of millions a piece and there are probably well less than 100 total. If, say, North Korea launches two nuclear missiles and you want to make certain you intercept them, so you launch ~5 interceptors per missile, you can see how after a dozen or so missiles the system is pretty much maxed out.
Historically, the US had the Nike missile system, where people were expected to manually fly (via TV) a nuclear warhead into the incoming nuclear missile and explode it mid-air.
There was a very positive system known as Brilliant Pebbles, proposed in the late 80s. It had a high probability of being effective.
Then Senator Joe Biden helped defeat it in Congress.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brilliant_Pebbles
In addition to what others have mentioned regarding airborne weapons, there is a pretty extensive set of closely guarded knowledge regarding ICBM interceptors. Exo-atmospheric kill vehicles are extremely fast maneuverable platforms that blur the line between spacecraft and missiles. These systems are launched when early warning radar detects an ICBM launch from enemy territory. The vehicles are intended to launch into an opposing trajectory, quickly identify the inbound warheads while they are still in space, and either kinetically or explosively destroy the threat.
As a consequence of the development of these systems, there was a cat-and-mouse game as offensive and defensive counter measures were developed. Some declassified examples of these are multi-vehicle trackers to combat MIRV ICMBs, reflective radar decoy balloons to create extra false targets, sacrificial vehicles to denotate early allowing empty balloons to be ID’d by the fact they they are pushed farther by a blast than empty decoys.
[Exo-atmospheric Kill Vehicles](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnofCyaWhI0)
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